These are my favorite Christmas gifts this year. Double great advice for the New Year, wouldn’t you say? Calm in the face of a storm, and grace under pressure, with my tongue firmly in-cheek. Just good British design, old and new (and I love all things British).
Here’s to 2011! Great beginnings and lots of hot beverages in fabulous cups.
We decided to set up our Christmas tree a couple days before Thanksgiving this year, and our usual conversations about where to put it started. The few viable spots for a Christmas tree in our house have been reduced over the years with the location of my office in the Living Room, and since having children has added furniture and toys that take up precious floor space. Keeping some sacred open floor space for me has been a challenge, but I find it critically important for my peace of mind and ability to maintain a fitness routine, especially through the holidays.
The only room to set up our tree is the Family Room, and luckily, I have a good-sized room that allows for a few different furniture arrangements. In addition to the usual stuff (sofa, lounge chair, ottoman, coffee table, etc.), we also have a treadmill. It’s a big, hulking beast; a serious, full-sized piece of equipment and moving it is not easy. This was the one thing I really wanted after having my first child.
A little back story. When I first learned I was pregnant, my husband and I took a trip out to California. We met another married couple in a restaurant that had just had their first baby, and the wife showed us this fabulous ring her husband bought her as a gift for “giving birth.” Sort of like a consolation prize for having endured pregnancy and childbirth. We were…intrigued. My husband turned to me and said, “Baby, would you like a diamond ring as my gift to you for having my child?” And I said, “Darling, I want a treadmill.”
What can I say? Some women like diamonds. I like to be able to chase and play with my kids and wear skinny jeans.
Folding up the treadmill and rendering it useless until after the tree comes down was not an option for me. We found a way. The tree looks great, has plenty of room around it, and I can still use my treadmill.
I’ve managed to keep up a fitness routine by making my house work for me, and allowing opportunities for exercise to exist in it. I had a conversation with fitness guru, Alexandra Williams, regarding this subject recently (follow her on Twitter, she’s hilarious). I asked her for her opinion about whether or not she believed that people are more or less inclined to exercise based on how their house is laid out. You can click here for her answer. She has posted a great podcast, with her sister Kimberly, about this as well with the steps women (and men too) can take to keep the holidays from totally derailing their fitness goals. A lot of this has to do with keeping your home, and its interior design, conducive to a fit lifestyle.
For me, this means treating my treadmill as I would any other piece of important furniture in my room, and keeping it placed in areas where it will get used. If you locate your exercise equipment in your garage, without any climate control (aka air conditioning or heat) and surrounded by stinky, dirty garage stuff, I doubt you will ever use it. Put it in your bedroom, or your family room, or some other room where you can see out your windows, listen to music, or watch TV while you’re on it. The key is don’t hang crap on it and don’t put it away.
The other way I manage to keep exercise possible in my house is by having furniture that’s easy to move. I have two ottomans at the foot of my bed that have casters on the bottom. When I feel like doing a yoga or Pilates video at home, I just shove them against the wall and out of my way.
Who won the tree vs. treadmill kerfuffle? Me, and my health. Cheers to your health, your healthy home, and a very happy and prosperous New Year!
The time dilation in effect for most of this year is now over. Time has headed over a cliff and is now falling toward December faster than I can hang on to my safety ropes.
Time dilation allowed me to do all sorts of things this year: gardening, complain about the heat, start a compost bin, and expound on the worthiness of certain kitchen sponges (which, by the way, I’m still using and they’re still the same price.). It allowed me to put together my website and start writing to all of you. I’ve networked, tweeted, joined clubs, and passed a test. I was Matron of Honor for my sister too (though, upon hearing the word “matron” I have an uncontrollable reflex that results in a boot to the head for whomever utters it.).
So, what am I talking about? Time dilation over? What’s that, some weird sci-fi reference? And yes, it is, actually. For an explanation of time dilation, you need to read Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide series. You will thank me, because it’s superb.
