According to yesterday’s New York Times, Fatboy Bean Bag Lounger Chairs in bright spring patterns are a great way to perk up during these economically grim and meteorologically gray times. To see all of their suggestions, click here. To see all the fatboys, click here.

photos by Lars Klove for The New York Times

It’s rainy and gross here in Atlanta, which is good, since we’ve been a drought, but it’s the perfect day for looking through these

and to get some scanning done. I thought I’d share a few whacked out organic houses I spied in an old issue of H&G. The top one is my favorite. I think it’s in France, but now I’ve lost the page in a scanning frenzy:

This house seems like it’s for someone on ‘shrooms who wants to live in a ‘shroom:

These images brought to you by Blenko Glass:

Happy Weekend Everybody!

Last week we talked about the changes in Facebook’s policies. I noticed today that there is an update:

For more information, check out the facebook blog.

Yesterday I received this email from Dwell magazine and thought I’d share it with you all:

Dwell is pleased to announce an exciting new product “re”design contest and competition.

Innovate it!
Sponsored by the all-new Volkswagen CC
Phase I – Feb 11-March 31, 2009

From toothbrushes to towel racks to transit vehicles, we often live with inefficiency, inconvenience, and downright discomfort simply because we accept dated and subpar designs as a part of the daily grind. It’s time to put your foot down.

Our Spring 2009 design contest and competition is set up in two phases. First, simply send in suggestions for everyday objects that you think need a rework. Either they don’t function well, are poorly designed or just downright useless for the task they were designed to perform. Dwell editors will select the items for redesign. Then the competition phase launches where you are invited to submit design proposals for recreating one (or all) of the three most tragically troublesome objects. You may participate in one or both phases of this contest and there is no limit to the number of entries.

Phase I: Submit Your Product
Feb 11-March 31, 2009

Dwell editors will vet the submissions and choose the three best (or worst!) products for redesign. The people who entered the winning submissions will receive credit on the Dwell.com blog and a free ticket to Dwell on Design Los Angeles, June 26-28, 2009.

Submit your ideas today!
http://www.dwell.com/services/contests/innovate_it.html

Good Luck.
The Dwell Team

In my post-Oscar haze, I remembered I wanted to share images from the Revolutionary Road sets with you right after I saw the movie, but I forgot. I was surprised that no one from the film, besides Michael Shannon, was nominated for an Academy Award, as all of the performances were excellent. This is a movie where the sets add so much to the story and give added insight about the characters. The Wheelers are a couple who hoped to live a bohemian Greenwich Village lifestyle in the late 1950s, but wind up trapped in suburbia. Their commitment to the mid-century colonial pictured above is a large part of the trap.

The house is slightly shabby on the outside due to neglect, as April, the wife, really does not care about impatiens, honey-do lists, or flowering up the mailbox. Inside the decor is in transition between Colonial Americana style and a Scandanavian, mid-century modern aesthetic. Plaid and floral patterns are pushed out for solid colors; frilly fussy furniture is replaced by pieces with cleaner lines, abstract art hangs on some of the old-fashioned wallpapered walls.

The hokey pine cabinets with the fussy hardware are relics that came with the house, yet the Wheelers have picked a Danish looking table and chairs for the kitchen.

The unused living room still has an older aesthetic…

…while the more casual rooms are filled with modern furniture.

The neighboring house, whose owners do not want anything beyond the surburban life, is still full of grandma furniture, which offers an interesting contrast:

It’s funny, though this movie takes place a few years before Mad Men, it’s uncanny how similar the Wheeler and the Draper home sets are, and how much the decor says about the changing times.