Chez Larsson

Thrifted Part 2

 

Ok, ladies and gentlemen (?), I had fun reading your "step away from the apple, lady!" comments and you'll be well pleased to see that the apple remains intact. I did not take a single bite. Actually I do love it as it is and when I do get tired of it I will pass it on to someone else who loves the wood no matter what. I will find thee a nice home Ms Apple. After I'm done with you. Promise.

 So on to the wall candle holders. They are now white and hang on either side of the dining area window. We haven't had tall candles for a while because of Miss Mini and Master Bonus so the fact that these keep the candles out of the way of them is great. Oh, before I get comments on tails wagging at candle height I just want to point out that we are super careful to snuff all candles when we leave the area and make sure Mini and Bonus don't jump up where the candles are. Three sets of eyes are keeping close watch!

Although I did contemplate painting the candlesticks in a bright color I again went for white. I know, I'm such a bore. I added another couple which were earlier thrift shop finds and now all six are on the mantelpiece. Again one of the few areas our feline friends stay off.

Did you notice today is Friday?! Yay! After this weekend I plan to add a page to the blog with before and afters of our house. Inside and out. It's as much for myself as for you guys. I know you love before and afters and so do I. I have all these photos and I'll try to compile them room by room and then pat myself and Martin on the back for all the changes we've made since we moved in eleven years ago. I think there will actually be some in-betweens too as things have evolved over the years. Stay tuned, hopefully it's ready by next week.

Thrifted

Yesterday afternoon I went around the city to get some inspiration for work and to run some errands, also for work. I suddenly found myself outside a favorite charity shop (omg, how did that happen?) so I had to go inside of course.

Above's my loot. I love it but am unsure exactly what to do with it. I'm torn between painting the candlesticks white or all in one bright color, like apple green or yellow. The tin wall candle holders at the back will most definitely be white but any suggestions for the rest?

I'm in love with the apple! I'm not usually attracted to wooden objects (to many sauna style interiors growing up in Sweden in the 70's) but this is beautiful inside and out and so well made. It would be sacrilege to paint it but will I be able to stand the woodsiness of it? Will keep you posted!

Organizing the Storage Room

On Sunday I decided it was time to sort out the storage room yet again. The reason being that there were a few things in there that we will never ever use in this house but Martin wants to keep. I've been working around them. As in re-stacking four broken chairs in every manner possible to make them take as little space as can be. Somehow I wasn't succeeding.

The thing is we have an attic. It's just a crawl space and for eleven years we've kept it completely empty. A few months ago Martin brought home a bunch of stuff which I knew wouldn't be used or worked on for a long time so I agreed we could store it up there and now that we have some stuff up there already I thought we might as well add some more to free up space in the more accessible storage room. It will soon be fall (Yay! I love fall!) and the patio furniture needs to fit in there as well as some other garden equipment.

So I climbed the ladder, fought the wasps and successfully stored the chairs, a metal sink, an vintage wooden soda crate and a wooden toy ride.  And for those of you who enjoy a peek inside someone Else's boxes I'm hereby revealing their contents:

1) Empty boxes and containers. This is where I shop when I reorganize a space.
2) Wille's old Lego's and empty game console boxes. Boxes kept in case he wants to resell.
3) Snow ballers and children's books. I know, weird combo but there was a bit of space in front of the books and there I was with a snow baller in each hand.
4) Marbles, string lights and lamp parts.
5) Box of stuff Martin wants to keep and I want to toss, toy cars for when Wille's cousins come over and plastic bottle and tube caps. Very important. They are for a project yet to be revealed to me. Sigh.
6) Frames and  canvases.
7) Office stuff as in empty binders, clipboards etc. And a slide show thingy. Again, sigh, but on my part. I want to transfer the slides to digital and then toss the originals and the machine. Any ideas on the best way to do that? I know the tossing part, I'm good at it, but the other bit I'm unsure of.

1) Old cameras, cell phone bits and other tech stuff.
2) Herbarium and stamp collection.
3) Lead, plaster and tin for crafts.
4) Vintage toys.
5-8) Wille's toys to be sorted by him at a later date.
9) Keepsake baby clothing.
10) Manga books
11) Easter decorations
12) Halloween decorations
13) Advent decorations
14) Christmas decorations
15) Christmas tree decorations
16) Miscellaneous hardware, lanterns and scraps of foam core board.
17) Abandoned craft projects corralled by yours truly, shell and bone collection aka the smelly box and fishing gear.
18) Comics.
19) More comics. These all need to be easily accessible. Loo literature for the man beginning with an M.
29) Small frames, party stuff as in balloons and decorations and soda and beer bottle caps.

