friendship, or best offer...

i love, love, love craigslist. i love the wild wealth and variety of furniture that’s available, love negotiating over prices, love to be able to change the pieces in my house around without spending much money, love the environmentally friendliness of it, love that it forces you outside your usual circle of people… i love craigslist.

about a year ago, i had just moved into a new house and i was looking for a little dresser for the powder area next to my bathroom. i’d been scouring craigslist for a few weeks, & finally found one that looked about the right size. i emailed the seller, T, & he emailed me back right away, suggesting that i meet his wife J that evening at their house to take a look at it. he was asking $150 or so for the dresser, and i wasn’t sure from the picture whether i loved it or not, so on my way to their house to meet his wife, even though i only had $30 in my wallet, i didn’t stop at the ATM. i wanted to give myself an excuse to leave their house and think about it before buying it- a little pre-purchase, cool-off period.

i arrived at their house (which was only a few miles down the road from mine), and rang the doorbell. J answered the door… and i immediately fell in love with her. i don’t know what it was, but there was something about her that made me start plotting to convince her to be my new best friend. it turned out to be easy- we realized within seconds that we both volunteered for the same dog rescue, and we spent about an hour chatting about our experiences with fostering and people we knew in common.

finally we turned to the business at hand- the dresser. my instincts from the picture were right- i didn’t love it. but i wasn’t about to risk losing my new bff just because i was picky about my furniture! so… i somewhat pathetically told her that i very much wanted to buy it, but i hadn’t brought enough money. we negotiated a little, pretty halfheartedly on both ends, and ended up agreeing that i would give her the $30 in cash that i had, and give her a check for the remainder… when she and her husband came over for dinner the following saturday night.

now, a year later, J & T are two of my favorite people and closest friends- they are the type of people you can’t get enough of. only recently, i confessed to them that i hadn’t really cared for the dresser, & that i was actually pathetic enough to buy it just because i wanted so much to be J’s friend. in hindsight, buying it was totally unnecessary- i’m sure we would have become close anyway. but on the other hand, this otherwise boring little dresser has such wonderfully happy associations that it’s grown on me. it’s perfectly useful, & while it may not be beautiful per se, the friendship that grew out of it certainly is…

santa fe studio...

if you've ever been tempted to drop everything, run off to the mountains of new mexico, and spend your days painting sunsets so beautiful they hurt, then i suggest you not click here. this is my friend bettina's studio in santa fe, and these photos just make me so happy i wriggle around a little bit. such an abundance of color and potential and joy...

to see another wriggle-inducing treasure-trunk of bettina's work, visit her website here. wandering through her art sometimes makes me feel like i'm scuba diving through an underwater gallery- i don't know if it's the fearlessly saturated colors, the references to bermuda, or what, but i love it...

playing with matches...

i have candles all over my house, but until recently i've suffered from a serious disorder which i'll refer to as the save-candles-for-company-mindset. fortunately, i'm recovering, and part of the process has been to make a ritual out of lighting them. i've also learned that for some reason i love to use matches instead of lighters- maybe it's the smell, maybe it's the part where i wander around the house from candle to candle trying to keep the match in my hand from going out, i don't know.

anyway, i decided to dress up my matchbox one day and i loved the results so much that i ended up making about a dozen of them as christmas presents. useful? check. adorable? check...

designing your rat park...

i read this article a million years ago, and the concepts in it inform my design choices as well as many of the other decisions i make on a day to day basis. here's a quick excerpt, but i can't recommend highly enough that you read the whole article (it's written by the brilliantly intuitive martha beck):

"[W]hat is this mythic Rat Park? And how might it relate to you? The term comes from a study conducted in 1981 by psychologist Bruce Alexander and colleagues. He noted that many addiction studies had something in common: The lab rats they used were locked in uncomfortable, isolating cages. Testing a hunch, Alexander gathered two groups of rats. For the first, he built a 200-square-foot rodent paradise called Rat Park. There a colony of white Wister rats found luxurious accommodations for all their favorite pastimes—mingling, mating, raising pups, writing articles for newspaper tabloids. The second group was housed in the traditional cages.

