Pure Organization Project #8: Tupperware Storage

I have to be honest with you:  I'm fading fast on the organization.  I'm sorry I never got Mr.Linky up last week & especially sorry that I haven't been able to check out everyone's projects. 

Last week was a crazy week for sure, but I'm having trouble seeing how it's going go get any less crazy now that I'm back at work with 2 little ones at home.  SO, in the interest of sanity (my own of course ;)  I'm taking a teensy chill pill about the Pure Organization.  They won't be every week.  (There I said it!)  I just can't make it all happen right now.  There may be 2 in a row and they may be every other week or I may have a good month and get them all in, but I just need to take some pressure off right now.  I hope you can understand & since you're all usually extremely sweet, I'm pretty sure you will ;)

But, I do have one for you this week!  Organize & purge the tupperware.  This one came out of pure necessity.  When all of our tupperware was clean & unused, it got to this:


Eeeeeek!   No joke.  We'd made a bunch of meals & frozen them for when the baby would be born, but when we ate the meals, we had way too much tupperware!  (Add that to the inherited tupperware from family who'd dropped off meals.)  Anyway, here was our drawer before:  lots of the lids and bottoms had no mates...


And here it is now:


Ahhhhh so much better.  I ditched all the mateless pieces (recycled them) and put the inherited stuff in a bag to return, and now it's feeling so much better.  The key is this:



I kept one of the mateless containers and filled it with all of the lids for easy matching up.  Makes it so much easier! Good luck on this one if you join in!!

xoxo,
lauren

Shop: Garbo in Stockholm











Thank you to Simply Defined design for posting about this beautiful store!! I am in love (maybe when I get to Stockholm I can go- someday!)

images via Garbo interiors

Bohemian in the hall



Loving the mix in this hallway..

image via Skona hem

Days 3, 4 & 5 of the Better Homes & Gardens Shoot

I thought I'd give you a play-by-play of the last 3 days of the BHG Christmas photo shoot at our house...


The photographer, Helen Norman (above), and her assisant Fj Hughes (below) shot the house on Wednesday and Thursday.  They arrived both mornings around 8 AM or so.  (Just having had a baby, it's really hard to get going in the mornings:  getting a shower & getting dressed sometimes feel near-impossible.    Justin was really spit-uppy and I made sure not to carry him over the camera equipment...  eeek )
I had so much fun working with them!  Helen has a great sense of humor (hysterical) and always made sure that we knew what the next meal would be.  (A woman after my own heart!  But she made a really good point that when you're on a job like this it's easy to forget about meals and then people get cranky & sloppy from being hungry.)  Fj has a 3 yr-old daughter and a 3 month old baby girl, so we had a lot in common.   
Below, Fj is holding the coco bead chandelier OUT of the shot.  (how sad for my chandy!  a bit too wild for BHG I think ;)


Jessica Thomas-the stylist- (below) was amazing.  The detail that's put into each & every shot is incredible.  Most shots took an hour plus to shoot (some less, some more.)  You'd be so surprised at how much thought is put into each shot.  And I'm talking about a photo of something as small as a Christmas ornament or a plate of cookies.  They made sure everything was perfect.  No unsightly tree lights or wires showing, etc.  It was awesome to watch.  A very precarious cookie kept falling over in one shot and we all had to stand perfectly still so as not to move the floor at all.  The sunlight kept going in and out of the clouds and Helen had to shoot at just the right time as Fj watched the clouds and let her know what the sky was about to be doing.  Craziness.  Jessica (below) has such an eye.  She made sure that each and every shot had a "story."  It was different than it would have been had we been shooting for a 100% design magazine vs a lifestyle magazine.  The shots weren't about the furniture or the room, they were more about what's going on in the room:  the people, the activities, and Christmas of course.  The room is more the backdrop for the story vs. the focus of the story.  (But of course the rooms had to look perfect in order to help "tell" the story.)


