DIY

Decor

Let’s Have A Chat With Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s Kim Lewis

December 5, 2017

This is Kim Lewis. You might recognize her from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, or Tiny House Nation. I would like to borrow a) her hair, b) her wardrobe, and c) her freckles, but - most importantly - I would also like to borrow her decor opinions, because I love a good door...and the doors that she designed for Rustica Hardware miiiiiight just be the best. Like, in the world.

Kim worked with me to help pick out the perfect doors to install in our not-quite-yet renovated garage  - you can see her selections here - and while I had her ear I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask her a few questions about how to incorporate super-bold design elements into your decor...and play the Match-the-Kardashian-to-the-Door game (it's a classic).

Hi, Kim! I obviously think you're fabulous and need to discuss all your fabulousness for posterity. Tell me a little about how you got to the designing-awesome-doors part of your life?

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Decor

The Christmas House

November 22, 2017

Give me all the Christmas things

I have never been a big Christmas decorator. But that’s not because I don’t want to be - oh my gosh, I would very seriously like to have my house look like a Christmas explosion, please - it’s because I never really had the space or the materials. When you grow up in a two-bedroom apartment in New York City, there’s not a ton of square footage to allow for high-volume decorating, and if you want to get all festive on the exterior of your place, what that means is stringing some lights from your fire escape.

Which is cool! But…you know. Definitely not the same as being a member of the McCallister family.

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DIY

I Designed My Own Engagement Ring (Using Jewelry I Already Had)

October 31, 2017

My beloved circa 2006 Las Vegas pawn shop ring

I love my engagement ring. It's one of my the very few things, including children and dogs (and, okay, Kendrick, but only on a good day) I would save from a house fire. (Sidenote: A few weeks ago, it seemingly vanished into the ether. I'm stopping myself from panicking with the assumption that it was taken off of my nightstand by one of my kids, and will turn up eventually in some completely unexpected and bizarre location, like what happened this other time I lost some very special jewelry.)

Anyway. I love it. But I also...kind of always wanted a ring-ring. Is that obnoxious?? Not a solitaire, and not anything wildly expensive - just something that was exactly the style and color and design I envisioned. I also had this vague idea that I wanted to design something myself, but that seemed like an insanely pricey proposition, between buying the stones and working with a jeweler to create a custom piece. I mean, who does that?!

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Crafts for the Uncrafty

Homemade Halloween Costumes Win Forever and Always

October 30, 2017

This photograph was taken in 1988, in case the crimped hair didn't tip you off.

Every year when I was a little girl, my mom would start making my Halloween costume in September. I might want to be a can-can dancer, or a character from Little House on the Prairie, or Cher (oh yes)...whatever it was, my mother would somehow pull out confusingly professional sewing skills that she apparently reserved solely for Halloween, and whip up a masterpiece of glitter and ruffles and perfection.

I am simultaneously sad about and relieved by the fact that kids these days ("kids these days"!! I'm so old) don't want homemade Halloween costumes. There was something grand - even heroic - about the fact that despite having no particular interest in crafting and exactly zero time to spare, what with her whole "being a lawyer" thing, my mother just rustled up her reserves and knocked it out of the park, year after year. And even when she didn't - my Cher costume consisted of a stretchy tube of sparkly fabric and the most unfortunate wig you have ever seen...it was still the only costume of its kind out there. It was mine. Made by my mom. I loved that.

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