And now that time has resumed its regularly perceived, mind-numbing speed, I have had to relearn how to fit 10 lbs. into a 5 lb. bag.
What that means is…I’m busy. See now, wasn’t that all more interesting than opening with, “I’m so busy?” That’s right up there with, “the sky is blue”, and “don’t discuss politics with the family over Thanksgiving dinner,” and other obvious statements.
I’ve been doing a lot of AutoCAD drafting in the last month and a half. Drafting for multiple hours every day on spaces with curving walls, cove lighting, and lots of ceiling changes. That, and my love of metaphor, caused my brain to cough up this little nugget yesterday after I came up for air with bleary-eyed fatigue.
I give you….a poem:
You’re on the line
The straight and narrow line
You’re a curving line, a swerving line, a blurry line
with foreshortened perspective
and no vanishing point
You wiggle and wriggle and try to be invisible
A dashed, almost there, out of line, line
Why can’t you be parallel?
With no intersections?
You’re full of segments and nodes and jumping off points
and that is what worries me.
You’re a line that desires to be something quite else
Something more infinite and three-dimensional, instead of simple, flat, and easy.
I want to break you.
Get back in line.
I think I may have been channeling the Five Man Electrical Band.
Feel free to attach whatever metaphorical meaning you wish to my gold-nugget protest poem. Ah, I can hear the beatniks booing snapping their fingers throughout cyberspace.
Have a wonderful and relaxed Thanksgiving!
“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”
So says Ford Prefect in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (by the late, brilliantly funny Douglas Adams).
I love science fiction, and well, wickedly funny science fiction is just about my vision of nirvana. I would like to give you more quotes from this funniest series of stories ever concocted, but every passage, every line, every phrase is so hilarious, I’d have to write the whole thing down, and that would be ridiculous. Oh, okay, here’s one:
“…and news reports brought to you here on the sub-etha wave band, broadcasting around the Galaxy around the clock,” squawked a voice, “and we’ll be saying a big hello to all intelligent life forms everywhere…and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together, guys.”
I must admit, I seem to be a bit of an anglophile. The people, movies, comedians, books, etc., that have amused me the most throughout my life all seem to be British. Benny Hill, Monty Python, The Young Ones, Douglas Adams, and Eddie Izzard.
I’ve also been following the exploits of some whip-smart wordsmiths: Colleen Wainwright (@Communicatrix on Twitter) and Naomi Dunford (@NaomiDunford on Twitter). Incredibly intelligent and wildly funny women that talk about their boobs and say the F-word a lot. And I can’t forget Kelly Parkinson (@Copylicious on Twitter). Anybody that can give credible business advice by talking about bears in the woods and using a dinosaur sock puppet named “Aaaaaawg” is one hilarious individual.
Which brings me to Madame Sunday (@ModernSauce). Witty, funny, profane, and with excellent design taste, she keeps me laughing almost continuously. I am incredibly jealous of her writing and internet-scouring skills.
My husband continues to make me erupt with hsyterical giggling at least four times a week, and after twenty years together, that’s saying something.
Please allow me to now introduce you to my beloved brother, John Gregorio. He’s an actor, and his specialty is improvisation. He lives in New York, and he is one of the funniest people I know.
He and some friends created a comedy improv show called The Nuclear Family, which is worth every effort you can make to see them perform. Imagine impromptu singing, high-kicks, and lots of wigs.
Laughter- a wide toothy grin, pure delight, a polite giggle, raucous hysteria, snorts, laughter that makes you eject liquid through your nose, laughter that makes your body seize and shake uncontrollably and tears roll down your face. I love it. We measure the good times in our life with the quality of our laughter. Laugh out loud, laugh proudly, with abandon, until you’re hoarse and completely spent, and do it often.
And now watch this (hey, I couldn’t help it. I live with two small children and a man for pete’s sake. There is something always funny about breaking wind.).
