china shepherdess

Obligatory Missoni Post

 

The hype about Target's collaboration with Missoni was certainly something. It surprised me to see bloggers who are normally hyper critical about quality getting into a frenzy over it all, but I guess I remember the same thing happening with their Orla Kiely collection.

The hype got even worse when the collection went live and their website couldn't keep up. You wouldn't know it from most of the ridiculously effusive articles out there, but the story wasn't really that the Missoni collection was SO popular; all of these big collaborations sell out immediately by design. The issue was that they went live with a new e-commerce platform and site redesign just weeks before. I imagine there was more than a little schadenfreude over at Amazon (their previous e-commerce partner) when all of this went down.

This is not to say that I'm immune to the allure of cheap chevron prints. So, I bought myself a little something for that thorn in my side -- the TV room of doom. The Pentagonal Pouf was an online only item that I ordered a day or two after the Target website debacle went down. My previous experiences with Target home delivery weren't so great, but this time it worked out. My pouf in the form of an ottoman arrived safe and sound and ensconced in a tyvek ottoman cozy. You can tell it isn't exactly real Missoni quality, but it will make a great pouf/ottoman/coffee table/dancing platform. It's chilling in my living room until I get my act together and finish my TV room. When will that be? Soon I hope!

 

Live from my backyard.

Now that spring is here, it's been fun to find out the various plants and trees I have growing around my house. I've always loved lilacs and it's a treat to have a purple lilac in my front yard and a white one in the back. They won't last long, but I thought I'd pluck a few blossoms to brighten up my living room.

They're perched on my new coffee table. I'm looking forward to painting this room, hanging the window treatments (and the dreaded hardware), maybe buying a rug and finally getting to the "after".

Perfunct.

It's been a long few days and I don't have much to say, but as per tradition, here are my flowers for the week -- Stargazer Lilies. Their fragrance is amazing.

Along with the flowers you get a glimpse of my living room. The chair came from the Minneapolis Public Library sale and the sideboard is a recent purchase from Craigslist. No art on the walls yet, because I still need to paint, I've already purchased Benjamin Moore Aura in Abalone. I just need to find the time.

I love Jonathan Adler, but really...

My sister and I went to Macy's yesterday so that she could help me decide which color of sofa I'm eventually going to order. We cleverly went to the downtown location so as to avoid a Black Friday nightmare. It was still kind of a nightmare because we both forgot to do a little thing like eat, but anyway...

I am SO excited to finally be purchasing a sofa. I haven't had one for about a year and my booty is a bit sick of sitting on Eames shell chairs all the live long day. The sofa I've settled on is the well-rated and inexpensive Corona. It fits within the small budget I've set for my living room (thank you first-time home buyer's credit). The only hitch is that, while it comes in lots of colors I like, there are none that I completely love. My sister is less timid than I am when it comes to color, so I knew she'd give me good advice. After we checked out the sofa and swatches we wandered through the clearance area where I fell in love in love with this.

Blue is not usually a color I go for, but this chair is amazing. It will coordinate perfectly with the blue and green vinyl upholstered Scandinavian Modern chairs I purchased at the Minneapolis Public Library sale a few years ago. With all this color I'll go a bit more neutral with the sofa, which is the direction I was thinking in the first place. The last thing I wanted to do was be stuck with a color scheme just because of one piece of large furniture. I'll be ordering the Corona sofa in Stone when pre-sales start for Friends and Family next week.

Also on clearance at Macy's was this, um, interesting piece by Jonathan Adler.

Yes, those well-formed protrusions are what you think they are. I LOVE Jonathan Adler (and his husband Simon Doonan) but this piece is just too too, at least for this chica. I was trying to think of the sort of room where it would work. Perhaps a baby nursery?

My first big purchase

I made my first big purchase (besides the house of course) and ordered this bed I've been eyeing from CB2.I love the integrated angled headboard -- perfect for reading in bed.

It's important to me that I get the bedroom in order as soon as possible so that I can move in and have an oasis from any other projects that are going on around the house. I still haven't made up my mind about color, but the bed's white frame will work with whatever palette I end up using.

My sister and I are heading off to Hirshfield's this morning so that she can buy paint for her place and I can grab a bunch of paint chips. I'm leaning toward painting the bedroom a nice restful light grey, and then bringing in color with the duvet and other accessories.

Grey has been one of my favorite colors for a long time and it happens to be trendy right now, so it's easy to find lots of inspiration pics. Here's a slideshow with examples on CasaSugar.