Monday, May 31, 2010

quick and easy headboard change

over the weekend i pulled out my stash of domino magazines.  i love looking through them every now and then just to see what i can find that i haven’t noticed before.  i find that as time goes by i notice different details in the articles and pictures.  sometimes it’s a light fixture; other times it’s a particular color. 

this time i noticed a great way to make an easy change to a headboard.  domino did a article in their june/july ‘08 issue about stephen elrod, vice president of design for lee jofa, and his seaside cottage.  the “new to me” element in the home was the layering of throws on top of headboards in two of the bedrooms.

although i’m not crazy about the fabrics he used i do love the idea.

i thought i’d throw out some ideas of how i would pair the two.

for an upholstered look i would pair this thomas paul print slipcovered headboard with a gray chunky tassel throw from west elm.

Skyline Furniture Slipcover Headboard in Gerber SungoldChunky Tassel Throw

for a seagrass look similar to the headboard in the second photo i would pair this pier 1 headboard and a suzani overlay from wisteria.

Sea Grass Block Queen Headboardimages/W3934-large.jpg

and for a darker option i like the pier one chocolate seagrass headboard with the ws home zebra stripe throw.

Rope Queen HeadboardSafari Printed Cashmere Throws

another great and inexpensive way to achieve this look would be to purchase a fabric remnant at your local fabric store.  once you hem the edges or use stich witchery then you could just drape it over your headboard. 

hope you all had a great long weekend.  i sure did!

Friday, May 28, 2010

Go Figure.

We've worked so tirelessly to get the inside of our house feeling good and now all we want to do is go outside. 


Summer's here (ok, maybe not really, but it totally feels like it) and it's time to break out the sprinkler for the little guys to play in!!  I found this awesome vintage (I think) set of black iron outdoor patio furniture this week at Lucketts and I can't wait to bring it home in our truck today!!  It's really not at all like this one from High Society below (it has  much straighter lines)  but its' the first thing I thought of (and my husband too--  poor guy has an awesome memory & I've been filling his head with decorating!!) when I saw the set. 


It has kind of a modern retro-chic feeling that will work really well with the exterior of our {not-so-pretty}70s house.  Here's a photo of it when we first moved in last year. (below)  Enough good things haven't  been done to it yet to warrant an "after" picture.  (But we have moved the neon playset into a less conspicuous area until we can get the wooden one we're after, and the tree debris & drain pipe are gone.)


...The back and sides of our house are still beigey/ "nude" (I love to say that about our house...  it cracks me up) while the front is now a rich gray.  (Still??  Yes, still.)

{My little fern hanging on for dear life}

...  I know the neighbors much just love us...  but hopefully they won't think we're as worthless as we look once we paint the sides & back of the house as SOON as Dave off of work for the summer.  (High school English teacher :)  I can't wait!!  (Both for summer vacation and a fully-painted house.)  

Anyway, the patio set is kind of a combination of these (in black iron) but doesn't have pillows that we can use:

{vintage set}


{image from Maas Brothers recoating...  It has a simlar 'X' back but with a large "O" in the center which is almost exactly the same as the caged lantern in our front entry.  (see photo of entry a few pics up)}


{Crate & Barrel via Hooked on Houses...  It has similar straight, spare lines but it's black. }

I LOVE its size (a massive 3-seater sofa, a chair and a chaise!!) and it has awesome lines, but the paint is peeling off and of course we need to have cushions made.   I can't get the High Society cushions off of my mind but might  go with a solid fabric and do pillows.  (I wouldn't be going pink out there...  but possibly an enlarged "grandma" floral...  I'm also thinking about orange as I love it with the gray on the house...)



We've also got plans to work on the shed/ playhouse this weekend...


Below is a photo of the ceiling all primed & ready for paint...


I set up a Facebook Page for Pure Style Home last night & posted a couple more pics of the shed as it is now.  I'm not quite sure how to really work facebook yet but hopefully I'll get the hang of it.  I'm thinking I will post little updates & progress on projects there.  Not as exciting as "voila" before & afters but I know some of you like to see behind-the-scenes & "progress" pictures.



