Crafty Soles Got Under My Skin

Told ya I have visual obsessions ... I can't leave the ribbon ideas alone (see post below). I offer to you a few ideas.

MJ Trim Hand Dyed Velvet in Bougainvillea. Luscious!

MJ Trim Plaid Dupioni Silk Ribbon:

MJ Trim Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon in lots and lots of colors:

Buckles, buckles, buckles:

Even safety pins, how cool is this:

Go forth, ladies, and create!

Crafty Soles

Ever need just-the-right-color sandal to go with summer clothes? I have a generous stock of black, brown and beige shoes of various styles and degrees of office-appropriateness, dressiness and grubby garden-ness. I tend to not want to invest in non-neutral colors unless they're inexpensive flip flops or other summer sandals. But these, you must have these, especially if you have a crafty DIY soul ...


You can change the ribbon color every day if you want!

Love love love. And as a hobby seamstress, I have a healthy stash of cool ribbons. Although I don't have any LFN Textiles ribbons yet, I've always loved the innovative designs ... tomatoes, pears, chocolate cakes, poppies and alliums, even knitting instructions:

There's even a ribbon commemorating my evil garden nemesis ... the dandelion:

On my shoes, I could see leopard or zebra grosgrain ribbon, ribbon with stitched accents, delicate sheer silk ribbon, embroidered and beaded ribbons ... I see a feverish search for unique vintage ribbons in my future. For new ribbons, buckles and other embellishments, MJ Trim is a great source.

So how do you get a $278 shoe purchase past a husband, especially when it's not even a complete shoe? Can you imagine explaining this one? Men just wouldn't get it. May be moot obsession anyway ... it's not available right now in 6.5, my size.

Oh, but ah, never give up! It's hard to remember life before Google, yeah? Here they are from Mohop the manufacturer, lots of low and high heel styles, wedges and flats. Oh so tempting. And handcrafted in Chicago, too. See a whole gallery of ribbon ideas! See how customers have used ribbons -- some used crochet ribbons, vintage ribbons, stones, buckles ... so creative and visually interesting. My new life goal is to get posted here!

But how to acquire, how to acquire ... there is the jar of spare change. It tends to add up fast ...

Oh So Giddy About Style For A Good Deal

So I surfed around Antiques by Zaar for a bit after referring to them below. Someday I will be overcome with my Chinese furniture obsession and will purchase from them. That is inevitable! For now, this table caught my eye:

I love it, and I already have two under our living room windows. It's a perfect spot for plants, and of course for cats. But I wouldn't pay well over $1,000 for a real vintage or antique table and then expose it to cat claws. With the tables being under windows, cats are on them every day. Just the other day, I saw our newest little guy, Chaai, hanging by his claws on our Chinese writing table because he tried to jump on it and missed a bit. But I wasn't fazed. Why? Because we got our Chinese writing tables for $100 each! We took pictures of Chinese writing tables on our most recent trip to Thailand a few years ago, and we made a special side trip to Baan Tawai, just south of Chiang Mai. Years ago on our first trip to Thailand, we tread carefully through one of those very expensive shopping centers by The Oriental. We loved what we saw, but could not afford it. It's the kind of place where you watch your elbows and you look behind you before you back up. Can't afford to pay for anything inadvertently broken! A woman in one of the shops told us to go to Baan Tawai, where everything is "cheap cheap cheap." That year we spent much time in Chiang Mai (why we were there so long is another story, and a long one, for another time, let's just say it involved visiting the U.S. Embassy many times, and sitting under John Ashcroft's picture made me shudder) and we did a little shopping in Baan Tawai. Her words "cheap cheap cheap" were correct and we've never forgotten them.

So a few years ago we were in Chiang Mai again, and we were prepared with plans and pictures of furniture we wanted to make. I read the book The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand -- I recommend this book for anyone shopping in Thailand. While the authors are higher-end shoppers, the tips and strategies they share are right-on and appropriate for shopping in any environment there. For example, during our first visit in Chiang Mai, our hotel arranged a minivan and shopping guide to take us to Baan Tawai. They kept speeding past places we wanted to visit, and stopping at crappy shops. We didn't understand at first. But after our last stop of the day when something overcame us and somehow we walked out of a shop with over $150 worth of gifty things we really didn't want (and that was a lot of Baht in 2001), and we saw the guide settling with the shop owner, we finally got it. The next day, we asked the tuk tuk driver who hung around outside our hotel to take us to Baan Celadon for our big dinnerware purchase. He played chess outside with his daughter while we loaded up on celadon plates and bowls, and I think all our boxes weighed more than the tuk tuk and the four people in it! It was a precarious ride back to the hotel.

The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand book recommends you do your research, be prepared, and travel on your own. So in 2005 we decided to not be dependent on others and we rented a car. We had plans to make and purchase quite a bit, and ultimately the car rental saved us money because we could negotiate better. We had many things made for us, including reproduction Chinese writing desks just like the photo above. Each was $100, made of teak and finished with a very dark espresso stain. They have the slimmest drawers. We didn't bargain the business owner down much, instead we emphasized that we wanted old wood, well-seasoned wood, and we were willing to pay for quality. The shop did an excellent job. We took measurements and pictures with us, and they made the tables to the exact measurements we wanted. They included all the details in the photos. The tables have cracked just a little over the past few years in the adjustment from Thailand's humidity to our dryer Illinois air, especially in winter. But it just makes them look older, and that's OK.

Another great Thailand shopping resource are Nancy Chandler maps for Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Here is our gorgeous girl Seesa, a bluepoint Siamese Snowshoe, lounging on one of the tables.