Interesting the stuff one keeps isn't it!? If it were up to me it could all go. With the exception of Molly, my plush bunny of course.

Cookie Cutter Collection

 

Victoria asked the other day if I can show my cookie cutter collection. Sure I can! It feels a bit odd to bring them out with summer approaching because I hardly ever only use them when making gingerbread before Christmas.

 

My collection is a mix between vintage and new. Above the evolution of the Christmas ham and of Rudolf.

 

About a year ago I gave over half of my collection away. They went to my sister in law and her family which includes little four year old twin bakers. They now care for Pippi Longstocking & co and a multitude of little animals, cars, planes and odd shapes.

  

The ones I kept are my faves obviously. I love hearts, leaf shapes and rounded ones. My very best one is the little acorn I think.

 

My collecion also includes a lovely woodland theme with vintage twinkling stars...

 

... and the BMW I got at Sur La Table in New York in December. Wroooommm!!!

 

These little guys are fun to dress up with frosting. The bigger ones are quite old and pretty tricky, more than once have gentlemen been amputated and ladies lost their slippers I can tell you.

Ok, I'm tucking you in again. See you in December!

Pez

Wille used to collect Pez dispensers and his collection has been tucked away in a box for a while. I love the little Pez dudes though and have wanted to display them somewhere around the house.

Our house has one floor and a basement. The stairs leading to the basement are pretty steep and there is an akward space at the top of where we built a cabinet for the fuse box, electric meters etc.  That's now Pez land.

 

Our Favorite Pez? Mr Bean. He didn't make it into the top photo, but can be spotted in the lower right corner.

Rain

 

This is so funny. There seems to be a rainy theme going on in my house. One more rainy item and I have a collection. You know that three equals collection, right?

 

Hold on. Wait a minute. All I need to do is to wait for the real thing. It's bound to start raining as soon as the colder temperatures are over. My collection will be complete!

Rainy art by Matteart Matte Stephens and Cosas Mínimas Blanca Gomez.

~

Are any of you familiar with Berlin, Germany ?(Apparently there's a Berlin, USA too!) I'm going there for the first time in March and have two days to gather Easter inspiration for work. I'd love some tips on fun shops that I might not find if I just wander around the main shopping streets. Thanks in advance!

The Art of Display

Having received some questions on how to display items on shelves I will give you some tricks of my trade. These are some very basic tricks that I teach the staff in the shops I work for.

Ofcourse there are more advanced display techniques and there are more advanced variations on the ones I'm teaching you but I won't get into that today. Also, it's not necessarily so that all beautifully styled shelves that you see in photos and in magazines have been styled using these techniques, some people just have an eye for it :) But once you know of these tricks you will probably start noticing that they are being used. Check out the chain store window displays next time you're out and about. You'll probably see a few examples.

Trick #1 TRIANGLES

   

Items which are grouped in a triangular shape draw the eye to the group as a whole instead of each individual item. The triangular shape is pleasing to the eye and without realising it your eye "reads" the display, starting at the top point, going to the bottom right and on to the bottom left and then back to the top. Click on the images to see them in bigger size.

Trick #2 GROUPING

For a triangle to be effective you need to group your items properly. Pick out the tallest item you want to display or add one if you were not planning on having one. This tall item will be the top point of your triangle. Add your mid sized items infront of your tall one. Place the outer ones to the side but still overlapping the tall one. Then place the smallest ones in front and to the side of them.

Grouping means exactly what it says, the items are or are almost touching each other (at least looking at them from the front) and yes, you may not see the every inch of the one at the back, but you will have a pretty grouping of items.

Trick #3 EMPTY SPACE

Don't be afraid of empty space when displaying. You may not have empty space in your bookcase but you should strive for some where you're not storing, but displaying.

Empty space basically means that you leave a bit of space around your group of items until there is another group. It helps the eye focus on your groups.

Trick #4 REPETITION

 

Repeating similar items is also a great attention grabber. If you have a collection of similar items you can simply line them up 3, 5 or 7 at a time. Uneven numbers are more pleasing to the eye as the eye tends to group things in two's which will "break apart" your display. Again think about the grouping trick, although this is not a triangle you still need to keep your repeated items close together, if not touching or overlapping. Also remember the empty space. Leave a little bit of space in between groups. 

