Design Inspiration

Rifling through iPhoto, I stumbled upon these photos that I took this winter when I was getting to know my new camera.  I'd love to design a room around the colors here--bright turquoise to pop, with a rich brown, velvety grey, and just the tiniest bit creamy white.

I love the shadows of the branches too.  That would make a really cool treatment for a wall.

One of My All-Time Favorite Looks

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I've always loved The Parent Trap--the original movie with Hayley Mills.  A big reason is the AMAZING house that the dad lives in in California.  I love the "Spanish hacienda from the twenties meets midcentury modern" design aesthetic.  In fact, it might be my favorite.  I always gravitate towards Spanish architecture from that time period.  When we were briefly looking at houses in Phoenix to buy (yes, thank God we didn't), the Spanish hacienda-type bungalows from the 1920s and 1930s were always the ones that I ooohed and ahhhhed over.  I think part of it is the bright white, thick adobe walls topped with an earthy tile roof; the Mexican tiled courtyards and patios; and the way that my favorite plants--cacti and succulents--look perfect as landscaping.

I guess I'm not the only fan of Mitch's California ranch house in The Parent Trap.  According to this site, Disney built the shell house on some land it owned south of Carmel on Placerita Canyon Road.  And this site has a ton of photos of the house in all its glory.

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A recent house tour on Apartment Therapy made me yearn for my own Spanish hacienda all over again.  Although some of this gentleman's interior design choices are a little too New York (his description, not mine) for my taste, what he did with this Los Angeles building makes me want to head down to Southern California to find my own building to rehab.  Maybe someday.

Feng Shui

I've always been interested in feng shui but never knew much about it, so I decided to remedy that, especially since I'd like to implement some ideas in our new place.  I'm not completely sold on it as a change-your-life type of thing, but some of the ideas do make sense to me from a design standpoint.

Tips that I gathered from various sources:

1. Make sure energy can circulate in your house.  [I take this to mean arranging furniture so that it's not blocking things as well as keeping rooms airy and open.]
2. For most rooms, take color cues from your Chinese astrological sign.  [Mine is the Snake, meaning my colors are yellow, white, and red.]
3. An odd-number of rocks piled outside on the left side of the front door means you desire opportunity; on the right means money. Putting rocks on both sides negates the power of the rocks.
4. Doors are auspicious because they open to opportunity.  [Our new place has plenty of these!]
5. Position the bed in the bedroom for the best view (i.e., out a window). 
6. The most soothing colors for a bedroom are skin tones: pinks, taupes, and browns.  
7. Plants in the bedroom are not good feng shui, unless your bedroom is fairly large and the plants are located far from the bed.  Also, since they represent growth and vibrancy, that goes against the calm and restfulness associated with the bedroom.  [Hrm.]
8. Storing things under your bed sucks your feng shui away.  [I will definitely try not to store a bunch of stuff under our bed this time around.]
9. Never block a doorway.
10. A bench (or a footboard) at the end of the bed can be good.
11. Only keep plants with non-pointy leaves.  [No way!]
12. Clutter is stuck energy that keeps you stuck in undesirable life patterns. Therefore, you can sort out your life by sorting out your junk.  More than just junk, clutter is all those things that have negative symbology and that collect stagnant energy.
13. Add flowering plants, in groups of threes along the walkway to your front door.  Red is best.
14. Move your furniture around--it's fun to create something new and exciting to come home to.  You will also change the flow of energy, which is good to do every so often.  [HAHAHA, take that, Cole!  There is a reason I am always compelled to change rooms around!]
15. Place a live plant on top of the toilet tank.

So let's see...for last year in our apartment, we've been violating tips 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, and 15.  I'll see how many of these I can work into our new place and report back.

Early Introduction to Modern Design

When I have a kid, I'm totally going to make a modern dollhouse like this one for him/her to play with.  I probably wouldn't furnish it as sparsely as this one is (half the fun of a dollhouse is having plenty of furniture to move around), but you have to love its clean lines, open floor plan, and most of all, the thick, white shag rug upstairs and the homemade lounger on the patio.

You can see more pictures of this cool toy here.