Leaving on a Jet Plane: San Francisco

 

{Ork City Map Poster of San Francisco}

Jake and I are heading out bright and early in the morning to San Francisco! My BFF I've known since 7th grade has finally found her true love after 10 years in med school, and is getting married in the awesome city! I'm SO excited to be a part of her special day. I'm sure I'll remember it forever.

We're only staying one night which is super-fast, but we're hoping to do some quick sight seeing in our spare time. I grew up in northern CA, so I've been to SF a few times - the most memorable time being deep sea fishing in the San Francisco Bay - but I haven't visited for about 10 years. Any of you have some tips of great places we should see, places to eat, or things to do??

From My Shelf: Elle Decoration · April 2011

Blues and greens are my absolute FAVORITE colors. Seriously. If I could cover my house, walls, furniture, etc. in just these colors I would be a happy girl! For many years I've wanted an aqua blue couch..or bright teal...so when I came across these tears from Elle Decoration's April 2011 issue, I just had to take the magazine home with me so I could add the tears to my inspiration library.  

I love in this magazine spread how they are taking different fabrics that revolve around a color story and piecing them together for wall hangings, table runners, mix and match pillows and upholstery.

I have a slight addiction, I must admit, to magazines. I think I may have come clean to you in a previous blog post? If not, I'm coming clean now {smile}. It's one of the things Jake and I love to go and do together - sit at Barnes and Noble, grab a stack of magazines and a coffee {ahem - a tall nonfat chai with six pumps of chai and no water - to be exact!}, and search for the best ones to take home with me. 

Just the other day I was going through my plethora of magazine inspiration tears - remember this blog post about my organization process, or this one about magazines I've had since 2002? - and thought to myself - 'Wow! I've gathered some beautiful and awesome stuff and it's just sitting in a stack!'...(because I have more inspiration tears and magazines than I have time to tear them apart and create beautiful books out of them). And with that, I thought I'd start sharing with you some of the highlights of my magazine shopping. I hope you enjoy and I hope that the pics I start sharing will inspire you to pick up that magazine at your local newsstand or start an addiction of your own! (Or maybe a slight craving to be surrounded by more beauty cause I don't want to encourage addiction {wink, wink}).

Inspiration Organization: Houzz

I don't know about you, but I absolutely LOVE looking at home magazines and dreaming up how I would decorate a room. My many trips to Barns & Noble result in taking home with me magazines such as Ideal Home, Living Etc., Country Living-England, and Country Homes & Interiors UK to name a few - and boy do I miss Domino & Blueprint! To make it even wonderfully worse, I've started a folder where I put all the tears from these magazines of home & decorating ideas that inspire me. You know - for some day!

So you can imagine my happiness when I stumbled across an online home photo organizing website called Houzz! Genius. Dreamy. Addicting. Enough said!


But I'll elaborate, just for you. Here's Houzz in a nutshell:

Design professionals showcase their portfolios, sharing their work with a community dedicated to home and landscape design. 25,000+ professionals have uploaded more than 150,000 inspiring photographs, making Houzz the Internet's largest database of design and decorating ideas.

Homeowners collect their favorite photos, find design professionals in their areas, upload photos of their homes and gardens, and swap tips and questions with other members. 600,000+ ideabooks have been created by Houzz members, and new ones are added every minute.

So, finally - no more finding fab photo's of homes & interiors online, taking screen shots only to clutter up your desktop...and then have to move everything to a folder on your hard drive. No more!


So I've browsed and browsed & created idea books. The great thing is that you can create many idea books (dining room, kitchen, decor, wallpaper, etc.) & also include notes along with each image, such as 'love that coffee table' or 'interesting color combination idea', etc.

I've included some pic's that make me happy. I hope you find Houzz just as fun & inspiring as I do!

{Love the color combination}

{Interesting wall decor. Love the lamp & grass wallpaper}

{LOVE the idea of mix & match upholstered chairs!}

{All images from Houzz.com}