This week’s Blog Off topic is “Is there a reason to be optimistic?” My take on this is highly personal, as usual. Be sure to visit the other blog participant’s posts. You can find a list of them here: www.letsblogoff.com
Something wonderful happened to me recently. After a long, downtrodden, worrisome year full of angst, stress, a little depression, and intermittent bursts of crying, I passed an exam. It was the LEED Green Associate exam that is the first tier of credentialing for the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green-building rating system (you can learn more about it here: www.usgbc.org).
This was big for me. Huge, in fact.
I haven’t taken an exam like that one since the NCIDQ exam, which qualified me as an Interior Designer and allowed me to get my license to practice. That one was not optional (in my view). There are those out there that will argue that point, but I have no patience for that. You want to be taken seriously in your profession and put the fine point on your education, experience, and hard work, you take the damn test. You crush the test, in fact, because you earned it.
The LEED exam was an optional thing for me. I don’t need it to practice design. It doesn’t change my circumstances, or make me an expert on green building, but I believe it was a necessary step for me to take to advance to the next level in my profession. Sustainability, resource conservation, and energy efficiency are imperatives for the Design and building industries. If we, as designers, architects, and builders don’t lead in this department, then who will?
I studied and studied, I made flash cards, I took copious notes, I procrastinated somewhat, I put off scheduling the exam until the last minute. I memorized codes and standards for ventilation rates and brownfields, water use and thermal comfort, and all the while I fought back against that little voice that sometimes creeps into your mind and tells you it’s all in vain, you’ll never pass it, you’re going to fail.
In the week or two prior to my test date, I started looking at myself in the mirror and saying in a loud, affirming voice, with a big smile on my face, “I am going to pass this test! I know this material. It’s all going to be okay.”
And it was. I passed it with flying colors. Along with relief, I am elated. Elevated, full of helium, buoyed, and soaring. And optimistic- for my future, the future of Interior Design and the building industry in this country, and the world. Sometimes it just takes one really good achievement, something really great to happen to you, personally, to alter your outlook on your own world and therefore the rest of the world gets better for it too. It starts with one, combusting from the inside, spreads out and catches on. So many good things have happened to me this year, but passing this test was the hurdle I needed to push myself into Optimism territory.
The fact that the LEED rating system exists makes me optimistic for Architecture and Design, building, development, and manufacturing. It’s not a perfect system by any means, but it is carefully articulated and well-crafted to change the way we’ve been designing and building for so long. It emphasizes consensus and working together to achieve a greater good as well as serving the individual needs of people. It furthers the impetus that is already gaining momentum to change our behavior and to think carefully about everything we consume and use during the course of our lives.
I get excited when I see people carrying their own bags into the grocery store, public recycling bins getting used, and when my kids remind me to turn off the water when I’m brushing my teeth. That kind of action gives me hope, and hope leads to optimism. We still have a long way to go, and this century has gotten off to a bit of a rocky start, but these are just growing pains.
It’s going to be all right.
Shocking, isn’t it? Yes, I know, it is a generalization. There are plenty of designers out there that love shopping, especially with their Jackie O sunglasses, cream linen suits, and their little dogs in tow. I’m just not one of them. Strange as it may seem, since sourcing out product is an integral part of what designers do (and I love finding new products), the actual act of shopping is my least favorite part of the interior designer’s job (unless it includes lunch, then it’s not so bad. Especially if it’s sushi. If I get to have sushi while out on a shopping trip, then it’s all worthwhile. Or Thai food. Yeah! If it’s Thai food, I’ll be skipping through the rest of the day.). For me, shopping is Work, not a leisure activity.
When it comes to selecting and purchasing furniture, tile, stone, paint, wallpaper, flooring, carpet, etc. etc., most people start to sweat a little and get pale. Why? Because the choices are endless and overwhelming, and unlike shopping for clothes or food, most people have a hard time figuring out what they want. Purchasing big-ticket items like furniture, fixtures, and finishes for your home or office should never be done on “impulse.” These things cost a lot of money and you will be living with your choices for a long time, so good planning is key.
