April showers bring May flowers though, if today's weather is any indication of what this month will be like, that honour may now go to February, a month that's short on days and long on the optimism that its central holiday evokes. Perhaps that's why the articles that caught our eye in this week's Los Angeles Times Home & Garden section are the blog version of old flames, we're curious to hear how things have turned out. There's a look at the blog Unhappy Hipsters; an update on the car in the living room; a closer look at Upward Bound and a metallic version of the loopy chair. Links to these stories and more, after the jump.
(Welcome to Smith from Chicago, one of the bloggers trying out for a place on the Apartment Therapy editorial team as a House Tour Contributor. Enjoy her work - comments welcome!)
Name: Erik (software engineer for Table XI) and Smith (Departmental Technician for Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago)
Location: Chicago, Prairie Avenue District
Size: 900 square foot one bedroom
Years lived in: 4 months
Erik and I are lucky enough to rent the Mother-In-Law unit in one of the eleven remaining Prairie Avenue historic homes. Having moved each year for the past 5 years, we have developed a simple yet comfortable style that easily adapts to different kinds of space.
Name: Misty Adair, husband John, two young sons and dog, Lucy
Location: Allandale, Austin, TX
Size: 1375 square feet
Years lived in: 6 years
When we spotted some photos of Misty's home in a few of her previous posts here on Apartment Therapy, we knew we needed to get in there for a house tour! A visit to Misty's house in the Allandale neighborhood doesn't disappoint. Full of bright colors, fun designs and a clean, organized aesthetic, you'll get inspiration from all of Misty's neat decor ideas.
We're always on the lookout for new ways to disguise the TV, and this is one of the most ingenious we've ever seen. Style at Home did a rundown of strategies for hiding your electronics in plain sight, and this was our favorite of the bunch: Hang a TV on dark or black wallpaper and it virtually disappears! Amazing.
Are you feeling the pinch of wintertime heating bills? Even though we spread out the pain across the whole year (we do the budgeting program) just seeing the charges that we are incurring each month is tough. We just ran across some ultra simple and sensible tips on how to (hopefully!) reduce the amount of heating bills...
I recently had the pleasure of meeting Los Angeles interior designer Nadia Geller at the recent Upward Bound Homeless Shelter Project in Culver City. Myself and 17 other designers came together to put our design style to create 18 completely different rooms using donations from local retailers, friends and family for the Los Angeles homeless shelter, converting an abandoned motel into welcoming and humanized spaces.
Every Friday! Here are all the home and garden sales across the country - painstakingly collected by our editorial team of over 70 bloggers. This is only place on the web where you can find them all in one place. Pass it on and send us your sale.
Here's some DIY inspiration for the weekend: a second look at two Rhode Island homes we've toured, both featuring beautifully stenciled wall patterns. While we used to think of stencils as being too quaint for our taste, we're won over by the growing number of creative and contemporary examples that we've seen lately, these included.
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