Weekend DIY: Updated Terracotta Planter

This is where a little boredom and a lot of spray paint will get you.

Problem: A boring ol' terracotta pot, the kind you get from Home Depot for like $7.

I'm tired of seeing my plants in these pots, so I decided to play around and give it an update based on my last experiment with leftover bottles.

Given a free afternoon and some leftover spray paint, here's what I did. First, a coat of white spray paint. Then some painter's tape and some sides to an old audition to create some diagnoal stripes:

And a few swipes with my beloved gold Rust-o-leum spray paint...

Peel off the tape and voila! A brighter, more modern pot!

Planted this baby into his new home...

And gave him a good drink to help him settle in.

Aaaah. That's the stuff.

Portlandia

A few weeks ago I made a weekend trip out to Portland, where I caught a case of terrariumania. Nothing like a dose of the lush Pacific Northwest to appreciate living on the West Coast. Seriously! Just a short two hour flight away from this...

...is this:

My gal pals...

Goonies! This is the beach in Astoria where they shot that final scene when the Goonies and the Fratellis escape the pirate cove to be reunited with their parents and the cops.

Starfish!

...and introducing the best Frenchie in the world, aka Mr. Tobias Funke.

There was a 30-minute hike to get between parking and the beach, and we found some wild sorrel along the way...

Just to give some perspective...them trees is HUGE!

Foraging for wild sorrel...

 ...which was later used for a delicious home-cooked dinner:

Goodbye, Portlandia! Until the next...

Life Is in the Details

Small details in a house make it a home. I'd much rather have a half-designed home full of little personal objects that have stories and meaning to them than in a "finished" house full of off-the-shelf decor bought at Pottery Barn.

I'm a sucker for fresh flowers.

These are from the Larchmont Farmer's Market, bought for me by Alex. And the jewelry hook thing is a gift from my friend's trip to India. The hanging aortic heart is a thank you gift from my childhood friend.

I love a good bedside table.

The glazed ceramic bowl is a wedding gift from a friend. And the succulent I got at the Rose Bowl, then planted in a vintage Japanese tea cup for our wedding.

I've since changed these curtains that were bugging me so much, but the garden view is what I love. I inherited the purple and white flowers from our previous tenant, and I love that they face the bedroom window.

This is the kind of view I never had in New York City. My apartments usually had prime views of a brick wall or maybe a window where I could see my neighbor going number 2.

The Chanel No. 5, a gift from my dad. I think he learned long ago from my mom that you can never go wrong with giving her a new bottle of No. 5, and he's since passed that wisdom down to me. The pearls, a gift from my mother-in-law, passed down from Alex's grandmother.

The rabbit dish, an engagement gift from my producer and good friend, Angela. It incongruously showed up as a prop in the movie Looper. The watch, an engagement gift from my parents, with a matching one to Alex. And the rings, they were from Pottery Barn, of course.

I kid!

Lastly, this guy makes all the difference in our home. It's like rooming with a miniature friendly lion.