Hope you have a happy Memorial Day weekend & get a dip in a pool!!!  If you have some time, check out the new facebook page & send me some thought/tips/ideas!!  (I'm so slooooow with computers/ technology!!)  I'd love to know what you'd like to see on there.
xoxo,
lauren

Thursday, May 27, 2010

my happy place

i’m in my happy place right now…

celebrity-homes-photos-meg-ryan-05.jpg

 meg ryan’s martha’s vinyard home in elle decor

that place is listening to my brandi carlisle station on pandora and looking at lovely magazines{unfortunately i’m not doing all of this at martha’s vinyard}.

celebrity-homes-photos-meg-ryan-02.jpg

 meg ryan’s martha’s vinyard home in elle decor

hope you can go to your happy place sometime over the long weekend.

celebrity-homes-photos-meg-ryan-03.jpg

 meg ryan’s martha’s vinyard home in elle decor

enjoy your memorial day weekend!

Limits of History, Limits of Historians

Randall Stephens

Timothy Chester has an interesting review of Sarah Blackwell's life of Montaigne--How to Live--in the TLS (May 7, 2010). Reading Chester's appraisal, I came across one of Montaigne's signature critiques. He took aim at historians, who, he thought, often made things up or misread evidence. It got me thinking about other judgments. Book reviews in history journals often point out the logical inconsistencies, over generalizations, silences, or glaring absences in a historian's work. "Historian X should really have looked at evidence Y." Here are a few such critiques, starting with that of the French Renaissance man of letters.

Michel de Montaigne, "Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions," in The Complete Works of Montaigne, ed., Donald M. Frame (Stanford University Press, 1958.), 239.

They choose one general characteristic, and go and arrange and interpret all a man's actions to fit their picture; and if they cannot twist them enough, they go and set them down to dissimulation. Augustus has escaped them; for there is in this man throughout the course of his life such an obvious, abrupt, continual variety of actions that even the boldest judges have had to let him go, intact and unsolved. Nothing is harder for me than to believe in men's consistency, nothing easier than to believe in their inconsistency.

Dipesh Chakrabarty, "Provincializing Europe: Postcoloniality and the Critique of History," Cultural Studies 6:3 (October 1992): 337.

In the academic discourse of history--that is, "history" as a discourse produced at the institutional site of the university "Europe" remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the ones we call "Indian," "Chinese," "Kenyan," etc. There is a peculiar way in which all these other histories tend to become variations on a master narrative that could be called "the history of Europe." In this sense, "Indian" history itself is in a position of subalternity; one can only articulate subaltern subject-positions in the name of history. That Europe works as a silent referent in historical knowledge itself becomes obvious in a highly ordinary way.

Jesse Lemisch, Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Role of New York's Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution (Garland, 1997), 159.

If maritime history, amateur and professional, has largely ignored the seaman, this is only part of a larger pattern in the writing of American history: neglect of the lower classes. We live, it is said, in an affluent, mobile society, we are all middle class, and it has always been so, more or less: thus the biases with which we view the contemporary scene have been reflected in our view of the past, and the existence of a lower class has been denied, or, when its actions forced some recognition, it has been contended that it acted as the tool of more prominent citizens.

See also this previous post: "I am almost coming to the conclusion that all histories are bad"

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

headboard love

my heart did a little pitter-patter dance when i saw this headboard upholstered in one of my favorite quadrille fabrics.  this headboard is pure perfection.

you can see the rest of this park avenue apartment here on the house beautiful website.

**side note – i have been out of town all of this week but i did see the new house beautiful at the grocery store on sunday.  why is this a problem?…because this is the second month in a row that i’ve seen house beautiful in the store before i actually got my copy.  i never received last month’s issue and when i left home i still hadn’t gotten this month’s.  house beautiful and i will have to have a serious talk if i don’t get my issue for the second month in a row.

All around the mulberry bush



As you might remember, we moved into our house about a year ago...  One of the funny things about first moving into a house (especially in early Spring like us before the leaves are out) is that you don't necessarily know what kinds of plants & trees you have on your property.  This past year it's been so great to watch the place bloom around us & to find out what everything is.  One of our favorite "mystery trees" that we saw when we first moved in turned out to be a mulberry tree!

