This is so pretty!  And surprisingly, it doesn’t look too hard to recreate yourself..  Created from silk flowers, I think it would be cute on one wall of a room, as a sweet pop of color and shadow.

via re-nest

It’s been so hot in our place I’ve been feeling almost sick.  We have a tiny window unit, but it only keeps an area of about a 3 ft radius in front of it cool, and that’s usually taken by our cat, Bruce.

So late last night Wes decided to create an A/C condom-tunnel contraption that carries the cool air to where we are sitting.  It’s pretty hilarious..

Take THAT MacGyver!

Ok, don’t even ask me why I was searching redneck mansions, but in my search I found these beauties that I thought would be fun to share..  Yeeehaaaw!

I have wanted a pair of motorcycle boots for a while and have not been able to settle on anything.  There are a lot of Frye boots that look really good, but there are a couple of things that have prevented me from getting a pair.  For one thing, even though they have a great history as an American boot company, some of their boots are made in China now and some are still made in the USA, so you have to look on the inside of the boot to know what you are getting.

What really stopped me from buying Frye boots, though, was the fact that there is nowhere to try them on. I contacted their corporate office last fall and they suggested that I order pairs and return them until I found the right size. No thanks, I don’t have the time- that will work as well as for me as the BMG Music Club.  I ended up buying a pair of vintage Frye boots off of ebay that were made in the USA and are really sweet.  To bad they don’t fit- looks like I would have been better buying from Frye after all.  If anyone wants to buy them, they are size 12 D.

So my search for a boot continues, and I have found a candidate: Corcoran 1500′s.

I first noticed these jump boots in Band of Brothers.  Corcoran supplied jump boots to the Army Airborne troops during WWII, though they were brown, not black.  They are still made in the USA, and are quite a bit less expensive than Fryes.  How can this be?  It may be because Corcoran is a subsidiary of  Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, and they can make do with a modest, steady profit.  Buy a pair here for under $160.

Get on my shoe rack immediately!  It appears that Need Supply will in fact, be supplying me with my needs in the shoe department all summer.

Cute & inexpensive gets me every time.

Ok, well, this is not exactly a new but it is to me: Ferrofluid… attracts nerds and I like it, even though I don’t trust it.  Just do a flickr search for “ferrofluid” and you’ll see what I mean; nerds & untrustworthy super-shiny black stuff.  If you decide that you must have some you can get it here, but I would recommend keeping it in a sealed container and locked up.

Newspaper as wallpaper, 1935, Little Rock, with Popeye comic.

I saw Stuart Haygarth’s over at Emma & Eckford, and really loved his use of everyday objects from toys, to eye glasses, to bike reflectors.  The chandeliers below contain party poppers, items that were washed up along a coastline, and plastic wine glasses.  Check out his site for more.

Nebraska Surplus carries a fairly large assortment of random electrical and mechanical surplus items, including these nice vintage panel mounted indicator lamps. Those of you that are familiar with Canal street in NYC may remember the time when you could find this sort of stuff there, before Canal street polished up. If you are thinking of building something electric/electronic with a cold war aesthetic, here is a good place to start.

I ran across these paper & resin animal head sculptures on Etsy and thought they were really cute.  Created by artist/illustrator, Jennifer Khoshbin, you can see more at her Etsy shop HERE.

This Swedish phone dialer is sure to come in handy next time you are caught with a phone that does not have numbers. I would guess it is from the late 1940′s or 50′s. I know this won’t appeal to all of you, but those that like to be prepared won’t mind shelling out the $5.95 to have it on hand.

I’m not sure how far these seed-filled postcards would get (or if they’d ever reach their destination) via the US Postal Service, but they would still be fun to send/receive.

available at thirdrawerdown.com

Ahh, the XBOX.  I have a love/hate relationship with ours.  On the one hand, it provides a great babysitting service when I’m really busy and Wes is bored.  I think it’s great that he can “virtually hang out” with my brother and BFF, who both live in Chicago.

The problems start occurring when he’s playing Halo and insists on not only wearing his headset, but also having the volume way up on the TV.. turning it into a foul-mouthed projection device, where all I can hear is swearing (my mother reads this blog so I won’t elaborate) and yelling, “I’m in the Sword Room!”, “I’ve got the Ghost!” and my personal favorite, “Hey, (fill in teammates name here) where you at?!”

Anyway, for my own personal entertainment, I would love to one day pull a little lift & switch with Wes’ controller, and replace it with this soap replica (which, btw, is Mountain Dew scented)  I’m sure the look on his face would be priceless.

see more nerdy soap HERE

Of all the ways that one could begin building a houseboat, utilizing US Navy surplus would probably be the best., considering that the navy already put $1,087,000 into each of these. The navy is unloading a dozen or more of these “floating causeways” in Jacksonville, in fact, they are selling so many that I suspect they will go pretty cheaply. They are powered with diesel engines, so now all you have to do is build your shack/cottage/whatever on top of it and you’ll be ready for summer. See more photos & place your bid here, starting bid $150. Bring a lot of friends, they weigh 200,000 lbs each and are awkwardly shaped.

I sure many of you know someone who insists on using a fax machine to do email’s work- and the result is both painful to look at, for the recipient of the fax, and painful for you to watch, as someone who emails.  It isn’t that the faxer-instead-of-emailer wants to fax photos, but that is the way they have always done it, and they don’t want to try to do some thing called “attach”. I think pens are kind of the same way… yes, you have been using your rollerball for a long time, or those gel pens, or your microns.

My impression is that people get stuck on pens, and then they don’t experiment with trying something new & possibly better.  Even though I have been using Rotring Artpens for more than a decade (which I swear by, but that will be another post) I decided to give this Lamy Safari a try. I like it. The nib is just a little stiff for my taste, but it is a good quality fountain pen for about $30. If you don’t own a fountain pen, maybe you should give one a try for a while- I think that a lot of times they are just a better tool.