My friend Ande is offering me this table. Should I take it?

Check out the amazing color palette in this room Kim posted over at Desire to Inspire. I think it's John Meyer and Linda Wary's apartment in Portland, Maine. You can see more photos of it on Wary Meyers Decorative Arts.

It's making me feel like it'd be okay to go back to painting the kitchen orange. A while ago, I let the orange go when my pal Melissa pointed out that it was very Howard Johnson! Of course, HoJo's updated their blue...

Will I get sick of an orange and turquoise and green house? Or should I throw caution to the wind and just paint it?

Holly at decor8 reads Marisa from Creative Thursday, where she found a link to Marisa's friend Cathy Nichols's artwork that you see here. This one's called "Spun". The original is sold, unfortunately, but you can buy a print. The thing I find so interesting about it is that the ride in the background looks exactly like the big old Parachute Jump that's still standing (for now) in Coney Island. Got the photo below from x-eyedblonde's  Flickr gallery, but I've taken many a black and white of the ride when I was into photography and there no digital cameras...

I grew up near a girl named Foofy. Or maybe it was Foofie. Foofie Arnold. Hard to believe, but it's true. Where is she now? Last I heard she was running a lot along Ladue Road in St. Louis, Missouri where I grew up. I was normally a very nice girl, but once I egged her house right in front of her. Someone must have dared me to do it. (One thing you should know about me: I can never turn down a dare.)

Anyway, my gang of friends and I there in "broken heart" St. Louis ostracized this poor girl. And egged her house while she stood there looking at us.

But boy did she get us back. She ran right inside to her lawyer daddy and told on us. We were too cowardly to stick around after we egged her, so we were just running down the hill in the back yard of my mom's house, nearly scot free, when I heard my father scream my name (imagine a Greek accent here): "Caaaaythy!" "A goddmmit sheet." He had me by the scruff of the neck and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on those sinky leather couches I told you about, trying not to laugh as the fathers (mine nearly a stranger though I lived in the same house with him) defended Foofie. Or Foofy. Or whatever her name was.

I won't dare defend anything foofy, not even this pillow. So give it to me straight. Should it stay or should it go?

I can't stop looking at this haunted etching I saw on Poppy Talk's Etsy Pick of the Day. It's by veronicapress. I'd buy it in an instant, but I literally have no spare money right now because I'm going to Tanzania next week and every dime I have is sunk in the trip.

I don't have the money to do a tree mural right now (I'm going to Tanzania to visit an anthropologist friend instead), and I don't have the nerve to do it myself. So at the ICFF this weekend I thought Amenity's organic bedding collection might be another easy way for me to incorporate trees into the room. Too bad this pretty blue one is sold out!

You know Emma and Djuna the cats who will not leave good enough alone? Who snack on plants like I snack on coffee shakes in July? Well, I think I may have found a way to outsmart them when it comes to greenery. At the ICFF, the good Kiwis at Essenze had a display of orchids growing upside down out of some simple-looking, but complex-engineered Antipode Planters by Patrick Morris.

Imagine how tantalizing the purple orchids (or whatever I grow in them) would be to the kitties. And how untouchable...

(PS: You can click on the picture to make it MUUUUUCH bigger.)

When I was a kid, my father used to go crazy every morning trying to figure out if his socks were black or navy blue. He'd fly into a rage and turn on all the lights while my mother was trying to sleep. Or else he'd pull up the shade and hold one pair of socks next to another in the sunlight and demand us to tell him.

We made fun of him, but I just did the same thing this morning. It's hard enough to tell the difference between black and navy blue in broad daylight, but in the penumbra of my house it's nearly impossible. Ask Grady from Design Boston; he's been staying here for the ICFF.

Anyway, there is nothing I hate more (at least not for right now) than that I CAN'T SEE feeling. Casapinka was writing about the lack of overhead lights in her house (that's her pink lamp up top), which made me come back to the issue. Are overhead lights so evil? Is there anyway to compensate for the lack of one?