As a designer, even I get overwhelmed by the sheer number of choices available, which is why aimless shopping, without knowing exactly what I’m looking for, is something I avoid.
There are some things you can do to make a shopping trip tolerable (besides lunch, of course) and also productive (because you want to come home with choices made, not more confusion):
Plan ahead. Do your homework. Research what you want to find and make a list of a few places to go and a list of the items you need to find. Group the items by type, like “tile” or “light fixtures” and focus only on those things. Small specific lists are manageable. Humongous lists with 50 things on them will do nothing but freak you out and set you up for failure. Measure your room(s) and sketch out your floor plan. Estimate your quantities.
On the day of your shopping excursion,
1) Wear comfortable shoes and bring snacks. I’m not kidding about this; your own physical comfort is critical to successful shopping.
2) Bring a tape measure! And a camera. Measure everything to ensure items will fit in your room, and that you can get them into your room (Are there any narrow hallways, elevators, small doorways, low ceilings, or stairs?).
3) Bring your floor plan (and room measurements) and a photo of your room for easy reference. Bring pictures from your idea file of the types and styles you are specifically looking for. Stay focused! It’s very easy to be dazzled by fantastic showrooms that have been professionally styled and either end up with something that you regret purchasing later on, or become so indecisive that you can’t make a choice. Research and define your likes and dislikes ahead of time. That way you can put your blinders on and not waste time.
4) Bring samples of anything that has already been decided or used, like paint color swatches, wood finishes, fabric swatches, tile chips, and stone samples for matching purposes. (Anything too big and cumbersome can be left in your car, but at least you’ll have it with you if you need it.) We’d like to think our memories are awesome and accurate for remembering colors and details, but they’re not.
5) Get price quotes in writing along with the name of the salesperson that helped you, and ask if the price quote has an expiration date or reflects a sale price that is set to expire by a certain date. Ask questions, for instance, how long is the production time, what are the shipping and delivery costs?
These are some of the steps I take as a designer to make selecting furniture, fixtures, and finishes a more productive and streamlined process, and to save my clients (and myself) from Shopping Overwhelm. Let’s review: plan ahead, small lists, focused attention, and Thai food (Mmmm). Now that’s a shopping trip.
I dream of living in a house on a hill. A barn, actually. A repurposed space that was once one thing and is now another. A place with lovely bones. A large, loft-like space with high ceilings, rafters, clerestory windows, big sliding doors with heavy, industrial, exposed hardware, and wood floors.
Barn Conversion by Shed
Shootfactorybarn found at Remodelista
Via Remodelista
Large enough for me to dance from one end to the other: grand jetes, tour jetes, one after another.
Psalm
A place where all the choreography in my head has a chance to land on the ground and grow. Spiral up, spiral down. An invitation to the spirits of Jose’ Limon and Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, and Isadora Duncan.
Jose Limon
La Patria from “Dances for Isadora”- Barbara Zivich Neri (photo by Linda Alaniz)
And a place where I can make things; tinker, glue, hammer, tie, paint, glaze and throw. Where I can leave stuff out, and come back to projects when the mood strikes, and fall into downward dog when my body says “it’s time.”
downward dog
I want to look out my windows and see trees, and that fox we used to feed French Silk pie to.
Gary Organschi- Outhouse
Big tables, large expanses of hand-planed wood. Live edges.
Vermont Wood Studios
I want to stretch out on the floor. No clutter, just open empty space, ready to receive whatever manifests itself there.
And a fantastic stereo.
Space for all my books, filling the walls. And a balcony for the telescope.
Via Interior Divine
I played in cornfields as a child, and rode my bike until dark. I stared at the full moon like it was the face of my dearest friend and watched Orion cross the sky. I spent my childhood in dance studios and on auditorium stages, filling the empty space with only what my body could fill it with: movement and voice.
Pretend your deaf aunt is sitting the back row. Project! Fill the space with You. Own it. Get wide. Expand your personal sphere and reach with every extremity you have to touch the ceiling, the walls, and the ground beneath the floor. If you fall, the floor will catch you.
