at the Pasadena City College this weekend, which is, by the way, held rain or shine since much of it is essentially indoors. I bought a giant warm fuzzy sweater (not pictured).

I really, really wanted this sign. Mostly I was confused about why there was a boat company in Iowa, but I guess we have lakes there.

consistent with the all-things-southwestern-are-now-cool trend. Futura is a bonus.

I’m sitting in the airport in Des Moines waiting for my flight home to Los Angeles (via Denver, which is one of my favorite airports ever). My mother moved into a lovely 130-year old Victorian in her hometown, and I swooped in to help her unpack as many boxes as I could in 48 hours. My unwavering and often illogical insistence on carrying only one small bag on weekend flights prevented me from taking home stuff I should have, like my old riding chaps and boots, some of my dad’s books, and a couple amazing coasters I set by the door and completely forgot because it was 4 am and I do not begin remembering things until 5:20 at the earliest. Still, I took a few pictures.

It should also be known that I have a thing for cemeteries, and the Nevada municipal cemetery is one of the finest I’ve ever seen. Most of my family is here, and I’m glad.

So, I’m thinking about getting a tattoo. So much so that my friends and coworkers are sick of hearing me talk about it and look at revisions, and frankly, I’m getting sick of thinking about it too. Part of the problem is that I’m a die-hard perfectionist, and pretty much nothing is ever good enough or finished. The other part of the problem is that I adore so many lettering styles that I’m having a very hard time settling on one. Also that I want to do the lettering myself, and I dislike traditional tattoo lettering. Here are some of my references:

I cannot love Anna Bond’s work more. Ideally, I want her to do my lettering and design an entire botanical sleeve for me. I mean, how beautiful are her flora? They literally make me cry.

And of course, I have such a debilitating design crush on Jon Contino I can’t stand it.

I guess at this point I should probably tell you what the damn thing is going to say. See, my dad wrote me a note while I was anxiously waiting to hear back about a job. I found out I got the job the day after he wrote the letter, and the day after that he passed away unexpectedly. When I got home from the whole mess two weeks later, I got his letter, and it said this: “Don’t get down. Just hang in there and everything will work out.” The importance of those words, though he could have had no idea as he wrote them what they would actually mean, still haunts me nearly two years later. Haunts, in a good way. So because it’s always true, and because he said it, there it is: “Everything will work out.” At this point I’ve agonized over it for so many months that I almost feel it’s too late, but here’s the latest version. And yes, someone already pointed out that the R in work doesn’t read.

am I crazy?

For more awesome tattoo and script examples, check out my pin board.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work in my very narrow kitchen. There’s not a lot I love about postwar apartment architecture in LA, but almost all of them from the late 40′s and 50′s had or still have this adorable brightly colored tile in the kitchen. I’ve seen pink and grey, coral and orange, yellow and aqua, et cetera. Mine is yellow and green, which just happen to be some of my favorite colors for a kitchen, so I went with it.

Super dark and super narrow. Not a lot of fun to use.

Chalkboard fridge!

I removed one of the doors making up the screen covering the offensive water heater and made a desk out of it. Moving the refrigerator to the other side of the room, and painting it a similar color to the wall (Farrow + Ball’s Card Room Green) opened up the space visually and makes it a lot more pleasant to be in. Plus, it’s fun to draw on:

the possibilities are endless!

I also had this comically large cabinet I paid WAY too much for (it was a I-drove-this-far-to-look-at-this-craigslist-thing-I-might-as-well-buy-it situation) storing pretty but completely useless items. Once I got rid of the giant table in the living room, I had nowhere to eat my hippie chia seed pudding and drink my herbal tea, so I needed an appropriately tiny table at which to sit.

hot mess.

A place to eat my hippie raw vegan food.

Also, plants. Done!

Well hey, what’s up? Oh, you know, just thought I’d spend the last few months intensively redecorating my living room again, no big deal. That red/pink/orange wall color was pretty sweet, but back in June I became a big girl and bought a couch, a navy blue one. Why would I do such a thing? First, I wasn’t using my giant table as much as I thought I would. Second, it was getting super awkward when people came over and I’d make them sit at my craft table and work on crafts instead of just giving them a drink and some conversation. So there it was, this navy blue couch (that I thought would be charcoal, btw) up against this red wall and it was a bit nauseating. I also got these awesome red lamps and this plaid blanket at what could possibly have been the best estate sale ever. Let’s skip ahead to the happy ending:

It pays to keep old paint.

Initially I thought I’d paint it white, or off-white, like in all those rooms I pin. But then the cheap person in me thought, “Hey, you’ve got some leftover white, some gold, some pink, and some green. What do you think that would make?” So I poured another glass of wine and started mixing. I came up with this camel color that I’m really happy with.

I know, I know. The cords. I should have at least photoshopped them out.

Small tray is Frankoma, print is Sascha Brastoff, vase is my mother's

So keep your old paint! You never know when you might want to mix up something new, or attempt to prove to a past landlord when you’re trying to get your deposit back that you did not in fact cover the walls in oil-based paint therefore causing thousands of dollars in damage (yes, this is really happening, and no, I did not).