{Mulberries}

And we love to eat them!!  (Things just taste better outside & especially when they're from your own yard, don't they?)  It's so relaxing to head outside at the end of the day & pick mulberries.  I love that we don't have to do anything at all to keep them alive (because my thumb is the blackest of blacks.)

{Christian's getting so big -will be 3 yrs old in July- and can reach the lower branches}


{yum! yum!}

...After we pick them we head to the backyard to the adirondack chairs to relax & enjoy the mulberries ... and forget about how messy our house is, the work that needs to be done, and the craziness of daily life etc.


They're not the cleanest of foods...

{Mulberry-stained hands, feet and face}

...But they sure make us happy...



Chores, work, messes and "things" will always be there... 
Think of what you can do with the people you love to take a quick break from it all.
Savor all the little moments you can.
simple      happy      beautiful      living.

xoxo,
lauren

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Still Time to Register for the Historical Society Conference in DC

Randall Stephens

Eric Arnesen, George Washington University, has put together a terrific program for the Historical Society Conference next week at GWU's Marvin Center. And, there is still time to register for "Historical Inquiry in the New Century," at a reduced rate, if you have not already done so.

The conference will feature panels on a variety of topics, ranging from high school history teaching, historians as expert witnesses, and military history to gender, religion in modern Britain, and the Medieval West (you can read some of those papers now on-line). The conference has a number of sessions devoted to labor history and African-American history. The latter includes:

THURSDAY, JUNE 3

1:00-2:30

Session ID: SLAVERY, HISTORY, AND THE FUTURE: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Room 309

Chair: Robert Cottrol, George Washington University School of Law

Karlee-Anne Sapoznik, York University
"‘They Say That It's Culture, but It's Abuse’: Slavery and Servile Marriage in Historical and Contemporary Perspective”

Jeffrey Gunn, York University
"Evolving History in the 21st Century: The Paramount Role of Autobiography and Biography in Linking Historical and Contemporary Issues"

2:45-4:15pm

Session IID: DOES IT TAKE A SMALL WINDOW TO SEE THE BIG PICTURE?
Room 309

Chair: Melvin Patrick Ely, College of William and Mary

Melvin Patrick Ely
"What Reviewers Should Have Criticized about Israel on the Appomattox, But Didn't"

Nancy A. Hillman, College of William and Mary, "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart: Biracial Fellowship and Black Leadership in Virginia Baptist Churches Before and After Nat Turner"

Jennifer R. Loux, Library of Virginia, "How Proslavery Southerners Became Emancipationists: Slavery and Regional Identity in Frederick County, Maryland"

Ted Maris-Wolf, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture
"Self-Enslavement in Virginia, 1856-1864: How Two Free Black Men Shaped a Law That Fueled the National Debate Over Slavery"

Comment: Melvin Patrick Ely

FRIDAY, JUNE 4

8:30-10:00am

Session IA: CIVIL RIGHTS AND THE BACKLASH
Room 301

Chair: Sonya Michel, Woodrow Wilson Center

Jerald Podair, Lawrence University, “‘One City, One Standard’: The Struggle for Equality in Rudolph Giuliani's New York”

Brett Gadsden, Emory University, “Refiguring White Backlash: Joseph Biden and the Liberal Retreat from School Desegregation”

Clarence Taylor, Baruch College, “The New York City Teacher's Union and Civil Rights”

Comment: Sonya Michel

10:15-11:45am

Session IIA: RETHINKING EMANCIPATION
Room 301

Chair: Alex Lichtenstein, Florida International University

James Oakes, CUNY Graduate Center
"Rethinking Emancipation"

Comment: Alex Lichtenstein

Comment: Chandra Manning, Georgetown University

2:45-4:15pm

Session IVA: STATE OF THE FIELD: TWENTIETH-CENTURY AFRICAN-AMERICAN HISTORY
Room 301

Chair: Adele Alexander, George Washington University

Daniel Letwin, Pennsylvania State University, "Black Political Thought in the Age of the New Negro"

