What is this?

An awesome playhouse for the kids? An office? A mother-in-law apartment?

Nope. It's a chicken coop.

I found it at diggingfood.com, a Seattle-based blog about growing your own food, cooking with it, and generally remembering that your plot of land in the city can be put to good use. She's one of the featured home-gardeners in this month's Sunset magazine.

I have been obsessed with gardening lately. Haven't, uh, done much, but I am trying to get my act together. I was delighted to learn that my mint and chives returned after a weird winter. I just bought a few kinds of lettuce, some peas, and more mint. I recently sat on a a plane to NYC and made use of the 5 1/2 hour flight to read THIS and Vegetable Gardening Simple Steps To Success
and made a list of what I want to plant and when.

I have a lot to do in addition to this. I bought 2 cone compost bins from a co-worker and now I need to figure out how to actually install them (I need to bury part of it in the ground). I have been reading thecompostbin.com, too. We have a lot of food waste (as most people do) which is something I am trying to figure out and reduce, and then also just make better use of the scraps. I wish I could say all of this is motivated by my inner hippie, but honestly, I just hate how quickly the trash piles up at our house and I hate lugging bags of compost to the backyard.


To help with this new composting program, yesterday I parked THIS in the new kitchen. I just need to remember to actually use it. Tossing eggs and coffee grounds into the garbage will be quite a habit to break, I am afraid.

Is anyone gardening yet? Planted anything yet? Growing anything yet? Are any of you going to grow anything for the first time this year? I would like to hear about it. Oh, and send good garden blogs my way, please.

House Beautiful

With the kitchen nearly done, the upstairs bathroom is next.

Guess which bathroom is mine?


We closed the door to it 4 years ago when we bought the house and have barely opened it since. We had so many other horrifying rooms in our house, that this was an easy one to just ignore for a long while. But, now that we are emboldened by our kitchen progress, this room is next, in addition to finally tearing out the carpet upstairs, getting the icky popcorn stuff off of the ceilings, and redoing the bedrooms. Remember the magical BINDER? I just started one for the bathroom project. Yay.

I have to brace myself, though. We're going to find a lot of expensive problems as soon as we start this. We need to replace most of the pumbling in the house.

The upstairs toilet is lounging in our tub for a reason. A bad reason. About a year ago, I noticed that the ceiling above our downstairs toilet was kind of bowing. I didn't want to think the unthinkable, which was that not only was the horrifying bathroom upstairs a cosmetic mess, it had actually problems. Plumbing problems. Scary leaky problems. Tear up walls & ceilings problems. Sure enough. After Big Jim the plumber removed the toilet to inspect things and confirm our suspicions, we all just decided to leave the toilet in the tub and close the door and only think about it again when we were ready to fix the entire problem.

That time is upon us. I am excited and terrified. And ready to sign my paychecks over to Big Jim and a new contractor.

God help me.

Is this the new 1st Dibs?

HERE.

Hope so. 1st Dibs needs some competition. Oh, 1st Dibs, land of the lady-blogger love and the $4000 white pierced porcelain lamp. Come on, now.

Dear Decorno:

Deeeeeeear Decorno -

I'm a twenty-something college student moving into a new apartment in May, and thought I might ask for your (and your readers') advice. I seem to have trouble balancing my wall decor - that is to say, being an apartment dweller, I have an urge to brighten up my white walls, but I also worry about cluttering them and things looking tacky. How in the hell do I strike a balance between real art and posters and thrift store finds and chachkis without it looking like a horrible pretentious hipster explosion?! Help!

Jess



Jess, I just got up, the dog is tearing at the sofa, my hair is sidewides and my armpits smell. In other words, I need to get ready for work and hustle out the door, but in the meantime let me give you some quicky advice and let the commenters have at it:


1. No posters. I can explain more about this later, but for now, avoid. Too Etsy.

2. Do you like your white walls? If so, great. (I love me some white.) But don't be afraid to paint, either. Doesn't matter if your landlord doesn't approve. Just be lawless and paint anyway, just paint well and promise to return it to the original color.

3. Don't put things on your walls because you feel like you must. What do you like? Velvet Elvis paintings? Contemporary photography? Name the thing you actually want to look at and then start shopping for something special. But a thing or two at a time.

4. Don't spread everything out. Put things up in interesting groups and leave some blank space, even an entirely blank wall.

5. Mirrors are magic. Don't forget to buy a mirror or two that you love. It's actually a good investment now, because they are easy to move and you can make them work from apartment to apartment and house to house as you get older.

Readers - thoughts?

A bold decorating move.

“The closet command-chair Trekkies have come out of the closet,” said Keith Marshall, 45, an unemployed phlebotomist, emergency medical technician, corrections officer and firefighter whose uncompleted chair, currently sitting in his brother’s garage, is slated for his own living room in Bonney Lake, Wash. “For a lot of people in the last few years,” Mr. Marshall added, “the pieces have come together.”

HERE.

Oh, House Beautiful.

Every issue gets better and better. You kill me.

I adore this sofa, and I am usually no fan of hippie dippy fabrics. HB can get any style right, that's all I am sayin'.

The current issue is all about getting "cozy" right. Who can't use an extra helping of cozy these days? I was happy to see slipcovered sofas in this issue. As you know, I am pro dogs-on-couch, so it as nice to see something washable in a magazine.