I just returned from a week giving shoes and other things to kids in Haiti. This shows nothing of that, but I think it’s one of my favorite pictures I took. This painting was so unlike anything else we saw in Port-au-Prince – most of the graffiti was political (vote for so-and-so) or “vive Wyclef”, plainly spray-painted onto cinderblock walls. Also, I went a little crazy with the Hipstamatic on my phone. Maybe part of why I love this image is that it’s so unrepresentative of what Haiti actually looks like – I either just love cool street art or I love that something like this can be found in a place of such stark contrasts.

Some more hipstamadness:

I loved all the hand-painted typography…

These are the happy shots I took, because this blog is a happy place. But of course everything was not happy, and upon my return to the US one of the first things I did was go to my local farmers market, and the ease with which I could buy blackberries and kale made me cry for a lot of complicated reasons. Or maybe not so complicated. I’m glad I went, but I’m glad to be back.

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to be on a photo shoot at John Marshall High in Los Feliz. Built in 1931, it’s a lovely example of the collegiate-style architecture I enjoyed in my university days, except that it’s a high school, and it’s on the west coast. If you didn’t know better, you’d think you were at an east coast prep school or in a John Hughes movie (Pretty in Pink was filmed here, along with myriad sitcoms and, most notably, Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” video). There are lots of details that make the school feel Spanish on the inside, like the tiled floors and beamed ceilings, and plenty of details that make it feel generally awesome. That goes for this little tiled walkway outside:

Some closer-ups:

I couldn’t find any information on what these are about or why they’re there, but they’re confirmed cool. Anyone know anything about them?

Just a couple shots of the new living room with its proliferation of Eames chairs and neither couch nor television:

A note about the apparent lack of “living” space in this living room: when I first surveyed this 140-ish square foot living room, I quickly realized that I was going to have to choose between keeping my awesome library table as a workspace, and having a cozy area to sit and watch a movie. I chose workspace, not only because there’s no way I’m giving up my table, but because I just don’t sit and watch television. I don’t even have a television. I have a computer, but it seemed like sort of a waste to buy a couch and create a seating area just to watch a computer. Also, I clearly don’t want for seating (there’s actually another Eames chair, a fiberglass shell chair, just inside the room that you can’t see here), so entertaining, while not exactly cozy and warm, is at least possible. For now, I’m happy to have a little space that lets me cut and sew to my heart’s content. Next step is finding the time for it.

As evidenced by my tiny kitchen photos last week, I have very little space for food storage, so everything has to fit in small containers that can also look pretty cool.

The Asteroid Commander there is holding chia seeds, which are actually awesome and quite good for you.

From what I can glean from the internets, in the 1950′s some wacky folks got together to form Space Foods Company with the purpose of making space-themed but earth-fruit-flavored syrups for consumers to make sodas at home. When the bottles were emptied, they could be used as banks, thanks to the pre-slotted screw top lids. A brilliant idea, to be sure, but somehow Space Foods went out of business after producing several hundred bottles but before filling any of them with the anticipated syrup. The box is also adorable:

Individual space men can sell anywhere from $20 to $45 each, but a full set should be $100-$150. Usually I would say here “depending on condition,” but since these were never actually used, they should all be in new or unused condition. A full set is 12 different crew members (though some of the lids/flavors are duplicates) in the original galaxy box.

I also get to show off some of my everyday Fiestaware:

The snack containers at the top appear to be painted by hand. I picked them up for a few dollars at a thrift store in Iowa.

I would love to take these cabinet doors off, but the hinges have been painted over at least a hundred times and I can’t quite figure out how to get them off. I’ve got some citrus paint stripper, think that would work? Or would it look too cluttered in that small space to have open shelving?

Another year, another tiny apartment kitchen to move into. This is probably my smallest yet, and I seriously considered asking the landlord to remove the stove to save space, figuring I’d just get more serious about my raw diet. But I do like to bake sometimes, and I enjoy a good quinoa pilaf, so I decided to work around it. There’s about two feet of space between the giant, obtrusive water heater and the diminutive (yet still massive for the space) refrigerator, which makes the whole thing feel cramped, and I have approximately 6 square feet of counter space.

Yet this is what I love about moving into a smaller place: living more simply and selecting only those things that are useful. I also love the creative challenges that go along with any new space, particularly those that include giant garish water heaters. To hide this problem, I stopped by Silverlake Salvage (formerly of Silverlake, now of Pasadena – recommended!) and picked up three old doors ($100 total), hinged them together and voila – no more water heater or litter box.

Yeah, I'm not sure about this painting here either.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to paint the two white doors. I love the unpainted dark wood one, but the contrast between it and all that white is a bit much. I’m also considering adding some chalkboard paint (not to the unpainted door, duh), even though that’s so 2009, it can be useful and probably better than that flower painting I’ve got up there now. One of the doors I bought came out of a bathroom, so it already had a towel bar built in:

Yes, I have a cheese knife. I use it for lemons and tomatoes. Don't judge me.

Neat, right? There is the aforemetioned space problem, but I think that’s just something I’ll get used to. Here’s how the rest of the li’l kitchen is shaping up:

This cabinet contains most of what I've collected from my grandmother over the years, with a few other finds keeping them company.

I'm debating going a dark-ish green for this room, something Farrow & Ball.

The small white pitcher and green jar came from my great grandmother; the pitcher was used at the state mental hospital where she worked.

So, that’s what I’ve been doing. Next time: cabinets! Wow!