I found my dream couch.

Isn't it dreamy?

I'm actually sort of relieved it's $5K because, like, that's not even in the REALM. If it were $2K I would gnash my teeth and try to make it happen, even though my couch budget at the moment is precisely $0.0K

The Standard Sofa by Michael Felix via Amy Merrick

we have a winner

This here tree branch (well, almost) is really what I had in mind for hanging the lights.

We have a very similar two-branched hook we got at OK -- it's currently holding coats by the door, imagine -- and I was bummed to learn that the store no longer carries em.

So H did a quickie search for "tree branch coat hooks" and landed on Live Wire Farm.

WOOHOO!

Note: Our winner is not the exact hook pictured above. All the ones I liked were sold, but I emailed Live Wire Farm, and John quickly got back to me with photos of several more hooks that weren't up on the site. I chose #1, which makes me think of a hard-on. Which makes me giggle. (Truth: if you stare at them too hard they all look like hard-ons.)

Anyhoo. Maybe once we've got our hard-on installed I'll attempt to take an actual picture inside our actual house.

The truth is I attempt to take actual pictures all the time, but rarely do they feel blog-worthy. Which is why I end up posting photos of other people's SMEGS.

An update from the tiny house

1. We ditched our dying microwave and put a plant in its place on top of the refrigerator. I'm feeling VERY pleased with us.

2. We sold H's dying Jeep Cherokee, and now we're down to one car. Again. I have mixed feelings about this.  

On the one hand, Hooray! We'll lower our insurance rates. That car was a gas guzzler. And while we're both working from home, we really don't need two cars. Like, really don’t need two cars. 

On the other hand, the Jeep was really fun to drive. And H always seems to have a spontaneous 4 hour meeting with a client right when I want to go to yoga. 

WOW I SOUND LIKE AN ASSHOLE WHEN I ACTUALLY TYPE THAT OUT. (Mention yoga, you sound like an asshole. When will I learn??)

3. I bought a string of lights I want to hang inside the house, like so. But I’m not sure what to hang them from. A tree branch? An antler? A a big fat nail? I want it to look, you know, sexy but accidental. 

I welcome your suggestions.

(Eleonore Bridge's lovely Smeg via Design*Sponge. We don't have a lovely Smeg. We have a not-too-ugly grey LG.)

aaaaaaand now I need this tub brush

clearly i'm a bigger fan of erin's blog than i was willing to admit.

she gets the thing about pretty cleaning supplies. and she had a toilet brush obsession tooooooooooooo



p.s. do you know that search trick? type into your browser: "site" [colon] "nameofwebsite.com" [space] "search words"

for example, if i wanted to search this blog for toilet brush mentions, i would type: site:eastsidebride.com "toilet brush" (put the search words in quotation marks if you want both words to be a requirement)

i use that trick ALL THE TIME, though it doesn't work as well for searching esb as i'd like -- all the tags on the side of the blog give me false positives. might be time to clean up this space.


(tub brush from brook farms general store)

STOP IT WITH THIS CHAIR

I am this close to dropping $420 on eBay* and buying one for our porch.



THIS CLOSE.

The timing isn't ideal, what with me being not-so-employed right now........ Will someone else pls buy it so I can't?

(Photos by Laure Joliet for The Animal Print Shop via Anne Sage)

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*Update: This one's not vintage. I don't want it. Which, PHEW.

a wedding present for the couple who has everything

Dear ESB,

You have had some great gift posts in the past, so I thought I would ask for your help with a wedding gift that has me stumped.

I am attending a destination wedding for a couple who has a lot of money, like a lot of money. They are wonderful, gracious people and their wedding is going to be the bomb. But everything on their wedding registry, which was all very reasonably priced, was bought up the day after I got their invitation and now I have no idea what to do. 

It feels weird for us (always broke-ish) to give them cash or a gift card to Williams Sonoma when they don't really need money. I love them and would like to get them something in the standard wedding range of about $100. I could go as high as $200, but closer to $100 is ideal.

Their taste is classic, kinda fancy, but they aren't dorks or anything. They're like, wealthy, straight, big-city-living people in their 40s. Have you seen any new and exciting salt bowls? I'm at a loss.

Love,
Bad At Shopping For Once

*****

How bout a polished horn salt bowl [pictured above] and spoon....

plus a jar of white truffle sea salt "harvested from seawater off the Oregon coast based on evaporation techniques first used by early explorers at the turn of the 19th-century." (Sounds like something rich ppl would like!)

