Summahtime Sculpture Score

Oh summer, you verdant minx. So flashy with your hot dogs and bikini clad pool parties. The pageantry of blooming pomegranate trees and cookouts en plein air... I would love you so much more if only I could get some work done.

The no school thing is really getting in the way of my posts. Sorry about that. Let me make it up to you.

 It has the Brancusi flava.

Thrifting: it's what I do with the kids when we're all hiked/biked/plum swum out. And what did I spy with my gimlet eye, at goodwill no less? Oh it's just a giant solid bronze signed sculpture by Russell Jacques, who makes giant outdoor sculptures like these:

Maybe I should take my sculpture outside for some fresh air and kumbaya on the guitar? No?

So new sculpture is crazy good, but also heavy, pointy, and highly dangerous to my curious georges. Would that I could let it live on the coffee table, because it looks amaze with my fancy Jenny Andrews Anderson painting.

PS, I will be revealing more of that hot action later, after curtains that will surely transform my life come in.

Until then, enjoy the sculpture photoshoot that pajama time Ike and I did together. He's a right good little Vanna White.

I don't know how he got so big... it floors me how long the days are, but short the years.

I'm off to spend some more QT time with my boys, because maybe the no school thing ain't so bad, after all.

In the meantime, sorry to get pimpy but please do drop by and say hi if you enjoyed this post. I may hoard room tours until fall if everyone is too busy summering it up to glue themselves to the computer and read blogs.

Gather ye beach balls and koozies while ye may.

Rug Mystery Solved!

So, remember the crazy rug I bought in a parking lot? The one from the sale that showered dirt all over my babe and surely gave me a bacterial infection of some sort? This rug?

I couldn't decide whether to keep or sell. You guys were not impressed by its Versacesque glamours, but I saw something in there... My spidey senses were a' tingling. Lucky for me I have awesomely smart blog buddies. Cassie sent me a link to Lisa the Rug Chick, a textile expert who knows EVERYTHING about rugs. Read her blog... it's amazing. Anyway, Lisa was kind enough to email me with her take on Mystery Rug.

Drumroll, please...

1940s Spanish Savonnerie.

Exciting! I mean, it wasn't a $4 million 18th century French Savonnerie rug:

But it was something.

In the meantime, I had grown very attached to Mystery Rug. I had plans.

Master bedroom Versacefication plans.

However, Lisa the Rug Chick had some not so glamorous news: Mystery Rug was very dirty, and because it was woven on a jute foundation it would need to be painstakingly hand cleaned by a professional. No hosing this 100 pound beast down in a driveway unless I wanted it to disintegrate. Plus the jute edges had some unraveling and repair issues... plus Ben hated it.

I called Deep Eddy rug cleaners and they quoted me $425 to start -- which is not insane to clean a giant dirty antique rug -- but I didn't want to put more money into that particular rug.

Sadness.

I decided to try to sell it, so on a whim I emailed Nazmiyal Rugs in New York. They deal in all sorts of amazing antique rugs, rugs that cost more than my car.

Aaannnnd, I got an immediate call back. They wanted to buy it at the price I had set... If you watch Pawn Stars you know that dealers make you set the price because dummies like me have no idea what their stuff is worth. Therefore I had probably underpriced the rug.

I emailed another dealer, who told me the rug was possibly Austrian. Then I looked up Austrian savonnerie rugs and found this one on Ebay. Looks similar, right?

It's $12,000. Kinda more than I asked for. Ooops.

By this point I had already entered into an email contract with Nazmiyal. Hey kids, a written email agreement between a seller and buyer is legally binding.

Good to know, right?

And then I had to ship my rug off to NY on approval, which was nerve wracking. What if they stole my rug AND I was out shipping???

They didn't. They are professional dealers with a fancy brick and mortar location in New York. My little ole rug was chump change to them. Also they were very nice and reassuring.

Cherry popped. Check cashed. Tidy profit made.

Nazmiyal will make a tidier profit, but unlike many people I have no issues with selling to dealers. Yes, they will sell your item for more (a lot more) than you sold it to them, but they have massive overhead to finance PLUS they have invested time and money into building a clientele.

I mean, I could have put my rug on Ebay and asked $10,000, but who would buy it?

Probably nobody.

I hope.

So now I am a tiny bit richer and minus one rug.... guess what that means?

Rug shopping!!!

Probably for the living room (AGAIN), because I think this is going to happen:

I feel pretty good about this plan. I mean, I LOVE my blue rug, but I don't love it with the red persian rug in the living room.

Two rugs in the same room is just tricky town.

We will discuss this ad nauseum later... I have 700 pictures and opinions ready to share regarding this subject.

And someday I will finish my next how to post on buying rugs. Sorry I am so slow.

In the meantime, don't forget to enter the mega Graham and Brown wallpaper giveaway!

It ends Thursday night.

Do it.

Green Dreams

I cannot even begin to tell you how glorious the weather in Austin has been... high 70s, crisp breezes, the scent of roses and freshly mowed lawns wafting about. The weather here is usually so HELLFIRE HOT by now that this spring seems extra special and it's really hard to do anything other than lie on the ground and stare up at this:

I love it so much that I just want everything to be green right now...

Green kitchens.

Green walls.

Green wallpaper.

The perfect green accent.

In fact I'm considering a little living room switcharoo to bring in more green, inspired by this:

Hot. Sex.

Should I maybe put my new blue/navy rug:

In the front of the living room:

And put the red rug in the back of the living room?

Please pardon the bad styling and photography. I did move about 500 toys out of the picture, so I kind of rule.

I'm not convinced red rug will be ok next to those green chairs (it's definitely not as vibrant as my picture shows, but it's still dark raspberry red), however blue rug could be looking mighty fab with my giant fancy new Jenny painting:

And some new pillows made from this Robert Allen fabric:

I don't know... it's tough to say how this will look in real life. Could be good crazy. Could be bad crazy. That's a lot of squiggly lines and a lot of black and blue together.

When I can pull myself away from tree gazing I hope to move some things around. This is just the first configuration I'll try... I have a lot of big rugs now.

Of course, I also want more big rugs.

Of course, I also also want to stay married.

What do you think the chances of success for this new look are?

More than 50/50 = furniture moving time.

[images via pinterest and my house]