Category Archives: Design

Owl House

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There is a darling old house here in Davis that I want to show you, it’s called the OwlHouse*.
There are wonderful plant pathology parties and wonderful people here.
And of course  there is wonderful furniture.

* I’m not sure where the name comes from, I assume there are owls roosting in the old tree out back…or were at one time, I haven’t spotted any yet.

My friend and I fell in love with the old girl’s paned windows, tufted velvet arm chairs and mid-century baby blue kitchen last year when we first attended a department party here. I still drool over the assortment of vintage furniture whenever I get a chance, so I broke down last week and asked Margaret (who lives at the Owl House) if I could take some pictures of it. Luckily she obliged my quirky request and here we are.

I love the old picture of Kennedy on the floral wallpaper in the kitchen. I don’t know if it’s a spunky decorating decision, or one of those aspects of the house that hasn’t changed since the 60′s. Either way it always makes me happy when I see it.

The back yard has a chicken coop, a flower garden, an outdoor lounging bed(!), a trampoline, and a little covered patio featuring a garden table and a collection of really comfortable and eclectically mismatched floral chairs. Oh, and did I mention the basement is often converted into a mini dance club with live DJ? It’s like a page out of Pippi Longstocking’s Villa Villekulla, a beautifully furnished after-hours playhouse for those of us who fancy ourselves adults during the work day, but really just want to sleep outdoors on the trampoline on a warm summer night.

Check out some more photos below. Thanks again to Margaret for letting me invade her home!





(finally) the living room

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So after weeks of half-heartedly unpacking, splashing around with wood stains and rearranging furniture, I’m calling my living room presentable enough to blog about it. The highlight of the whole ordeal being my new ebony/jacquard stained couch (which you might remember in its unboxing state). I bought a World Market Indonesian Bench and played around with it in my garage for a few weeks, staining, sanding down, and re-staining until I got sick enough of the pattern to just drag it into the house :p (it started as an awful light gray teak color that doesn’t really come across in the photos…) I got a variety of pillows from West Elm and IKEA. There is also an ottoman still in the works to match… more after the jump!

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The September List

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Ok I’ve got to spill some beans. I’m working on some projects that I’m really excited about, and I can’t keep quiet anymore. I’ve gone a bit overboard racking up the to-do list recently, here’s what I have on the boards:

1800′s Hutch

My mom’s boyfriend has had this old girl in storage since his antiquing business days, and he’s kindly letting me manhandle it into some kind of useable shape. Over the years someone has repainted it (to this…erm…lovely green) and changed out the door hardware, but we’re guessing the base hutch is from the 1800′s because it’s held together by wood pins!

I’m really tempted to turn it into something very similar to this Terrain Folkloric Hutch, don’t kill me if I end up being that unoriginal… would just be nice to have that piece of furniture for less than $2.5K! More after the jump :D

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Book hunting

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I happen to have a weakness for well-designed, super tactile books- especially cookbooks. I think most of us graphic designers carry a soft spot in our blackened hearts for the odd well-crafted book, but I’m not sure everyone goes to such lengths for them as I. Herein comes what I like to call book hunting.

My most recent triumph was a French pastry/cake cookbook by Hidemi Sugino that I saw recipes from on Køkken69‘s blog. I think she even wrote an entry about how much she loves this book, it has extensive directions on correct technique, and some ridiculously (complicated looking) awesome recipes. Of course the entire book is in Japanese, and can only be ordered on Japanese Amazon for about $50 + international shipping, but luckily such trivialities don’t stop me.
I spent a few days trying to laboriously translate the Japanese Amazon shipping policy, until I realized Google Chrome does a pretty decent job of translating websites :p Needless to say that made things much easier(my Japanese is understandably rusty), and after about a 2 week shipping time I had my lovely new cookbook!
Of course I’ve had it for probably four months now and haven’t baked a single thing from it yet, but you know I do most things in life just for the challenge. And if it counts for anything, I did take a day at the pool to translate the introduction :p

On my vacation in Iceland I dragged my freezing ass into a bookstore in hopes of a cup of coffee, and was pleasantly surprised by their cookbook isle! I found their pricing a bit prohibitive so I didn’t buy anything, but I took some surreptitious photos so I’d remember to look them up later (ironically I still have a 5,000 Icelandic krona bill burning a hole in my pocket that would have bought like 2 of those books).
My favorite in terms of layout and overall book design was Maturinn Hennar Nönnu by Nanna Rögnvaldardottir. Who knows what that title means, buying an Icelandic cookbook may be a bit of a stretch even for me… but what the hell, I think it’s about baking.
There was also a really interesting looking set of baking books (from Britain?) that I might look up later. They had some really nice foil embossing on the covers and good layouts inside, but the recipes didn’t exactly tickle my fancy (maybe because I can read them?). Go figure.