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!

A week ago my parents, Dustin and I went to a mid century modern warehouse sale in the Chicago suburbs. Through some clever dealing, my parents acquired me this George Nelson Eye Clock. I have wanted this clock since I learned of its existence. This particular picture of someone’s collection of Nelson clocks stuck with me too:

This clock is now hanging near our Hang-It-All, with some space left for an art poster Dustin has his eye on. So, more pictures in situ I’m sure will be forthcoming.
My dad just got a George Nelson Pill Clock that I’ve seen pictures of but can’t wait to see in person. I love these clocks, so many of them are amazing. I wish Vitra was still producing more of the designs. George Nelson’s wiki page claims he designed nearly 300 wall clocks, I wonder if that’s true? Someone needs to make a book about them, if there isn’t one already…

Lots of things going on at work, but I’m still trying to make the time to take pictures often, even if it’s just via Instagram.

I have big news about a new addition to the mid century collection — post about it soon!

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.

Here’s Dustin holding my first Catherine Holm piece today. We found this in the back of our local mid-century furniture/object store — which we also recently found out is moving out of town. Gah! At least we found this first.

(This was taken with my iPhone and post-processed by my new CrossProcess app, which I am loving so far.)

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.

Dustin’s uncle bought this house recently; the interior needs significant renovation (the previous owners wanted a ‘Tuscan villa’ look and totally ruined all of the flooring, walls and woodwork), but it looks great from the outside at least. It’s huge, over 4000 sq. feet, with two stories and some great built-in features and brickwork. Also, the multi-level yard! Wow. It will take a long time to refurbish it, but I’m excited to eventually see it looking more like its original incarnation again.

A shot of our home office in the morning.

At “Carrie’s”, an odd little curio shop packed with random vintage stuff in downtown Champaign, we found a full 8-piece set of vintage Bodum glasses last Sunday. I am in love with their design and the clean happiness of the white handles. They even have the older Bodum creed stamped on the bottom. They look unused; I wonder what their history is, if any.

Friday’s sofa road trip wasn’t without its challenges, but we made it, and the sofa fit in the car, and we got a bonus Hang-It-All, so it all turned out alright in the end. The biggest surprise was that the sofa is blue; I had thought it was dark grey. Adding another color to our small and already somewhat colorful living space sounded risky to me but I think it worked out alright. The blue is starting to grow on me anyway.

See our new living room pictures here — the first sixteen are the new ones.