Flashback Friday: Bri from Me, You, and a Wiener

Another Friday, another fabulous guest post. This week I have the incomparable Bri, she of the gold wiener dog hand-painted wallpaper

and mind-blowing ikea hacks, like this insane desk

and this turquoise cabinet.


Can you stand it? Really, this girl needs no introduction. Bri, have at it!


Love that space: Wiener residence 2010. The upstairs living room or as I call it now "my rainbow sniffing days."



The vision: I just wanted something that didn't suck! Seeing as I have no decorating experience I just resorted to magazines and blogs for inspiration. I have no clue wtf my style is, I like simple crap, you know, not too much stuff everywhere. I have a kid who likes to break everything so the less the better. I also love blue, I FREAKING LOVE BLUE!!!!! So I painted the walls a dark blue.

Seriously I am way too obsessed with this color. Most of my wardrobe is blue. It's rather sad. In fact most of my house walls are blue, except downstairs which I papered in grass cloth. Unfortunately our family room is in our basement and is way too dark to get pictures of.

The elements: Too much color that's what. I realized this living room was wack and not really functional for the wiener family. Not to mention it was becoming way too girly for my taste so I decided to scrap it completely. As in GONE, done for. I repainted a few walls white but still kept some walls blue, which suck btw! Why? Because I have to constantly dust them that's why!!! But they are so pretty I put up with it.



The huh? Factor: More like WTF were you smokin' bri? Did you sniff a rainbow? I have no clue, I mean the colors are pretty but this just wasn't me. That green chair sucks btw. It's the most uncomfortable chair in the world. Ever. I'm selling a lot of this room off. I just wasn't feeling it anymore. Oh yeah you see no couch. That's cause I still can't make up my damn mind on what I want. Seriously I suck at life. But I am slowly putting the room together the way I wants it. It takes time. I love vintage and thrifted crap. I also like making crap. So most of what you see in the pictures is 80% thrifted or made. I also like money, and I like keeping my husband's money, the less I spend the more I get to spend. On shoes, expensive nice shoes. I'm a sucker for pretty shoes.

What Remains: The only pieces I kept from my old "Rainbow Sniffing days" was the floor bench which I reupholstered in a different fabric. The lamps which are now in my office and my lucite table, I would get rid of my husband first before I'd give that up. bahahhaha no seriously. True story.

The analysis: I wanted my office to look like a double rainbow exploded in there. My happy place and sh*t .


Seeing as to the rest of our house is now more neutral, I wanted at least one room in the house to be colorful. When one of my buddies saw my office he said it looked like Studio 54 exploded in there and asked if I was doing coke. bahahhah I guess you can't appeal to everyone. He's a real modern dude, all his crap is from CB2 so of course my style is a bit much for him. I told him I was going to break his knee caps next time I saw him. He took back his words. Do what you love and stop worrying about people think and sh*t. They are not the ones living in that space, you is.

I still have a lot of unfinished projects, like that lamp in my bedroom. Damn I suck at finishing stuff. I cant offer many pictures since most of my house is destroyed because of reno. A lot of stuff has changed. This last picture is crap I wish to add one day when I win the lottery. Hey it can happen people!!!!


I still don't know what my style is. I like weird sh*t, stuff that doesn't make sense sometimes. I love Hollywood Regency but sometimes it's a bit much for my taste since so I keep it to a minimum. Basically I like anything that doesn't suck. Magazines are a huge inspiration, and of course blogs. Also, I hate trends and try not to follow them. But sometimes fall victim to them. There's a lot of pretty crap out there. The chevron trend is one I'm a sucker for, I can't help but love it. I just decorate with stuff I love. And try my hardest to make it look good.



There you have it, Bri's twisted abode. It's a huge work in progress since we have been remodeling for the past 2 years!!! Hey it's expensive people. But I love my house, it's the first home we ever bought. We've made tons of memories there. I only hope one day we'll be done renovating it, so we can sell it and get the hell out of there!!!

My thanks to Heather for having me, you get TIMMY! hugs.

-gangster bri

Thanks Bri! Love the old space, but can't wait to see what you're cooking up in the new living room.

If you haven't already, go on over to her blog and be prepared to die laughing.

Happy weekend!

The Lamp Factory

I currently have three pairs of lamps in various stages of makeover.

It's no secret that I L.O.V.E. Home Goods lamps. They have a wide variety, they often have pairs (and I love pairs of lamps almost as much as pairs of chairs), and you can't beat the price. Even other mass retailers that I think of as being inexpensive, like Pier 1 or West Elm, sell lamps for about three times as much. Many of my faves from Home Goods look unique, and you would never guess I paid under $50 at a discount store.

However.

For some reason, the default base seems to be that brushed nickel, no matter what the style of lamp. And with gold accents in most of my house, nickel lamp bases just won't do.


So I've been spraying a couple of them with metallic brass rustoleum. In the un-ventilated basement. (Still too cold to open the windows here!) When the girls and I walked in the back door after school pick up, the house reeked. Oops.

This pair also had mismatched finials, and neither looked like it went with the lamps.
So I got an extra $5 knocked off each one and figured that a matching finish would at least distract from the mismatched shapes. Maybe eventually I'll buy new finials (but I doubt it.)

Pair number 2: ikea wall lamps for the guest room. You can see one in the middle there, also going from nickel to brassy, along with the wonky finials.


(You can also see the legs of a set of 4 white Ghost chairs, all stacked up. I almost sprayed them gold, just by the proximity of that spraying station. That would have been a VERY expensive mistake. Sometimes I'm a total idiot about my projects that way.)

Pair number 3: What do you think about this classic navy ticking to top off these brass stick lamps? The original white shade is feeling a bit stark against the new navy walls.


I think I'll probably go for it. This is the last project for the guest room, and then I can share the results! But at least this is a sneak peek of the wall color. I like it more and more and more and more. And our weekend guests dug it, too.

Oh, and the green lamps back in the living room.

Perhaps the most subtle "after" shot on earth. But much, much better, especially since the frames on the wall RIGHT THERE are black and gold.


Sometimes it's the little things, isn't it?