Here are some more beautiful shelves from flickr member hnxing. Check out the way she had the stamps framed. I’ve been meaning to do this with my Eames stamps before I use them all up on bills!

photo from flickr member hnxing

It’s so fun to see a new batch of photos added to our Fresh New Spaces Group! I know I just featured her a few weeks back (here), but I had to share Ivy style 33’s lovely shelf arrangement with you today. I hope it inspires some weekend organizing and decorating for you!

photos by flickr member Ivy Style 33

Decorators should never insist on throwing out everything the client has. Even when they are far from perfect, loved possessions add personality.

-Billy Baldwin

What are your loved possessions? Please share them with us! I’ll start: Two of mine are these Staffordshire dogs that were my grandmother’s. They always sat on her mantle on Cape Cod and they always remind me of her. She was the ultimate animal lover – every bird and stray cat in her neighborhood was fed by her, and her dog Guinness had gourmet meals prepared for him every night.

Now they have separated, one of them has a place of pride on my Parson’s desk:

Blu Dot always catches my attention by doing something creative. Starting on Wednesday, they will begin The Real Good Chair Experiment, tracking Real Good Chairs on a journey through N.Y.C. You will be able to follow the chairs in real time here.

“We’re all collectors by nature. But if you’re talking about an orderly life, there has to be a stop sign somewhere. Building a collection requires a strong constitution and the ability to resist.”

-Albert Hadley, The Story of America’s Preeminent Interior Designer

It also requires good eye for assembly. Through Jenn Ski, whose blog we mentioned last week, I found myself linking over to the fabulous Junk Culture blog, and from there I linked over to Lost Found Art. Lost Found Art describes itself as “a unique design company that specializes in sculptural installations and assemblages using antique and vintage pieces. Our works are created with an eye to scale, balance, color and surface interest, and the end result is a strong visual statement that combines artistic statement, whimsy, form and uniqueness.”

It makes me think that a collection of just about anything can look good if it’s arranged the right way! Here are a few favorites. There are about 70 more here.

Do you have an artfully arranged collection of something? PLEASE SHARE IT WITH US!

All images are from Lost Found Art

I admit it. I forgot all about blogging some flickr faves on Fridays. I’ve been trying to hard to come up with a costume all day. So enjoy a stress free lovely shot of some unmutilated pumpkins compliments of flickr member anadelmann, and have a spooky weekend!

The front walk – it’s your first chance at making an impression on visitors. Since more and more crackheads are knocking on my door asking for money lately, I have thorny roses blocking mine. However, if you want to let visitors feel welcome and let them know that you are groovy, you do what Jenn Ski did. We are LOVING the way she interpreted and installed the idea behind these photos.

Just wait until summer! Jenn has all the concrete poured. Here is the story of the work in pictures on flickr.

We also love Jenn Ski’s prints, available in her Etsy shop. Here’s a teaser:

images via Jenn Ski;

• first image: Garden Art & Decoartion, A Sunset Book, ©1962
• second image: she found at Junkcultureshop, one of my new favorite blogs.
• third image by Jenn Ski
• fourth image: Home Sweet Home giclee copyright Jenn Ski. See link above to purchase on Etsy.

I was sad to hear of Lawrence Halprin’s passing on Sunday night. He was one of my favorite landscape architects. For eleven years, I lived in Charlottesville Virginia and was able to enjoy the Halprin-designed Downtown Mall. I could go on about his best-known projects, like Ghiradelli Square or the FDR Memorial, but my very favorite design of his is Lovejoy Plaza in Portland, OR, and a glance at his sketchbook pages tell you all you need to know about why his designs work so well. Without weighing us down with a bunch of archispeak gibberish, we can follow the idea from it’s initial contextual inspirations to the final product:

I should have known when I went to find a picture of Lovejoy Plaza on flickr that my favorite one would have been taken by Ken McCowen. To see more beautiful images of Halprin’s work taken by Ken, click here.

Halprin was that perfect combination of conscientious urban problem solver who understood natural processes. He did such an artful job of understanding the greater context of a place and bringing his interpretations of ecology into cities in an artful way. Lovejoy Park is a perfect example of this. He contributed so much to the American landscape; whether helping to heal the gash a freeway cut through a neighborhood in Seattle or protecting the land by leaving a soft footprint at Sea Ranch. He will be missed.

For more information on the Halprin Landscape Conservancy, click here.

• Sketches by Lawrence Halprin, via The Halprin Landscape Conservatory site.Click over there to see the rest of the project. P
• Photo by flickr member Ken McCowen

I love that Busy Bee turned the bellbottom pants (in the photograph within the photograph) into this darling pillow. It’s just about the simplest reuse idea out there, and it has such a pleasing result. Now if I could just learn to sew…

photo via flickr member ivy_style33.

Sorry, it’s technically Tuesday and has been for 40 minutes here on the east coast, but I was out of town and didn’t get my blogging act together too much before I left town. This morning I woke up to this, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in awhile:

So this is right off the deck on Stockbridge Bowl in the Berkshires. The mountain in the background, I think it’s called Mount Lenox, or Lenox Mountain. I only wish one of us would have had a real camera so that we could have captured it better, but my camera phone was better than nothing!