New Animals! Friend and Faux

Much to the disgust of my girlfriend (and apartment mate) Cathy, I purchased my very own Faux animal head for the wall. Alas, I took a trip to the cardboard forest and shot myself a price dear, and all by myself i chopped off his head and hung it up above my computer for all to admire.

And not only are faux animals infiltrating our place, but REAL ones too! Allow me to introduce my new kitty Mao (chinese for cat I've been told) thanks to Laura Duran who was kind enough to donate him to me :)

Sorry for lack of posts, money is getting tighter and new things are getting harder to come accross... here is to more and more new stuff in the near future! It's about time to make the bedroom cooler now!

iMac Glory

I know this doesn't technically count as an apartment decoration or furniture, but it's so darned good looking I had to post it. I finally mustered up the money (and courage) to buy one of Apple's fancy pants new iMacs! I am very excited about this considering I am a huge Apple nerd, and to finally afford one of there mid-level machines is saying something big for me financially.

Maybe this new computer will make me all excited to post all the time now right? :)

New Table

So, thanks to Danni and her most informative group of Craigslist links I am a proud dad to a new and awesome living room table, clap clap clap! It fits so perfect in my place and I feel it really pulls the room together, which is a surprisingly nice feeling as of late. Picked it up for a 50% discount brand new off Craigslist, usually listing from Urban Outfitters for 180 bucks plus shipping and tax, not too shabby. Also, I thought I would throw in my groovy (far out?) mirror I picked up from Ikea for $20, nice place you know, full of grand surprises and deals.

I want to take this time to apologize for the radio silence (or intertubes silence actually), I have been busy busy busy with a new job and have finally got my wits back to me. Also, Stephanie gave me a nice nudge to post :) Thanks for that and thanks for reading!

Red & Orange

So here we have a few new things, both coming in at a combined amount of under $50, not too shabby.

First, we have a pair of orange salt & pepper shakers... but these are not just any salt & pepper shakers, these are from 1946 in perfect condition still with the original box! Nice right? And only 8 bucks and in perfect working condition. A nice touch to the apartment in my opinion and a nice match with my new favorite orange chair that I just happen to be sitting in right now.

And second, is my new shinny red cabinet from Ikea that I gave my finger a nice injury with while putting it together. Oh battle wounds from Ikea, nice stuff. So now I have this nice treat (topped with a book from miss stephanie) to sit by in my orange chair everyday instead of my ugly black plastic thing I had before.

Life is looking good here, now to see what next paycheck brings :)

Please... Buy me this!

As usual, I spend my Sunday morning perusing about Craigslist and torturing myself with the awesome stuff that's on there. I usually find some pretty nifty things here and there, but then are those moments when I find a post that makes me want to sell a vital organ on the black market so I can have it... and this is one of those finds. Please direct yourself to this link for further details (and apparently a website with more stuff?) so you can buy this for me :)

wink wink, nudge nudge, you know you want to!

My Blank Walls

So I've been thinking of what to put on my walls for the past few days... all while dreading finding and charging my point and shoot camera to take some decent pictures of all the cool stuff I got last weekend. I have gotten it down to a few things and thought I would share for the sake of sharing.

First, maybe some wall graphics? A few friends at work showed me this link (whatisblik.com) and I have been liking some of what I saw, what do you think?

Second, I thought maybe I could design a simple typographic poster around a nice quote. Some contenders I was thinking of:

"Keep Calm and Carry On"

"Today is a good day to have a good day"

"War is over, if you want it."

Now... I know all of those are based on poster quotes already, but I thought it would be fun to make my own twist on them and get them printed all big on a plotter and frame them.

And lastly, I was thinking I could print up some old posters I designed. What do you think Danni and Steph, my two readers? :)

State of Life

View of my living room as of 6:30 a.m. today, February 16th, 2009.

Floorplan = 75% done

Walls = 0%

I need to put stuff on my walls people! Any suggestions? I was thinking a simple post I design myself and get printed and framed all big like for the south wall (right of the picture).

Some photos to share

So, Friday ended up being a triple threat of money: payday, freelance job payment, and tax rebate. So, needless to say I spent entirely too much money this weekend. For one, on the chair in the last post, and two, on this nice vintage 1958 dresser from they same shop. It's fully restored, in excellent condition and now serves as my TV console.

Also, me and Cathy took a trip down to Ikea (a dangerous place when I have extra money laying around) and picked up a cool sputnik style mirror and some pillows for the couch to make things a bit more comfortable around here (shown with my rabbit enjoying them).

So that is it for now... I got so much stuff this weekend but I need to take good pictures of them to share... maybe I should stop taking all my pictures with my phone and dig out the ol' point and shoot huh?

And the chair goes to...

So, as you can see from the image above, I got the chair! As I had mentioned the other day on this blog I purchased a vintage 1958 dresser (pictures to come in the next post... I also got lots of goods to share with you at the local antique affair), and while picking up the dresser this past Friday evening I made a deal with the shop owner that brought the would be $350 chair down to $200. I could not resist, and as you can see it now sits nicely in my living room area :)

So, anyone in the market for a $120 Ikea chair?

Karlstad Ikea Swivel Chair

Some links and a weekend to look forward to.

So living in this new apartment has turned me furniture crazy. I've got to thinking... if I had all the money in the world, I would have no problem decorating my place. I would sign on to some site like Blu Dot, Design Within Reach, or Crate & Barrel and supply my place with all my dreams and hopes. But no, I don't have an unlimited reach in money, which is why I have spent the last few months struggling to get my hands on things I want in my apartment at an affordable price.

I think I'm finally getting there though, after many finds on good ol' craigslist and target.com, I'm almost set. Just this last weekend I put half the money down on a dresser from a downstairs shop that was built in 1958. I've prepped the apartment for this new find tonight and will post images when I get it up and in here tomorrow night, so look forward to that! (Also, I am SERIOUSLY considering selling my current orange chair for that great one I showed in my last post :)

So, to end this post I thought it would be nice to share some great links. One was provided by my good friend Mike just tonight which has some of the best displays of letterpress print design I have seen in a while, and the other is a link I have been going back to over and over and drooling over for the past month. 

Link Fun:

Graphic Exchange

Apartment Therapy

Enjoy!

I want this...

Anyone want to buy me this chair? It's a straight up 60's arm chair and makes me want to set fire to my current orange Ikea chair just to be able to have an excuse to buy this for $350 at my downstairs vintage shop.

Just saying... I like it.

A New Start

Hello.

So I used to have a blog on Blogspot... a place to post about my design life mainly, because that was my life then. I posted often, life was good. I eventually posted 160 times in that year, gathered a few thousand hits and convinced people to tell me how they felt 250 times in the comments. 

Then I graduated school, got all professional and stuff and ruined it. You see, it was hard to find time to post and now that I had my blog integrated into my professional design site I couldn't just post ANYTHING... and then the blog REALLY died. So here I am thinking, "Hey, I just moved into this neat apartment, this apartment that is bringing many new things into my life and giving me a new creative outlet... buying and putting things together to create my new apartment living." 

So here is my new blog, welcome.  Here's to hoping I can learn to write interesting things worth reading, pictures worth looking at, thoughts worth pondering over, and ideas worth listening to.

Have a happy Sunday and see you soon enough this week :)