New Issue of Domino (and Beautiful Neutrals)!

Wonderful news! The new print issue of Domino is now on newstands! Technically it hits next week, but I found copies here in Arizona in groceries stores and at Barnes and Noble, so it should be everywhere. And guys, it's really, really good.

The team shared a couple of sneak peek photos with me and invited me to pass them along to you. Both of the images feature mostly neutral interiors. You all know how much I love the concept of neutral backdrops with pops of color. It's an easy recipe that works every time. Domino's Editor-in-Chief, Michelle Adams, had this to say about this artist's space:

Designers are gravitating towards pared down scandinavian-influenced interiors, using color to express their personalities. This artist, Jenna Snyder-Phillips, was influenced by her ink, oil and charcoal paintings. The neutral black and gray tones allow her art to take center stage and this sophisticated palette makes her 400 sq ft space feel grand. 

And how gorgeous is this living room in the Harlem apartment of designer Ron Marvin? He was inspired by a Kravet fabric with lots of beautiful, neutral tones. I think all the textural elements in here really make this room sing!

both photos by Brittany Ambridge

Here are some items that I'm loving in neutral tones with a similar vibe to these beautiful Domino spaces:

1  //  2  //  3  //  4  //  5  //  6  //  7

8  //  9  //  10  //  11  //  12  //  13  //  14  //  15

16  //  17  //  18  //  19  //  20  //  21  //  22  //  23

Now run and go grab your own copy of the new issue! :)

Fruit Painting

Pulling out my paints is the fastest route to my happy place. It's so nice to be able to turn on a good Spotify playlist (or a short story podcast), and settle in and zone out.

Someday I'd love to figure out portraits, but for now fruit and flowers are simple and fun to paint. I've been doing a few of these more graphic collection-style paintings lately inspired by some of the pre-pop Warhol prints above. I started a butterfly one for Evie's room that I need to finish still - it feels like I have a lot of half-done paintings sitting around. :/

I wanted something to hang on the wall in the kitchen right away, something big (to better fill the tall space) and colorful to pop against the new pale gray walls, so I thought a fruit collection would be really fun for the room and would be simple enough to finish in one night.


I don't often buy new canvases. I think it's fun (and less expensive) to recycle thrift store paintings. I got this giant one for just a few dollars. Shocker, I know. Who wouldn't want this gem?

The canvas was in great shape (there wasn't any texture to the old painting - and if there had been, it would have been pretty easy to sand it down). I gave everything including the frame a quick coat of white paint. (PS I have some plans brewing for that unfortunate frame)

While the paint was drying, I quickly sketched up the layout of my fruit collection idea. I tried to group them loosely by color.

I love oil paints, but the clean up is a pain, so I just used acrylics this time. I lightly sketched the fruits on my canvas and then outlined them with black paint. 

Then I just layered on colors. Like for the grapefruit, you can see on the plate here I had ivory and white and pink and orange and red and two or three different yellows. Then I've found the easiest way to get a painterly but still sort of realistic look is to just use a light hand to sort of layer on color according to how the light would hit the fruit. I really love it when little pops of the black base peek through the top layers of color.

I love painting this way - where you purposefully think less about what a banana looks like and more about texture and how light changes the eye's perception of a color. It's easier to do with fruit than with butterflies. :)

I know it's not some great masterpiece, but it was a fun exercise to start and finish a painting in the same day. And at the very least, the painting fills my wall up well and is a shot of bright, happy color in a pretty monochromatic space. Perfect for a kitchen!

Lighter, Brighter Kitchen and New Dining Chairs

One of the big projects I tackled this month was painting the kitchen. No small feat with those 16 ft. vaulted ceilings!!

I had to rent a ridiculously tall ladder from Home Depot to get all the way up to the beam. Makes me a little fuzzy feeling just thinking about it.

Remember how it looked before we moved in? Lots of yellow and lots of faux brick:

The walls are now Benjamin Moore's Titanium, which was a runner up for the common areas in the rest of the house. I had two gallons on hand already, and I love the color, so it was an easy choice.

The brick range surround also got a paint job. I need to do a second coat, but I'm still recovering from the hours and hours of work the first coat took! I'll do a post about it later, but the gist is that the mortar was a beast.

I'll admit I was a little nervous to paint out the brick for about five seconds, but now I have exactly zero regrets. It's so much brighter in here! I know I'll love it even more when the second coat is done.

The dining table could use a refinishing, but my love affair with this vintage beauty is still going strong. We recently put in all the leaves after I picked up four ghost chairs at a junk shop for $60 for the set, so now we can seat ten people around the table comfortably. I love it.

And I really like how the ghost chairs mix with the Widdicomb chairs, which I got back from the upholsterers just in time for Christmas dinners and parties. They've held up so well the past two months! The leather is really easy to keep clean (spills wipe right off) and the color is so pretty against the soft gray walls.

I hung my old Italian mirror on one side of the table and a new piece of art on the other side that I made last night on the fly.

There are about a million things left to do in this room. New lighting. Cabinets facelift. Backsplashes. New sink and faucet. Open shelving. Etc., etc., etc. But I think now we're at least in a pretty comfortable place. I don't mind the blacky-brown color of the cabinets any more now that the yellow is gone. The lights are still horrible, but I took off the old globes and put in big white vanity bulbs and that somehow helps. We've only done temporary fixes, but they really add up and help make this room more inviting.