Joanna Linberg (below) is writing the story.   She also assisted Jessica in getting all of the props ready for the shoot and was AMAZING with Christian.  (He will be SO sad when he learns that "Miss Joanna" and "Miss Jessica" / The "Homes & Gardens Ladies" are not coming back tomorrow.  I've been using them to get Christian to do things:  i.e. "Miss Joanna wants you to brush your teeth."  hee hee hee) You know when you meet someone and they just exude goodness?  That's Joanna.  She's so young and has worked so hard to get to where she is. 


We were in a few of the photos and Christian did such a great job.  He was such a good little kid throughout the whole process & really followed directions well.  ("Ok, now go on your knees and giggle." etc..  He had so much fun!) 
Below is a picture of my kitchen shelves being emptied so Jessica could style them.  I LOVE what she did and am sad to see the things go!  She used a combination of my own things, some props from the Meredith prop room and some thigns we found at On a Whim and Lucketts. 


On the last day, at the end, we started running out of daylight.  Daylight is so important, because if you lose it, the photographers have to light the space and the look is totally different.  (not as pretty at all either!)  That crazy cookie kept falling over and then it was time for our family portrait.  Justin was crying and we had to get the shot as quickly as possible before the sun went down.  Definitely felt the pressure but it was so exciting!  Ps-  I think I TOTALLY scared Jessica before we met.  We'd been doing a lot of the prep over the phone/ emails and I told her multiple times how excited I was about the shoot.  (She does this ALL the time and so was not nearly there with me ;)  When some extra Christmas ornaments arrived for the tree, I got teary (give me a break- I just had a baby!) because they were so perfect.  I called Jessica and told her how much I loved them & how excited I was she was like, "Ok,"  (probably like "what is wrong with this girl?????!"  hahah)   Jessica is awesome at what she does& just so much fun and I'm honestly surprised everyone's not this nutty around her. 
On Day 5 (Today) Jessica & Joanna packed up everything from the shoot & put our house back in order.  (FedEx will pick all of the boxes up later this week to send them back to the Meredith Studio and back to the companies they came from.)  Jessica & Joanna also (as they did all week long) helped take care of Christian & Justin, and Jessica even made Christian a peanut butter & jelly sandwich for lunch.  Finally, we said our goodbyes and Christian waved at our new friends from the window. 
Below, here we all are at the end of the shoot.  Everyone was so good to Christian & Justin.  (Helen below, with my little guy.  He loved them all so much. )


I'm really going to miss them all.  It was such a fun crazy week.  ...Such an awesome experience and I just feel so lucky to have gotten the chance to work with such talented, sweet people.  I wish we all lived closer. 

And I can't wait to see the spread next November!!!  (Feels like forever away!!!)

Have a great weekend!!
xoxo,
lauren

**update**  I should clarify that they used a lot of our own things:  my urns, cakestands, plates, stemware, silverware, pillows, blankets, ornaments, accessories, etc...  but supplemented them all with some extras & of course more Christmas things  (Our trees & garlands were long dead) and food. Jessica worked really hard to make sure that the items they brought in worked with my style & blended seamlessly with what we already had.   :)  so much fun!!

Books in the fireplace...













Life is not always grey sometimes there's blue..

images via Dave Coote

Greige guest suite by Tracery Interiors











If they invited me I would come and stay awhile. I am loving this guest suite from a home in Alabama, designed by Doug Davis and Paige Schnell from Tracery Interiors. They based the color palette on the colors found in the calacutta marble in the bathroom. Just perfect!

Tracery is a design firm that believes in mixing new and old pieces to make a space more inviting. The chair pictured in the guest suite was purchased from Circa Antiques in Alabama and refurbished for this space. Please check out our post on My Sparrow about this chair and a few other pieces that they reused.

images via tracery interiors by Colleen Duffley

Oliver Gustav shop in Copenhagen











Loving this dream shop...

images from indenfor and udenfor 2008

Better Homes & Gardens Christmas Shoot Days 1 & 2

Well, "Christmas" is finally here again!  (Below, the boxes that have been arriving at our house for the BHG shoot)


 Better Homes & Gardens Assistant Editor Joanna Linberg and stylist Jessica Thomas arrived at our house yesterday!! Joanna is writing the article & assisting Jessica in the set up, and Jessica is running the show.   The first thing we did was walk through the house & answer all the questions Jessica had.  She's incredibly detailed  (She even made sure we had enough chalk to write on the fridge!)  and I am floored by how well she nailed down my style.  (She's insanely talented & I'll be doing a post on her & her work soon!!)



