I’ve been gone for a while now, due in part to the sudden passing of my father, who was a sort of larger than life figure for me for 30 years.

As shown here, my dad was clearly a badass. He cussed, watched football, ate steak, and worked out at least an hour a day. He also emptied the dishwasher, organized his bathroom drawers, and planned family vacations. He taught me how to play golf, shoot pool, and play cards, and he taught me to strive to accomplish more than I thought I could, to work hard and be happy. He expected a lot, but never failed to make sure I knew how proud he was of me and how much he loved his little girl.

I’m going to miss my dad terribly, but I would never trade all the pain of this loss for all the years of memories I’ll get to keep. Also, these photographs:

When my parents were only dating. This lasted a few weeks before they ran off and got married.

A handsome devil, this one.

Their third of 42 Christmases together.

We still have this gold rocking chair and I am never giving it up.

I was also very small here.

What this holiday taught me was this: anything can happen, at any time; make sure you never take your loved ones for granted and please keep things in perspective.

Here’s to a new year and a new beginning. Thanks, Dad, for giving me a great start, and more than I could ever deserve.

Did you ever hear about the experiments with rats where they would get frustrated in some way, and then made themselves feel better by going and beating up other rats? Now, I am not a professional interior designer, nor stylist, nor photographer. I have no budgets and I have very limited resources. Thus, I live in a very fragile glass house as I throw these stones, but hey, it’s fun. When checking out some professional design sites to get inspiration for my pretty pink bedroom, I came across some genuine head-scratchers. Case in point:

Living, etc. calls this “Cape Cod style.” I call it “Who let the pony on the bed” or “Let’s get out of this hotel room before they see what we’ve done” or “half-assed shipwreck.” Seriously, wtf? Hasn’t this casual styling business gone a bit too far? I don’t even know what kind of inspiration I’m supposed to take away from this other than “blue” and “America” and “whatever.”

Okay, so this one’s not so bad, though there’s a lot I could say about how vague and disconnected it is. But what’s with the overstyling? Magazine on the bed? Water on the bedside table? It makes it unclear where the design ends and the styling begins – oh, I just leaned this mirror up against the wall so I’d have a place to hang my dress? How would you even use that mirror in real life with that chair in front of it?

I want to make it clear that I love everything about this setup except SOMEONE PLEASE FIX THE STRIPED BLANKET IT’S GOING TO FALL VERY SOON kthx

I promise I’ll be positive in my actual inspiration post to follow.

I want to make one thing clear: I am not getting married. But thanks to Apartment Therapy’s color contest this month, I’ve been thinking a lot about color and what it takes to create a successful color palette. And thanks to design*sponge, I was introduced to Once Wed, a stunningly lovely collection of wedding ideas, photography, and decorating porn. It borders on the obscene it’s so beautiful. There are a lot of photos of flowers and the outdoors, and I can spend entire afternoons going through the site and creating potential romantic room palettes based on them.

Taking the deep, muted green of the leaves and adding yellow, pink, and red, we get this, the most beautiful bedroom I have ever seen:

This is one of the most awesomest bedrooms I have ever seen. Farrow & Ball in Down Pipe is the color, though it looks greener here. Love.

Or, this:

Or even this:

Or from my *other* favorite color contest entry:

Check out Once Wed for some great color inspiration, and
vote tomorrow (!) for me and for Gidget (and for whomever else you like)!

If you live in LA and have never been to Heritage Square, you should go. It’s sort of like a sanctuary for old homes and buildings, where they can go to be restored and toured and generally appreciated. If you’re into history, architecture, and/or design at all, it’s a really fun way to spend an afternoon. If you’ve already been, then you may want to check out this holiday season’s Designer Holiday Homes tour, where three of the historic structures are being professionally decorated in the style of various historical periods.

Historic interior of a house at Heritage Square, via Sarah Barnard Design blog

The Holiday Homes tour will be available for viewing from November 27 through January 3, 2010 from 12pm to 4pm on Saturdays and Sundays. For more information about this and other events at the museum, visit www.heritagesquare.org.

I’ve got some adorable new old things in my etsy shop!

Fabulous vintage tropical fabric, $20

Firstaid Quickbands tin, $12

Cute shot glasses, $4

and much more! Check it out here.

I have entitled this post “Awesome Orange Van” because on my way to work this morning I passed an awesome orange van and took pictures of it. It looked like a nice place to wake up, maybe open the windows and have a cup of coffee.

Also, a couple coffee tins in the etsy shop this week, just $5 each:

Have a great weekend!

My lovely MacBook Pro (named Gypsy) has succumbed to the awful dead graphics card disease, so I’m going to have to wait a while to finish documenting my redecorating project while she gets repaired. Let’s wish Gypsy a speedy recovery!