I love Neatorama. I really, really do. There's no explicit focus to the posts, and that's a good thing. They're constantly exposing me to things I'd never, ever find in a million, trillion years otherwise. Like...Custom Creative Taxidermy Art. Sarina Brewer takes roadkill and other leftover animal remains and turns them into fanciful stuffed creatures. "She calls it art, you can call it whatever you want."

WARNING:
This squirrel lamp is tame compared to the rest of Sarina's site. Have a look, but be forewarned: Her site is not for those with weak stomachs.

I keep thinking that some of you might be in New York for Design Week. And if you are and you like words and art with words in it, I highly recommend Proteus Gowanus gallery in Brooklyn. They've got a great "Library" show up right now. Now I'm off the New York Design Meetup.

Have you ever noticed that when you just toss something off you were thinking about in a half-assed way, that people really respond. Conversation. That's what this is supposed to be about. Process. All that. Yeah. Another lazy post in a minute.

Lots of stuff going on this week in the Big Apple. The ICFF begins tomorrow. A few colleagues and I kicked off the weekend last night at the Matter Manhattan store opening in SoHo. Daily Dose's own Material Guy, Jamie Gray, has been on leave while he opened the new store, so we congratulated him and started harassing him to start blogging again now that the store's open for business.

(photo left to right: domino senior editor ruth altchek, sarah natkins of susan grant lewin associates, and ID managing editor jill singer)

(Did it sound like a robot had written this post last night? It had! I threw the robot out of the house and rewrote the post myself. First time reading it? You're lucky.)

Gradon from Design Boston turned me on to the Chicao-based photographer Jen Hathy. I was first drawn to the picture above ("The Good Parent") because of the kind of 70s-bleached-out-polaroid look of it. But then I realized it's also the man in the photo that gets me. This may reveal a litte too much about my relationship with my father, but I wonder if it will ever be boring to look at pictures of men taking care of their children. Thankfully all of you who have/had model dads might also appreciate Jen's stuff--consider, for example, the disorienting composition in "Ghosts in Chicago" below. It's so top-heavy, I love it. Jen sells her stuff on DeviantArt.

CB over at Apartment Therapy has to get rid of a bunch of her magazines. Wonder if she has any old dominos...

If I invited you to dinner and made you sit in a metal garden chair, would you hate me?

I swear there is something mildly comforting about them--they bounce. And massage your back. Speaking of which, I'm having terrible back problems so I could only move one chair over there to show you.

Have you ever heard of people putting rocks in their sinks or around the tub? My friend Matthew has his tub surrounded by found rocks and shells. I've always loved the way it looks, and every time I use his bathroom I spend a few extra minutes handling his stones...

Last weekend, I visited a new neighbor who seems to have settled in to her new studio apartment in about two months. Her secret? She's got stones in her sink.

So here you see me experimenting by with two stones--shale and something with a little "claw" mark on it--that I found at Isaac's studio. Is this going to help me settle down or will it just drive me crazy every time I spit out my toothpaste?

There's a joke we like to make around here when you go to see an apartment in an oh-so-desirable "pre-war" building and the price is too good to be true. "Pre what war?", we ask. Meaning, it can't be pre-WWII--not at that price. So it must be real-estate speak.

In any case, there's some subtle-ish snobbery about post-war buildings in New York, which isn't news to anyone who lives here. But I wonder if that's about to change, given everyone's obssession with mid-century this and that. I mean, look at the lucite door handles on this post-war beauty. Is that charming, or what?

Went to Brooklyn Designs yesterday and spoke to Nicholas Furrow who makes lamps out of found objects. I was going to tell you about this strainer pendant light, but apparently Maxwell at Apartment Therapy blogged me to it...

You can imagine why this kind of DIY thing would appeal to me. Of course, I'm all like, "I can make one!" Right.

Or I could buy it at apt.

