holla

my best friend monica was in town, and we were having a girls day in minneapolis...which led us to the Soap Factory (home of the scariest halloween haunted house around) for Craft'za: a one-day art market for handmade goods.

if you know me, you know i say "holla!" all the time. so when i saw this amazing hand-cut, gold holla sign, i just HAD to buy it!

uptown style art

for christmas this year santa bought me a completely one-of-a-kind piece of art...an illustrated version of uptown. and to make mine 100% unique, an "S Girard Ave" street sign was added to the bottom center of it. i love it so much, my parents...err...santa...did an awesome job at choosing a gift! it's from the uptown art fair, which i went to with them last summer. i fell in love with the print instantly, and must have made it obvious enough for them to notice :)

even though christmas was months ago, i finally got it hung over my exposed-brick wall. i plan on filling the wall with artwork, but for now i just have this print and a watercolor flower painting my grandpa painted years ago.

a peak inside

most everyone who visits me has said the same thing: "what's with the paper hanging in your door?" well, we'll get to that in a sec.

here's the back story:

august 2009. summer. it was my first night staying here, and although it was under-construction, i was excited to finally sleep at my own place. i locked my bike to the fence right outside my door, ready to bike to work the next day. but as i opened my door on that raining morning, the bike was gone, and in it's place, the broken lock lay in two pieces on the ground.

i felt a little uneasy, someone had been footsteps from my door. maybe they tried the door handle -- just for fun -- to see if it was left unlocked. my mind was filled with imagery of what had happened the night before. even if it had been a somewhat innocent crime of uptown late-night carousing by excited bar-goers after last call, i couldn't shake the feeling that someone had been peeping through my windows, looking to see if there was anything worth breaking and entering for.

so i ripped a piece of lined notebook paper in half and hastily secured it over my window opening in the door with masking tape. phew! now no one would be able to peak in whenever they felt.

i finally decided that little piece of paper needed to be replaced. i grabbed the leftover fabric rachael had given me along with her circle wall art frames (currently hanging my dining room) and picked out a pattern with tiny flowers. i made it four sheets thick -- so it's not completely opaque, but also not thin enough to be see-through.

i also decided that since the fabric was so thin, it would need to be weighted down at the bottom (so the wind from my fans wouldn't constantly blow it about).

my solution? i sewed a little tunnel (i apologize for not at all knowing the proper sewing terms) just large enough to hold a thin magic marker. but one wasn't heavy enough, so i added another "tunnel" for another marker to hide, to help weigh my fabric curtain down.

next i sewed two small one-sided pieces of velcro near the top of the fabric, on the backside of course. then cut equal lengths of velcro to stick to each, and secured each of those with a 3M command strip to attach to my door.

and voila! my new door window covering. definitely a step up from the lined notebook paper and masking tape...

the secret of happiness

turns out certain people are worried that naming my dining room the opium den might hurt my reputation. well how about the poppyseed lounge? hmm, this might take some time, so as i ponder more socially acceptable titles to help you understand my vision, here are some photos from last weekend's project. what do you think?

here's a little background on my inspiration for this room: those who know me can understand why i ended up choosing a different (but equally vibrant) color for each of my four walls. as seen in my daily wardrobe, i am intrigued by mixing together as many patterns and colors as i possibly can. and now that i have my own place, it's starting to show through in my home decor as well.

the circular wall hangings shown above were a diy birthday gift from my lovely baby sis and i am so happy i finally got them up on the walls. i decided to have them hanging down from the ceiling, so i secured a string of hemp across the entire middle wall, and then hung each fabric circle down from there at different heights. i didn't plan it out in advance, and should have probably thought about their placements, measured, and used a transparent thread, but i was impatient and just wanted to get them up.

PS: for those of you still worried about the negative connotations of the term opium den, here's what a little google searching uncovered to prove that the word can be used to describe a design style:

• a peek into the home of olga naiman via design*sponge
• a post from the BBC's design inspiration section
• an LA spot, the figueroa hotel
• and of course, the one and only kitty cat klub in dinkytonwn

and i leave you with a quote (also found on my google search), which inspired the title of this post.

"i took it, and in an hour...an abyss of divine enjoyment suddenly revealed...here was the secret of happiness...at once discovered." -- thomas de quincey.

mirror, mirror on the wall

i went on a little shopping spree this weekend, and this mirror is one of the things i picked up along the way.

a few things

i scored a few things this weekend...here's two of them (both from target).