Fall Fashion Wist List

Are you ready for a completely pointless and self-indulgent post?

Good! Here are my fall wardrobe wants:



I dream of having a really chic, funky wardrobe full of black, white and denim clothing. Then I would funk it up with stripes, polka dots, and brightly colored accessories. It's kind of tough but girly, sophisticated but rockin. Plus, it feels like getting ready to leave the house in the morning would be so much simpler if everything in my closet matched everything else.

Anthropologie Shoes - These are the ultimate in girly hipness. They deserve to be purchased and then left in the box so they never get dirty. Then, 60 years from now my grandkids can bury me in them and I'll get to spend the rest of eternity wearing them. Is that weird?

Old Soul New Heart Necklace & Whiting and Davis Clutch - I saw Old Soul New Heart on a blog yesterday and I looooove it. I am a sucker for anything with a bow on it. It also perfectly matches the Whiting and Davis box clutch that I've been trying to justify buying. As of right now, I have yet to successfully do so but I'm working on it.

Forever XXI Shorts and Tunic - What's rock and roll fashion without (faux) leather? And what person doesn't want to be festooned with sequins every now and then? Both are pretty impractical in terms of "Where the eff would I ever wear that?" but at $23 apiece I will probably buy them anyway. I'm all about the cheap thrills.

OPI Nail Polish - I'm not a big fan of OPI, but they always have the perfect shades. I have some Cover Girl Boundless Color polish that I think lasts longer than OPI. The color selection isn't as big but it's half the price and lasts twice as long before chipping.

Matt and Nat Crossbody Tote - A big giant stylish bag. I can always find a use for one of these. I'm especially fond of Matt and Nat bags. They're made with fake leather but look and feel like the real thing. And it's the perfect size for carrying around my new box clutch for an easy day to evening transition. Not that I'm ever in need of easy day to evening transitions. This is Omaha after all.

Kate Spade Dress - The whole Kate Spade fall collection makes me cry. It is all so adorably perfect. This dress is my favorite though. I would commit serious crimes in exchange for it.

The Emperor's New Table

I've been thinking a lot lately about our "next" home and what I want to look for in it. Five bedrooms for all of our kids, a mudroom, a green kitchen (the color not the buzzword). What the eff am I doing? We just bought a house in March 2008 and last time I checked we didn't have any kids. I think we as a society in general spend way too much time wanting for the future and not enough time loving what we have.

That being said, let's talk about all this stuff I want.

Yay, consumerism!!!

I love our house but I'm still working on loving what we put in it. The inside of our house is very nice but we're not great decorators so the style of it is still striking me as bland. Since my husband is gone and I'm not allowed to watch Planet Earth without him, I occupied an embarrassing amount of time last night updating my little living room want/have board and searching for new crap to waste our hard earned money on. Blame it on the new CB2 catalog. There is some goooood stuff in there.

Here's what we're working with. We have about half of this stuff. The rug, blue chair and orange lamp are off CB2. That lamp is as good as bought. The rug is beautiful in the catalog. The picture below doesn't do it justice.



I've decided to expand the funkification into the dining room now too. Partly because it makes sense (the rooms run together) and partly because I bought that awesome birch wood hanging lamp before realizing that the living room isn't wired for it. So, I made the executive decision that it's going over the dining room table. And that means that I need to head over to Velocity Art and Design and buy a bunch of crap for the dining room too now. And this too I would imagine. $350 isn't too much for an invisible table, is it?

Living Room Re-Deux

Our European dream vacation is going to cost us $5400 not including the cost of feeding and entertaining ourselves for twelve days. So, that's not going to happen next year. We'll save it for 2010. Or 2015. That means the living room rehab is back on. I searched again for some new stuff for the living room. I made a few changes and dropped the price on the makeover:



I love it! It's a lot more grownup and a lot less "burn your retinas" with all the yellow and red everywhere.

I swapped out the club chair ($359.99) for an identical chair from Ikea that is $99. It's fabric, not leather. But who cares? Leather furniture is kind of gross to sit on in the summer anyways. The ottoman ($699) got traded for a yellow one ($279), also from Ikea.

