Another Travel-Themed Nursery

ohdeedoh, which I wish I had found before our little one was born, has a tour of another amazing travel-themed nursery. I'm really happy with how our travel-themed nursery turned out, but I would have loved to see a few reference points like this one before we got started.

Downtown Austin West Elm and Etsy Event

I just found out about a little event crafty and mid-century design lovers might be interested in. West Elm, Etsy and abby try again are putting on We Heart Handmade Art, a one-day, pop-up event. And it looks like the lovely ladies of Spruce, a.k.a. the Spucettes, are going to be there as well.

Here are the details:
The downtown Austin West Elm
1011 West 5th St. Suite #100
Austin, TX 78703
February 26: 1pm-6pm

Mid-Century Austin Find: Vintage Gas Stove

It looks like this stove could use a little love and a lot of scrubbing, but it could be the highlight of any kitchen.

From the craigslist listing:
Beautiful 1950s white gas stove. We bought it for our kitchen, but it didn't work out for us. When I bought it, I was told it worked perfectly, but I never installed it. Very mid-century, very cute. It looks like a standard size that should fit in any kitchen.

Mid-Century Kitchen Remodel

You know how once you see something you start seeing it everywhere? That's how I feel about Stuart Sampley Design Studio.

I just got done writing about their A.D. Stenger Remodel when I see them in Apartment Therapy while I'm looking for mid-century kitchen inspiration for our eventual kitchen remodel. Check out the pics of their five-star rated kitchen remodel, in another A.D. Stenger home. (I wonder what they did with that Malm fireplace.)

The best part is they're in Austin, so when we get serious about our kitchen remodel we can actually use them, not just use their pictures for inspiration.

Mid-Century Kitchen Tile

We have big plans for our kitchen, which involves lots and lots of smaller pieces. Perhaps some of the smallest pieces are the backsplash tiles. I have a few favorites from modwalls:

The Hudson blend
And the Big Sur blend

Handcrafted Modern

An amazing friend gave me an amazing book for my birthday and I finally finished reading it/drooling over it.

Handcrafted Modern is, according to the dust jacket:
An intimate and revealing collection of photographs of astonishingly beautiful, iconic, and undiscovered mid-century interiors.

Among the myriad studies of significant mid-century interiors, none are more celebrated yet under-published as the homes created by architects and designers for themselves. This new collection of photographs presents the most compelling homes by influential mid-century designer such as Russel Wright, Wharton Esherick, George Nakashima, Harry Bertoia, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eva Zeisel, and allows a personal glimpse of the private spaces in which they chose to spend their lives.
Anyone decorating their home with mid-century design should check out this book, for a few reasons:
  1. If you're redoing your kitchen, it never hurts to see what the Eames' kitchen cabinets looked like.
  2. If you're trying to figure out how to add more character to a mid-century home, so it's not just all clean lines and peg legs, this book is the answer.
  3. If you want to see true function of space, these homes will blow you away.
The one drawback of this book is a problem I have with a lot of things I love: Sometimes the artists who influence the artists you love aren't your cup of tea.

As long as you don't expect to love every photo or home in this book, you should flip through every page.

A.D. Stenger Remodel

Hat tip to Modern Austin for finding this gallery of an A.D. Stenger remodel.

From the architect:
Remodel of mid-century modern residence designed and built by A.D. Stenger as his personal home in Rollingwood. Scheduled completion March 2011 - Built by Miars Construction. 5 STAR rating from Austin Energy Green Building Program.

Mid-Century Austin Estate Sale: 1615 Country Squire, Cedar Park

This estate sale might be worth the drive out of town, windows down of course.

Here are the details:
1615 Country Squire, Cedar Par
Cedar Park, TX 78757
February 18: 8am - 3pm
February 19: 9am - 3pm
February 20: 11am - 3pm

Retro Flip Clock Screensaver

For a while, I've had my standard computer background: the original R2-D2 and C-3PO concept art by Ralph McQuarrie. I like because it has a mid-century futuristic feel, and because I'm a nerd.

But I didn't have a good screensaver to fit in with the mid-century vibe at our place. That is until I looked over at a co-worker's monitor while he was at lunch. He has a great flip clock screensaver, which I now have on my home computer.

Now I just have to pick up a real-life retro flip clock to match.

Mid-Century Austin Homes: 6205 Dorchester Dr.

The tour guide in this video says "mid-century modern contemporary" enough to make anyone want to scream, but it's worth it to see the stove.

Mid-Century Dollhouse

Having a kid sometimes means deciding between good design and dropping a few extra dollars in their college fund. With that in mind, I think we'll be passing on the Emerson House. But if they could blow it up to real-people size, I might be interested.

From their site:
The Emerson House modern dollhouse is the perfect home for the modern family. The modern home has six rooms including a living room, kitchen, library/office, master bedroom, bathroom and child's bedroom. With its large, open floor plan and floor-to-ceiling windows, the Emerson House enjoys year-round sunlight. The modern dollhouse features many extras including mitered-glass corners, two fireplaces, sliding glass doors, solar panels and recessed LED lights.

Out of This World, Vintage-Looking Toys

I'm a fan of toys. I'm also a new father trying to find non-branded toys. And it wouldn't hurt if those toys inspired a great deal of imagination and wonder. I think these toys fit the bill, and have some amazingly designed retro packaging.
I just need to wait for them to be age appropriate for the kid.

Mid-Century Austin Find: Retro Stereo and Bar

I have seen wonderful mid-century stereos and gorgeous mid-century bars, but I have never seen a combination of the two before.
You can find it on Austin's craigslist here.

Broyhill Sculptra Magna Dresser

I thought I had seen the entire Broyhill Sculptra collection, but then I ran across this photo.

From the site description:
Vintage Modern Danish Style Broyhill Sculptra Magna Dresser. Among the Sculptra bedroom pieces, this is the hardest to find. This is a fantastic storage solution for any retro 1960s mid-century modern furniture lover. 2 Columns of drawers and one row with 3 divided shelf sections. American made.

Mid-Century Ranch Home Colors

We've got a contender for the door color.
With a solid backup color
The pipes will be fence posts, a trick we picked up from our landscape guys - great metal look with a much smaller price tag. I think we're going to go with stainless steel for most of the metal work (mailbox, address numbers, doorknob). And we're still planning on a bocce ball court in the fairly useless strip of dirt to the right of the sidewalk.

Bought Our Mid-Century Tree Topper

This post is a bit out of season, but when you buy things out of season you can save yourself some coin. We just bought out mid-century tree topper because it finally went on sale.

This is the one we ended up with:
It should look pretty good on top of our mid-century Christmas tree.

Mid-Century Carport Idea

One of the items on our to-do list is to turn the carport into an outdoor living area. There's a gate between the carport and the road, which makes it a pain to park there, and since we live in Austin there's no snow to try to keep a car out of.

I ran across this image and it's something we might consider.
Half walls like that could give the carport more of an outdoor-room feel, and less of a people-used-to-park-cars-here feel.

Shutter Bugs

I've been doing a lot of research on mid-century shutters and shutters in general. Basically there are four styles, with slight variations within each style.
I'm not really in love with any of them, so I thought I'd get a little creative and come up with something original, based on the Crestview door we're planning to install.
Luckily this is only in Photoshop and not real life, because it makes our house look like a bird. Back to the drawing board.