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I've been really grooving on this lantern light fixture trend I've been seeing lately.








When it's done well, it is such a big, brave moment in a room. It's a fine line into weirdville though, you don't want to look like your channeling the headless horseman in some spooky colonial America re-enactment. So I wasn't actively seeking one of these fixtures for fear of getting it wrong, but when I spotted this diamond-in-the rough, I just had to snap it up




It was hanging from the rafters at Habitat for Humanity and was missing two pieces of glass, which was actually awesome. I knew the glass didn't effect the functionality. I actually thought it would look better, more modern, less Paul Revere, without the dated seeded glass panels. I was totally right, sans glass it looks like a gilded birdcage

Also, the asking price was $65 which was amazing, but I played up the fact that it was "broken" due to the missing panels, and got it for $50. An absolute steal

What I didn't know, however was how ridiculously, prohibitively heavy the things was going to be. It took a forklift and three underpaid workers to get the thing down from the rafters and loaded into my teeny-tiny mazda. An easy 75 pounds






I did some browsing when I got home just to get some interior inspiration, and by some Google miracle, I found my exact.same.lantern here retailing for over $2000 clams. Holy schnikey's.
So now I'm thinking, "should we sell this behemoth?" I get a little hypervental-y when I imagine hanging the thing, it's truly the size of a small elephant, but then I think about how entirely perfect it is for our huge living room, and I fall in love with it all over again. 

The deciding factor is going to be whether our electrician gives us the thumbs up or not to hang it. I'll keep you posted  


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It's a really good thing my kids don't have college funds because if they did, I might empty them to buy this:

La Cornue CornuFé Stove, Provence Blue $8,600

the supermodel of all stoves, the Michealangelo's David of appliances. Of course it's French and the most perfect shade of you-can't-afford-this blue. It graciously removes all of the calories from food so you can indulge to your hearts content, and also gently hand washes your pots and pans when your done cooking (or so I imagine, with that price tag). It just so happens, however, that the delivery charge alone ( a cool $1,300 for "white glove delivery") is about $600 more than I will be able to spend on a cooking implement in the near future. Le sigh.





Monogram Headboards

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We decided that our two girls should share a bedroom because we wanted to keep one of the rooms set up as a guest room, kept free of Lego's and swaddle blankets, since we get a lot of company. We all sleep piled on top of each other like a pack of wolves anyways, so having a "kids bedroom" right now is basically just a fancy place to keep their clothes
Our good friends were cleaning out their storage unit and had two beautiful twin beds that they didn't have the space for anymore. These were the same friends that gifted us the dresser that later became our bathroom vanity, the sectional couch we had for years in the Garden Ave house, and lots of other furniture, clothes and toys. When they decide to spring clean, we circle like a pack of vultures, we know we are getting something good!
The beds were white and a little rough, so I painted them a very pale pink semigloss. I had wanted to do huge monogram decals on the wall above the beds, but once they were painted and assembled, I thought it would be perfect for the decals to go straight on the headboards.

Sasha Fin

Schuyler Ro


 The decals are from Etsy seller Decal Gal and they really jazz up these already super amazing beds. Rest of the room tour coming soon, just have to conjure up Mary Poppins to come and razzle dazzle the kids into cleaning up after themselves so it will be presentable enough to photograph

The fiddle leaf fig eludes me!

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I've been a fan of Emily Henderson since she won Design Star how ever many seasons ago. She's no Antonio Ballatore, but she's a pretty good designer. One of her signature moves has been adding these big sculptural trees to her interior spaces called fiddle leaf figs






She may actually be a little obsessed, but they work! I did a little digging (pun intended) and found out that anyone whose anyone is using these African native trees in their spaces
Jonathon Adler

