How to style an animal bust on a wall

There is something about animal heads hanging on walls that is so irresistible to me and I am always on the hunt (groan!) for a good safari bust to add to the walls of my home. There’s something so awesome about papier mache horns slapped on the wall with a few basic Target white frames, or the byproduct of one of Uncle Derwood’s deer hunting trips next to a stretched canvas print. They add some 3D interest to an otherwise flat, boring (dry) wall.

On my biweekly perusal of the HomeGoods clearance aisle, I snapped up this cool silver longhorn to add to my collection. It sits above a framed picture of the Capitol and an old wooden chair that Wes picked up off the curb in D.C. way back when he first learned of my appreciation for dumpster diving.

Animal heads, at least my herd of them, are best hung in arrangements of at least three items. They need something to anchor them to floor of the room and then draw the eye upwards but not distract from everything else going on (a la Gaston’s living room from Beauty and the Beast). It’s something I saw done well at Pretty People Vintage in Virginia (an equally wonderful source of interior inspiration and vintage clothing): they styled a papier mache zebra bust with a bright yellow chair and a few frames, and tucked it into a small space next to a display shelf. (I also love the purple walls and more-is-more approach to décor.)

This picture has been in my interior inspiration file for a long time, and has influenced most of the rooms in my tiny little house: if you visit, you’ll find a wine rack-and-mirror combo topped with a silver moose; a fireplace mantle stacked with books and finished off with a pair of deer antlers; and a desk with a few pictures hung beneath an elephant bust. And now a pair of longhorns in our bedroom!

A stylish solution to your clutter problem

“Clutter” is a loose term, but in my house it usually means wayward clothing, piles of purses, cast-aside neckties and other items that don’t quite make it home to their designated dresser drawers.

Although I wish I could blame Wes for all the mess, it’s a problem I’ve grappled with for a long time: the constant battle between my closet hangers and the insurmountable effort of getting my dry-clean only blazer hanging on one of them after a long day at work. It’s just so much easier to toss it on the back of the couch or crumple it in a corner.

To save myself those extra trips to the dry cleaner, I started installing wall hooks around the house in those little, rarely noticed places. They service a niche market for storage found between the commitment to using a closet to its fullest potential and the lukewarm interest in keeping clothing off the floor. My purses and blazers typically land on a brass pineapple hook in a corner of the front hall. Wes’s ties land on one of the hooks decorating our bedroom walls. (Actually, I purposely keep one of his marigold silk bowties draped over a hook as part of the décor).

Over the years, I’ve accumulated quite a collection of brass hooks that have become part of my housekeeping system as well as the utility (and charm) of my house. Little walls that once stood for nothing became coat racks and blank spaces behind doors became closet extensions. It gives me something to look for when I peruse through stalls in flea markets, and they’re always on my eBay watch list (like this one, this one, and these).

Get on the Turkish towel bandwagon

This post could also be titled ‘how to make over a chair in 10 seconds’ which is exactly how I use my collection of Turkish towels: at this very moment, I am sitting on a worn out Ikea Poang chair covered in a gray Turkish towel in my bedroom. It covers up a wine stain on the cushion, looks very Jonathan Adler, and pairs well with a Mongolian fur pillow all for a mere $35.

 

 

I have a white Turkish towel draped over an old wooden captain’s chair in my living room that lightens up the dark wood and saves me the time and effort of refinishing it.

They’re also bath towels, blankets – even a makeshift umbrella in one instance. They get softer (and more authentically Turkish-looking) with every wash. It’s one of the only things that I am willing to pay retail, and I used to buy them at Eastern Market from a Turkish woman who sources them from a textile town in their namesake country (I now order them from her Web site).

For summer, I’m adding a couple new ones to my stash to use as packable beach blankets-slash-sarongs. In red and turquoise stripes that look great stuffed in a canvas tote (I’m ordering this one with my unofficially new initials).