Alexander offered both groups a choice of plain water or sugar water laced with morphine. Like rats in other studies, the traditionally caged animals became instant addicts. However, the residents of Rat Park tended to "just say no," avoiding the drug-treated sugar water. Even rats that were already addicted to morphine tended to lay off the hard stuff when in Rat Park. Put them back in their cages, however, and they'd stay stoned as Deadheads."

soon after i read this article, someone treated me to a massage at a really lovely spa, and i remember wishing i could afford to go hang out there every day; it was such a peaceful, relaxing place. at home, i looked at my tiny studio apartment bathroom and felt totally discouraged... until i remembered this article, and promptly decided to turn my bathroom into as much of a spa it could be. i scoured until it sparkled, ditched old toiletries and any junk i didn't use regularly, and added candles, a new bathmat, & speakers for my ipod. it wasn't the most original idea in the world, but it was such good practice for me in the rat park creation process: how can i create a home that makes me sigh with joy when i walk through the door?

pay attention to how you feel when you walk into your home, or into various rooms in your house. do you feel warmer or colder? how do you feel when you walk into friends' homes? into work? into your favorite coffee shop or store? when you enhance your awareness of your surroundings like this, you can start to make those small, trim tab changes that make all the difference.

when it's ok to be a doormat...

to me, spring says new doormat. the l.a. rains tend to destroy coir mats pretty quickly, and i keep thinking i should get a chilewich mat or something a little more durable, but i never do- i like the fact that coir is a natural material that literally grows on trees (it's the rough fiber on the outside of coconuts), i like the way it feels on my feet, & i even like the disintegration aspect- it means i get to pick out a new one every year. this butterfly mat is new at pottery barn, and the paisley one is made by tag. for a few more made by tag, see here, here, and here. the doormat i currently have is from cost plus world market, and they have a new, colorful one that i really love. finally, this is outside the coir category, but if you love your iphone and bad puns, this one's for you...

gypsies, the original rv'ers

completely in love with these images of gypsy wagons. i feel like they follow the useful/beautiful rule but no other rule whatsoever! see interiors and many more here...

welcome...

welcome to irreverent sanctuary! lately i'm feeling increasingly in touch with my inner designer, and i'm finding so much joy in exploring the way people create their living spaces, their sanctuaries. i'm particularly drawn to what i think of as fearlessly happy spaces, rooms and pieces that i can just tell are truly joyful reflections of their inhabitant's fearless sides. not to minimize it, but it's easy to make a beautiful, comfortable space. the real question is, how do you make it a home? how do you turn a blank space into your sanctuary? william morris’ famous golden rule of design is a start: "have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful-” but it can be hard to tune into your inner aesthete and its needs. both beauty and utility are wildly subjective, and it can be easier to follow the rules, follow the trends, keep your choices tame/classic/minimalist, than to listen to the voice inside that craves polka dotted wallpaper.

for example, in my home, i don't have a dining room table. i had one, and when my boyfriend and i were moving in to our home, we wandered around the kitchen and living area with the table, trying to find a space where it fit. finally he said, “what do we need a dining room table for anyway? we eat breakfast at the bar, and dinner in front of the tv." to me, this was sacrilege- one must have a dining room table! i stammered, "what about when we have people over for dinner?" he responded, "well... what if we just design our house for us, instead of for other people?"

this was wonderfully profound for me. it really changed the way i make design choices- i try to make every choice very personal- what is useful to me, what is beautiful to me? it's difficult- often i find myself looking at something and thinking, "well, what does this say about me?" as soon as that question comes into my head, i try to change perspectives, because as soon as i'm wondering what something "says" about me, then i'm no longer focused on just my own experience & enjoyment of the space or the piece, and i'm worried about what others will think. my design/style goal in life is to be purely self-centered when it comes to making these choices.

i'd like to note that since we ditched our dining room table, we have more dinner parties than ever, with more people, and more fun. to me, a dining room table means pressure- creative, perfectly executed centerpiece, tablecloths, place mats, etc, etc, etc, & that's even before the food. instead we usually just find a place to sit, shoo away the dogs, & enjoy each other, toasting with wildly mismatched stemware.

back to my own selfishness- my primary motivation for starting this blog is that both my budget and square footage are far too limited to amass all the things and spaces that inspire me, that make me gasp, that make me so happy to exist at the same time they do. i'm trying to live the maxim that just because you fall in love with something doesn't mean you have to buy it- this site will help as i can at least share the objects of my affection virtually. thanks for stopping by and i hope you enjoy the blog!