Plank

With fall here I should start to focus on getting fit for ski season. But for some reason the only planks I want to be looking at are wood ones. 

Love the light boards - allows for a darker pallet to not make the corner too dark

Never too much wood. Especially with those windows.

The floor planks add a bit of warmth to the black and white (and green) space.

Also - I think I've found my new favourite blog: Scandinavian Retreat. I want to live in all the places! 

Baby Boy's DIY Decorations

I just finished helping my cousin with a little DIY for her son's room (more on that later) but here are some of the other options we were looking at.... 

1) Fabric Banner - This would be a simple sewing DYI, and you can use all those extra fabric pieces! Alternatively Baby Bump has a great selection...

Baby Bump Bedding

2) Talk about another simple DIY - I love this IKEA hack - Spice rack to secure book shelf! (this would also work great in my trailer). A little paint and attach to the wall. 

Via - Here

3) This one is a bit far fetched (aka more work and skill), but because I love wood walls. I was trying to create accent wood wall. This one is adapted from the talented Vintage Revivals who used this technique on her trailer floor. I would see attaching this wood pattern to a thin piece of plywood and then attaching the plywood to the wall. I think a narrow column of this would look great and not overpower the room!

Via Vintage Revivals

Peg It

This weekend I came across these leather and wood peg hooks in a new store's change room. I thought they were ingenious: Hangers would lay flat wonderfully in the leather and the wood peg is just perfect for a purse. I would use these all the time to lay out my outfits for the week. If I did that... 

And then today - I found this hook round-up. And I swear I wasn't looking for it. I can't put holes in my walls so I definitely am not looking for hooks. 

But I found the source for my beloved wood and leather hooks. Not to mention so many more awesome hooks. Now if only I could convince my landlord to let me put a few holes in the walls!

And I imagine it would look better with time! 

Bent grains

I love wood grains, clean lines and intresting angles. I also love magazines. How did they know?

Via svelteobjects on Etsy.

Katie's Pad Part 2

A long while ago, my dear friend Katie was looking for a coffee table, while I was back at home we went out and scoured all day and didn't find anything! Later I hit the Internet and did some research - found several options and posted them. While searching I came across some other great items for her wonderful new apartment. So as I start to prepare for my Easter trip back home, I reminded my self of these wonderful pieces I have saved to show my dear Katie! Here ya go hun!

If you still want a desk in front of your window, these ones are great and could be used as dinning room tables too!

These ones are small and would be great in the corner where the bookshelf are! And look at all of the storage!!

This table might be a hall/sofa table but it reminds me of the one that we saw at Sojourn. It would look awesome in front of the window and can double function as a buffet...

...as well as be narrow enough to allow for another sitting chair, such as the lovely one below this table! (this might not be the ideal colour, but the shape is awesome! It would be a great height to pull up to the coffee table too!)

If you don't think you have enough room for the chair above, these ones would be good options, they could double function as desk chairs, dinning chairs or a family room chair for extra guests!

If you are leaning towards the bench with storage option for the window, here are some of my favourites!

Don't forget some storage! I love those square ottomans, although I also really like the ones we saw in leather!

And last but not least, side tables! I love this one, I think it is a night stand, but I love the simple design and all the storage.

And to add some texture and keep it casual and welcoming, these versatile floor cushions! They would be great to pull out when sitting around the coffee table eating or playing games! Scrabble battle! (you can also use them as foot rests!)

Here is the one catch: To achieve this look, we are going to have to go on a road trip to the States and visit a West Elm, since everything is from there (yes I am a bit obsessed!). So what do you think Katie? Anything that you like? What about everyone else? Any items that you love or could see in your place?

K.T. Tables

My dear friend Katie moved into her first one bedroom apartment. It's a beautiful pad with huge windows tons of sunlight and a great open flow. Now comes the fun part - decorating! She already has a couch, TV and bookcase, so now we are on the hunt for coffee tables.... simple right? Well not quite, Katie has strict thoughts of what she wants from her pieces of furniture (and rightly so!) For the coffee table Katie wants something with an open bottom so she can put her feet under the table, no glass or metal and a simple design (and maybe some storage...). So with that criteria in mind, I have found some that I think will fit, and are available in Canada.... Take a peak Katie....

I know you don't want metal, but these ones are dark and feel lightweight, might be what you need next to your couch!

Modular Coffee Tables by West Elm

Haven Coffee Table from Pottery Barn

Remember the table we saw last Sunday? These are other options... and not as expensive! The second one even folds out if you want to make it into a low dinner table!

Delmonte Coffee Table from Sears

Marakech Flip Top Cocktail Table from Sears

Simple and sleek, storage, foot room, no metal or glass and about the right size.

Kelsey Two Drawer Cocktail Table from Sears

I think you can fit your feet under these ones! I love the natural wood of the first one (although it might be too country for you, and the second one is pretty much my classical favorite! There is a storage shelf, but it looks high enough - some baskets or IKEA boxes on there and you will get your storage and coffee table in one!

Cordoba Coffee Table from Pottery Barn

Chloe Coffee Table from Pottery Barn

Last but not least - simple but perfect. Great wood grain, nice solid legs, and a smooth top. You could put baskets/boxes under the table for storage and then move them when you want to put your feet under the table.

Jackson Coffee Table from Sears

A few things I figured out while searching. There is a surprising number of coffee tables without room to put your feet under them. For simple designs The Bay and Sears are good options, they are starting to carry more modern designs. Check out Crate and Barrel, (see below) there are some great ones on that website, I don't know if they ship to Canada but it might be worth a trip to the US!

