animal prints: tacky or tasteful?

I have always associated animal prints with the word tacky.  I picture a middle aged woman with a leopard top, frosted hair, doused in perfume, red talons and a red pucker reeking of booze and cigarette smoke slurring sweet nothings to the balding used car salesman at last call on a Friday night.  Yup...cliche as it is that is what I think when I hear animal prints.   Well, I had an epiphany when I posted this picture....



congress hall brown room

 I decided that if animal prints were tacky then I want my home swathed in tackiness!!  Okay.  Perhaps I am a bit overzealous.  I don't want my home doused in leopard skin just like I don't ever want to run across the aforementioned woman with the leopard blouse and red lips on a Friday night.  However, I am not afraid to use a little zebra in my home and might just do it.  I grabbed the pictures below off the internet for inspiration.  I apologize if these are your images....I am a mess when it comes to organizing my images and credits.

Are animal prints tacky or tasteful?

clutter!!

If you are anything like me you spend time whittling away the clutter that some how accumulates in your day to day existence.  Piles of junk mail, receipts, bills, free items and a host of other useless junk that has no permanent home.  If this sounds like you at all then check out Jen's blog for tips on organizing and ridding your self of clutter!  She's even kind enough to be doing a clutter rehab giveaway for folks like us!  Don't walk, run to her blog to enter!!

modern vintage?

Is that even a style?  I have no idea so I am going to coin that phrase if it isn't already spoken for. I last posted that I was eyeing up the Ikea candy and was thinking of going sleek and modern in design. Well, no sooner did I type that than my husband said he thought we go modern vintage a la Congress Hall style. 

If you are not familiar with Congress Hall...let me introduce you.  It is one of my all time favorite seaside haunts.  A stately hotel from the 1800's that housed the presidents on vacation!!  It had taken a beating and was worse for the wear until a dynamic duo called the Bashaws came into town...think supergirl and superboy.  They renovated and remodeled top to bottom and left us with Congress Hall...vintage with a twist. 

The Bashaws also own and have renovated the Star Inn, The Chelsea, The Beach Shack, The Virginia and The Sandpiper Beach Club!!  Oh, how I would love to be related to the Bashaw family right about now. 

modern love gets me to the church on time

a la david bowie....I have chartered new territory and found myself loving the clean lines of more modern furniture and minimalism.  Not stark "I have nothing in my house" minimalism but rather "I have chosen my belongings carefully" minimalism.  I took a trip to Ikea recently to look at the Edland line but it proved to be unloveworthy.  What I thought was black was gray and what I thought was metal was plastic.  Meh.  I passed.   While there though, I started to really appreciate the clean lines of the furniture and am thinking of adapting a more minimalist clean living space as opposed to the shabby chic furniture and tchotkes I have!  A modern line is the complete antithesis of what I currently own.  I had no idea that I even liked this furniture or style of decor.  Who knew??  But, I love it!!  In no particular order here is a sampling of some of the simple and clean lines of the Ikea brand that I am beginning to admire and wish to integrate into my dwelling!!!

everyone wants to be accepted

After multiple counter offers, we finally negotiated a price on the house.  It took only slightly more than a week to settle on a price.  At the time it seemed like it was indefinite.  I had reached the state of infinity.  The state that you learn about in math class in junior high and can never quite comprehend how one can ever calculate infinity.  When will it end?  Oh that's right, it doesn't.  It keeps going indefinitely. This is exactly how I felt during that week....that I somehow landed on the other side of the equation in the indefinite space of infinity.  Our counteroffers would somehow continue transcending time and space and we would be stuck in this continuum forever.  Lucky for me, I was only in infinity for about 10 days.  It was an ugly 10 days but it's all over now.  The offer was accepted and we are under attorney review.  3 days of attorney review with a weekend sandwiched in the middle....hoping that infinity doesn't rear his ugly head this go round.