Jessica checked out our wardrobe options and we didn't have what she was looking for :)  Since it's a Christmas shoot, of course we should look super-cozy & wintry but I'm not really fitting into any of my chunky winter sweaters right now and Dave's sweaters aren't so wintry.  So our task was to go shopping last night for winter sweaters. 



But before we did our family clothes shopping, Jessica needed some extra pieces for styling.  So I took Jessica & Joanna to some of my favorite shops:  On a Whim & the Old Lucketts Store.    (When they said they were going shopping I totally invited myself along!! I was way too excited to stay home ;)  Our first stop was On a Whim (below) owned by Donna Troxler who was so kind to let us borrow the items for the shoot free of charge.  We found the most beautiful ironstone pieces to use on the tabletops & to supplement the whiteware in my kitchen.  Donna's store is full of one-of-a-kind treasures & I never leave empty-handed.  Here's a pic of Joanna & Jessica choosing some pretty pieces:


Next up was Old Lucketts Store.  We were greeted by a smiling Lisa (below right) who always makes me feel so welcome.  They told us that during the snowstorms some of the women who worked at Lucketts had a  few-day-long slumber party in the Design House to ride out the storm & get the place shovelled out for customers!  (They had good food & wine & watched movies- how fun is that?!!)  Jessica found more goodies at Lucketts (how could you not?) and it was time to say goodbye.  Heather & Lisa helped check us out & were sweet as can be to let me take a pic with my phone:
     

When we got home, Joanna & Jessica headed out to run errands:  meeting with the bakery & a trip to Target among other things.  Dave & I headed to the mall on a search for winter sweaters.  It was bleak.  The stores have moved onto Spring clothes.  But we did it!  We found some good winter clothes. 

This morning after getting some of the custom things I'd had made by my workroom, I headed to my mommy work-out class with Christian & Justin.  When we got home at around 10:30, this is what we found: 


Joanna & Jessica had been hard at work & had turned our family room into a prop room!  And my laundry room (below) is now a flower shop!


 

Oh my goodness!!  Check out all these paperwhites:


And the cabbages:


The cut flowers were delivered locally and the Christmas tree & wreaths and greenery came from North Carolina.  They flew into the airport! ha!


My friend Amy (below) who works as a landscape designer at Merrifield Garden Center has been hard at work...


...  growing these:


Aren't they amazing???


WOW.   So today we pretty much just started setting everything up.  (I saw "we" but I was pretty worthless-  the baby does not want to be put down.)  They've also been incredibly sweet with Christian as he follows them - the "Homes and Gardens Ladies" as he says- around. Jessica let him eat some of the props today (clementines) and I think he's got a new favorite fruit.  (Joanna & Christian below): 


So, for now, the tree is up & decorated and the food is here.  (mm mm mm!) The rest of the things will be set up tomorrow when the photographer arrives.  And I'm ready for bed!!!  I'll keep you posted on the rest of the shoot, and Michele from My Knotting Hill's Guest Blogger Before & After post will be up later on this week!

xoxo,
lauren

Steampunk and The New Victorians





Steampunk aka The New Victorians is a wonderful new trend. Some say this vintage industrial steam era inspired interior and fashion trend was solidified with the amazing interiors of Robin Standefer and Stephen Alesch of Roman and Williams hit the scene. Their design of hospitality spaces across the board is amazing!

Have you see the trend popping up? I feel like I see it everywhere... and I love it!
























images via roman and williams, cote maison, mikkel vang, house beautiful, my sparrow and glamour
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