Free bargain hunting service at Copy Cat Chic

Bazaar Style

You may have done something like this - sweated and puffed to make yourself a no-cost Moroccan ottoman and now you would like a Moroccan tray to put on top so that it can look like the one above, but the tray costs more than what you spend on food in a month.

In such instances, I hop over to Copy Cat Chic and have Reichel look for a cheaper version. Reichel regularly finds affordable knockoffs of high-end products. She found a tray similar to the one I admired for less than one-third the price. And she also found this, West Elm's hammered tray and medina stand.



Isn't it adorable?

But what would I do with it? Any hammered tea tray owners out there? Do you use it as a coffee table? Side table? Frisbee? Where on earth would I put this and a Moroccan pouf? Why do I have such a weakness for cute little tables?

Dressing Room

This is for my mom.

Mom, Anna Sui has an entire room turned into a dressing room/closet - in a Greenwich Village apartment no less. You are not the only woman to have more outfits than Schererazade had plot lines.

From the new Elle Decor.

How to make a modern fountain

So sorry, folks. I was supposed to resolve the mystery of the origin of our outdoor fountain on Thursday but the annoying real world kept intruding.

So, here it is, two days late. Drum roll please.




Here is the fountain before. In its former life, it was a big fat country armoire.

Tom built me a larger version of this armoire for our first anniversary. We cut it down in size and stripped the green stain for our 10th anniversary. Around our 13th anniversary, Tom got a flat screen television of enormous proportions. Out of that transaction, I got a new media center, which he built for me.

As for the big fat country armoire, we could not sell it or even give it away since everybody else was buying flat-panel televisions of enormous size as well. So Tom used the wood and the basic structure to build a fountain.



Here's the backside of the fountain. It has a door on the bottom half.

Inside is the piping for the pump, which sits in the bottom tier of the fountain.

Tom coated the inside of each tier with roofing sealant and painted the outside with outdoor latex paint.

Neighborhood squirrels and birds treat it as their personal drinking fountain. It's really refreshing to sit by it (as I am now) and listen to the water flow.

DIY Wednesday: Make a monster doll

This is not really a home design project, but it is free fun and, even better, requires pretty much no skill whatsoever.

I made this monster doll for my little cousin Danny (nicknamed Danny Monster) who had hernia surgery last week. If you look closely, you may note that my monster has stitches in what I believe to be the standard monster hernia area.


Supplies were an unattractive fleecy jacket, old sock, fabric napkin, buttons, scissors, needle and thread. Total cost: pretty much zero, excluding my dignity.



First I cut out the largest section of jacket fabric and laid out my buttons and sock mouth to get an idea of my monster's dimensions.

I cut a piece of paper to the size of my fabric and sketched out a monster shape. I folded my paper in half to make the two sides of the monster symmetrical, although symmetry is by no means a requirement.

I cut out a front and back to my monster and hand-stitched the features to the front. (If you are using a sewing machine, which I recommend, add a half-inch seam allowance before cutting. )

I then hand-stitched the front and back together and stuffed the monster with cut-up pieces of the rest of the jacket. If using a sewing machine, put the front and back of the monster together wrong sides out and stitch, leaving a space for stuffing. Turn the monster inside out and stuff.

I believe a machine-sewn seam would have improved my monster, since he is already looking frayed at the edges. Otherwise you pretty much can't go wrong, as you can see from some of my favorite handmade monster toys.

inhabitots.com
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inhabitots.com
Panda Mama

monsterdoll.com

Go forth and scare small children.

Storm and sun and storm

We've been getting pelted with wicked bad storms lately.

Here's a bleary glimpse out our window to the deck during one of them.

The deck gets green

Last weekend we got two new pots for the deck, bringing us to saturation point for a balcony that is 16 feet long and 4 feet wide. The pots, a good deal from Home Depot, look like stone but are pure plastic and incredibly light.

Dabbling in some succulent rescue, I picked up an overgrown jade plant and cut off a bunch of its arms, which then languished in a tray for three weeks but did not die (this is called 'callusing'), which in my opinion makes succulents kind of creepy. That and the name. Succulent.

I stuck all of the bits and parts into one of the new pots. The mommy jade plant is already sprouting new arms. This may be my perfect plant - happiest when chopped up and denied water.

The white pot on the end is sown with arugula and micro greens. I don't know which are which and I don't have the heart to harvest the micros.

And here is our fountain, built by Tom. You'll never guess what it was in its former life.

The pouf makes Apartment Therapy

My celebrity footstool is here, thanks to AT blogger Amy Azzarito. Amy got hammered about a year ago for suggesting a $20 Moroccan pouf, yet she fearlessly revisited the subject.

Many thanks to Red Shoes for jumping in and saying something nice. Those AT'ers are a tough crowd.