Green Interior Design ala Lori Dennis

I received a lovely email from fellow blogger and award-winning interior designer Lori Dennis.

Images from Lori Dennis' website

She is soon to release a book worth reading: Green Interior Design. I must remember to get it from Amazon this Christmas :)

Images from Amazon

Promising to be a beautiful book with gorgeous photos, projects and extensive resources who practice green behavior and business strategies. Of course, Lori includes plenty of inspirational and cost-effective tips to creating glamorously green interiors in almost every aspect of creating a beautiful house and home, from furniture and accessories, window treatments, fabrics, surface materials, appliances, plumbing fixtures to the outdoor living.

Images from Lori Dennis' website

Make sure you tour Lori Dennis' home!

Images from Lori Dennis' website

Lori shared some simple and zero-cost eco-green tips for us all:

1. Clean often (and vacuum) with non toxic products. That layer of dust in your home includes dead skin from humans and pets (no so bad) and a breakdown of walls, fabrics, paints, plastics which probably contain carcinogens. This is why interior air is often more harmful than exterior air. Keeping it clean is one of your best Green Interior Design strategies. A proper green clean arsenal includes:
• white vinegar, baking soda, peroxide and rags for cleaning
• vegetable oil with a few drops of lemon for polishing
• a hefty portion of elbow grease

2. Remove shoes when entering your home. You wouldn’t believe how many toxins your shoes pick up from the streets, driveways and gardens. Taking off shoes before entering a home helps to prevent these chemicals from coming inside. Yay, being from Malaysia, I'm glad I was brought up taking shoes off at the door and keep it to this day even in Australia.

3. Open the windows and let the sunshine in. Sunlight is a natural disinfectant. Even if you live in an apartment, you can place pillows, blankets and mattresses in front of an open window to allow solar rays and fresh air to help sanitize them.
It’s a lot easier than steam cleaning them too! Yes I can't stand being in homes where the windows are always closed, four seasons, 365 days around. Sunshine is the best feeling. While I don't like being in the sun directly, I almost NEED sunshine in the home. I also don't like using a dryer. I much prefer the sun beating down on my linen. I love whitening my white linens with sunshine rays. Beats harmful bleaches.

4. Reuse what you already have. If you are inspired by a space you see in a magazine, look around your home or office. What pieces do you have that are a similar look, scale, color? Arrange existing items in the same way as the magazine spread. You’ll be amazed by how you old things take on a fresh, new look.

Images from Lori Dennis' website

5. Next time you’re going to buy cut flowers, consider a flowering plant instead. If you take care of it, it can last for decades. An added bonus is that plants help to clean the air and produce oxygen. Gerber Daisies, Peace Lilies and Bamboo are cool looking plants that do this well. Studies have shown that plants improve your mood. Market cut flowers are expensive and usually grown with copious amounts of petrochemical pesticides, insecticides and herbicides, plus they often travel across continents to get to you. That’s a lot of poison production and wasted energy.

6. If you really want or need something entirely new, comb through what you have. Sell something that you aren’t using on Craigslist or at a yard sale to offset the cost of the new item. Preferably buy the “new” item used. One man’s trash is another’s treasure.

7. If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down. Arid states like California are familiar with this drought time slogan. In an attempt to use less water only flush when absolutely necessary- or when guests arrive. Yes. hehehehe we have done this for years hahahaha

Images from Lori Dennis' website

What Kim Kardashian and I have in common

Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write. And for those of you keeping track, no, it's not that we've both been linked to a pro-football player or star in a reality show on E!

It's this:


Hey Kim, you and me both, sister.

As I approach my next birthday, which happens to be one of those decade-milestones, it's hard not to reflect on what I've accomplished in my life. I've never had a strict timeline of events in my head, and yet when I graduated from college, I did have vague ideas about where I saw myself 5, 10 years down the line. If you had asked me, back at the tender age of 22, where I thought I'd be now, I would have speculated that I'd still be acting in some capacity, hopefully at a professional/respectable level. And that I'd be married. No kids yet -- I would have figured that for the early chunk of my 20s, I'd casually date before finding my soul mate around the age of 26. We'd date for a couple of years, be engaged by the time I was 28ish and right around now, I'd be walking down the aisle.

Ok, so maybe I did kind of have a timeline. But it's not like I wrote it down or anything.