Shelving Made

Maire Claire Maison

What a coincidence! I made these exact shelves yesterday at work! And to my surprise Desire to Inspire posted about them yesterday as well! Crazy hey?


While the shelves I made won't be put to quite as beautiful use as these ones (they are being used for equipment storage in a sea can) I did take note of how sleek they are... both in appearance and in easy of assembly. 10 minutes and they were up!

House and Home

Faux Sure!

I am really digging faux wood right now. (If you do too check out this website!) I don't mean, TLC Trading Spacing faux finishes, rather items that you know are faux, and are meant to be faux... I am sure we will all cringe at this trend in 10 years, just like we do now with wood paneling, but hey why not give our kids something to laugh at!

Via Pottery Barn

Via It's (K)not Wood by Gus Modern

From Walmart - Via Decor8

Re-wood

Scrapile

Recently Haute*Nature has profiled two companies that make fabulous furniture out of scrap material. Scrapile and Oormerk have sleek designs, where the 'multicultural' wood adds intriguing dimension to the pieces! Oormerk is based in the Netherlands, and Scrapile is based in Brooklyn New York.

Oormerk via Design Boom

Scrapile

And you can even purchase items from Scrapile in Canada! You will have to make a trip to Montreal, but hey, anything for a company who has a logo like this! (Scrapile's Logo)

Cycle Blood

I have a friend who has an unlimited number of very useful skills, one of them is bicycles. He is an avid, enthousiastic and skilled rider and is also mechanically inclined. He takes apart, repairs, cleans, alters his bikes with the ease of making a sandwich. Just recently he took apart his whole bike, cleaned (with a sonic cleaner) all the parts, buffed out all the scratches, waxed the frame and then proceeded to put the bike back together. It took a total of 7 hours, and while he thought this was a great use of time, his girlfriend informed me of a new term... his love of bikes is making me a bike widow!! I can see how one would think that after 7 hours!

So on that note, I would like to dedicate this post to my two biking friends, lover and widow - if he makes you a widow, get him to spruce up the house while he is at it!

These are from Bike Furniture Design and are just some of the many forms they have - all with recycled bike parts!

These designs are from Swedish designer Frida Ottemo Kallstrom which I saw on Inhabitat

Honeycombin'

Okay - major lack of posts - I have been away for a cousin wedding - but man did I get some inspiration!! I am looking forward to exploring all the ideas that were touched in that short visit home... Until then I will stay on the past posting track.... Apartment hunting - so lets say you found the best place ever but it is only 600 square feet - for two bedrooms! What do you do when you want to have people over? Well you have paper furniture!
I first saw these expandable paper seats at Inhabitat - they are from Vancouver based Molo Design. As you can see from the image below their versatility allows you to do anything with them .If you want to snake around like this - you will need more than one unit - but it's easy to connect them - they have magnets on the ends! I was still doubtful of the strength of this design (I thought that those models were just really good at looking comfortable in a squat!) So I did a little looking up on the honeycombed structure and I was wonderfully proven wrong - as it seems - honeycomb is used in many applications that need and high strength to weight ratio such as skis, and planes!!! If it is strong enough for the wing of a plane, I am sure it is strong enough for me! Molo also has expandable screens and room dividers as Jackie Von Tobel wrote about it on her blog. he Softseating collection was just acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art for its permanent collection



Molo aren't the only people with this idea as you can see in this video.
Expandable Honeycomb Paper Furniture
"This piece was created by industrial design students from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. The honeycomb material is made of recycled paper, and can stretch from 30 to 720 cm (almost 24 ft.), seating as many as 16 adults." - Centripetal Notion A frugal note:
If you don't want to buy these expandable pieces of furniture take some inspiration from Charles Kaisin and glue some newspaper together for those extra guests... just make sure you have some warning time before they show up!

Wedding Wood

So my cousin's wedding is coming up this weekend, and I am stuck on what to get her for a wedding present. She has registered at The Bay and Home Evolution, however I don't know if my budget reflects my desire to get her something "just so". I really want to find something that comes from the heart, is compatible with her soon to be kitchen design theme, is useful, and will be used.

I looked over her registration at Home Evolution and she has chosen very simple, classic white tableware. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing! It means that nothing I give her will clash, but I have a feeling that she has a colour scheme in mind, but I am not going to know what that is.

So here is the best think I can come up with: A cutting board. It sounds lame when I say it like that, but I was thinking of getting a handmade cutting board that you can sometimes get on Granville island. The pieces of wood are original and have interesting knots etc... I headed down there to find my man, but I found out that he is not around for the next few months!!

Up a creek, I needed a plan of action - and I made one: I am going make one. Initially I just thought about going into the forest and finding a dead tree and hacking it up. But I think that is a little beyond my abilities, not to mention illegal in most places and unpractical (since I would also need a professional wood kiln.I followed a lead to go look at Lee Valley however they didn't have anywhere near the wood I needed. They would have the tools, if I were to do something special. I then stumbled upon the Vancouver Wood Arts Society website and emailed the President Jeff Trigg, where he directed me to Windsor Plywood, my new favorite place. The people in there are great, and it seems so low key and relaxed. I would be hanging out in there this weekend if I wasn't going home for this wedding!

So I now have 4 x 1 x 18 inch boards that I need to sand, glue together and make pretty by Saturday. Wish me luck!