This song's so hot it's stolen

I discovered this song, "My Dick" by Mickey Avalon, while watching Harold and Kumar: Escape from Guantanamo Bay. And as a poet, I have to give Avalon props for some of the rhymes here-- truly sophisticated stuff. To watch the music video (with audio!), click here.

Soon I will write at length about Thanksgiving, reflecting on this year and what I'm thankful for, but since I don't have time to go into that now and it's been over a week since my last post, I'll just give you this small gift.

You're welcome.

Mickey Avalon widget by 6L & Daxii

Let's face it...

For the past 4 years, this blog has always been about airing interior design matters, whether personal or highlighting a designer's work. I hope that it's been more about my home rather than just posting the portfolios and works of the myriad of fantastic designers around the globe. I'd like to think this has been more about putting my feeble attempts at creating a more personal home, both while I rented and now that I've finally been blessed to own this lovely home. Of course, this means I've certainly shared with my readers my pathetic mistakes, my few triumphs and my mental moodboard for different living rooms/spaces. And I do so thank you for reading and following me; in part, seeing the number of readers in Google Analytics come to bijou kaleidoscope despite not commenting, has spurred me on.

I've been feeling recently that (maybe it's that time of the month again or something) I can't be bothered anymore. To write, to share, to try... Sometimes having no budget (pea-sized or otherwise) challenges me. Times like now, it depresses me...

If you have the budget (and experience), making mistakes are easily repaired... if you don't have the budget... mistakes are very costly... so trying new things out, or even affording the new things, is not always possible.

So thanks for allowing me this space to air out my mistakes, my bad attempts at creating living spaces that I had hope to inspire... and eventually build upon. Thanks for being gracious, for not chewing me out and cirticising...

(maybe next week there'll be more to read... but for now, i'm mellow.)

Have a good weekend!

Rug from towels?

So far, my planned yellow, black and white home office (blogged here and here) is looking more like a a box of crayons because our furniture, stationery, office accessories aren't all yellow. Though I'm slowly changing them to be more yellow, black and white where I can, progress is slow.

(I desperately want to paint the mucky brown fireplace a bright yellow.)

Ever since seeing Bev Hisey's Yellow Moroccan rug I've wanted a yellow and white rug for this space, just to make the space and my intentions for it more cohesive.

Bev Hisey's Yellow Moroccan


Some other contenders:

Moorish Tile by Pottery Barn


Kaley Bloom Rug by Pottery Barn


Brink and Campman's modern rug


Of course, none of these are available in Australia and finding a similar rug here has been rather painful (within or without my pea-sized budget).

This Saturday, after enjoying a great brunch at Gas, South Melbourne, Australia, (253 Coventry Street, South Melbourne) we roamed around Clarendon St. I'd been eyeing these beach towels from Bed, Bath and Table and they were finally on sale! So I grabbed two for under $70.

I've laid them down on my home office floor. While I'm not keen on the square-ness of the rug, I really do like the yellow and white modern floral pattern and they do make a more white & yellow statement.

But they are what they are (for now): 2 beach towels side by side. Can you perhaps throw in some suggestions how you would transform these into a more substantial faux-rug?

Would love to hear some suggestions! Thanks so much in advance!!!




Pardon the unstyled shots!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Who is Sarah Palin's publicist?

"Sarah, baby, it's going to be great, we're going to do the interview while turkeys are being slaughtered in the background. We'll show those pansy liberal vegetarians who the real Americans are! Wait, Sarah, why are you wearing a Burberry scarf and drinking Starbucks? You're a real everyday normal woman, with real everyday normal problems like a knocked-up teenage daughter, right? Right?!?!"

(thanks to Jocelyn and Levi for sending this to me...)

Domino: the Book of Decorating

I had to choose an affordable "something I'd like" for our Christmas gifts to each other (husband and I). Now with a mortgage, 10ft luxury ebony wood yachts or mountain-top Swiss chalets are out of the question (they were never in to begin with)...

I finally chose. (He chose a good quality coffee grinding kit (the Coffee Been's kit) and I am getting:

The MUCH talked about and MORE MUCH longed after Domino Mag's new book, Domino: the Book of Decorating.



Can't wait to get it!!!!


(Btw, we're not precious about not revealing our gifts to each other. I *HATE* getting gifts I can't appreciate so we have decided to make our gift list known to each other so we can truly appreciate what we give each other -and family members-)

A note to Australian readers/longer-afters-too, Amazon beats ANY price offered by Australian retailers (online and otherwise) for this book.

Boola Boola

As some of you may know, this Saturday marks the 125th anniversary of the Harvard-Yale Football Game, an event categorized by immense anticipation, binge drinking, and very poor athleticism.

In case you are not sure which team to root for, let me help you out. First, click here for some appropriate music to play while you read.

1. Yale's team is the Bulldogs. Bulldogs are cute and feisty (just like me!)

Harvard's team (and their daily newspaper) is the Crimson, which reminds me of my period, as well as that scene in "Clueless" when Alicia Silverstone tells Wallace Shawn she is "surfing the crimson wave." To summarize: yuck.

2. BILL CLINTON went to Yale! George Bush also went to Yale.


3. Yale's fight songs were written by Cole Porter. Perhaps you've heard of him?

4. The Yale Precision Marching Band, in addition to featuring standard band instruments, includes violins, bagpipes, accordions, keyboards, cowbells, triangles, and air guitars. Their halftime shows are more about pyrotechnics than fancypants formations. Basically, they like to blow shit up on the field.

5. Harvard sucks (and Princeton doesn't matter).

There are too many other reasons to list here, but basically, GO ELIS, and wear blue on Saturday! If you're in the Cambridge area, visit me Friday night at Hong Kong in Harvard Square or track me down at the Yale Club of Boston's tailgate on Saturday.

Weather.com

Cloudy

36°F

Feels Like
28°F

Ok, so maybe I'm being oversensitive, but whenever I log on to weather.com and see something like this, my first reaction is "Don't tell me how I feel, weather.com! YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME!"

What if I go outside, and to me it feels like 29 degrees? What then? For all you know, weather.com, I'm dressed super warmly today. Maybe I feel like it's 65 degrees and sunny. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT THAT? Are you going to tell me I'm WRONG?!?!

I just think this feature of the website is rather presumptuous. The science of weather forecasting seems somewhat comical to begin with, but this crosses the line. Now meteorologists are not just telling me what the temperature is, they are also speculating how my body is registering that temperature.

It's like weather.com and I are in an unhealthy relationship and I try to express my feelings, and weather.com tells me what I'm really feeling, which is a thinly veiled prescriptive statement about how I should be feeling. Like there's something wrong with me if today's high of 36 degrees didn't feel more like 28 degrees.

Well, I have news for you, weather.com. You do not know how I am feeling, so I would appreciate it if we could just keep things professional. I do not dispute your claim that humidity is at 50% and there are 11 mph winds coming from the northwest. I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow at 6:48 am and set at 4:46 pm, as depressing as that is. All I want from you is a general sense of how fucking cold and/or windy/snowy it is outside so I can dress accordingly. You do your job and I'll do mine, ok?

All best,
Katie

p.s. I do get a kick out of the pet safety forecast feature. Though Maude never ventures beyond my apartment and sleeps approximately 16 hours/day, I'm sure she would be grateful to know her "flea comfort index" should she ever find herself awake and outdoors.