Actual recap of the post-college years goes like this: give up on acting after 5 exhausting years of doing bad plays in New York, decide to move to a new city and get my MFA in poetry, have a slew of serious monogamous relationships that ultimately fizzle, largely for reasons unknown (i.e. not for lack of love or basic incompatibility).

Now, this next statement is going to sound, well, snotty: historically, I tend to get what I want. This is due to some combination of luck and stubbornness. But the truth is, I got the lead in the high school musical, went to prom with the guy I wanted, and got into my first choice college. I usually get offered jobs I go after. In short, when I want something and decide to fight for it, I often get it. Hate me, call me a lucky bitch, but it's the truth.

Finding someone with whom to share my life and raise a family is something I want. Doesn't have to happen now, but as the years tick by, I get increasingly nervous that it will never happen. I know, 30 is not exactly over-the-hill. But it's also not 25.

Of the 6 girls in my 6th grade class at Wilson School, I am the only one that is not married. Three of them have babies already, too. The high school stats are equally staggering -- I am definitely in the minority as a single woman with no offspring to pose with in my Facebook profile pic.

I know, it's not a race. It's not a contest. Over 50% of marriages end in divorce, blah blah blah.
And I consider myself a feminist, so I HATE admitting that these "traditional" things, these 1950s housewife-sounding things are things that I covet. I do want professional success as well -- if I didn't, I wouldn't be accruing thousands of dollar of debt to go to graduate school. I'd just join e-harmony and spend all my time/effort/money on trying to "settle down." I don't plan to stop working and pop out babies.

But I hate feeling guilty/old fashioned about wanting these things. I hate admitting that I want them. I wish I had a "it''ll happen if it happens" philosophy, but that's not how I'm programmed. I have a very good life and I have a lot to be thankful for -- good friends, a supportive family, enough money to pay my rent and occasionally eat at a nice restaurant. But I guess I buy into that cultural fairytale that until I find a person to share it all with, I can't be completely happy. Partly, I do blame my genes -- both of my parents are terrible at being alone. Within a year of divorcing, they were both remarried. So I can blame them, I can blame society, I can blame myself. It doesn't really matter.

Kim K. came clean in People; I'm coming clean here. I'm not married and I'm a little disappointed about it.

Insight into the mind of a poet

Like many writers, I keep a journal. Several, actually. One for banal observations and whiny ramblings expected for the diary genre and then two others that I use for poetry/teaching/whatever else I need to write down when I'm at my desk (directions to restaurants, confirmation numbers). It's sometimes fun to flip through these hodgepodge notebooks and discover random things that I have no memory of writing. I recently came across this, well, list for lack of a better word. I'm guessing it was from a free writing exercise wherein I was trying to jumpstart my creativity. The "list" is as follows, verbatim:

rosebuds touching
a lonely harmonica
a patch of dead grass
unforgiving mailbox
where the wrist meets the hand
the second to last kiss
a church parking lot
flowers with the dirt still on them
zodiac sign language
selling individual balloons
a ballad, oversung
the worst sunset
a cracked pocket mirror
the Sunday newspaper
pewter souvenirs
not enough drum lessons
forgettable family dinners
steering wheel, too hot to touch
Tabasco sauce on everything
crowded aquariums
renting ice skates
one matinee too many


What does any of it mean? No clue. I really like "not enough drum lessons" and "unforgiving mailbox," though. And maybe I'll use "The Worst Sunset" as the title of my memoir. A lot of these would make great memoir titles (tell me you wouldn't buy A Ballad, Oversung: The Life and Times of Katie Vagnino). I don't think I ever wrote a poem or story incorporating anything from this list and the journal supports this: On the opposite page is a recipe for shrimp tacos that I remember copying from Real Simple.

Shoe storage

I want to share something very close to my heart with you, my precious blog readers.

I've grown to love shoes.

Not mine, of course. From Bust Clutter

In a oh-dear way.

Since slowly falling in love with shoes, I have garnered a few pairs. But most of these shoes have to be piled on top of one another in a most unappealing fashion, either on an everyday-use, by-the-door rack or in their boxes above our closet.

I'd like to display some of my shoes... as chic-style storage. (Also so I remember what I have!)

