Living Inspiration: The Getty Villa

When visitors come to town, I tend to look at Los Angeles from a tourist's perspective. What in this city is actually worth sitting in traffic for, or spending half a day at? Pink's Hot Dogs? Nope. The Hollywood sign? From afar. The Venice canals? Maybe.

When the husbo's parents came to town a few weeks ago, we ended up spending an impromptu day at the Getty Center and the Getty Villa. I'd been to the Center, but the Villa is one of those things that you hear about and never really make it to until parents are in town...you have to make advance reservations and buy tickets ahead of time. But I was very glad we ended up going, as it made for some nice design inspiration and a great way to spend an afternoon.

Built atop a hill in the Pacific Palisades in the style of a Roman villa, the Getty Villa actually reminded me of my college semester spent abroad in Rome, Italy. Oh, if only our garden looked like this:

The main things that I remember about Rome are stuffing my face with penne all' arrabbiata and drinking red wine with my new Italian friends at Il Fox, our favorite pub in Trastevere. The alcohol eradicated any self-doubt about my language skills and allowed me to speak Italian freely and without worrying about sounding like an idiot. La vita e' bella!

Occasionally, though, occasionally, vague memories of studying ancient Roman art and architecture will trickle through all the food and drink memories. Oh yeah, Il Foro. Ohhhhh yeah, Caravaggio! He was that guy who painted, like, dark shit. Right?

The Getty Villa included a fantastic outdoor herb garden, one that I would love to have in our backyard. Unfortunately, Crazy Backyard Squirrel would put an end to that quick.

I loved how the Villa designers used color, too. Look at the contrast between the aqua tiles in the pool and the bright yellow spring daffodils.

Apparently, ancient Greek and Roman statues were actually fully painted back in the day. We're just so used to seeing them after the paint has worn off, with the pupils gone. But this just looks creepy, doesn't it?

I see you, Jake Scully.

Ahhhh... what I would give to spend a year living in Rome again.

Can you imagine if this was your home, like the Roman emperors used to do it? Imagine the bad-ass house parties you could have. I'd Gatsby that up in a second.

With a Little Help from my Friends...

Any Asian knows at least one person who's got their glamour shot wedding photo blown up to a wall-sized canvas and displayed in their living room.

Sorry, I found your pic on Google.

Needless to say for me, hells to the no. I've always shied away from putting too many personal photos on display in my house, but I'm rethinking that now. My parents' living room is cluttered with personal photos of our family vacations, weddings, kids, etc--and I love looking at all of them. My husband and any other visitor also gets a kick out of seeing all these old photos of us.

Recently, I visited a friend who'd moved to a city far away from her friends. Her apartment was filled with great photographs of her family, friends, and pets, all framed and, quite honestly, evoking those very people, even thousands of miles away. It was a testament to why we keep old photos and display them. It's like having your friends and your memories all around you, at all times.

I've yet to put up photos because I just haven't gotten around to getting frames, but also I'm trying to figure out a good way of displaying images without cluttering up our space and while keeping the overall aesthetic of our home.

Here are a few ideas I'm toying with to display more personal photos:

Create a cluster of frames

A pic here or there may look messy, but strength in numbers is key!

From theeverygirl.com

From Apartment Therapy

or something more geometric, like what I did for these cool Cassia Beck photos:

Create a shape out of unframed photos

From Thefancy.com

Clotheslining Polaroids

We have a bunch of great polaroids from our wedding that would work great for this. And we could really fill up the office window (which looks sort of gross anyway) with this trick.

From Apartment Therapy

Create a rotating clip board 

This super simple DIY featured on creativemama.com involves a strip of wood, screws, and four paper clips--plus your choice of photos to display and change as you please.

From Creativemama.com

Keep a photo board / mood board

Nothing better than working at your desk and looking up to see all the people you're not hanging out with.

From Dustjacketattic

I love this idea...would work great with our dark office wall.

From Smitten Studio

Create washi tape frames

Cheap, colorful, and cute!

A Treasureless Hunt

In my quest to make over our office, I've been hitting up thrift stores and flea markets to find a cabinet or chest of drawers that can do double duty as our printer table and store all those stacks of head shots and post cards.

A few weeks ago I made a little trek out to the Rose Bowl Flea Market - the mecca of vintage treasures in LA. I meant to get up   with the rest of the crazies at the crack of dawn and pay an extra $20 for early admission at 5 am, but then I came to my senses. The early bird special is good if you're hunting for an authentic Eames lounger or Saarinen tulip table or a vintage Chanel purse for a fraction of its going price, but since I was just looking for something functional, I got a few extra hours of beauty sleep and showed up around 9 am.

Spotted this cool mid-century sunburst clock...

It's not me but I love these awesome baroque chairs in the background...plus how fun would it be to replace that olive green vinyl in the foreground with some cool fabric?

And this super comfy leather recliner, which Alex got excited about since it's the same model as his father's office chair from years ago. We saw it at H.D. Buttercup last year going for about $3,000. This was $250. Does anyone know the maker? If it was black we would've bought it, but that burgundy was nicht so working for me.