Bright Velvets in the Library

One of the big house projects we haven't tackled yet is the built-in bookshelves in the front room we're calling the library (it's the sunken space just inside the entry). I have a handful of inspiration images and a few drawings that I want to share with you guys. It's turning into a sort of expensive project, so I'm nervous about pulling the trigger. More on that later though. In the meantime, I've been making some progress on decorating the other side of the room!

We had my Lee roll arm sofa (which we've had for almost a decade! - a record for me!) upholstered in a mohair that I got for something insanely cheap, like $15 a yard, on sale at my old favorite fabric store in the city, JEM. It's a deep moody charcoal with lots of blue-green undertones. When the upholsterer dropped off the sofa a few weeks ago, my Gracie said now it was the color of the ocean and I think she was spot-on.

The newest addition to the space is this pair of bright yellow Henredon chairs I got from a consignment store for $50. I picked them up at the same time and place that I got the pink ikat sofas (they were probably owned by the same person).

I fell in love with the color and the Schumacher strie velvet was pretty new, just a little marked up from sitting in the store. And I knew the chairs could look a little more modern if I removed the skirts and left off the back cushions.

When I got them home, I used a damp microfiber cloth to take off most of the smudges. I usually give all my vintage upholstered finds a good vacuuming and then a pass over with my steamer in case there are any mites or bed bugs (haven't had any problems yet).

The feet aren't my favorite, but they look better than the skirts and I have some ideas for changing them up down the road.

The room's far from finished, but it's fun to have a place to sit and host visitors. I'm on the fence about the Designer's Guild pillows on the sofa. The green bergeres have needed new upholstery for a long time now (thinking gray Bengal Bazaar or some other pattern in a neutral color) and the rug is there temporarily. I do like the magnolia mirror in that spot though! 

Plans

The past couple of weeks have been a blur of projects and house guests, which I have so loved doing and having, but now I'm in the clear a little more and am able to get focused back on work. I'm so excited about a big change I have in the works!

As we were organizing the house in anticipation for these house guests we've been hosting this month, Michael and I have been talking a lot about the way we use our house and about how to best use the spaces we have.

The big room above the garage that we've been calling the play room has been largely unused by the kids (these photos are from before we moved into the house). The space is sort of far away and removed from the rest of the house, so it makes sense they wouldn't really want to be up there all alone. Over time, the toys started migrating over to the bedrooms and the play room was beginning to feel like a big waste of space.

And you guys all know that I've been really thinking a lot about work and this blog and sort of trying to figure out what I want my future to look like. One of my New Years resolutions is to work smarter not harder. I don't even pretend to have a balanced life - some week's are allllllll work with family squished in there. Other weeks (like this one) have been all about friends and loved ones. I'm finally getting used to the fact that this is just how it's going to be and that there's power in embracing the imbalance of the balancing act. :)

(Sidebar: speaking of family, my friends over at Small Fry blog interviewed me about some of my thoughts on motherhood and Evie's crazy birth story. Hop on over if you're in for a read and a little TMI from me.)

It's been so nice to get to work from home for all these years, especially while my girls were so young. But I think it's time. I think I'll always share my personal home projects with you guys here on LGN, but I also want to focus on creating more editorial content and shoot the projects and ideas in a separate space. Also I've been trying to get the ball rolling on a book for about three years now, but we just keep moving and things get pushed back. I would love to finally start (and finish) my book this year.

So I thought for about two seconds about renting a commercial office space, and then I realized the play room makes the perfect studio. It was a total 'duh' moment. Why hadn't we thought of this before? The space is removed from the rest of the house, though easily accessible, so maybe I could get the best of both worlds with privacy and convenience?
My beautiful sister, Heather, who used to live with us in Brooklyn, moved back in about a week ago so she could go back to school to get her teaching certificate (so excited for her!). She'll be living in the the guest bedroom, which is right next to the new studio space. In her off-hours, she'll be pitching in with projects and I'm so excited to have her around again. She makes even the most grueling, labor-intensive projects hilariously fun. And there will always be music and dancing.

I've also hired someone to help with coordinating and shooting mostly the book. Her name is Kate and she deserves a whole post dedicated to her awesomeness. She's really great and I'm so excited to have her around starting the beginning of March. More on the amazing Kate later!

We've been working like crazy to transform the studio since deciding to turn my old office (the space with the dry erase boards) into the playroom. The new playroom space is pretty much in full swing now and the kids and their friends use the room so much more! Success.

Pulling up the carpet in the studio was, surprisingly, the easiest part of the mini reno we're doing. I had lots of practice in the brownstone, but this carpet was a breeze compared to that nasty old stuff! You just sort of pick at a corner until the carpet pulls away from the tack strip and then just pull and roll while you go. The only tricky part is getting up the tack strips, but it's not too bad with a hammer and crow bar. We got down to subfloor in just a couple hours. (Special thanks to my sister, Ali, who is a carpet-removing machine!!)

We're almost done with the new floors and I'm so excited to share the tutorial. I just need to finish baseboards and I'll take some photos. I wanted a bright white space. Here were some of my inspiration photos.

Things ended up evolving a little though and what we ended up with is a good blend of the above photos and the two below. Cryptic, I know. These all look pretty different. :) 

Anyway, I am just SO excited about how everything is turning out. I'm not really talking about the floors even, though they are spectacular! But, I'm feeling like I have a plan and a the foundation is laid for a really great 2014. Thanks for all your continued support, friends. I have felt you cheering me on and it has meant the world to me. xoxo

(all inspiration photos via Houzz here)