Zen had come easily to him—sparse interior, shaved head, “rug-garden.” It was motorcycle maintenance he was having problems with.
-Sebastian Biot

To see the typical Dwell interior shot that inspired this ingenious blurb, click here. I promise it’s worth it. Warning: If you haven’t been keeping up with Unhappy Hipsters, be prepared to sacrifice at least twenty minutes of your time as you catch up. You won’t be able to stop.

from here.

Fiona also has an Etsy shop full of adorable baby toys. I love the rattle shaped like tools and covered in lovely textiles:

So, Organization Point #1: A Gorgeous & Neat Work Environment. This is a beautifully organized workspace. I am not quite sure what’s going on in that bottom shelf on the right, but I like that there is one little messy element. That magazine file on the desktop can hide a multitude of sins and serve as an inbox without messing things up. I can’t quite tell what is in the Catherine Holm casserole dish, but it sure looks neat and organized. I would not have thought to use a casserole dish that way. I’m sure it would get a lot more use on my desk than in my kitchen. The drawers in the vintage desk provide plenty of space for everything to be tucked away. Also, check out how organized the art arrangement is. With everything lined up neatly like this in a similar color palette, you could hang pages from a lovely glossy and it would look fantastic!

Organization Point #2: Using tumblr. Does anyone out there use tumblr? What do you use it for? For those of you who don’t know or don’t care to blog, you may find you really enjoy tumblr. It’s kind of like tweeting but with photos, at least for me. It is also a very simple way to dip your toes into blogging, as it certainly isn’t all about photos. That’s just what I use it for. Anyway, you can peruse everyone’s blogs right on the site in one easy feed, and mark your favorite posts. You can also re-post those that you like.

So, how does this help you get organized? The result is that you can create style files of your favorite images. You can also tag them. For example, when I want to look at inspiring black and white designs I’ve been collecting, I can go into my own tumblr blog and search “black and white” and they’ll all come up in a wonderful stream (here is mine if you want to see what I mean). The catch is that you have to be an obsessive compulsive tagger to make this work. Overall, it’s the perfect spot to store all kinds of inspiration and ideas. If you do post to tumblr, please remember to give credit to publications/websites/blogs/photographers if you are using their images.

Here are just a few of my favorite design people to follow on tumblr (tumblr has even informed me that they are among my “tumblr crushes” because I mark their images as favorites the most often!):

The Brick House

Yvestown

Design Evolution (this post Michelle wrote is how I found out just what the heck tumblr was in the first place – seriously, how does everyone keep up with the latest and greatest web tool? It’s ridiculously overwhelming!)

The Beautiful Soup

My Farmhouse

P.S. Doesn’t this office fit the color palette from yesterday? It does a much better job than I did, and it wasn’t even trying!

Here’s the Pantone Palette:

Here’s the collage:

It needs a lot of work and editing, but I told you I’d give it a shot, and I don’t have all day . Oh, I think if you go to this link, you can see where to buy everything. I didn’t stray too far from Design Public, West Elm, and Circa Lighting. In fact, I think those might be the final three places where you can find everything above.

By the way, I’m an idiot at technical stuff, and Polyvore was super easy to get the hang of. Obviously, I’m still learning, but you should try it – it’s a great way to collect all the stuff you want in one place and check out what it all looks like together.

Remember when Domino used to do “Can this outfit be turned into a room?” I find myself thinking that way now about so many things, especially postcards. I find this Charlie Harper postcard so inspiring. Besides the charming figures and shapes and perfect composition, the color palette really struck me: Baby blue, light-medium gray, army green, white, light brown with a little bit of definition from a brown so dark it’s almost black. Wouldn’t it be great to plan a room around this? I think I’m going to give it a shot. I’m already so far behind today I’ll post this first and add it to the blog later. If you’d like to submit one, post it to flickr and send me a link in the comments section – I’d love to see what you come up with!

Oops, upon quick perusal of our site before I launched off elsewhere, I found that Area has already got this palette down:

This flickr fave comes from the amazing and talented Victoria, a.k.a. sfgirlbybay. She’s such a blog superstar that it always gives me a little jolt when I see she’s bothered to contribute to our Fresh New Spaces group! This picture is for those of you that still are not seeing a bud on a tree and still expect snow, and to remind you that blossoms can warm up and cheer you no matter how cold it is outside. For some of us, it’s a perfect time to clip some branches and force those flowers out indoors.

So Drew told me about this outsider art festival in Alabama called Do0-Nanny. Has anyone ever been? It sounds like a blast. It also says it’s 2.5 hours from Atlanta, but barring any sort of NASCAR related traffic or something horrible like that, I betcha I can make it in two. Anyway, I don’t understand exactly what it is, and I’m not a huge fan of camping, but it sounds fun and I collect outsider art. It’s March 27-28, and here’s the description from their website:

A truly unique experience!….a casserole of southern folk art, home cookin, homemade movies, camping, foot-stompin music, experimental architecture, guessing, oddities, unusual characters, a movie festival, surprises, cracker ingenuity, experiential transomism, and much more!… Folks coming in from NY, TX, CA, and beyond beyond…

Begun as a roadside folk art show in 1996, the Doo-Nanny is now located on a beautiful 80 acre farm in Seale, AL, near Columbus, Ga, and includes a wacky “lo-fi” film festival, fun food, and and eclectic assortment of music and activities.