Also made a trip to the famed Wertz Brother's Antique Store in Santa Monica, and found that it was closing.  Doh! I had to make do with their vintage furniture store nearby, which had less fancy stuff but was a maze of cool finds. This sturdy Drexel chest was $195. Not my style or color, but well-constructed.

Don't these look like they belong in that big room of stuff in Return to Oz?

Pick me, Dorothy! Pick me!

I'm a sucker for old card catalogues, but I need drawers that will fit those headshots and stacks of papers inside, not just paper clips.

These parrots yelled "HELLO!" at you if they saw you down the aisle. I assume they were also master shoplifter-detectors.

How many fair maidens have washed their butts hair with this basin?

Oh well, no loot this time. I'll have to keep looking.

Goldmember Part 2: DIY Gilded Magazine Rack

Off the tails of yesterday's post about how I'm basically Austin Powers' Goldmember, here's another Midas touch transformation I did of a cheap shabby-chic chickenwire magazine rack that I found at Home Goods.

Here's the original:

Very industrial Returns to Oz steampunk, no? Cool but not my style. Laid it out in the garden...

Did a quick spray primer with my favorite, Rustoleum, to make the paint stick.

Two coats of Rustoleum's shiny gooooold:

Oops, missed a spot!

Ta da! Left it outside for 48 hours to dry...

And found a temporary spot next to the new office couch just in order to stop the cats from scratching. The office is in mid-renovation after my last shame-sesh. Updates soon, I promise!

Who dares to disturb my slumber?

I plan on actually nailing this to the wall and maybe making it into a little in/out box over my desk, or a hers/his, once the office is finished remodeling. Because gold makes even going through the mail a fancy affair!

DIY Gilded Plant Stand

Why are plant stands so damn expensive?

A regular run-of-the-mill one from Home Depot will run you up to $100, about the same price as a cool mid-century one off of Etsy. It's a damn holder for plants, people. It doesn't do anything, except sit there.

Rather than shell out a hundred buckaroos for an inanimate object that I don't even like the aesthetics of, I decided to upgrade a cheapo one from Amazon. Like our old friend  Pepe Le Pew says, there ain't nothin' that some good ol' spray paint can't solve.

The original, made of wire-metal painted green, for $20:

I decided on gold to go along with that whole gilded Hollywood Regency thang that I've been into ever since I moved to LA and Craigslisted that amazing mid-century regency glass table (shown here at my old apartment).

First, a nice coat of Rust-Oleum primer, just to make it stick. Probably didn't need it, but just in case.

A quick two coats made this baby look shabby chic...

Or maybe just shabby. Next, the Midas Touch! Ooooh yeahhhh....

I got super excited when this spray paint can arrived in my mail. Did you know at most art and hardware stores you have to get someone to retrieve spray paint out of locked cabinets, I guess to deter graffiti? Seems dumb when you can just buy it online. Pretty much I want to paint everything gold now. All our planters? Gold. Our television? Gold. Two kitties? Gold! Speaking of kitties, someone was very disappointed he was not allowed outside while I was painting.

How come I'm never allowed to go outside and breathe paint fumes!

Next, two coats of gold spray paint in light strokes. This proved a little difficult because the plant stand was so thin and wiry and so much of the paint just went into the air. But I managed it without too much dripping.

24 hours outside to dry...

...and ta da! A gilded regency-style plant stand!

Now our dining nook is a full-on tropical jungle. Monkeys welcome.

Ruh roh. I've got the Midas OCD Touch. What else can I turn gold?
Which reminds me of one of my all-time favorite movies, which I used to watch on repeat with my old pal Ayana. This is basically me.

Dining Nook: Before & After

When I first started this blog, I posted some pics of our apartment in the state in which we found it:

...and then one updated pic after we painted the walls:

Is that a disposable dishwasher in the dining room? Of course. Only recently did I realize we've never really showed what it looked like after we furnished it. Silly, silly me. Since then, we've put up new curtains, gotten a credenza, and replaced our beloved creaky mid-century chairs with updated chairs courtesy our wedding registry. We also replaced the broken light with a ceiling fan (not my choice), and thrown in some plants for good measure. Sorry, because the space is a little cramped it's hard to get a good angle...

The credenza makes it a little tighter space-wise in there, but it majorly helps out our whole lack-of-storage situation in the kitchen. I wanted to make all the liquor look a little bit nicer, so I found this antique mirrored tray at the Rose Bowl Flea market for only $30...

Twice the liquor is twice as nice!

I'm plant-sitting this little guy for my friend San, who took it home as a teacup succulent favor from our wedding (the DIY tutorial is here)! I think I'd found the Japanese ceramic tea cups at the Rose Bowl, too.

Here it is again. Before:

...and after!

We don't normally have those towering french tulips mid-table, but you can blame that on Valentine's Day. I do enjoy sitting among all the lush greenery and feeling like I'm in some sort of sunny jungle. take that, cold! (Yes, I'm sick again. WTF).