When it rains, it pours. I now have three bedside tables sitting in my house with nowhere to go, and now I want to buy this one that they featured on Blue Ant Studio. It's from Urban Outfitters, and it's only $120... And even better, there's this storage table for one for $175. Has anyone seen these tables in person? They're only sold online and I'm worried they'll look bad in person.

Hmm, it seems that Fresh Direct is going to start delivering to my neighborhood soon. So says the Brooklyn Record. How do we feel about that? Property value goes up, long-standing Flatbush Food Coop goes down? No laughing at their website...

Got this lucite lamp for a song in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. Not sure what kind of shade would work. Went to Another Shade of Grey where I found some great graphic lamp shades last summer, but before I could find shades I discovered a post about another Etsy artist, Yellena.

Next thing I knew, I bought this...

Holly from decor8 did a roundup of Etsy print artists for dominomag.com. In it, she features Pratt graduate Dan-ah Kim. The print in the show seems to be sold out, but I did get this great Lady Hitchcock print that I can't wait to hang somewhere along the long white hallway in my apartment.

I love it when  old pals turn up in new places. Like my former fellow Iowa City resident Deborah Stein who first made a reappearance in my life as  jewelry designer Bonbon Oiseau, and now turns out to be doing a great blog called Your Destiny is Stone Golden. I wonder if that name comes from somewhere, or if her active little imagination made it up...

Anyway, one thing I love about this girl is how quirky and unique she is. So unique, that she's got my dang tree mural to be on her blog too.

The other thing is that no matter how wack I act or eclectic my mix of things feels, hers is even more wackier in a good way. These assemblages are a case in point.

But don't worry, Becky from Design Public's Hatch blog has a ram with some junk in his trunk to make me laugh. He's just one of the funny little decor things in the Anti-Depressive Living Flickr group, which was inspired by Jonathan Adler's book, My Prescription for Anti-Depressive Living.

These Deco boudoir lamps are going in the boudoir for now. Which temporary home do you prefer?

I wish I were speaking to my older brother. I'd send him the link to this floating candelabra on Design Milk. When I was a little girl, he gave me these glass floating candles for about five Christmases in a row. They looked like barbells and burned oil, I think. Anyone remember those?

Did you all know you can click on the photos in my blog to make them bigger? Just wanted to let you know. Go ahead, try it.

Pink was worried I didn't love her anymore because she thought her blog Pink Mohair dropped off my blogroll. Actually, it was never there because I forgot to put it there, but I will. And speaking of Pink Mohair, one thing I love is how unique her style is. Her house is no FILL IN THE BLANK showroom. For instance, check out her Home Decor Beyond Ubiquity section. I mean, the woman loves Blythe and the color pink, what's not to love?

People write in to the magazine suggestion various websites for Sites We Love. And most of the time I read them. Sometimes I even remember to go back and spend time on a suggested site. (So feel free to blitz us with your suggestions, we won't get annoyed because it takes a while for things to register...)

Anyway, today a reader sent me a link to art dealer Norman Brosterman's site, where I discovered outsider artist Melvin Way.

I love his work, and it's made with, get this, paper and tape. What do you think?

For her May column in the magazine, Cynthia Kling aka "The Adventuress" spent an hour on the phone with style consultants Carrie & Danielle, who basically came up with a personal brand identity for her--they call it her "style statement". "Cultivated Wonder" is what she got. I keep hearing about people playing this game for themselves. Pink came up with one for herself, but I'll let her tell you what it is.

I decided that mine might be: "Something for Nothing." Or "Earthy Retro Glam" or "Frayed Edges" or "Deliberate Dilettante". Let me know if you've got something better for me.

What would yours be?

Now you're really going to think I'm insane. And you'll be right. It turns out that I was just outbid on the second Deco nightstand that's in Westminster, CO. But...Apartment Therapy's Scavenger found another nightstand on Craigslist that I'm going to try to get if the nice lady who owns it will hold on until Friday. It's just a subway ride away.