Looking at neat and lovely offices is so inspiring. I thought I’d find a few to share today. The first comes from flickr member Lillian Day, who lives in Vienna, Austria. The PERFECT use of “Woods” by Cole and Son. So light. So bright. So spare. I swoon:

Just a tweet-like post to share a really interesting article in The New York Times home section today. First of all, I never knew Shabby Chic went out of business. Second, I thought the Target line tended to highlight the cheesy and outdated part of the style. Third, the real Shabby Chic sheets and duvet covers will instantly cure insomnia, I am not exaggerating. I am over my huge Shabby Chic phase which dominated my style in the mid to late nineties, but I like Rachel Ashwell and hope that she finds success with this new venture.

Be sure to check out the economic/Shabby Chic style timeline in the article. It’s very clever! Oh, and I have to give the reporter, Penelope Green, props for including Shabby Chic fans from Jeff Goldblum to Madam Suzanne from HBO’s Cathouse. Hilarious!

image from shabbychic.com

While twittering around this week, somehow a Poppytalk/Paris Hotel tweet exchange led me to Balustrade and Bitters magazine. Wowzah! How did I miss this one? Be sure to check out this month’s interview with Jack Deamer.

When I love a blog/online magazine a lot, I start clicking around on the ads just to help them out. However, the ad for Colleen & Company led me to all kinds of fantastic, glamorous things, my favorite being these scrumptiously dreamy watercolors by Victoria Molinelli. Everything about them reminds me of two of my favorite blogs, The Peak of Chic and Style Court.

Does anyone know who did these rooms? If I had to guess, I’d say Billy Baldwin or Albert Hadley. I’m sure that green sectional room is some iconic design and I should be embarrassed not to be able identify it. However, life’s too short. Anyone know?

The limited edition prints are available, signed and numbered 1-25, at Colleen and Company. Images by Victoria Molinelli, via Colleen and Company

Some of you youngsters may never have seen one of these before. It’s called a rake. Before everyone looked like Ghostbusters and blasted the neighborhood peace away with their stupid, gas-guzzling, obnoxious leaf blowers (thanks neighbor across the backyard, who was leaf blowing THE WOODS for AN HOUR in the THE RAIN first thing this morning – idiot!), there were these things called rakes. You scrape the ground with them and they gather the leaves. Then, instead of blowing the leaves either (a) deeper into the woods (b) into the neighbors’ yard so that they can blow them back in a few days or (c) into the street to clog the gutters, you can gather the leaves into this thing called A COMPOST PILE or you can put them in PAPER LEAF BAGS and put them by the street so that the city can pick them up for mulching for these places called PARKS.

You can find these mysterious implements at places like Ace Hardware, Target, WalMart, Lowe’s, hell, CVS probably even has them this time of year. Let me know how it goes.

What was your room like when you were a kid? I had floral wallpaper and two antique brass beds, a huge shelving unit, an aquarium (all the fish died of some disease appropriately called “Ick”) and a rolltop desk. In Junior High, I covered the wallpaper with Duran Duran and Police posters, and eventually my mom let me make over my room. My pride and joy was my new white “Scandanavian” desk from Bova, primary colors, the blue file cabinet I covered in paint pen squiggles, and the pièce de résistance, the Boynton wallpaper border. Remember Boyton? I had buttons and stickers and notepaper before I worked my way up to wallpaper border. Yesterday I found a piece of the wallpaper inside of the rolltop. Here’s a little 80′s nostalgia for you…