Last month I wrote about the Once Standard Bathroom Fixtures We've Left Behind. I had so much fun looking into the past, I wondered if there were any pieces of furniture that also used to be ubiquitous that might now have us scratching our heads as to why…

Last night, I achieved a dream I never imagined possible — without winning the lottery, that is: purchasing a real piece of art by a known artist!

If you’re like me, then sometime not long after finishing college you – and maybe several roommates – rented your very first grown-up apartment. Being fresh out of school and without two nickels to rub together, much less an actual bed with a box-spring, your parents helped you out by giving you some furniture that you had grown up with. No problem, right? Well …

I am absolutely nuts for Lucite furniture. I have such a weakness for the stuff that I have had to put myself on a Lucite diet — only one small piece per room — lest I cross over into full-on Liberace circa 1974 mode.

I have a confession: I am absolutely terrified of going into Hermès, the ubiquitous French retailer of $10,000 handbags named after chic actresses. My fear is two-fold: First, that the handsome security guards at the entrance will instantly know I don't belong and throw me out (the shame!) and second, in an effort to "blend in" and not attract the attention of the security guards, I'll end up overcompensating and walking out with a handbag that is more expensive than my car--and will take me longer to pay off!

After living here in Paris for the better part of a year and trolling the city's famed flea markets, I finally decided to take the plunge and buy something. I scored six mid-century Italian lacquered folding chairs for a song and was on such a high from my first successful foray into the flea market world, that I neglected one very important fact: I am moving back to the States this fall and need to find some way to get the chairs back, too! What to do?

You've got a great sense of style otherwise you wouldn't be reading Apartment Therapy every day, right? You probably have a firm idea of what kind of furniture appeals to you whether it's traditional, mid-century, or totally modern. You can easily identify the colors and tones of wood that just say "you." So, you'd never need to hire a decorator, right? Wrong!

My mom loves decorating according to the seasons and their corresponding holidays. When my sisters and I were growing up she would the house with American flags for the 4th of July, decorate the tables with real and ceramic pumpkins in the fall, deck the halls with boughs of evergreen after Thanksgiving, and after each interminable New Hampshire winter, break out pastel Easter eggs come spring. All of this seems within the realm of normal seasonal decorating (especially when you have young kids), but she also did something I've rarely seen anyone else do: she changed the artwork on nearly all the walls to reflect the changing seasons!

As Memorial Day approaches, I'm dreaming of a beach house get-away and outside of a white, slip-covered sofa nothing says "beach house" like bringing shells and sea colors into the bathroom.

Click through the jump for some major beach bathroom inspiration!

It may seem like a no-brainer that a tub, toilet, and sink are all you really need to keep clean. Early in the last century, though, indoor plumbing and ideas about what constituted good hygiene were both under development leaving plumbing supply companies and consumers alike a little confused as to what constituted "standard" bathroom fixtures. Click through the jump to see some of the standard fixtures we've left by the wayside…