When I first discovered these, my inner cheapo felt guilty for spending $100 on three (amazing) towels. The versatility almost cured me, and then I learned that each one is hand-woven in traditional looms in Turkey and the three ladies who run this company partner with local organizations at every stage of their production process to help women in the community become economically independent.

I’ll take that over Target any day.

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Upgrade your nightstand

When we first moved in to this house, we picked the smaller bedroom to be the ‘master’ because it was in a quiet spot at the back of the house. For a few months, it was just a bed, two mismatched dressers, and makeshift nightstands (a pile o’ books and an unstable plant stand). It’s still not quite right, and has been my biggest design challenge in this old house. Working with such a small space forces you to give careful consideration to every item you want to bring in. And carefully considering is not one of my strengths. So I haven’t brought much.

Upgrading the nightstands was a necessity (I may or may not have sent a few glasses teetering to their deaths) but I had a serious issue: there was just a couple feet of space on either side of the bed, barely enough space for the pile of books. I needed something light, airy, and glass so it wouldn’t crowd the tiny little space between the doorway and the bed. And it is harder than you think to find a table that fits these qualifications.

I was just about to order this one cool gold metal table from Urban Outfitters when I found an amazing silver metal side table with a glass top at HomeGoods that was an exact fit for the space (as in, sometimes Wes gets his toes caught and trips on it on his way to the bathroom… small price to pay for the perfect side table). I picked up a second little gray table for the other side and created a new home for an old silver desk lamp from my desk, some silver candlesticks that were still in the attic, and a shimmery Buddha that everyone thinks we got on our honeymoon in Thailand but was actually a $5 clearance find at my favorite store. This great table is also fulfilling a deep, emotional hole in our lives: it’s a much-needed final resting place for books that Wes Amazons into our home, never reads, but loves to think about reading some day in the distant future.

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Tips for creating a gallery wall

My favorite little neighborhood coffee shop (Dilworth Coffee for any Charlotte locals) has great taste in interiors. On my way to pick up lattes, I always walk past this gallery wall, admire it, and think about how it wants me to spray paint all my mismatched frames a muted gold. I finally snapped some photos to share their great ideas for creating one of your own.

Granted, I am probably not the best person for giving tips on hanging pictures (I “eyeball” everything, and therefore most of my walls are covered in nail holes), but do think you’ll agree that galleries look best when they are a little willy-nilly and off kilter, as if a real artist just slapped them up there for sale.

Here are some tips I’ve learned from the gallery walls across America that I’ve admired and copied in my own homes over the years:

1. Go beyond picture frames and canvases – sprinkle in some letters, animal heads, or anything else that you feel inclined to nail to the wall – remember that there is no ‘wrong’ in an art gallery

2. Start hanging from the center – choose the frame or two that you want to be the anchor for the rest, and just go ahead and hang ’em up. Below is a photo of the gallery wall from my old studio in DC – I chose to start with the two largest pieces as the center (a canvas and a big white matted print of the Capital). Once I committed to those two as the focus, it was pretty easy to start hanging the the others in the places where I felt they fit. (And if you’re not comfortable making as many nail holes in the walls as your darn well please until it looks right, you can play with the layout on the floor and use a ruler.)

3. Vary size and dimension – use fat frames, skinny ones, long ones, small ones – but stick to roughly the same amount of space between the frames themselves to keep it balanced (I like to keep them one or two ‘thumbs’ apart).

4. Use as many colors and textures as you want – and if you want to change it up, an $8 bottle of gold spray paint is all you need. I decided to copy Dilworth Coffee and paint all my old frames gold – there are still a few left to go (ran out of paint – downside of an impulse project).

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How to make a bad rental kitchen (sort of) nice

For all the charm of this little old 1930s bungalow, the turquoise countertops are almost a deal-breaker – the kitchen was in a sad, disorganized state for months and I had no idea how to fix it.