I have some criteria for my shoe storage:
1. Must be chic
2. Must be practical
3. Must fit into current space requirements (until we have bought a house and have a walk in closet)
4. Must be something easy to maintain for my less than neat household
5. Must be portable

So while I'd love these shoe storage solutions:

Via Apartment Therapy

Via House to Home

I have to admit to space and budget requirements... and these are at the top of my choices:

Via Living Etc

Via House to Home

Via House to Home

Via Deliciously Organised

Via Apartment Therapy

Now this is also nice!

Pink and gold

You know when you see a picture/image and it strikes something inside you? It inspires you?



I ordered myself a print copy (can't beat print) of Lonny Magazine Aug/Sep 2010 months ago and finally this weekend had some time to look through it carefully. This unassuming photo was from the article on Larson-Juhl (page 41).

The pink and gold seemed right. Adds a touch of luxe. A touch of old world class!
(Even though the "pink" was just molding clay before being painted!)

The colours made me go, "see!??!?!" inside and I wondered why... Then I remember using it in creating a beautiful artpiece for my sister in law's home.. and completely loving the result:



Normally I don't really like gilt frames, preferring to paint it a while or solid colour... but with pink, the gold/gilt seems to work perfectly.

SO I searched my image files for more pink and gold inspiration:

ENJOY!

The pink chairs with the gilt faux-bamboo table? Luxe!

The gorgeous French bed in pink upholstery and gilt frame!

Love the class in the wallpaper :)

Image from Laura Ashley

Notice that the gilt side table doesn't look as good with the green as it does with the pink? I think the green adds a touch of tarnish to the gilt actually! But the pink adds a touch of warmth and blush to the lovely gilt!

See the gilt frame against the pink walls? Inspired!

Large gilt mirror against the deeper pink walls... a touch of fun, against a touch of class!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween kind of snuck up on me this year. In fact, the whole month of October snuck up on me. How is it already November?

At any rate: Halloween 2010. It was fun, perhaps not as memorable as past years, but maybe I'm just finally reaching an age where Halloween is less fun for me. That's a depressing thought. Not going to unpack that at the moment.

This year, I had a little impromptu gathering at my house, featuring pumpkin-flavored beer and homemade "spooky snacks": Sriracha-spiced deviled eggs and curry/cayenne roasted pumpkin seeds.


We watched a few scary movies (Little Shop of Horrors, Alien), then went to the obligatory costume party. My costume was I think funnier in concept than in execution. But really, it's all been downhill since my costume zenith from Halloween 2001: The Taco Belle.

I spent the whole night speaking Spanish with a Southern accent. Damn, I'm clever.

Last year, I went as Baby from Dirty Dancing. I carried a watermelon around all night. And told people not to put me in a corner.


Tonight, I did little to celebrate -- no trick-or-treating, no parties. Ate take-out Thai food and orange and black M&Ms. Maude looks way more festive than I do, but she's sort of perpetually in the Halloween spirit due to her coloring. And her worship of Satan.

Too much candy for Maude?

So You Think You Don't Like Poetry

For this week's selection, I decided to go with two short poems I admire that happen to be very far from what I understand to be my own poetic style. One is by current Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, a woman known for her concise, almost Dickinsonian lyrics; she writes very small, condensed poems that are deceptively simple. The other is by Wendy Cope, whom many liken to Ryan as well as Gertrude Stein. Her poem has a lot of repetition and a risky rhetorical strategy, one that I think pays off.

Blunt
by Kay Ryan

If we could love
the blunt
and not
the point

we would
almost constantly
have what we want.

What is the
blunt of this
I would ask you

our conversation
weeding up
like the Sargasso.

Some More Light Verse
by Wendy Cope

You have to try. You see a shrink.
You learn a lot. You read. You think.
You struggle to improve your looks.
You meet some men. You write some books.
You eat good food. You give up junk.
You do not smoke. You don't get drunk.
You take up yoga, walk, and swim.
You don't know what to do. You cry.
You're running out of things to try.

You blow your nose. You see the shrink.
You walk. You give up food and drink.
You fall in love. You make a plan.
You struggle to improve your man.
And nothing works. The outlook's grim.
You go to yoga, cry, and swim.
You eat and drink. You give up looks.
You struggle to improve your books.
You cannot see the point. You sigh.
You do not smoke. You have to try.