$29 + 9 + 29 = $67 from Kaufmann Mercantile

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Sidebar: I had a terrific experience with KM back when I was obsessing about tiny home decor.

I ordered the horsehair hand broom, which I l-o-v-e....

And the enamelware dust pan (which is gorg) but then I decided that I wanted the enamelware dust pan with the rubber lip, which was out of stock.

They sent me a free return shipping label, hung on to the credit for me, and shipped the dust pan with the lip as soon as it came back in (which took a while, but was worth the wait).

Can't recommend em highly enough.

And ps if you sign up for the newsletter, they'll send you a discount code for $7 off.

YOU GUYS

We're about to pull the trigger on this baby from Design Within Reach.

It's not cheap, but it is the perfect perfect perfect minimalist multipurpose desk/dining table to go under our big windows and it is made out of MOTHERFUCKING STEEL and I am over the moon.

We had the Ikea knock-off tulip table in the bungalow for 5 years, and though it looked good (from afar), it was wobbly, the plastic base attracted dirt like crazy, and the surface scratched off if you scrubbed to hard.

I'm turning FORTY. I'm too old for that shit.*
______________________________

*Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand I will now shut up about how I'm turning 40 and you can all go back to pretending I am precisely your age.

the obsession continues.

I still don't have my dream toilet brush. I posted this before I ordered it, they sold out immediately, I am an asshole, I don't want to talk about it.*

Moving on to brooms/dust pans.

Anne Sage did a terrific roundup of stylish/affordable cleaning tools yesterday,** which sparked a terrific discussion about stylish/affordable cleaning tools, which led me to....

1. The Shaker Broom from Justamere Tree Farm ($40 + $10 shipping) (which I just bought)

2. The Cardboard/Bamboo Dustpan from Harimi ($24)

I haven't pulled the trigger on the dustpan because I'm obsessing about whether or not I'm willing to pay $10 shipping for a $24 item. And whether or not I need the little hand broom that goes with it. (And if so: whether or not I care to pay for shipping from Japan.)

Welcome to my brain.
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*I did finally buy a temp toilet brush at Target after H had a mini-meltdown the other day, so you can lay off the poop talk in the comments. Thx.

**THANK GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO CARES

who's laughing NOW? (my adventures in toilet-brush shopping)

A couple of weeks ago,* as I meandered down the aisles of the Container Store, I tweeted that I was "really having trouble pulling the trigger on a toilet brush."

Everyone laughed at me. They told me I was overthinking it. They told me to go to Ikea. They told me "NO ONE LOOKS BEHIND THE TOILET."

I meant to go to Ikea. I really did. But WHO WANTS TO GO TO IKEA? Just to get a toilet brush??

I considered this quirky number..... But for $55? I couldn't pull the trigger. Then I moved on to this sleeker idea for $49. But you really would want the matching plunger. For $53? Even I couldn't pay $53 for a plunger.

And then cevd posted a link to MY DREAM TOILET BRUSH. Galvanized metal holder, oiled beachwood handle, made in Germany. $34!

Who's laughing now?? is all I'm saying.

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*Okay, six weeks ago. And yes, we have been without a toilet brush for 6+ weeks. Try not to think about it.

Things

We are gradually letting go of things that just don't fit in the tiny house.

A water jug we got at OK with credit from our wedding registry. A mid-century modern floor lamp scored at Goodwill. An ice-ball tray Maker's Mark sent me a couple of Christmases ago.

Why do we get so attached to THINGS?

As H said, "Things don't love you back."

THINGS DON'T GIVE A FUCK.



Photo by ANNALEENAS HEM via Jennifer Hagler via Aysen Orhon. (One day I'll have a night stand that is not a stack of printed material. Right??)

welcome to my world

Instead of writing a wedding-y post for tomorrow, I spent the morning googling "vintage industrial shelving" and "heavy duty shelf brackets."

I thought I was looking for this:

(Robert Reck for The New York Times)

But then I realized this is the closet unit we've got going on in the bedroom. (On the wall. There is no actual closet.) I don't really want just a better version of the same thing in the living room.

So now I'm thinking we might use heavy duty white shelf brackets to do a set of four shelves and a long desk for two. Basically, the elegant version of this.

Have I lost my mind? H seems into it.