Girl Around Town: Side

What was it that lured me into Side, an up-cycled furniture boutique on Berkeley's San Pablo Avenue... could it have been a glimmer of aqua blue, or perhaps the enticing aroma of fresh paint? 

The Side business card bears the Sister Parish quote, "innovation is often the ability to reach into the past and bring back what is good, what is beautiful, what is useful, what is lasting." Apt, because that's precisely what owner Carolyn Pickell is doing. While so many contrive to make new furniture appear old, Side celebrates vintage furnishings made young. The tiny shop features an ever-changing assortment of meticulously refinished antiques wearing unexpected paint colors and clever detailing (even pinstripes!). Every surface is laden with treasures, natural curiosities mingling with gilded accessories.

Side has the eclectic aesthetic of a flea market- refined, edited, and styled flawlessly. It's a new Bay Area favorite!

The February Flea

Antiques, football, and an early crop of freckles- I couldn't have asked for a better weekend! Adam and I  spent our Sunday afternoon soaking up sun and inspiration at the Alameda flea market. We didn't spring for anything, but sometimes a long day of looking is all I need to update my vision for our apartment. 

Though the best deals are often found in piles of rubbish, I can't help but admire the more curated booths. This vendor offers silky tassels and ribbons that glitter with gold thread, and the table itself was elegantly trimmed. I could see this crafty-chic sign working just as well as a bulletin board, or to display table assignments at a wedding.

Sometimes going to the flea market feels like a trip to the pound, with so many sad little things needing new homes. It's hard to say no, especially to furry fellows like these! The green-eyed tiger puppet seemed to be begging for hugs, and the wiry fox terrier with the wonky ear... oh, I almost adopted him.

So, no new things, but a head full of new ideas. I'm feeling quite ambitious this year!

Our Cabinet of Curiosities

I blog so often about cabinets of curiosity, it seems only fair to share my own...

Our petite cabinet of curiosities resides in the living room. The cabinet itself was a Craig's List find, purchased for $50 in Seattle, from a very kind woman helping her elderly friend downsize. I was so in love with the uncommon greige finish and elegant shape, I made Adam take an afternoon off to help me load it into a borrowed car, back down a perilous driveway, and inch it up our steep and narrow staircase. When we finally got it inside, I found a booklet full of neatly penned notes comparing bottles of scotch tucked into a drawer. Imagining that this might have been a little old lady's liquor cabinet still makes me giggle!

We've filled it with treasures, valuable for otherwise. Beautiful art books and vintage ephemera mingle  with found objects and natural oddities. Adam's collection of laboratory glassware stands next to 20 years worth of my beach-combing souvenirs. My alligator head grins from the second shelf, with a mouthful of foreign coins. The cabinet is home to items inherently beautiful and sentimental, like my Great-Grandmother's china teacup (or a vial of kitten teeth!)

I papered the back of the cabinet with pages from a tattered old Japanese & English dictionary: yet another layer of meaning for the curious observer.

How do you display your most prized belongings and mementos?

A Curious Memento

Our Phineas has grown so much since we introduced you to him in May. He's now quite a lapful, and strong enough to make Tildy think twice about tackling him. And he's losing his baby teeth!

I know, this probably elicits as many "ewwws" as "awwws," but I'll be keeping this tiny relic of Phinney's kittenhood in our cabinet of curiosities. I can't help being sentimental! I just adore every tooth, whisker, stripe and spot on this cat. He's something special- so here's to hoping that he doesn't grow up surly like Matilda!

Happy weekend, friends!

Ikea Style

There's something about Ikea that makes me want to fill myself with Swedish meatballs and fill my trunk with flatpack furniture. I'm not really one for primary colors, so it thrills me that the Ikea aesthetic seems to have matured over the years, embracing subtlety and traditional shapes. Look at all the goodies in the new catalogue!

The Närhet glasses for dessert wines, champagne, whites, & reds are a toast to sophistication.

The Gislev rug is a lot of graphic bang for only 20 bucks.

I can envision either of the new greige-stained Hemnes glass-door cabinets in my bedroom. 

Maybe to showcase a shoe collection?

I wonder if a clever crafter could customize the Florö slipcovered bedframe- perhaps with upholstery studs or ribbon trim?

The new catalogue also boasts some beautiful styling. As if I wasn't tempted enough by the low prices, they have to make everything look so magazine-fantastic.

This is exactly how a nightstand should look!

This is my favorite spread of all. The styling is so of-the-moment, and I love the over-shelf gallery. 

And look: curiosities!

Anyone else crushing on the new catalogue?

Flea Market Finds

If the find is a primal urge, then the monthly Alameda Flea can only be compared to nature's most spectacular feeding frenzies.