Via Broadway World
The kids will know not to disturb me here. Their friends will say, “What is your Mom doing?” And they will say, “She’s an artist. She dances. She makes things.” “Like what?” they’ll ask, curious to look in the windows. They will answer, “You just have to experience it.”
Sometimes an empty room is not really empty.
Yoga
Where do you feel most at home? When you dream of your most perfect space, what comes to mind?
This is my contribution to this week’s series of ”Let’s Blog Off” posts. For a full list of participants and links to their sites, go to www.letsblogoff.comIn this age of nesting, home as sanctuary, aging in place, and all the other –isms of “staying-putted-ness” people are looking for ways to repurpose their belongings, update their homes without spending gobs of money, and achieve a change of scenery without leaving the scene. One of the best ways to do this is with paint colors. Paint is inexpensive, the color choices are virtually limitless, most people can actually pull off a decent paint job on their own, and changing colors can completely transform a room. Here are a few rules of thumb for transforming a room with paint:
Since there are so many paint colors available, choosing the right colors for your space can be daunting. If the idea of choosing paint colors makes you lose sleep at night, consider investing in a color consultation by a professional interior designer (that would be me!). Click here for more details on how we can work together to select the right colors for you.
Blog off!
What’s that, you say? Is that some new curse de jour for cranky blog readers and writers to hurl at passersby by? No friends, it’s a term coined by and an activity engaged in by some of my Twitter friends. Since entering the strange universe that is Twitter, I have met a slew of incredibly smart, engaging, resourceful, and funny people. I’ve tweeted with other fellow designers, architects and contractors, craftspeople, remodelers, business-people, yogis, futurists and deep thinkers, writers, artists, and musicians. Together we talk shop, talk and opine about what’s going on in the world, and learn from each other. It’s awesome and fun, and totally addictive.
A small group of us, led into the blog-off forest by one Veronika Miller (also known as @modenus), are here today to answer this question on each of our own blogs in our own way. The other participants are listed at www.letsblogoff.com. Believe me, these people will not disappoint, so read, comment, and spread the love.
So, the question is, are college grads ready for the working world? Upon asking a few of my contemporaries, I was told NO, resoundingly. Perhaps it will surprise you (perhaps not), but I am not surrounded by many recent college graduates. In fact, the only one I really know currently is my little sister, who at age 25, just completed her Masters degree, got married, and moved to California in one fell swoop this past May. I asked her if she thought she was ready for the working world, and here is what she said:
“Hm… prepared for the working world? I think that after I graduated with my bachelors in psychology I was DEFINITELY not ready for the working world… but that could be because I knew I didn’t really want to work in the field of psychology? That was a big part of it. But, I know I was def freaked out to be graduating and didn’t know how I was going to handle the working world. I was not ready. I was like “ohh no…. I’m staying in school!” Now, when I graduated with my masters in fitness, I was ready. There haven’t been any major “I wish I had learned THAT in school” moments….not yet anyway. I believe I had some friends that were so set on a path and READY for the real world as early as high school! They just always knew what they wanted to do and they were stuck on that path. I do think that my psych degree helped me deal with the real/working world too… since I learned a lot about people and human behavior. Maybe those with a different degree would feel different upon entering the working world.”
Do you think knowing exactly what you want to do throughout your educational process equates to better preparedness for the working world? I, personally, do not. It does perhaps provide more drive and focus, but that doesn’t necessarily make you ready. I believe there is a marked difference in maturity levels between 20-year olds and 25-year olds, and staying in school to earn an advanced degree allows this maturation to take place in the relative safety of the school setting. (There’s a great article in the New York Times about this subject, which is definitely worth reading.)
Earning an advanced degree is not always possible or desirable for everyone, though, and so we have many young 20-somethings entering the workforce with all their wild-eyed optimism and loads of piss and vinegar (I like to call this the “hot shit and a bag of chips” syndrome). Are they ready? I say, barely.
