Check it out folks! Event Designer David Beahm condones the mood lighting produced by the Harry Allen Bestow Vase/Candle Holder. This feature illuminates the beauty that just a simple candle, and an outrageous candle holder, can bring to your home. We’re so happy they see it our way!

Thank you New York Times!

I was just catching up on Visualingual and cannot stop laughing over this. While I’d love to just swipe it outright, it’s probably a lot more blog world kosher to send you over to that site. You won’t regret it! A hint: Costanza gets out-Costanza’d regarding his dream job.

I am totally behind on my blog reading, the reason being it was going to be my reward for finishing my taxes. By finishing, I mean organizing the information and sending it off to my accountant. I have been clicking a little here and there (still haven’t amassed all the stupid useless information), so here are six of my favorites:

White over at Bliss. What I love about these images is that the neutral color scheme really shows off the shapes, texture, and architecture in the featured spaces. Be sure to click here to see all of the images:

Rosa Pomar Portuguese floor photos featured at Black Eiffel:

Be sure to hit Rosa’s flickr account if you are a floor fan! Actually, you don’t even have to like them as floors; the photographs are such great graphic images in general.

I cannot get enough of Hollister Hovey’s Blog. She’s on Spring Break right now, but if you haven’t caught up in awhile, it rules. It’s beautiful, it’s funny, it’s got some old school prep in it but modernized and with a wink, it’s dark (literally; a black  background and nothing resembling an all white Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic room), it’s got a great typeface, she has a sister with another cool blog…what can I say. I’m jealous!

This nail polish post had me rolling on the floor:

Paola over at Mirror Mirror has me excited for spring with her scrumptious bud and flower shots from the Seattle Arboretum…

I love when Patricia Gray takes a trip and blogs about it right away. I tend to take them, download my photos about two months later, forget why I took half the pictures and never write about it at all. This tree is hilarious, and I love the post she did about screen block in Palm Springs:

Laundromat seating over at The Mid-Century Modernist: It’s not just the awesome seating, it’s the beautiful and clever photographs:

I was reminded of this post Ali did about Thomas Paul’s take on laundromat seating. I guess a lot of inspiration can hit when you are bored out of your mind at the laundromat.

Thank you to all the bloggers out there who are constantly keeping me inspired!

• Image by Light Locations via Bliss
• Image by Rosa Pomar via Black Eiffel
• image via Hollister Hovey
• image by Paola Thomas via Mirror Mirror
• image by Patricia Gray via Patricia Gray Interiors
• image by em hunt via The Mid Century Modernist

Wow. I wish I could write like Alexandra Lange. It isn’t ALL that often that I actually read the text in a blog and admire the writing so much (I don’t mean any offense to bloggers at all, I’m just saying that this is a stellar example of a blogpost). This post over at Design Observer regarding the Standard Hotel in NYC and its precedents is a standard I wish I could shoot for and live up to as a writer, but it’s not ever going to happen (in fact, I’m lucky if I give my posts a re-read or even a spellcheck, so I have a long way to go). There is no unintelligible “archispeak” or blathering boring theoretical crap. It’s complete, it’s beautifully written, it’s has the teensiest tiniest, almost imperceptible dash of subtle snark. It understands history and context, and gets to the heart of the matter and asks brilliant questions, leaving the review open to discussion; that is to say the reader can complete the review for herself in a Choose Your Own Adventure kind of way. GO READ IT NOW! You’ll be a better architecture buff for it!

I don’t think I’d enjoy this building very much. Genius Brutalist engineering or not, my paranoid neuroses would not let me trust those legs to hold up the building. By the way, the legs are straddling The High Line.

The Standard New York, Polshek Partnership Architects, 2008

Photo by Andre Balazs Properties via Design Observer

I tend to think that loft renovations I see in magazines and newspapers are all more or less the same, but this one really struck a  cord with me – last Thursday The NYimes featured the mega renovation of Billy Morrissette’s SoHo loft, filling the story with analogies about moving back to NYC from L.A., darkness in the original space and Morrissette’s status as recently divorced and depressed, etc. etc.  In spite of all that, what I really liked about the story was the collaborative relationship he had with his architect, and that even though he was spending hundreds of thousands on the reno, he was not above building a dining room table out of poplar and IKEA legs, turning an old suitcase into a table, or using soundproofing material to make a headboard. You could really see this guy’s personality through his place; I know I’d walk in and say “I want to get to know the person who lives here.” Check out the full article and slideshow here.

photos by Fred R. Conrad for The New York Times