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femina house
Styling by Louise Kamman Riising, photos by Pernille Kaalund // Femina magazine

Gosh, I’m SO BAD at doing scheduled posts. This is only the fifth Friday (since May 2010!) I’ve managed to do a Twitter round-up. I like the idea of doing it every week, but I’m forgetful.

Here are my favorite tweets from the past two weeks:

+ I love everything about this Danish home, as spotted on emmas designblogg.

+ I love the new Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools poster from Pop Chart Lab (designers of the awesome Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names poster in my hallway).

+ Martha from Uniform Natural wrote this great post about SCARFSHOP and her thought processes that went into every aspect of its creation. Really inspiring!

+ Have I mentioned how happy I am that Kathy is blogging again?

+ LOOK! AT! THIS! HOUSE! (!!!)

+ There’s just something about watching a beautiful French girl put on makeup, you know?

+ Is it possible that it’s taken me 30+ years of listening to “A Prairie Home Companion” to finally realize how annoying and unfunny it is?

+ The performance by Janelle Monae, B.o.B, and Bruno Mars on the Grammys? YES PLEASE. (Also: Janelle Monae and Bruno Mars are going on tour together. Yay!)

+ Adrian Tomine on NYC: “I pay the exorbitant rent so I can stay at home and know that I could avail myself of all that culture if I wanted to.”

+ #mymostamazingqualityis my ability to procrastinate to the point of utter desperation and then pull off a half-assed effort at the last second.

+ Twenty-six album sleeves…recreated in LEGO.

+ Have you been following along with Juli and John’s trip to Japan? Great photos, great posts!

+ Crystal Renn on weight loss and backlash. I hate that she even has to address this.

+ The Crazy Nastyass Honey Badger, with original narration by Randall. This is what all nature shows should be like.

+ I love this short film of Daniel and Valeria of Hindsvik‘s home. It was shot by Pascal Perich for Etsy, and it gives a really nice little peek into D&V’s living space. It’s amazing how different a house can look in video than in photos…

Vogue on Vogue on Vogue
14 issues of Vogue Deutsch, layered // Shrubrub

Okay, okay. I know it’s technically past midnight and therefore also technically Saturday, but it’s still Friday in…um, California, right? Sure. So here are my favorite tweets from this past week!

+ Vogue on Vogue on Vogue: This is what you get when you layer a years’ worth of Vogue covers (from 19 countries!) on top of each other.

+ This hilariously accurate flow chart shows you how to describe your used furniture on CraigsList.

+ IKEA gave all 12,400 of their U.S. employees mountain bikes for Christmas. Beats the hell out of a lame buffet and an open bar, doesn’t it?

+ I’m thinking about buying this insulated cat house for “our” stray, Sylvester. It’s cold out there.

+ I’m in love with these incredible modern quilts by Carson Converse Studio.

+ An abandoned men’s club in Alabama is now a home, and it’s really beautiful.

+ How great is this pine dowel Christmas tree that Martha and Tom made?!

+ You know what I want for Christmas? FRECKLES.

+ Barring the gift of freckles, I’ll take Tord Boontje’s entire “Witches Kitchen” set.

+ Okay, or a Box of Swedishness.

+ If you haven’t already watched Kanye West’s short film, Runaway, you should. Even if you think you’re not a fan. (Thanks to Kathleen for the reminder!)

Dan and Me

No, I don’t have a secret son or a much-younger brother, that’s Dan from Manhattan Nest! We’ve been hanging out a bit lately, and let me tell you—I think we’re ready for our own TV show. About what, I have no idea, but is that really important? I’m sure we can come up with something.

I’m sure this is going to make Dan blush, but you know what? Aside from being super-smart and funny, he is just one of the nicest, most considerate people I’ve ever met. He’s a really good gift-giver, too. As if buying me Amy Sedaris’s new book, Simple Times (OH MY GOD, IT’S SO FUNNY), wasn’t enough, do you know what he gave Evan and I for Chrismukkah? You’ll never guess…

We each got our own Clarisonic. No, seriously. Can you even? Evan and I are going to have the cleanest pores on the planet, and it’s all thanks to Dan.

I, on the other hand, am horribly thoughtless. You know what Dan got in exchange? He got the honor of baking banana bread with me at 10:00 at night. Cool, right? Okay, and a cup of coffee. And I wrapped up some of the banana bread for him to take home. Come to think of it, he also got to spend an awful lot of time snorgling Fritz and Bruno (they love him), so I guess he made out pretty well. Maybe I’ll even let him renovate my kitchen, too, if he’s lucky.

Thanks for being a good friend, Dan. I’m glad I met you. 2010 was the year of Manhattan Nest, and I predict all good things for you in 2011.

Mehmet Ali Uysal
Urban installation by Mehmet Ali Uysal // Chaudfontaine Park, Belgium

In case you missed them, here are my favorite tweets from this past week. Enjoy!

+ This installation piece in an urban Belgian park by Turkish-born artist Mehmet Ali Uysal is completely fabulous. (via Büro North)

+ Mari at One Ink Pin on what it’s like to have never been kissed at 22.

+ There’s a big Robert Rauschenberg exhibit at Gagosian Gallery through January 15th. (via HI + LOW)

+ My mustard-colored scarf from Scarf Shop arrived, and wow, is it beautiful. I want to wear it every day. Thanks, Martha!

