apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

This weekend Urban Craft Uprising is hosting the Seattle release party for Issue 08 of Craft: magazine. Besides the inherent snazziness of a magazine release party, there will be food, drink and craft projects to learn, do and take home.

We saved up and purchased these two shell chairs with eiffel bases, and were tickled by the sticker that came attached to them. Snowflakes, indeed.

These simple hexagonal wastebaskets are covered in cotton fabric, scraps leftover from the apparel industry in India. While we could copy the idea and make this ourselves, we're glad to see factory scraps put to use.

We were very taken by this solid, architectural doorstop, but we think it's really the beautiful barn door, opening up to the flokati rug from a brick courtyard, that has us swooning.

Now here's something we haven't seen before. The Sundance catalog has curated three collections of books, which they are selling together as sets. While we keep our book buying to a minimum and prefer to choose them ourselves, the point is not lost on Sundance that an interesting pile of books (with nicely designed covers, not coincidentally) is one way to warm up a guest room or nook.

The New York Times posted a slideshow over the weekend of this house designed by artist Roy McMakin. McMakin is responsible for the oversize typewriter eraser, ampersand and concrete benches in Seattle's Olympic Scuplture Park, and the house he designed for k.d. lang's personal manager is no less an installation art piece.

Hailing from Vancouver Island, B.C., via Israel, Lilach Lotan's work is a study in focused vision and warm, inviting ceramics for the home. Though her repertoire includes vessels and tablewares, we were especially taken by her series of sconces, votives and ceiling fixtures.

We first saw these when Anthropologie was selling a version, and we're as much enamored of them now as we were then. The blob-like softness of the shape and slight green tint remind of something we'd find in an attic and treasure.

Name: Danielle
Location: Awaji-shima, Japan
Link: No link
Description: Between two of the four main islands of Japan, the moderately-sized island of Awaji-shima is traversed by the highway link between Kobe and Shikoku. It was on a solo trip through the country last year, just a few days after quitting my day job for an unknown future, that I decided to visit the very remote Shikoku via Awaji-shima. After a full day of sightseeing in Kobe, I departed for the island by bus. I am a fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants traveler, and up until this point I always managed to get by fine without making hotel reservations in advance...

Modular storage is about as good as it gets for apartment dwellers and renters, allowing maximum flexibility and adaptability to new spaces. Housefish's modular storage system is currently high on our list in this category, with bright colors, no-fuss (i.e., no hardware) sliding doors and simple assembly.

We've heard of denim insulation before, but not on this scale. The new California Academy of Sciences Building in Golden Gate Park is insulated with 200,000 pairs of jeans donated by the Levi Strauss company, that would presumably go to waste otherwise.

The Container Store's "off to college" campaign, DORM, groups storage and organizing products by style. We found this garment rack in the collection called "A Natural Fit," and appreciated the organic-modern alternative to what is usually an industrial, metallic and purely functional object.

When my husband and I combined finances after getting married, we discovered that we were spending an absurd amount on groceries and dining out. But oddly, when we compared across months, we noticed that we were spending roughly the same amount per trip to the grocery store or food joint, and less trips equaled less spent overall. So we came to the solution of budgeting our trips out, rather than budgeting our dollars, with the aid of a simple homemade visual cue.

Remember this? We would be extremely shocked if someone hasn't DIY'ed Scrabble pillows yet, but for the rest us, the cushions are available for purchase now from the designer of the original Wordplay installation.