indoors meets outdoors, a creative clutter swoon
9.01.2008
I came across this image on an older post from mati rose's blog tonight, who found it on another blog, who found it on another blog, who found it on garden rooms (umm, I think!)... and well... I just couldn't help passing it on again.
To me this is the epitome of perfect clutter, studio loungey space meets garden.
Thanks so much for your supportive comments about our move. They kept my spirits up!
After all of this moving around, I'm ready for some serious downtime! We took the weekend to unpack and organize. When I became so tired I couldn't move any more I did what any exhausted person would do, I caught up on some cheesy cable shows. For some reason I keep finding myself watching, "Kimora: Life in the Fab Lane". To be honest, half the time I'm cringing and holding the remote in the air. Just frozen in my tracks unable to turn the channel. She's a force of nature!
I'm loving how the area we just moved to is both developed and undeveloped. To one side of our neighborhood is a vineyard, and the other pasture. Our neighbors have two horses. I've been bribing them with handfuls of baby carrots to try and get them to pop their heads over to the fence. It didn't take long for them to catch on to my little game. Now they come trotting at full speed whenever they see us. I'm seriously fond of them, they are in dire need of some cute nicknames.
Here's a peek into our new place, still plenty of work to get fully settled in, but we're definitely off to a great start.
Last week I was having a blast in the PaPaYa! studio wrapping gifts with the new line of fine wrapping papers to photograph for the catalog and web. Two things that really are my cup of tea! (Take a peek at the product gallery to see more.)
On a totally different creative spin... I've realized, now that we're living in the sunbelt of Oregon I'm really feeling ready to roll up my sleeves and get my creative gardening mojo back in check. To kick things off the new house has officially been Christened with the addition of a new doe inspired miniature garden on our back patio. Total whimsy!
Here are some visual snippets from the local garden & historic home tours we've taken this summer. It's been a great way to gather ideas and meet other creative people in the local scene. In fact some of these old buildings and gardens are just so visually intriuging, it's often hard to leave. Every home always has it's own story to tell.
The photo above is from the Pottery Barn "work Spaces" book, from the section on planning a garden workroom. The whole spread is beautiful. I loved the contrast of the worn wooden and metal surfaces against the sleek white enamel pails and containers they used for storage.
Whatever you put outside, has to endure the elements and will most likely look worn out faster than you can blink an eyelash. So I was happy to see that they had embraced the beauty of how things get weathered in the garden.
They had some really clever ideas about taking objects and re-purposing them for storage throughout the book. Which is something I think everyone does, since it's just not always practical to go out and buy everything.
It made me think of this old 7-up crate, that I'd recently used to organize all of my seed packets.
Maybe some of you have some re-purposing ideas that you'd like to share too?!
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Random bits:
There are some amazing fashion history quips written under the comments section of my last post. They were all so much fun to read, I highly recommend you taking a look at them. The one about John Hancock being proud of baring his nice legs, cracked me up a bit!
Laura Kim jewelry and I collaborated recently, she's made some really beautiful Par Avion necklaces with the pendants I made for her.
My good friend Wende's 10 year old son, completely amazes me. He's started his own little business, by making & selling "bag bags" (a handsewn bag to store your plastic bags). $1 of every purchase goes to Heifer International.
Lately I've been thinking a lot about how long this winter has pushed on... some days it feels like it will never end. Winter for me has just been one long reoccurring daydream of the arrival of Spring.
I love going on local home garden tours to get inspired by looking at what other people have taken years to create. I'm really looking forward to a few I've read about that they hold here on the northern coast of Oregon, and the Portland home & garden show.
I always take along my camera, and do my best to capture the things that get my heart racing (you can see a few more here in my creative gardening album on flickr).
This photo with the urns was taken in a neighbors yard that was on a garden tour a few years ago. I never get tired of pulling this image back up and staring at it. I love the way she paid such careful attention to height of her plants together with the shapes of her ornaments. There was this amazing level of sophistication that exuded from the garden rooms she created. You can visit her garden through one of my old live journal posts here. I've probably mentioned it here before, it's one of my all time favorites.
Yesterday I nearly flipped when I came across this article about one of my local gardening muses. She has sparked so much imagination to everyone who visits this creative gardening nursery... these photos are of two of her miniature displays there. They really are like perfect little worlds.
For further outside inspiration from another Wee garden, which includes some very helpful miniature plant lists for beginners too.
Here's a pic from my own mini garden, also lovely yet random: my new favorite apple, bird, and flower mugs, the backdrop blue of our garden, and my springer spaniel Jerry doing his loungey dog thing. He truly knows where the good life is at!
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Also just in time for summer lounging, a fun new collaborative music project is under-foot at Under A Pink Sky.
I love it when people use architectural salvage pieces creatively in the garden.
Here are a few clever things I've spotted locally in the past week. A small greenhouse made with reycled windows, my old fashioned pink David Austin roses (just because they are amazing all on their own), an old door made into a clever garden display, and tall painted blue ladders used as shelves.
A little less extroardinary, even a bit shabby... but all in all something that's making me feel completely content & even a bit blissed out lately is the recent conversion of our little garden shed into a tiny painting studio! I've got a little stereo in there, all of my paints, a nice breeze, dogs sleeping at my feet, a view of my garden... it's even equipped with tiny halogen lights that hang from the top rafter and hardwood floors. I'm dubbing it "Kathleen's playhouse", because that's exactly what it feels like.
