just do it

the ultimate long way home

thoughts for the weekend

love life - because living is a wonderful thing

enjoy your few days, my darlings! 

have a big heart and stand tall

craigslist rescue

i love craigslist. from the 'best of' to the apartments to the free stuff to the unique antique finds, i love it all. i'm even occasionally entertained by the scams. i mean really - nigerian missionaries, wire me the money, and then i'll send you the keys to an apartment you won't get to see - entertaining, so long as you are able to distinguish scam from truth. but i digress.

i like to look through craigslist and plot how i would rescue a piece of furniture. right now i don't have room to bring any more furniture into the house (i just got rid of 200 books and they're still overflowing). but someday....someday there will be an extra room for furniture rescues. maybe i'll even sell them. maybe i'll love them too much to give them away. maybe i'll put them back on craigslist. who knows. in the meantime i'll rescue them in my head and on my blog.

today i found this sad looking brass lamp:

there's no reason to throw this away, and no reason to not give it a little tlc. a very wise woman (love you mom) always reminds me that there's nothing a coat of paint can't do. (same woman who reminds me that it's just paint, you can always do it over, and it's just hair it will grow.)

for this lamp, i would scrub it clean and use this shade of ivory for the pole:

i would use this shade from anthropologie to finish it off: 

the other piece i found today that i really, really, REALLY want to rescue (pleaseeeee mom???) is this:

i would (after cleaning, sanding, priming) use a gray/purple color like this one (which ties in nicely to with the lamp shade):

i would also consider distressing the paint once it's dried. for the hardware, i would use something similar to these drawer pulls from anthro:

and it would all be seriously fabulous.

how would you rescue these pieces from craigslist?

the sheer genius of apple

we tend not to talk tech-related things here (though we'd like to plug the ipad at this time because we love it), and stay more fashion-home-letterpress-lifestyle-cooking-and-all-other-lovely-things-that-make-us-swoon.

but today i read at mashable that gizmodo "happened to find" the prototype for the iphone 4.

now...let's consider this. 

do you actually think that someone at apple - a very hush hush company when it comes to prototypes and new gadgets -  who is important enough to be carrying the prototype would actually forget the phone at a bar?

take it one step further - do you think someone important enough at apple would happen to be at a bar where someone from gizmodo happened to be and happen to forget said prototype?

and even further....would apple really not shut down the prototype for an entire week?

me thinks apple is too smart for that.

all that being said, we're excited for the new phone and will certainly be holding out for iphone 4 to come out before purchasing a new one. the physical design has changed - it's a smaller product and has hard edges instead of the rounded style. the new camera has a larger sensor and a flash, video chat capabilities (genius), and insanely high resolution.

check out gizmodo's article with videos here.

what do you think of the new phone? what do you think about gizmodo happening to be the ones to find the prototype in a bar?

we promise our next post will be something fashion-home-letterpress-lifestyle-cooking-and-all-other-lovely-things-that-make-us-swoon related....though the new phone makes us swoon just a little.

thoughts on branding and really, really great packaging

branding for products is incredibly important. think about it - you don't have to read the labels in the juice aisle, you look for the carton that looks like the one that your mom kept in your fridge as a kid, and you buy that one because it's what you know.

have you ever seen a little kid (who hasn't learned to read yet) get SO excited about a box of animal crackers? they can't read what the box is, but they know what it is, because the box of animal crackers is branded, it always looks the same, so a little kid can reach for it and know exactly what's going to come out of the box.

but what about new products you integrate into your life?

they need really, really fantastically fabulous packaging to catch your eye. they need to stand out and shock your senses and be so downright gorgeous you feel like you can't live one more minute without buying the product.

and that's how we feel about these products....and we wish every product was packaged this beautifully....

food for thought - what if kitty litter had this gorgeous of packaging? what about the packaging for a lightbulb for your car?

these remind us of something straight out of alice and wonderland

this olive oil is from croatia so we wouldn't be able to understand what the label says. but it's the international language of yum - packaging and product together. 

these cereals might just trump animal crackers for kid-love.

these chocolates from fling make us want to drool. between the color choice for the packaging (is that blue seriously not the best shade of blue ever?) and the curly-q's on the front, we have to find some!

now, we admit that we buy wine based on the label - we totally judge the book by the cover - but we've found some really fantastic wines that we buy time and time again (think, fat bastard). if we see these bottles from purple cowboy we'll definitely pick up a few bottles of the night rider merlot and the tenacious red.....if for no other reason than really cool design and perfectly named bottles.