A Mixed Bag of Design Thoughts

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This week is one of those weeks. You know the ones… where I can’t seem to get the DIY flow going again. Usually, all it takes is a little momentum – like last week, where my dining room paint job morphed into also painting the upper hallway (THE hardest-to-reach spot in the house).

But this week? Totally different. I guess that’s the ebb and flow of DIY. I also have project ADD (which I disguise as my “one room at a time is for suckers” mantra), and right now, none of my current projects are really speaking to me. Not even ones I really need to get to, like a long-overdue landscaping project on the side of the house:

All it takes is one summer of neglect, and I’m in the weeds. But more on that later. (That whole area is a beast and will take its own full post to explain. My neighbors should all be considered for sainthood with that kind of patience, but then again, this area is kind of masked by my neighbor’s big-ass, smelly tree, so it’s not really all that visible from the street until you’re actually standing in my yard. But in the interest of keeping this blog 100% authentic, I sucked it up and snapped a photo for you to feel superior to. So hey, at least it will make the after that much more jaw-dropping – right?)

Anyway, I did what any girl in my situation might do when they’ve reached an inspiration plateau: I’ve gone shopping.

First, I’ve been hitting the gym kinda hard lately. All of this working-from-home stuff makes me a virtual houseplant since I do almost 100% of my job from my computer. I’m not complaining. Really, working from home is awesome. But it takes more of an effort to get me out of the house and moving about. So I recruited a friend of mine from grad school to remind me how not to injure myself when doing some strength training. And then, of course, we grabbed a post-workout beer (I earned it, I swear).

I also changed my hair. I have yet to find myself in a situation where I’ve fully styled it, but here’s a hint at the new color:

I haven’t gotten any good photos of the new color yet, so I’ll grab another sometime soon and post it on Instagram. It looks really different when the sun hits it!

Naturally, when you find yourself working out more, you also start ogling new shoes to go with your new gym schedule. Or am I the only one? It’s been over two years since I bought my last pair… seemed like a good time. But why do the guys’ shoes always look so much cooler than the women’s?

I wound up finding ones that fit me like second skin, but I had to order the color I wanted online. I saved myself another $20 bucks for my trouble thanks to coupon codes (Remember: no matter what you buy online, if there’s a box for a discount code available during checkout, it pays to do a quick web search to see if there’s a discount code floating around somewhere. Nine times out of ten, I save myself at least ten bucks on average and get free shipping too).

But, that wasn’t the end of the shoe story; it wasn’t all new stuff – some of it involved getting rid of the old. When I got home, I took one look in my closet, and I’d had enough. I love shoes, but I get bored with them. And I buy new ones, but do a lousy job at getting rid of the ones I never wear. Which is what prompted me to suddenly tear through my shoe collection and just start chucking. It felt great. I should do this more often :)

I also perused Etsy for some new prints to fit the gallery wall that will go in the hallway. I’ve bought a handful of them already, so I’ll share the lot as soon as I’ve got some of them in frames. The last time I bought a few, it was figures and abstract art; this time around, it’s all animals. Especially birds and whales.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

I’ve been tempted a few times to also go for some typography prints, but each time I’m about to pull the trigger, I stop. I guess I find it harder to justify spending cash on a font when I’m confident I can create them with a few clicks in Photoshop. But aren’t they clever? I can imagine myself buying the one on the left for my office and the one on the right for the guest bathroom (the idea that this is the first thing that a guest might see stepping out of the shower cracks me up). I’m super tempted to create one of my own out of my favorite song lyrics as well.

I’ve been eyeballing a few others, which you can see on my Etsy curated collection here if you’re curious. But I’m also curious to know how you discover new art for yourself. Any shops you just love, Etsy or otherwise? Do you feel the same way about typography art as I do? Or perhaps you like men’s sneaks more than women’s too?