About ten years ago, I worked with a 20-year old guy. I was the senior designer for a small interior design firm, and he was our draftsman, IT guy, and more or less, my assistant. He hadn’t finished college yet, because he recently moved to the area with his family and had yet to enroll. He did not have any formal design training and had no intentions of becoming a designer in the long run, but he had taught himself AutoCAD because he thought it would be fun (can you imagine?), and so he was working there when I started.
Besides being scary smart, especially about computers, he was a hard worker, took criticism fairly well, and allowed himself to be “trained.” He also had an annoying tic, was moody and socially awkward, and harbored an inordinate amount of anger towards his mother. I liked him a lot. And I usually wanted to strangle him weekly. Every time I got frustrated with him, I would remind myself that he’s only 20. He’s a baby. He’s so young he doesn’t even know what he doesn’t know. My god, was I like that at 20? Probably yes (minus the tic).
Here I am; the proud college graduate at the tender age of 21. (The little blond girl behind me is my now-25-year old sister, and the smiling lady is my grandmother.)
I had big plans! I knew some stuff! I was ready to take on the world, and so ready to just be finished with school and be truly on my own. Later on I thanked (and I continue to thank) my lucky stars that I had an Arts education. Studying the Arts, any kind- performing, fine, or applied, requires a consistent and regular level of real, physical involvement and commitment to create and complete a work, and hone your skills. You have to practice, and you have to learn how to manage your time, or it’s impossible to meet your deadlines. It imparts a work ethic that is different from other intellectual pursuits (which is why, in my opinion, arts education is a critical component to the education of our children, from the earliest age possible, but that is a post for another day.).
On most days, and nights, and during the wee hours, I was here:
While my roommates were doing this:
(I ended up marrying the one on the left, and don’t worry, despite all the beer, he turned out really well.)
College provides a foundation on which to build a career, a life. Mostly it arms you with a certain set of (hopefully) marketable skills in your chosen field of interest which will require honing and refining over time, just as the person grows to be more honed and refined over time. We were all in that place once upon a time. It’s the reality of transitioning into adulthood. It doesn’t happen overnight. So are college graduates prepared for the working world? I would say they’re about as ready as they can be. Along with their efforts to learn and grow, work hard, and acknowledge what they don’t yet know, the rest of us more (ahem) seasoned-types need to be willing to offer mentoring and guidance, and above all, patience.
(And to my former 20-year old co-worker who is now 30 (you know who you are): I know I yelled at you a lot, and I’m sorry. I still have our notes from the screenplay we were going to write together about the wacky world of interior design. Good times. Former-Boss-Man told me you joined the Marines and were deployed to Iraq last year, so please stay safe and come back in one piece.)
Here is the list of participants:
| Veronika Miller | @modenus | Modenus.com |
| Paul Anater | @paul_anater | kitchenandresidentialdesign.com |
| Rufus Dogg | @dogwalkblog | DogWalkBlog |
| Becky Shankle | @ecomod | eco-modernism.com |
| Bob Borson | @bobborson | lifeofanarchitect.com |
| Bonnie Harris | @waxgirl333 | Wax Marketing |
| Tim Elmore | @TimElmore | growingleaders.com |
| Nick Lovelady | @cupboards | cupboardsonline.com |
| Tamara Dalton | @tammyjdalton | tamaradalton.net |
| Sean Lintow, Sr. | @SLSconstruction | sls-construction.com |
| Amy Good | @Splintergirl | Amy’s Blog |
| Richard Holschuh | @concretedetail | Concrete Detail |
| Tim Bogan | @TimBogan | Windbag International |
| Hollie Holcombe | @GreenRascal | Rascal Design |
| Cindy FrewenWuellner | @Urbanverse | Urbanverse |
| Steve Mouzon | @stevemouzon | Original Green |
| Cheryl Kees Clendenon | kitchendetailsanddesign.com |