Elle Decor

Chloe Warner

Tim Clark


House Beautiful



These trees are everywhere, and they are amazing! Of course, I must have one immediatley! Living in a tropical climate, and these being a tropical plant, I figured it would be as easy as waltzing into my neighborhood Home Depot. Little did I know I was seeking the Birkin bag of foliage, replete with wait list. After being met with blank stares at the first two Home Depot's I armed myself with the latin name: Ficus Lyrata, and a print-out of the tree for reference and hit up the two nurseries I pass on my way to my kid's dance class, still nada. Lowe's? Nope. The Floral Emporium? Sorry. The Green Market? Uh-uh. Now it's purely ridiculous. I heard a rumor that Ikea is selling them, but with the floor issues in the living room I can't persuade Mike to take a trip down there with me, and I just cannot brave it alone with two kids, even for the  most.coveted.tree.in.the.world. (pout). 
So, I've decided to start a plant design trend of my own, I present to you, the humble sea grape:

(You saw it here first)


Now taking up residence in a corner of our bedroom. It's got the similar fat green leaves and will grow into a tree as well. The thing I love most about sea grapes is that they are cheap and available (my two favorite traits).I haven't given up my hunt for the elusive fiddle leaf fig, but for now, I'm pretty happy with my sea grape. 

The pit of despair

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We bought the house on Caroline knowing full well it came with it's share of problems. Some were obvious like the cesspool of a  pool, and some were not so obvious until we started to pull things apart.

Day of close/ Caroline


The floor in the living room was past-it's-prime beige wall-to-wall carpeting. I despise carpeting in general, but this was especially horrid. It was one of the first things to go. Once the carpeting was 86'd we noticed a slight dip in the floor. Nothing too serious, but the floor would need to be leveled before we could put any new flooring in.Worrying about this took a back burner to adding a new bathroom in the airplane hanger, fixing the gate on the Garden Ave house for the tenants, completing the kids living room under the stairs, and having a new baby (to name a few). We lived with the plywood subloor for a while with this room functioning as a catch-all for junk, an indoor soccer court, and a beanbag nap center


We finally got around to opening things up, this weekend, and boy did we open things up. Besides the layer of carpet and underlayment, there was a plywood subfloor, then a layer of tar paper, under which was a layer of linoleum tiles, and then under that was another layer of plywood subfloor, under alllllllll of that was finally the support beams and then just dirt. I didn't know what I expected, but I was a little surprised to see just plain dirt underneath it all. After all that I was hoping to find the buried treasure (or ex wife) of a past owner, maybe a priceless dinosaur bone or two, no such luck, but there were a few empty beers, a can of spam, and, inexplicably, someone's front fender. Also, we found the culprit of the uneven floor: a decrepit center beam which on closer inspection was inhabited by a hungry termite family which had been working it's way through the beam for some time. We apologized for ruining their weekend, but they just had to go.



We had hoped it would be a problem that could be fixed quickly and cheaply, but it was evident that the entire floor needed to be ripped out down to bare earth and rebuilt from scratch.

To add insult to injury, it soon started to rain. Not a gentle Florida sunshower, but a typhoid fever type moonsoon. This ended up being a good thing because apparently our living room, unbenownst to us, became the River Jordan in heavy rains. Water was literally pouring in from a corner of the house and pooling in the center. At this point, I thought our best option would be to get a few bags of sand and make an indoor beach volleyball court so as not to fight and uphill battle. Mike, as always, Mr.Practical, poo-poo'd that idea. 


It was good that we caught the problem and were able to seal up the gaping hole, otherwise we'd soon be dealing with more wood rot and decay.

There is, as yet, no "after" photo because our living room (or as I am fondly calling it, "the pit of despair") still looks like this. Mike has been working on putting everything back together all week, and tommorrow we should at least get back to the plywood subfloor so we can play soccer in our living room again.


Sh!t my dad brings over

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On this episode of sh!t my dad brings over (backstory) we have this lovely fish carving/wall hanging from Jamaica

I pretty much love it. Just don't know quite where to put it

And



This dried out woven bird, which is actually a win in my book, even though this picture doesn't do it much justice. I think I will string it and hang it in the girls room. 

2 for 2 this week dad!