Thrifters abandon their favored hunting grounds to converge upon this site of vintage bounty. Each month we take the long walk from some distant corner of the parking lot and pass satisfied hunters clutching their trophies, dragging heavy furnishings off to their cars. I usually spot something rare and delectable on another person's trolley and pick up the pace to join the fray. Once we're inside the gate we're on the prowl. There's enough for each gluttonous shopper with a few bills to fill their rolling cart, but there's still that predatory instinct: don't let that tea set get away, you may never see one like it again!

Adam and I like to work the rows together. He's on the lookout for French kitchen knives and copper pots, I scout for glass cake plates and tole chandeliers. I pounce, he goes in for the deal. We're always in pursuit of the find.

We did so well this Sunday I thought I'd showcase a few of our prizes!

$20 won me a lot of brass flatware. It's actually two different patterns. One I've yet to track down, but the knives, forks, and soup spoons with the tough studded handles are Dirilyte Empress Goldware. Now I've got something new to stalk on eBay!

Adam snapped up this Pyrex thingamajig for $5. We liked the quirky variation on the cloche shape, and it's just right for housing a tiny curiosity (or perhaps an air plant?).

Dare to Dream: 13 Crystal Heads

There've been a lot of posts about kitties and bunnies around here lately. I don't want you to think I'm losing my edge. I'm badass! I like skulls and hard liquor!!

Therefore, I give you Crystal Head Vodka. Definitely an age-appropriate gift for StB *hint hint*.

So, here's the thing. I first appraised Crystal Head Vodka on its looks alone. I thought, "here's a bottle that could make my liquor cabinet into a cabinet of curiosities." I had no idea I'd stumbled onto a "spiritual awakening." Thanks to Dan Aykroyd, my eyes are open to the world of the magical unknown.

For your enlightenment (and a much-needed Tuesday laugh):

Projects

Whenever it's quiet on the blog, you can figure that things are buzzing in real life. In a few days we're headed to Hoopfest, where Adam and his tall athletic family will be playing basketball and getting tan, and I will be short, pale, and harping about sunscreen. Reeeeeeally looking forward to it.

I've got to get back to packing, but I thought I'd tantalize you with things to come.

A cabinet of curiosities...

and my mercantile-style china cabinet.

Back soon,

Elizabeth

An Unstudied Air

Mr. Collins has a line in Pride & Prejudice that always makes me smirk.

Says he, "though I sometimes amuse myself with suggesting and arranging such little elegant compliments as may be adapted to ordinary occasions, I always wish to give them as unstudied an air as possible."

Not that I want to expose us to ridicule, but don't we aesthetes do the same? I subscribe to that brand of just-so-perfectly-imperfect styling that demands the most deliberate tweaking. I adore a meticulous mess- like this jumble of books and artifacts, harmoniously united in faded jade and gray and beige. A happy accident, to be sure!

Image Courtesy of Domino Magazine

The same is true of those chic ensembles calculated to inspire envy, of which we flippantly declare, "oh, this old thing- I just threw it on!" I aim for edited excess. Almost (but not quite) matching celadon greens, too many (but just enough) beads and baubles. Effortless, I assure you!

My fashion fancies: the Pearly Girl Dress, Guinevere of Glam-elot Necklace, & Oh Pear Bracelet (all from ModCloth), Pearl Pave Posts (from Anthropologie), Peony Espadrilles (from J. Crew), and the Kimchi Blue Lady Satchel (from Urban Outfitters).

Style may be an artifice... but we all have our follies!

Dare to Dream: A Room to Furnish with Books

This weekend Third Place Books was having a 20% off sale, which I used as an excuse to spend 100% more than I budgeted on some new design tomes for my collection (c'mon, they were on sale!). Matilda and I nestled in with a pile of literature and purred at all the pretty pictures- that's what I call a holiday.

Our favorite? A design book about books in design. A biblio-file for a bibliophile? 

Whatever it is, here it is:

Books Do Furnish A Room by Leslie Geddes-Brown showcases the integration of books into homes. Grand libraries, teetering stacks of text, bizarre modern-art bookcases, books shoved wherever they'd fit. Like or dislike, each image was a guilty pleasure: such fun to put together an imagining of the reader based on their collection and the manner of its display!

And my favorite image? 

The library in the county home of Stephen Sills & James Huniford in Bedford, New York.

I always think of myself as preferring a dusky nook for reading, but this crisp white page of a room makes a convincing argument to the contrary. Where might one find a skeletal lobster for her cabinet of curiosities? Also, my library will never be complete without that magical ladder (even though my bookcases are only 6' tall). Someday, a real library- ah, dare to dream.

Under the Tree: It's Science!

If you followed along as Adam and I analyzed our design tastes, you'll know that we were both inspired by interiors with a laboratory aesthetic ("lab fab," if I may). We decided to mix some chemistry-chic decor into our gothic-eclectic home. Ever since we've been searching for the perfect science paraphernalia to test out...

