I had a great time taking a solo walk around a local park today, which has both paved and forested paths. There is restored prairie in some sections of the park and some mostly terrible outdoor sculptures as well. I took some of the off-road paths in the twilight during today’s perfect weather and shot some iPhone pictures. (I processed these with either Camera+ or the newly upgraded Instagram.)

In the man-made realm, our new couch is finally in our house as of this afternoon. We ordered a couch from a local independent (and very quirky) dealer who offers, among other things, sofas from Younger — a modern and classic high-quality furniture maker that seemed perfect for our “no crappy made-in-China couches” approach to quest. After 6 weeks of waiting for it to be built, the couch that finally arrived had the wrong fabric. The floor model the dealer already had, the exact one we’d fallen in love with and ended up ordering, was still there of course and in pretty perfect shape (this is a low-traffic furniture store that’s open about 18 hours a week). So one negotiated discount later we ended up taking that couch and depositing our incorrect one in its place on the display floor. “All’s well that ends well, you know, like Shakespeare!” he exclaimed as we left.

Check out a few more pictures in my set here.

Things have been quiet around here — you may have been following some of my daily life images on Instagram (I post there frequently), but mainly we’ve been working and planning and sorting and finally moving. As of the beginning of August we now live in a house over twice as large as our last one, with so much more light and space and more improvements as compared to our previous situation than I can believe.

Nearly three years in our old place meant an amazing accumulation of stuff despite our best intentions for that not to happen. But that’s what moving is for, starting over and cleaning it all out. That’s not to say there aren’t some boxes of stuff we certainly don’t need that didn’t drift over to the new place, but we’re not here to talk about that… we’re here to see some nice pictures of some of the main rooms of the place fully sorted out.

Click here to see the whole set!

I took more house photos today, though it was in the late afternoon so the light isn’t as good as I would have wanted. Better than nothing though — I’ll redo them soon maybe.

Our house is also sort of an ongoing expression of joint functional creative design too, as much as we can given limited space and budget anyway. I’m planning to do another set of photographs of the current state of our place, as any new (or vintage in some cases) things have found their way in here somehow and it’s looking pretty different than the last house tour I shot. So, look for that once I get my camera back!

Some rain, then record-setting heat. Yesterday we had a fruitful trip to Ikea and dinner at P.F. Chang’s. I am loving my new camera.
I badly want to travel and expand my experiences. We both want to move to a larger city, maybe/hopefully/eventually near the ocean…

I hurt my knee falling down while running in February. The healing has been slow and and the skin there is still new and sometimes sore.

The last few days we’ve rearranged the living room a little bit and the bedroom completely — it’s like a fresh start to the space. Things flow more and feel more inviting. Improving my environment is a big priority for me right now, it makes me feel much better to have a space that resonates with me. It’s hard to explain, but when things aren’t arranged well or in a way that feels natural it can make the whole room feel subtly off/uncomfortable.

More house pictures will be forthcoming this month once we get the office improved the way we want (on the hunt for a loveseat right now).

A weekend of lots of talking and wine. We finished a bottle of Boxhead White between us on Saturday, and had more still (red) after that. Then a walk today and some Indian food. Another weekend day would be great.

Thanks to Craigslist and a really cool older guy in Niles, IL, we are now the proud owner of a set of four amazing Eames Herman Miller fiberglass arm shell chairs in seafoam green. (!!) (click the image above for more pictures)
They are from 1957, with metal glides on zinc H-bases. Two of them still have the foil label from that year. The maker’s mark looks to be the double triangles/mountains from Summit Plastics in Kalamazoo. I am in awe of these chairs, and our luck in finding them. We saw found them the day before we left for Florida and called the person selling them, who was awesome enough to hold them for us for a whole week until we could drive up there (it’s near Elgin, so we spent the night at my parents’ and hand an insane sushi orgy furnished by materials from Mitsuwa – more on that later).
Thank you, Craigslist. Oh man.

We’re headed to Florida for 6 days starting this Sunday; my month has been super busy work-wise but generally nice with fantastic weather and a great trip to Elgin around the beginning of this month. We visited the flea market again and I scored a vintage Nelson bubble lamp in the small spherical shape. I’ll post pictures soon once I get this place straightened up and actually take some. Mr. Clean Magic Eraser really is magical, by the way, because it is fantastic at cleaning up vintage pieces like fiberglass chairs and our bubble lamp; the thing was completely filthy but looks new after some work with one of those. I wholeheartedly endorse them.
I also found two original Rorschach ink blot test cards; each is double-sided with an ink blot image and numbered. I still need to look up my specific blots.
Finally, as I’m hopelessly bag-addicted and there’s no help for it, I bought two Lug bags to do my traveling with and I’m really happy with them so far. I got the Skipper in grass green and the Taxi Full Tote in ocean blue, below. The texture, weight, construction and color of these bags is fantastic, can’t wait to haul them around some airports (and Disney World).