Carol Anderson, Emory University, "Freedom Fighters on the Cold War Plantation: The Histories of African Americans' Anticolonialism"

Mary Ellen Curtin, University of Essex, "Race, Gender, and American Politics since 1965"

4:30-6:00pm

Session VA: "THE LONG CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT": A ROUNDTABLE
Room 301

Chair: Eric Arnesen, George Washington University

Patricia Sullivan, University of South Carolina

J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan

Beth Bates, Wayne State University

Robert Korstad, Duke University

James Leloudis, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

SATURDAY, JUNE 5

8:30-10:00am

Session IE: RACE, POLITICS, PROSTITUTION, AND THE COLLAPSE OF RECONSTRUCTION IN THE AMERICAN SOUTH
Room 413-14

Chair: Leslie Rowland, University of Maryland

Emily Landau, University of Maryland, “Public Rights and Public Women: Plessy, Prostitution, and the Effects of Reconstruction’s Demise in New Orleans 1862-1896”

Michael A. Ross, University of Maryland, “Creole Icarus: Jean Baptiste Jourdain and the Rise and Fall of Reconstruction in New Orleans”

Comment: John Rodrigue, Stonehill College

10:15-11:45am

Session IIA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., I
Room 301

Chair: James Miller, George Washington University

Thomas Guglielmo, George Washington University, “Raising a Black and ‘So-Called White’ Military: Race-Making and America's World War II Draft”

TourĂ© Reed, Illinois State University, “The Urban League in the New Deal Era”

Yevette Richards Jordan, George Mason University, “George McCray and the Shifting Dimensions of a Transnational Black Identity in Newly Independent Ghana”

1:00-2:30pm

Session IIIA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., II
Room 301

Chair: David Chappell, University of Oklahoma

Kevin Gerard Boyle, Ohio State University, “Redemption: Civil Rights, History, and the Promise of America”

Joseph Kip Kosek, George Washington University, “‘Who Is Their God?’: Religion and the Civil Rights Movement”

Sophia Z. Lee, Yale University, “Without the Intervention of Lawyers’: Race, Labor, and Conservative Politics in 1950s America”

Comment: David Chappell

2:45-4:15pm

Session IVB: RACE AND LABOR IN THE CONTEMPORARY SOUTH
Room 307

Chair: Robert H. Zieger, University of Florida

Jane Berger, Cornell University, "'A Lot Closer To What It Ought To Be': Black Women and Public-Sector Employment in Baltimore, 1950-1975"

Rob Chase, Case Western Reserve University, "Slaves of the State Revolt: Southern Prison Labor and a Prison-Made Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1980"

Michael Dennis, Acadia University, "The Virginia Organizing Project and the Movement for Economic Democracy"

Comment: Robert H. Zieger

Session IVD: TRADITIONS, REVISIONS, AND PUBLIC THEOLOGIES IN AFRICAN AMERICA
Room 309

Chair: Richard S. Newman, Rochester Institute of Technology

David Waldstreicher, Temple University, "Phillis Wheatley, Religion, and the American Revolutionaries"

Jacqueline Robinson, St. Joseph's University, “A Halfway Covenant for Harlem: The Public Theology of William Lloyd Imes”

Comment: Richard S. Newman

Session IVE: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE STUDY OF RACE AND SLAVERY
Room 413-14

Chair: Mark Smith, University of South Carolina

Joyce Malcolm, George Mason University School of Law, “Slavery in 18th-Century Massachusetts and the American Revolution”

Robert Cottrol, George Washington School of Law, “Race-Based Slavery and Race-Based Citizenship: How Brazil and the United States Became Different”

Amy Long Caffee, University of South Carolina, “Hearing Africa: Early Modern Europeans’ Auditory Perceptions of the African Other”

4:30-6:00pm

Session VA: NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE HISTORY OF CIVIL RIGHTS AND RACE IN THE U.S., III
Room 301

Chair: Steven Reich, James Madison University

James Ralph, Middlebury College, “‘It is an Eternal Struggle’: The Pursuit of Civil Rights in the Land of Lincoln”