And what do you know- Santa's been reading my blog!

The many scientists in Adam's family tried to teach me the proper name for this type of flask, but I persist in calling them "vases." It is incredible that I passed AP Chemistry.

The frog was also hiding in my stocking. He's not real, but wriggly enough to fake it. 

I find him rather delightful, Matilda seems to find him threatening.

I can't wait to experiment with my new labware. Cruets for oil & vinegar? Dispensers for measuring out potent alcoholic concoctions? I don't know- but I'm sure they'll look smart in my china cabinet.

Decorating for Two: Battle of the Sexes

You live with someone for four years, you think you know them, and then one day the truth comes out: they have a design aesthetic, and it's not quite the same as yours.  

The fact that Adam has his own taste is a shocking revelation for me. Call me oblivious, but all these years he's never voiced an opinion! It's amazing how the give and take of a relationship works- he gave me total sovereignty over our shared abode, I pretended to enjoy watching televised poker tournaments (sorry to finally break it to you, Adam). Those days are over though. From now on we're going to be watching a lot more Project Runway and Adam's been promoted to design consultant.

Last night we held design summit with the help of Skype screen sharing, and Adam worked on his visual vocabulary. And boy, did he ever. He had a lot to say- both about what he likes, and what I like (that he doesn't). I may have created a monster, but I asked for it (and I probably had this coming after I threw away his Bob Marley and Scarface posters).

He responded to this bedroom immediately- the stormy walls, the majestic dark wood bed, the fireplace. He even knew what style of chandelier that was (making me look like a total fool). I was intimidated by this pick, as it seems more formal than our budget and pocket apartment can provide. What I have to learn from this is that I do need to decorate to accommodate my 6'7" fellow, and that I should think twice before painting over wood furniture.

Image Source Unknown

We were in complete agreement about these two rooms.  He liked the wood floors and architectural details, I am very into that table and chandelier. Very.

Images Courtesy of Unknown, Anna Wolf via Dwellings & Decor

These are a couple of my favorites that he stuck up his nose at (I saw you Adam, video chat!).  He hates having furniture floating in the room like this round table, instead preferring to have everything anchored to a wall.  As for the second image (the one that's been on my Berkeley apartment mood board)... the color scheme was vetoed firmly.  Good thing I hadn't bought any lavender paint yet, argh!

Images Credits Unknown

Adam had very strong notions about organizing- stacked and visible. In Adam's world if you put something in a cabinet and close the door... it no longer exists (which makes hiding Christmas presents a snap in our household). He repeatedly pointed out neat images of kitchens and craft rooms with open shelving, many of which had a sophisticated mercantile feel.

I'm all over this, as long as we pick out beautiful furniture and showcase our things in a pleasing way!

Images Credits Unknown

Conceptually, we both love this first image. In real life, we have neither the private property or the self-confidence for a bathroom like that! Thinking more practically, Adam chose images of bathrooms with deep double sinks, large and tall mirrors, exposed pipes, basket storage, and patterned hex tile flooring. That's my kinda man!

Image Credits Unknown

Adam shares my love of curiosities, but we didn't see eye to eye when it came to display. While I prefer a more naturally staged approach (like Mr. Puffin there), Adam liked seeing the objects laid out in the glass case. I guess that's a scientist for you.

Image Courtesy of Spagat, AT

Remember this stunning loft that I mentioned yesterday? He liked it too- except for the drapes, calling them "too feminine." I'm in disbelief here. I suppose he's not a fan of these either?

Image Courtesy of Loft Life Blog

Many of my favorite homes have a fairy tale quality to them. Stone buildings with peaked roofs, all swallowed up in vines. Mazes of nooks furnished with mismatched antiques, and lots to be discovered. It was a dream come true that Adam picked out these images as HIS favorites as well! He didn't even bat an eye at the floral mural in that odd green room, acknowledging that it just added to the charm.

Image Credits Unknown

One of the most important design decisions we'll make together will be about how to store and display our rather large library. I'm afraid this could be a point of contention. Adam liked grid shelving, pointing out every room with an Expedit unit (very subtle hint, boyfriend). He noted how this bookcase made from crates combined rustic and geometric elements that he favored. On the other hand, I prefer floor to ceiling bookcases with a little more drama... 

Images Courtesy of Unknown, Domino Magazine

This is a very broad and eclectic spread- it's going to be fun to help him narrow down his vision and start blending it with mine! I'm envisioning a major decor purge as soon as I move. Perhaps he'll wish he'd kept his mouth shut when I've turned the house upside down? Heh heh.

What do you all think of Adam's first dip into the image pool? Is this something you'd consider doing with your partner or spouse? Any design professionals out there who want to chime in? I'd love to know how you help your clients define their personal style- your techniques might come in handy here!