So I decided to stop fighting it, accept those ugly laminate counters for what they were, and work with them by adding other quirky accents to liven the place up a little (and focus the eye on the white space of the pantry door).

For some reason, spelling out ‘EAT’ in large letters in your kitchen is suddenly cool, and I hopped on that bandwagon for a mere $10 worth of wooden block letters from Michael’s and sat them on top of the crown molding above the pantry door. I added a knife magnet for organization purposes, and dragged Wes’s (stolen?) street sign home from his old high school bedroom where it fit nicely above the cabinets for now. The brass pineapple hook was an eBay steal ($6) and the perfect home for an amazing Crate & Barrel dishtowel (it has all of the measurement conversions you’ll ever need, in machine-washable cotton for $6 – it’s my kitchen reference library!).

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Small space idea: decorate your small walls!

 

Wes and I are sharing one tiny bathroom, which we knew was risky going into it. With a little creativity around storage space (and ample discussion of showering schedules) it is working out ok!

 

We have a small étagère in the bathroom that holds the everyday items like shampoo, Advil, and our toothbrushes, but we had nowhere to store all the extra toiletries that I certainly wasn’t planning on parting with (although that was discussed as a potential solution). So, our bathroom storage moved into the hallway – I picked up this small table with basket storage, filled it with toiletries, and that was the end of it. 

To make it work in the hallway (and keep it from looking like the overflow bathroom storage afterthought it really is), I decided to dress up the tiny wall around it with a frame and a silver cross that had formerly been living in a box underneath the bed in the guestroom. One side of the table is where my rolled-up yoga mat now lives, and the left is where I keep my vintage eel skin cowboy boots on display.

 

I decided to follow suit with some of the other small walls (or small wall spaces between furniture) to make them the new homes for forgotten posters, artwork, plant stands, shoes, etc.

 

This teensy wall above is right next to the front door, and was a perfect fit for an old plant stand that I found at Goodwill years ago but has been living in the attic. Spare keys, gum, and pepper spray (thanks, Mom) are in the little drawer, and I added a plant to use it for its intended purpose. It made a new home for an African tribal mask that had been living in a box in the closet, my favorite ankle boots, and a little lantern.

And the small space between my armoire and Wes’s unreasonably large TV in the living room became a place to display his vintage Lakers pennant, Michael Jordan poster (???) and store my extra pads of sketch and watercolor paper (and of course, a place to display my rose cowboy boots). var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-46889504-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_setDomainName’, ‘thestyleheist.blogspot.com’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

How to make a drab little dining room cool

When we first moved in to this rental house, the dining room was the worst part. It was small and dreary and dark with dirty, damaged mini blinds and had a wall separating it from the kitchen that I wanted to knock down (and still do). It was a pretty depressing place for someone like me who takes hours to drink my coffee on Sunday  mornings and loves to throw dinner parties. It needed light, color, and fun to make it a relaxing place to work, eat, paint, sew, etc. 

It’s been a ‘work-in-progress’ for months now, meaning that I’ve had the below to-do list that I just never did. I finally took the time to knock out some of the items on my list of improvements for this room:

• Replace the ugly light fixture
• Take down the mini blinds
• Install white roman shades
• Add a colorful rug
• Hang bright, fun artwork
• Add kitchen storage
• Add colorful placemats
• Add colorful dishware
• Paint wood barstools (white?)
• Hang black-and-white striped wallpaper
• Replace fold-up butcher block on the island

Actually, now I am second-guessing the wallpaper because I like the light and airy feel so much. Maybe it just needs a couple of coats of a pale gray paint to add some dimension, but that can wait.

Anyway, I have officially moved my coffee-and-Kindle tradition from my couch to the dining room, and finally had my first real dinner party on NYE – I took some pictures with the place settings because finding the right colors was half the battle.