Suffocated By Oak II

Our kitchen has a completely useless desk in one corner. When we first moved in, I had many new file folders to manage for new household services, utilities, insurers, etc. I wanted to keep them close at hand as I was talking with these companies frequently. But the desk drawer is not wide enough for file folders. Useless!! We are also never going to sit at it because it's child-sized, really, and a chair would be encroaching on the kitty-cat racetrack in our house. And oh yeah, humans walk through that track frequently too.

It's an inefficient area in a room where efficient use of space is paramount. The space under the desk by default stores big handbags, computer bags, bags of rice, etc. And the desktop is an open air junk drawer to catch the mail, spare change, pens, coupons, sunglasses, cat treats, tubes of glue, extra cereal boxes that don't fit in the cabinet, cell phones, Blackberries, etc. What a mess!! Above this junk is about 18" of blank air space, then a wall cabinet above that. Meanwhile, most of our plates and bowls are stored in the family room and dining room nearby, and sometimes-used appliances like bread machine and quesadilla maker sit on the basement floor right now.

A better use of this whole space is sorely needed. I've often envisioned ripping out the desk and the wall cabinet and replacing them with a red Chinese cabinet like this one at one of my favorite websites to drool over vintage and antique Chinese furniture, Antiques by Zaar:

We already have a fair number of vintage and reproduction Chinese pieces, and I think this would contrast in an interesting way with our traditional kitchen. Our kitchen has moss green granite counters with black specks in it, and deep red patterned runners protecting the wood floor from all the sharp and hard things I drop on it. The clean lines of a cabinet like this wouldn't clash and would give us stylish storage. Someday, someday ...

Stone Cold Crazy

On our recent trip to Tuscany, I fell for stone. Rustic stone walls everywhere. Loved it. I'd already had plans for stone for our home -- a bluestone walkway to the front door with a wide hefty stone step to the porch, a bluestone patio, and a raised garden surrounded by low fieldstone wall in the backyard. I'd like to add stone veneer ...

... below the lower half of our sunroom structure, below the windows.

Or, salmon/beige/gray old Chicago brick to match the brick accents on the front of our house. Hmmmmmm. Obsessing. More later ...

Suffocated By Oak

I travel too often for work, and like to spend flight time flipping through home decor and renovation magazines. The latest issue of This Old House ignited a back burner obsession: painting our kitchen cabinets. No, that link is not my kitchen cabinets, instead it offers delicious photo ideas from This Old House to inspire painting cabinets. Our cabinets are good -- they are oak and so solid that I can't screw in hooks on the inside doors to hang potholders. But, our kitchen floor is oak too. And the island is built of oak. And there are two planks of oak facing our entry hallway that encase the fridge and double oven. There's so much oak! It's suffocation by oak! And grain! Too much of a good thing. Or, as some people who haven't been struck by the homey charms of a typical midwestern house, any oak at all is not a good thing. I mean, really, I do have a hard time imagining lots of oak in California, or Seattle. It just doesn't seem to fit. But in Chicago, Minneapolis, Ann Arbor, Detroit -- all places I've lived -- oak cabinetry is nearly inescapable. I can accept it, but to a point.

Which leads to the ideas in the back of my mind to transform the cabinets into a warm buttery ivory, perhaps, with darker antiqued streaks in the cracks and on the edges. But I don't know. It's a big commitment. Not something to jump into impulsively, as I'm likely to do. This Old House does tell you how to paint the cabinets.

Some ideas ... light cabinets with darker glaze accents like this finish at KraftMaid:

Something like this effect at Plain & Fancy cabinets, except with more glaze in the recessed areas of the cabinets:

A final note to leave you with as I got drawn into the This Old House site: vintage metal doorknobs. What things people get crazy about! But they are beautiful. A row of these on the wall to hang robes and such would be something.

The Right Table

I need to thank Mrs. Limestone, whose excellent design sense probably has more blog fans than she knows, for helping to solve a long-time problem. I have been obsessively searching for a table for years. Not just any table. A small table to set drinks, dishes, and other things in our family room, especially when we have people over. There is an old Chinese chest between the sofa and chairs, but it's a bit of a reach from where people sit. This was the perfect solution from Restoration Hardware:


The round table in brass is the perfect solution. But I just didn't want to pay the price. Maybe it never went on sale enough. We have a fireplace set and a floor-standing library lamp in brushed brass from Restoration Hardware in the family room, but both were bought at bargain prices, which is the way I like to get the look.

Ballard Designs has the table too. Hmmmm. At least they DID. Can't find now. Anyway, it looked like the pic above, you get the idea.

Then Mrs. Limestone posted an option with a $35 (!!!!!!) price too good to pass up, from Alsto. While she did warn that it's not brass but a painted version, I didn't care. My house is filled with quality everything and not everything has to be the ultimate version. Here it is:

The smaller side table I got is no longer available but you can still have the lower coffee table. The table was a good pick -- we use it nearly every time we're in the family room. A good indication that it's not just a want, but more like a need.

Of course while surfing Alsto.com, I found the perfect solution to fill a blank space on our mantel that was crying to be filled with the current trend of a shabby chic clock. I had found many $250 versions that I wanted that were quality, heavy and three-dimensional. The one I got has an image silkscreened on what seems like MDF, but it's the right colors, the right look, and the hands move on time so it does the job, for $29.99! It also fits our travel theme with the "Grand Hotel" motif:


Of course I can't surf anywhere, even to fill in the pics and links here, without finding something new and perfect to obsess about. So I present the newest object of my obsessions

Our family room already has sconces from the previous owners of our house, and they do their job quite well. But this room is full of rich black and red and gold ... and well, wouldn't these red leather sconces be so much better! They will need to remain an obsession in my mind for now ...