Woodside Residence

This Arts-and-Crafts design by Visbeen Associates was built by Holwerda Homes and is a perfect vacation property. Including the guest suite it has 4 bedrooms, 3 kitchens and tons of living space perfect for family gatherings or private retreat. By the way, this home, built in Northern Michigan, is for sale!

Modern Pendants from Lights Up

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you'll know that we have a soft spot for pretty, colorful things. We love decor that is fun, happy, and bright.

Our sales rep emailed us yesterday about Lights Up, a lighting company based out of New York. We love the line and thought we should share it with you. They make pretty, colorful pendants, which are really inexpensive and really fun. Lightsup's lead time is 10 days. The fabric can be customized.

Here are some of our favorites:








The fabric selection is adorable. Here are a few (you can see the rest on the site).





These pendants, as we mentioned previously, are totally inexpensive. They run between $200-$400.

To see the complete line, check out Lights Up web site. We'll be putting them up on our lighting section soon, so check our site in a few days...

Great Lake Story

I hope you're following Great Lake Story in Michigan Blue magazine and enjoying Jim & Susan Buda's captivating journal entries. In Blue's Winter publication the journal entry refers to the sketches Wayne Visbeen drew in the first five hours of their initial meeting. They are attached below:

Initial Concept Front Sketch

Initial Concept Rear Sketch

Initial Concept Side Sketch

Initial Concept Driveway Sketch

Initial Main Level Sketch

Initial Upper Level Sketch

Initial Concept Lower Level Sketch

Initial Concept Family Room

Initial Concept Kitchen Sketch

Initial Concept Lower Level

Initial Concept Billiards Room

Final Concept Front Sketch

Final Concept Rear Sketch

Final Living Room Sketch

About Us

The year was 2001. We were working in sales for one of those high-tech software companies in Silicon Valley. This was the year of the dot-com boom. The Internet was taking off and people were making money left and right.

We had a little money to play with and decided to decorate our own house. Mind you, we knew nothing about decorating then. We proceeded to waste a lot of money from overpaying for furniture, hiring worthless interiors designers (note: not all interiors designers are worthless, just ours) and whatever else. It was a complete disaster.

So we proceeded to find our own sources for decorating, and in the process, found some amazing places where you can get good stuff for cheap.

It was in one of those boring ass, trying-to-make-some-sales trips that we decided that maybe we could turn what we learned into a viable business. We quit our jobs.

Little did we know, it's a hard, hard business. Especially if you try to run a retail store. Especially after 9/11. Especially if you don't have any clue on how to run a business.

We started out as an online store only; then had this brilliant idea of opening a retail store, which we had no business doing. It almost undid us. Physically. Mentally. Financially.

So we got back to our core business a few years ago, which is to create an e-commerce site for home furnishing products that are pretty and affordable.

This turns out to be the best business decision we ever made.

We now operate two online stores. Inside Avenue is our main store and carries mostly furniture and accessories. Inside Fabric is our first niche store, carrying only upholstery fabrics and wallpapers. We plan to add more niche stores in the future- time and money permitting.

This blog is born out of our love for decorating. We love finding new things and tell you about it.

We love discovering new vendors, especially the small and emerging ones, and write about them.

As we find new resources that are interesting or useful, we share them with you. They are not all neccessarily about decorating. Sometimes we write about food,travel and fashion too.

We hope you enjoy our blog. Thank you for reading.

P.S. Your thoughtful comments are always appreciated (note we said "thoughtful"-read into that as it was intended).

Three Very Glamorous Chandeliers

You probably think that we are being lazy when there are only "three" items on our list instead of ten. What is it about lists that always have to have ten items in it anyway?

So we are going to buck the trend by only have three items in our list. Mainly because right now there are only three chandeliers that we think are worth mentioning, and the other reason is, well, we really are lazy today. It's been a long week.

We promise to bring it to ten eventually.

Here are our three favorite chandeliers this week. We like them because they make such a statement without being too expensive (they run about $1500-$1800).

This one is from Oly Studio. It's called Flower Fall Chandelier.


This one is from a small designer in Los Angeles called Marjorie Skouras. We saw this in High Point and it is lovely indeed.


This one is from Made Goods, one of our new favorite vendors.

Colorful Upholstery Furniture from CR Laine

One of our biggest complaints about American furniture manufacturers is how BORING their furniture can be. Year after year you see this same old stuff--they call it classic but we think they are just unimaginative. We're talking about brown, dark wood furniture, heavy upholstery in taupe and cream, plain styling. The sad thing is, 80% of households have this stuff. Why? Because we don't have lots of choices.

So we were really happy to see some colors this seasons from some of the old-school uphoslterers. They are finally getting it! Who wants to be surrounded by drab all the time! Give us some vibrancy and happiness! Give us colors!

Here are some from CR Laine that we kinda like. This company makes great upholstery furniture. Most of their stuff is fairly standard (as you will see from the web site), but here are some jewels:




To see the complete product line, visit to CR Laine web site.