+ I’m crazy about the jewelry in the Fortune shop by Kim Dulaney. (via Design For Mankind)

+ We just signed a 19-month (don’t ask) lease renewal for the apartment. NO rent increase! Yay!

+ Some of the 40 pages of photo collages, paintings, drawings, and writing David Hockney contributed to French Vogue in 1985.

+ Mamma Biscuit had her photo taken with Santa Claus!

+ Did Modernica rip off Büro Tree with their “Superstar” trees? Büro vs. Modernica. Hmmm. (And no, it wasn’t a collaboration.)

+ Evan gave me these incredibly beautiful earrings from Round Designs for Hanukkah. I’m a lucky girl!

+ Keri Smith shares Secrets of the Self Employed (or How to be an Amazing [insert profession here]), and her advice is perfect (even for those of us who aren’t self-employed).

+ Did you notice that the “featured blogs” for December are up? Check ‘em out…over in the sidebar!

mjolkshop
The Twosome Blanket by Vík Prjónsdóttir // From KITKA Design Toronto

Uhhh, so…I completely and totally forgot about my supposed “new category” for Fridays that I announced back in May. Like I said then, I’m not good with schedules or planning when it comes to blogging! This has been an especially good week for tweets, though, so without further ado…

+ Juli and John over at Mjolk Shop did a photo shoot for the blankets from Icelandic collective Vík Prjónsdóttir they’re carrying in their shop now, and the result is both hilarious and sweet. I also really, really want a Sealpelt to wear in my always-chilly house this winter!

+ On the day after Thanksgiving, would you consider joining the Carnivalesque Rebellion and observing Buy Nothing Day?

+ Portland-based builder, designer and tinkerer Matt Pierce has a beautiful new blog, and it’s called Wood&Faulk. (Check out the wooden crate headboard!)

+ The interview with Loretta Lynn on Fresh Air this week was phenomenal. If you missed it, you can listen online.

+ The new line of fixtures at Schoolhouse Electric is pretty great. (And look! It’s Victoria’s nook!)

+ This Arne Jacobsen sofa is pretty much the most amazing piece of upholstered furniture I’ve ever seen in my life. (via Hindsvik Blog)

+ Damn You Auto Correct! I seriously thought I was going to stop breathing and/or vomit from laughing so hard at these iPhone autocorrect FAIL screen captures.

+ If this clip of James Brown performing “Night Train” doesn’t make you happy to be alive, then you might already be dead:

I love this! Carnivores & Destructors is a new, limited-edition Morrissey fanzine put together by Adam Krause at Pau Wau Publications in Brooklyn. It makes me happy to know that the fanzine is not obsolete! They had a Michael Jackson fanzine, too, but it’s out of print, unfortunately.

(Did anyone else used to subscribe to the long-defunct, brilliantly-named Morri’zine in the late ’80s/early ’90s? I still have every issue.)

Now, about the changes around here…

Yes! There may be a few more tweaks over the next couple of days, but I have finally given Door Sixteen a design overhaul. Aside from the design, these are some of the new features you might have noticed:

Featured blogs. Following a discussion about the effectiveness of blogrolls on Twitter a few nights ago, I decided to do away with mine completely. By featuring just four or five blogs every month, I’m hoping to bring a little more attention to each one rather than letting them get lost in a sea of links. (Check out my October selections!)

Social media sharing buttons. I resisted adding buttons to facilitate sharing posts on Twitter and Facebook (and some other places I don’t know anything about, like Digg and StumbleUpon), but the time has come for me to give in. I use Twitter constantly, and I know I like when the blogs that I read have these buttons (URL shortening is built in!), so…there you go.

Gravatar support. If you’d like your image to show up next to your comments on blogs instead of a yellow dot, visit the Gravatar website and get yourself a globally recognized avatar. This is entirely optional, of course, but it’s fun. Your avatar will show on any Gravatar-enabled blog.

Threaded comments. I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner! Now I can reply directly to specific questions in the comments, and you can reply directly to other commenters, too.

Wow, I feel like I’m finally caught up with all of the latest features…from 2008! Please let me know if something is looking weird or not working right (and I’m not talking about Fritz).

Mr. Pickle

Things might look a little weird around here on Monday night. I’m in the middle of updating the design of Door Sixteen, and it’s going to take a couple of hours to fully transition everything. Thanks for bearing with me!

In the mean time, enjoy this anthropomorphized pickle.

Remember my friend Adam? You know, the guy who did that amazing bedroom renovation a couple of years ago? Yeah, him. Well, he took a little break from working on his house . . . and a not-so-little break from blogging. A couple of weeks ago, Adam came down to Newburgh from Potsdam for a visit with Evan and I, and I gave him some poking and prodding and encouragement to get going again—with the blogging, yes, but more importantly, with working on his house.

Adam was one of the first people to see our house when we first bought it. He saw it before we’d even moved in! He hadn’t been down since then, though, so he really got the full “before and after” effect with a four-year gap between visits. I’d like to think that seeing our progress was a little inspiring. I know it gave me a little perspective on how much we’ve gotten done by thinking about how different the house was the last time Adam was here.

Anyway, Adam is back to blogging, and I couldn’t be happier for him. He’s all set up with a new layout and logo and his own domain, too! You can find him (and me too, from time to time) at Fixing Adam’s House. Yay!