James D. Wolfinger, DePaul University, “‘The American Ideals of Justice and Equality’: The African-American Fight for Equal Rights in Levittown”

Kenneth Mack, Harvard Law School, “Race, Representation, and the Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer”

Monday, May 24, 2010

in disguise

does your closet look like this?

or these?

bad closet bad closet 2

if you said yes then turn that frown upside down. thanks to country living you can make it look like this!

i’ve seen a lot of closets-turned-offices but i think this is by far my favorite.  the bright punch of aqua and the floral wallpaper add so much character.  the peg board and tackboard on the backside of the doors makes storing small items that much easier.  the best thing is that it can be completely contained with the closet doors should it start to look like this again.

closet edit hopefully that would never happen though.  check out how to create your own office nook here at country living’s website.

i didn’t want to leave you with an ugly “eek” picture so here’s one of my favorite images completely unrelated from the post but still pretty from the latest coastal living issue.  isn’t that sofa amazing!

Turquoise and Green Living Room

Washington Design Center Hall of Fame Gala



This past Thursday night was the opening Black Tie Gala for the Washington Design Center's 2010 Design House sponsored by Elle Decor Magazine.  Dave & I decided to go and were so excited... until I tried on my dress options 2 hours before we were supposed to leave.  eeeeeeeeeek  not good.  You would have thought I would have been a little more prepared but it's fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants-time at our house these days and it really just slipped my mind.  I also don't have a full-length mirror right now (it helps the post pregnancy self-esteem... no actually we just keep forgetting we need one ;) so I couldn't tell what I looked like in a dress and my mom snapped a picture to show me.  (A very diplomatic/ honest move.)  And when I saw the pic, I knew we had to high-tail it to Tyson's (our mall).  So to Tyson's we went with Dave in his tux, us sprinting around like lunatics with only 50 minutes to find a dress.  I went all over but eventually I found a dress- and the ppl at Nordstroms were so sweet as always.  (This is no joke-  ever since high school I have these nightmares every so often that I'm off to homecoming or prom and I am dress shopping and I don't have anything to wear and I'm late or miss the dance.  Well, this was my nightmare come to life and it was not really nightmarish at all...  just kind of ridiculous.)  I wore the dress out and people laughed at us as we sprinted through the mall- me in a floor-length gown with flip-flops...  ruinging any chance of a good hair day.  When we finally got there we saw lots of friendly faces & also met some new ones: 
{ Textile Designer Bryant Archie, me & my friend Michele Ginnerty of My Notting Hill

{New friend Nicole Qualls of Elle Decor.  We're kindred spirits- do you see how she loves the monkey?!}

{monkeys all over the showhouse!}

{Bryant, me, my husband, fellow-shelter-designer Raji Rhadhakrishnan and her husband}
photo by Michele Ginnerty via My Notting Hill


{Dave & superstar advertising director Matthew Talomie from Elle Decor  ...We love Elle Decor  and were so happy they came down to DC!!}


{ me with friend/designer Rachel James, and Kathleen Litchfield}

I was a very bad blogger (as usual at any events) and spent more time having fun than taking pictures, so I missed a lot of great new friends in the photos including Sherry from Elle Decor (Nicoles's mother- what an awesome family they are!!!) and  sweet/fun-local-designers Sally Steponkus, Heather Safferstone, Barbara Franceski, Andrea Hickman, and builder John Petro.

I did get this photo of Kelley Proxmire in her gorgeous turquoise accented foyer:

{She matched her room- how perfect?!}


{ Chandy with honeycomb beeswax shades..  LOVE}



{And of course I loved the accents in he garden room}
...But then the music got to us and dancing ensued and the camera was forgotten.  ah vell.
If you're interested in seeing all of the rooms, check out this article in The Washington Post or go to the Design Center to see them in person!  Thanks to the Design Center and Elle Decor for an amazing night!!

xoxo,
lauren

ps- we went out afterwards and people thought we'd just gotten married!! of course dave insisted it was true as he showed them photos of our 5 month old and 2 year old. 
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