Careerline Tech Center

The Building Trades program of Careerline Tech Center purchased a plan from Visbeen Associates and their students worked to build the house. Students do the rough and finish carpentry on the house, as well as the roofing, insulation, siding and concrete work. They build the deck off the back of the house and install all windows and doors. Congratulations to these students on a job well done!

Cara Tepat Teknik Pengecoran Beton

Concrete is a mixture of sand and cement krikil (split), which is a construction sala very important in building the structure, function of the concrete is urged to hold power, so in making concrete work should be considered carefully, in order to achieve the quality of concrete in accordance with expected.

PREPARATION

Before making concrete begins, all equipment and transporter mixing concrete should be clean, before the concrete casted in locations to cast dirt must be cleaned of dirt.

Stirring

Mixing concrete on the quality of concrete, but the quality of Bo, should be done with a mixing machine, in order to perfect mixing, during mixing progresses, the thickness of the concrete mixture should be kept, whether the amount of water is quite appropriate pencapur, the stirring time depends on the capacity of the beater, but in general while stirring taken at least 1.5 minutes after all materials entered into the drum mixer, the perfect note when mixing mortar results have the same color.

TRANSPORT

Transporting concrete mixture from the mixing place should be conducted casting happens not to separation and loss of material, if the transport distance away and take time, typically a concrete mixture should be casted within 1 hour after mixing with water, and if necessary a long transport time, the period it can be extended 2 hours but the concrete mixture should be driven mechanically continuous, if it took even longer then needed materials binding inhibitors.

FOUNDRY and compaction

Concrete should be casted as close as close to the final goal to prevent the separation of materials due to the transfer of mixture in the molds, since the casting started, the work should be continued without stopping until it reaches a specified location. To prevent cavities and nest cavity nests empty gravel, concrete mixture should be solidified during casting, compaction can be done with mortar or grind numbuk by hitting hit print, but it is recommended to use a mechanical compactor (vibrator)

Six Great Decorating Web Sites

We love decorating web sites as much as some people love chocolate, perhaps even more so. It's an addiction, actually. A harmless one, but an addiction nonetheless.

Here are some fantastic decorating web sites we'd like to share with you. They serve as inspiration boards, ideas and sometimes, just decorating porn...

1) Light Locations

The web site itself is a photography agency for home & garden magazines, but you can get ideas from their beautiful images.

2) Remodelista

This is great blog for resources, product ideas and the like. Easy reading, pretty pictures.

3) Design Sponge

Founded by Grace Bonney, this blog has several postings per week with topics ranging from decorating, DYI project, before & after, book reviews. Very thoughfully written.

4) Point Click Home

This is the official web site for Metropolitan Home and Elle Decor. It is well-categorized and have all the back issues covered. A great site to browse through past & current issues without having to store tons of old magazines.

5) My Home Ideas

This is the official web site for Sunset Magazine, Southern Accents, Southern Living, Cottage Living and Real Simple. It has tons of pictures (and tons of ads as well), but it is a wonderful site to browse through for tips and inspirations.

6) Redcover

We love this web site for its wide range of home decorating pictures, mostly international. Beautiful photography.

Backpack Shcool

Are you looking for a wonderful place for buying wonderful gifts? Are looking for some amazing fun things to buy? Then Posy lane is the site for you. They have the most fun amazing things for your kids also. insulated lunch tote , toddler backpack , kindergarten nap mat preschool nap mats are available in this site. They will definitely love the things in the Posy lane website. You might have been faced with the tough job for finding the right place for buying things for your kids. You don't have to think any longer, because Posy lane is here for you. It has the most wonderful stuff for your kids; they will surely love you for the things that you buy for them from Posy lane. The Posy lane site provides you with the most fun stuff which you won't find any where else. These items are also low priced; they will certainly not hurt your wallet much.

Autos

Launched auto-expanding compose boxes in Gmail for iPhone. This makes composing longer messages much easier since you're able to see more of the text you've typed. Just keep typing until you get near the bottom and then the compose box will magically expand by a few lines! As an added bonus, for all those iPhone users out there, auto-expanding compose boxes take away the need to press and hold to scroll with the magnifying glass.

OPEL ZAFIRA 2003 Autos workshop industry and everything about Opel Zafira 2003. Technical data, crankshaft, butt head, camshaft timing, cooling circuit, agent lubrication, overview of components, air ducting, charging, bankrupt system, pneumatically controlled systems, allegation burden control, air alter ascendancy in overrun, ACF system, crankcase breather. I am new to the whole Turbo design and function but I wanna go that route.

Reynard

Reynard was built by Jeff Segard, Grand Concept Homes and the photographer was Megan TerVeen. For more photos, check out our website. Here's a write up:

Designed to make the most of a waterfront site, the four-bedroom, five-bath Reynard would be at home in any setting. A large welcoming foyer leads to a spacious open living area. Two wings radiate from the living room – one with private spaces such as bedrooms and baths, the other with a large kitchen, dining room and home management center. Two decks and a hearth room make outdoor living easy. A casual lower level contains two additional bedrooms, a family room, and a cozy screen porch.