I'm going to pause here to say that Ikea is exactly the same as CB2 except much, much cheaper. Is this common knowledge? I've only been in each store once so maybe it's just me who didn't catch on.

The white credenza, from guess where, is $299 instead of the CB2 one that's $499. Again, it's the same freaking thing! How are they getting away with this? I changed my mind about the end tables because the other ones were sort of cheesy. This one is $79 instead of $119. I'm still obsessed with the yellow table so that stays. And as far as that couch goes, I really love it but spending $899 for something that the dog is going to end up sleeping on seems like a bad idea.

Obviously I never had any real intention of buying the $3200 photo print. I really want a large piece of art to hang in the living room above the couch though. I was looking on Target.com and came across their wallpaper section. I know! I didn't realize they sold wallpaper either! There is some great stuff on there. I really love a red and white patterned one and at $75 a roll it would make for a really cheap piece of art. Since framing something that large would be way pricey, I'm going to find (or stretch if I have to) a really long canvas and then paper that and hang it up.

The total price of the furniture is like $1200 less than before. I think it's actually affordable now! Couple that with the $3100 reduction on the wall art and the room is a bargain! Matt might actually go for it this time.

Living Room Inspiration

Matt and I are really excited to redo our living room after our inspirational trip to San Francisco. We want to do something that feels very 1960s mod inspired, but is still comfortable and fits us and our home. I would say that as people, we are of a very 1960s flair. Our home is not though. Our home is a culmination of hand me down furniture and mismatched stuff from my 400 square foot (yes, really) apartment. It's very colorful and comfy, but Matt and I want to pimp our house so it's time to mix it up a little.

Here's the wall colors that we're working with:



And here's what I've come up with:



It feels really good. Everything is sleek and clean and bright. The idea is to stay away from the Austin Powers "mod" cliche of cheesy egg chairs and purple velvet. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I'm a person who would probably kill for a piece of Eames furniture, after all. I just don't want it to go over the top.

Everything except for the wall art is from CB2, Crate and Barrel and Target. The San Francisco poster is something we bought after our last trip to SF and the couch sized tree photo is from Images Of Nature. That print is like $3200. Ya. Okay. I used to live above an Images Of Nature gallery, and while the stuff is nice, it's really overpriced.

Office Inspiration Board

When we moved into the house, the room I claimed as "office" was painted some horrible beige color, including all the trim. Who would do that? So, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to fix it. I repainted all the trim white and painted the walls a color that I have been dying to paint a room since I was sixteen but was never allowed to: dark gray. Ya. Better on paper than in life. Apparently, I thought my dad was lying when he told me that painting a room a dark color makes it look smaller. The room went from beige wasteland to industrial coat closet.

I love the color but the room needs some help. My desk is metal and glass, I have some wire storage racks, and my computer is a sleek white iMac. I'm kind of digging the accidental industrial look. I want to warm it up though. I bought some black and white curtains at Target that have a chandelier and damask pattern on them. (I can't find them on the site or I'd link to them.) I also hung up a couple French movie posters and now I have an idea for the room: Faux-French Pop Industrial. Is that anything? Can I do that? An interior decorator, I am not. I just make it up as I go along.

I made my very first inspiration board to illustrate:



Items from Target, Pier 1, CB2 and Office Depot.

I want to stick with gray, black, white and pink. I think it's kind of hip and graphic. Right now the room is full of junk and I'm a wee bit broke from vacation, so it might take a while to actually decorate the room. Everything in the picture maybe totals $1000 ($400 for a chair? Really Pier 1?) so obviously it's just inspiration. I want to hunt around for some thrift crap that I can fix up on the cheap. There's a possibility though that I need that mouse immediately. And the hot pink desk chair. My current desk chair is a $2 metal garage sale chair with no padding. Hurts the butt.

It really excites me to have an idea finally of what I want the office to look like. I'm kind of anal about my workspace and I find it hard to get work done at home when I'm distracted by my surroundings. Not having an office was rough. My last "office" was a kitchen table in Matt's and my bedroom at the Dundee house. So not conducive to my productivity.