ArchDarling's Profile

@Rural and Rueful, I was going to say the same thing. My dog would just sit and stare at those balls on the wall for hours.

I would not dare build a home, any home, without having a fat, fat bank account. No matter how diligent and honest your architect -- and I know many diligent, honest ones -- things just end up costing way, way more than you anticipate or estimate, and everything takes much, much longer. That's just the way it is. I'd probably end up in an insane asylum if I tried to build my own house without knowing that even if things go terribly wrong, my financial future is still fairly secure.

Prefab houses are like anything else -- a commodity being sold to us for a company's profit. Go forth and gentrify, people. Renovating a beautiful little bungalow that's fallen into disrepair is far more green than building a new house.

For clothes to look good displayed out in the open, they generally need to be pretty monochromatic. But most people tend to own clothing in a variety of colors, patterns, textures, etc. In magazine spreads, this look works because the clothing tends to be either pinstriped suits or little black dresses. I can't see this translating so well in real life. The fourth photo looks okay (at best) because the clothes are exclusively white, camel or black.

Size has nothing to do with how well suited a dog is for apartment life. 120 lb. Great Danes make great apartment dogs while I would hesitate to adopt a 25 lb. cattle dog.

Doggy daycare is a must for my active large dog (65 lbs.). He's a mutt but mixed with some kind of shepherd breed that makes him pretty high energy. The daycare folks pick him up and drop him off. Completely hassle free.

Also, please consider adopting or if you're deadset on a certain breed, check petfinder for rescues.

Your choices are perfection in my eyes (I have a Saarinen tulip table, too, and love it)... minus the West Elm desk -- and I own one, as does everyone here it seems. Claire of AT deleted one of my posts in which I called this desk "a piece of crap." Sorry, maybe I got a lemon, but mine definitely is. I rarely even use the desk but I've noticed chips on the white lacquer. Also the legs of my desk don't line up exactly once I screwed them in, so it doesn't have a true Parsons look. The seams also ruin it. The reason parsons style furniture is so expensive elsewhere is because they are meant to be seamless pieces and can't be broken down -- hence higher manufacturing and shipping costs. I'm not only regretful that I purchased one, I'm tired of seeing them absolutely everywhere. I wish I had spent $300 on a really nice real wood desk from Craigslist or something. Waiting to be tarred and feathered now...

Well, the kid is a kid. Being a child is transitory -- as the child of foreigners, I have always felt that American parents forget this. I've never understood the American emphasis of making children happy in the moment at the cost of their happiness in the future. You spend much longer as an adult than as a child so is it not sensible to instill in children the good taste that will benefit them as adults? I'm not yet a parent, but I know for sure I will not care too much what they think about the decor of their bedroom -- much less if their tastes veer towards Disney. A child's opinion matters on a lot of things -- whether or not she likes her school, her extracurriculars, etc. But if she complains there's not enough Disney branding in her bedroom? I fear it'd make her grow up to be the kind of grownup to wears sweatshirts emblazoned with Winnie the Pooh.

My pets have never even acknowledged that the TV is on. I think it would actually annoy them if I left it on all day while I'm away. I tried to get my dog to watch the stimulation video from DogTV on my (large) laptop but he wouldn't focus on it. My cat also doesn't particularly care for the iPad while other cats seem to go crazy for it.

SLEEK1, it just looks like a large sheepskin thrown over a chair to me.

I know this tip will not appeal to some, but I swear by it. When our dog had stomach troubles, he had diarrhea on our wool rug... a lot. It's much, much easier to just pick off the runny poop once it dries completely than to try to clean while its still wet and goopy. When I try to clean immediately, I just end up rubbing it into the fibers.

Thank God he's all better now. It wasn't fun waiting around for poop to dry out.

... though I guess if shipping is $350 to some places, it's well worth an Amazon markup! In the Chicago area, there are two Ikeas in the suburbs... the flat delivery rate is $80 to the city which is a lot but not tooooo bad if you consider what renting a car costs!