 

The whole room was inspired by the elephant painting in the photo below – Wes and I bought this from a street artist in Thailand on our honeymoon and carried it through multiple countries to get it home. Our last transfer was at O’Hare airport and I left it behind at a Chilis Too! Miraculously, the foodservice folks in Chicago found it, answered my frantic voicemails, and airmailed it back to us where I DIY-stretched it onto a canvas frame, hung it on the wall of the dining room to get it out of the way, and ended up designing the entire room around it.

 



 

 

P.S. The cards dangling from the ceiling in the picture above are attached to this amazing card chandelier that I found at Crate & Barrel. When I went to take down my Christmas decorations, I decided to leave it up and add in some fun pictures of friends and family to make it season-less. The mirrored star below is also a holiday decoration that just might be left up year-round.

 

 

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What to do with that weird nook in your hallway

 

We moved into a rental house that was built in the ’30s and has all the charm that money can buy (think arched doorways, worn-in hardwoods, antique moldings) and included a whole set of strange nooks and crannies that took up valuable square footage. Exhibit A above is a 3′ x 4′ alcove in our hallway that was the resting place for old gym shoes, a discarded wooden chair that Wes picked up off the curb, and useless boxes of ‘important documents’ that everyone feels obliged to keep but never needs (or opens to begin with, in my case).

 

My natural inclination was to add shelves so at least it could be organized storage instead of a pile of junk. I measured the nook, went to Home Depot and got them to cut some plywood that was sized to fit and picked up a set of L brackets to hold them in place. I bought a power sander and some white paint and went to town but couldn’t make it past the first shelf. Instead, I decided to make it into a writing desk by installing it at table-height. I love how it has become a natural home for that salvaged old chair and some of our souvenirs, brass hooks, picture frames, and my new Jonathon Adler bookends (that I wrote about here).

 

Side note: how amazing is the lion’s head doorknocker? I found it for $12 but don’t have a door for it so I nailed it to the wall for the time being. 

 

 

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$9 DIY Mason Jar Light Fixture Upgrade

 

Since I was just hating on Michael’s and mason jars, it seems only fitting that I ‘fess up to this sad little DIY project to upgrade the light fixture in my “dining room” (quotes because it hardly qualifies). The last time I tried to DIY an electrical appliance, I Youtubed my way through installing a light fixture (otherwise known as ‘create a near-death experience’) and ended up with an always flickering (yet cool) chandelier that was 100% a fire hazard + death trap that would sometimes keep me up at night. It did look good, though. I told myself, “Never again, just fork over the $75 for an electrician next time” and allowed myself to live in a home of bad rental lighting for years.

That is, until I met some friends at a hipster brewery last weekend, happened to gaze at the ceiling, and spotted mason jars filled with light bulbs and hanging from wires. Genius! (Key takeaway: I have made a friend or two in the four months I’ve lived here.) The next day, I went to Michael’s, bought a few $3 mason jars, and went home to see if I could replicate it. It turned out to be an extremely easy project that essentially just involved changing out the original shades – perfect for the risk-averse or accident-prone such as yours truly. See below for how to DIY!

First, unscrew the old light bulbs and ugly shades – but be sure to hang on to the white washers that held them in place, you’ll need them to install the jars.

 

Take the lids off the jars, and pull out the flat metal circle part.

 

 

Using heavy duty kitchen scissors, cut a round hole in the metal circle, wide enough to not-quite fit the washer.

Replace the flat metal circle into the rim of the jar, and attach to the light fixture using the white washer that held the original shade – it will not (and should not) be perfectly flush against the flat metal circle part. It’s OK, as long as it’s screwed in it will hold and a few gaps will let the heat out.

Next, replace the old light bulbs with chandelier lights. (I thought about stopping here – it was bare, but nonetheless an upgrade. Chandelier lights just make better lighting in general, especially over the old energy saving favorite of landlords everywhere.)

Add the jar, and screw it into the lid tight enough to hold it in place (but does not need to be airtight – in fact, it should be a little loose to let out the heat and avoid blowing up while you’re in the middle of a dinner party).

Voila!

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