When displaying I often use the triangle technique for a larger group and incorporate some small repeated items at the in bottom left or right of my triangle.

Trick #5

Keep it simple. Don't try to display all your nick-nacks at once. Store some and bring them out to switch your displays around.

I'm off early tomorrow to the south of Sweden to see my mom so I won't be posting again until Sunday. You'll have plenty of time to practice the art of display until then :)

Good luck!

Ps. The cute print "Little Olive Girl" is by Tiel Seivl-Keevers of Tsk Tsk who was recently featured on Design*Sponge.

Organizing Expedit

Since we were on the subject of books and bookcases the other day I thought I'd show you another one of our bookcases. This IKEA Expedit is in Wille's room and houses his Harry Potter books, manga collection, DVD's, magazines, CD's etc. Basically all the stuff a teenager wants to have around. In the baskets at the bottom are software boxes, assorted cables and other stuff we (I...) don't want to see.

I love the symmetry of the cube shelves of Expedit and I also love that it's deeper than regular bookcases so there's plenty of space to display things on top. This Egyptian temple was built by Martin and Wille out of MDF after our trip to Egypt five years ago. There's Anubis, Horus and the rest of the gang.

To make best use of the deep space we added shelf raisers which we cut to size from foam core board. It's glued together with a hot gluegun. Simple and fast solution. Ours are 12 cm ( 4 3/4") tall, 18 cm (7") deep and 33 cm (13") wide. 

The shelf raiser enables you to put things at double depth but are still able too see what's back there.

If you want more Expedit ideas there is a Flickr groups devoted to just that here and here you can check out photos of Expedit and other IKEA bookcases. Enjoy!

Diningroom cabinet sort-out

Boy, we are having odd weather over here. After weeks of really hot weather we are now down to fall temperatures and pouring rain. Worked for Wille and me today though as we had loads of errands in the city. Haircut, new passport, new bigger sized Stan Smith's and new school bag, all for Wille. We also snuck in and saw a movie, the new Indiana Jones which was fun.

As we got back home the rain was still pouring down so Wille sat down at his computer and I started sorting out my diningroom cabinet.

The cabinet is right next to the dining table which is really convenient as it's mostly filled with dinnerware. It could also be referred to as the nick nack cabinet because this is where I dive in to get stuff when I rearrange the things around my house. With it's central location it tends to get messy. It was time for a sort-out as I'd shoved my flea market finds from earlier this summer and other things from around the house in there. See I do that too!

The cabinet used to be a closet with one shelf and a clothes rail. We tore that out and added lots of half- and full depth shelves. Since the kitchen is so small with not a lot of storage it's a great space to have. There's a lamp bulb in a special socket by the door which lights up as the door is opened.

I always line everything up in straight lines. All of the same in front of the other. Candlesticks and votive holders together, glasses together, dishes together etc. With this main system in place it's not a huge job to sort it out once in a while.

The cabinet is a funny shape. To the right of the entrance door there's a narrow nook. We added lots of shelves in there too and it's where all the indoor flower pots, vases etc are kept. It's such a akward space and really difficult to photograph so you'll just have to imagine the rest of it.

Floor to ceiling of stuff. But all of it stuff we use on a regular basis. Love it.

Yohoo! I'm back!!!

Wille and I are back from our little vacation in the southern parts of Sweden, Småland. We stayed with close friends near a town called Moheda. The weather wasn't great but the company was.

We've been there every summer the past four or five years or so and since it's Wille's best friend's family us adults needn't worry too much about the teenagers, they're happy as long as they're fed, treated to the odd afternoon snack, swim and trip to the game shop in the closest larger town.

Us adults are in turn treated to chauffeur driven tours (Thank you Thomas!!!) of the local flea markets and auctions. This year we missed the auction but instead visited several more flea markets. The photos show my loot which I just unpacked and will clean later tonight.

I had decided to try and get a vintage globe for Wille's room and I did. Judging from the countries it's late 40's early 50's.

I try to find fleas with a purpose so a lot of mine are jars and bowls to be used in the kitchen.

Fabrics are also favourite finds. I love the vintage prints and most will probably be turned into pillow covers.

I'm always on the look out for vintage books on style, manners and homemaking and did find a few of those too.

I'll show you some more photos of the house we stayed in tomorrow. Have a great evening!

~Benita

PS. Sorry about the weird post of yesterday. The photo credits came out strange and I'll try to fix it tonight or tomorrow.