If you’ve already defined what your room is going to look like, now it’s time to get a little more substantial. What do you need in your room? Is there anything that’s taking up space, that you’re not using, that you can sell? Are there things you have stored away that can be repurposed?

It was so, so difficult to sell this lounge chair.

This chair was given to us, but it was so terribly hard to say goodbye to. It wasn’t a real Eames chair (we never would have sold it if it were) and it needed a lot of repair, but the look is so iconic and beautiful that it felt criminal to get rid of it. But more important than having a piece of furniture that was a particularly good deal (free is a pretty good deal) or a piece that you really like the look of, is getting both value and looks in a piece that works beautifully and is functional in your home. And in our 630 square foot house, this chair and ottoman combination simply did not work, no matter where we put it. Ultimately, we decided to sell it, so voila – instant redecorating budget. And a nice couple got a cool chair on craigslist.

Once you’ve figured out what you can live without, it’s time to think about what you need. Think about what you want to be able to do in your room, keeping in mind that rooms can often do double duty – our dining room is also our office, for example. Some advise against adding offices to bedrooms, but sometimes it’s unavoidable (in my first studio apartment, my desk was right next to my bed, and it never bothered me a bit). So for my project, in our bedroom, we need areas for:

• sleeping
• storing off-season clothing and other essentials
• storing current clothing and getting dressed
• exercise (the kind you could do in public at the gym but prefer to do at home because of financial and personal insecurities)

So you’ve decided what you want to do in your room, now think about exactly what you need to accomplish that – probably things you already have, with room for an improvement or two. For instance, I want to store off-season clothes. I have the space, but maybe I need some boxes first, so the clothes don’t just get piled in the corner. Stuff like that. Now, sketch out the room as you want it – pretend it’s an empty space and a blank slate, and start filling it only with what you need.

As you do this, make a list of things you need to make or buy to accomplish your goals, and begin checking out thrift stores, ebay, etsy, and craigslist. If you want to be notified immediately if, say, someone posts a vintage dresser on craigslist, you can create a google news alert for it. Just click here, enter your search term (i.e. “vintage dresser”) followed by site:your local craigslist site (i.e. “site:losangeles.craigslist.org”), choose your delivery options, and click “Create Alert”. Be sure to enter your local craigslist web address, natch. Google will now handily notify you if someone in your area posts a vintage dresser, or whatever you’re looking for, for sale or free.

As you make this list of what you need, consider the balance and flow of your room. If it doesn’t feel comfortable (and if you’re doing this, it probably doesn’t), try to pin down exactly why. If it feels too empty, imagine what it would be like with the furniture pulled away from the walls or rearranged to prevent dead space in the middle of the room. If it feels too cold, consider adding a rug and/or curtains. If it just makes you generally anxious, compare your room to the photos you’ve chosen as your inspiration – what’s different (besides the obvious professional styling and photography)? Are the colors drastically different? Colors play an essential part in the feeling of a room – and that doesn’t mean everything has to be neutral; white walls make me terribly unhappy. Is the room too dark or generally poorly lit? Try to avoid garish overhead lighting and instead rely on sconces and table lamps that create a nice glow.

the bottom line

Today, we:

• see if there’s anything in the room we can sell, give away, or repurpose
• determine what we want to do in our room
• decide what we need to make or buy to accomplish that, staying within our budget
• start scouting for bargains and ways to DIY
• think about the balance and flow of our new room

At this point, we’ve already accomplished a lot. We know how our room will feel, what we’ll do in there, and what we need to make or buy to make it happen. Day three, however, is when we actually roll up our sleeves and get into it. Ready?

I’m working on a small-budget redecorating project for ye olde blogge here, but in the meantime, check out this rad table I got at the Venice High School flea market last weekend for $100. Some pure tung oil and a lot of fine sandpaper darkened the wood to match the base and gave it a nice, natural, water-resistant finish.

I’d been eyeing a similar burl wood table at an antique store for months, but at $500, it was simply more than I could afford. When it sold, I thought I’d never find one as good, yet here it is, a much better shape for the room. The moral of the story? Don’t be afraid to have blank spaces where a chair or table needs to go – work without them and eventually you’ll find the perfect piece at a price you can afford.

December 10th? Really? Has it been that long? December was exceptionally busy for me, so I guess I’m not terribly surprised that I barely made a worthwhile post for the entire month. But there’s also something new and exciting (for me, anyway): you can find official, printed, and better grammarized versions of my vintage designer and decorating diatribes in Today’s Vintage magazine, a lovely little free publication available at antique malls throughout the west. In case you missed it, I was featured in the December issue and our patio was on the cover.

Our back patio was featured on the cover of Today's Vintage magazine.

There I am! Some of our home's more charming elements made it in to the December issue of Today's Vintage

You can read the full article here.

I don’t have a list of locations that carry Today’s Vintage, but you can read my January article on midcentury textile design here at todaysvintage.com.

Happy new year!