Hey guys, thanks so much for entering the Graham and Brown wallpaper giveaway! It was super fun to read about your decorating hopes and dreams… sorry I’m about to crush most of them.

Hopefully not permanently?

Anyhow, comments are now closed and I ran the numbers through the magical doohickey, bee bopp booo bing zam:

Wow, that is just weird. Numbers be crazy, yo.

Congratulations to Lauren, you are the winner!

“Would love to win Bao in cream. I’m buying a small fixer upper apartment and would love to use this in the entry.”

Sounds like an awesome plan to me… I would slap some crazy art on top and call that space done.

HUGE thanks to Graham and Brown for hosting this amazing giveaway!

For everyone who didn’t win, here is some wallpaper porn to get you through this trying time. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

Happy Friday!

[pinterest]

Friends, I don’t do giveaways very often. On a daily basis I am inundated with emails from press people trying to get me to review off brand paint and eco toilets, but I try to keep the blog strictly related to things I want to get in my house right now.

Things like wallpaper.

Me and wallpaper have a lifelong love affair going on. It started when I was a wee baby, swaddled in a muslin cloth tacked together by wallpaper paste, rocked to sleep with the sweet smell of wet wheat in the air… fast forward to today, when I have a closet filled with stacks of wallpaper samples. Sometimes I stroke them gently at night and whisper sweet nothings into their ears. Don’t tell anyone.

All this to say I am a little excited to be giving away THREE ROLLS of Graham and Brown wallpaper designed by Steve Leung!

The winner will have her/his choice from any of the six Asian inspired patterns designed by Steve Leung in any available colorway.

THREE. ROLLS. BAM.

That’s enough to paper a huge feature wall, or perhaps a small powder room, foyer, or laundry room.

So, basically $80000 worth of wallpaper… or maybe $255 USD. Whatever. That’s a lot of wallpaper. Let’s check out the players, shall we?

There’s Jiao, which has a touch of the De Gournay about it. This color is very pretty in real life, but other colors are also available.

This is Bao, which means treasure. Adorable, because my Chinese bud always calls my kids “bao bao.” Anyway, the rep sent me a black sample but I lovessss the cream on cream. You can’t tell from the picture but this pattern is very textured.

Hua has some metallic interest in the branches.

Juan is so sparkly it’s like a disco in your eyeballs. I am kind of obsessed with the gold on cream colorway.

Ling has great scale, and is slightly textured. All of the colors are nice. Karly likes the cream on cream but I think the red might be Chinese Chippendaletastic.

And then there’s Mai.

Let me tell you about this honey of a paper: you can hang it vertically or horizontally. It has a teeny touch of metallic interest, but not Kim Kardashian much. All the colors are great — the white and silver is dreamy and versatile, but the charcoal is dramatown and would be perfect in a foyer.

In short, I want to marry this paper and I’m a little annoyed I agreed to give it away rather than keep it for myself. 100% serious.

There better be a lot of entries or I will be tempted to create 100 anonymous email addresses and enter my own contest.

Kidding! Hahaha.

Ha.

I took some pictures of the samples the rep sent me so you could kind of get a sense of the texture on the papers.

Jiao/Mai

Bao/Hua

Juan/Ling

All of these patterns are nonwoven paste-the-wall papers that are so easy to hang even a dummy like me can do it. And if you tire of them, just peel the paper off the wall in strips.

You need this in your life.

Contest rules:

Please peruse the available selections here and pick a fave pattern and color. Leave a comment telling me all about your favorite paper and what you plan to use it for. The winner is free to change her/his mind so don’t get all analysis paralysis on me… I’m really just curious and y’all know I love to talk decorating projects.

That’s it! Leave a comment and you are entered for a chance to win three rolls of Graham and Brown wallpaper designed by Steve Leung.

The contest ends at midnight central time on Thursday, May 16. Winner will be announced on Friday.

Let’s blow it up, people.

[Graham and Brown]

Today marks the second visit of the cleaning lady, and I’m pretty sure she’s going to mutiny when she sees how dirty this place has gotten in two weeks. Little does she know that my cat attracts leaves like velcro and paint in the sink is a state of being over here. But she might also notice that since the last time she was here, new curtains were boughten and the bedroom has been painted and my shelves for the front room are back, sporting a fresh coat of glossy paint.

Good things. Things that will appear in pictures soon. I promise.

Some bad things might have happened, too. Things like our fancy marble dining table arrived cracked down the middle. And I didn’t order enough wallpaper for the baby’s room. And I’m 99% sure I didn’t order enough wallpaper for the powder room, either… did someone say wallpaper calculator? Who? Wha?

I don’t know — maybe it’s the fact that I’m dead tired and HUGE, but I just don’t care anymore.

That’s why they call me mellow yellow…

today.

Tomorrow I will assuredly have a nervous breakdown since I’ve been with Ike all day all summer with no school, plus his birthday party is this Saturday and I haven’t prepped AT ALL.

Oh and the baby will be here in a month.

Mellow yellow, dudes.

Mellow.

[pinterest]

Hi, how was your weekend? Mine was one of those bust-your-ass-but-accomplish-very-little affairs. At least, that’s how me and my sore tailbone are feeling this morning (wtf, pregnant ladies?! what is happening to my coccyx?). Sucks to have so much to do and to be so impaired lazy. I did manage to squeeze in two chocolate covered donuts… yay for me!

So, what’s really going on at Casa Erin? Let’s discuss some life decisions I’ve come up with (thanks to Karly and Naomi for listening to my whiny pleas for advice).

#1. Wallpaper has been selected.

Pheasant in Coral will go in the upstairs hallway, Neisha Crosland’s Zebra will go in the entry, and Pines by Little Greene will go in the powder room. It was really tough to decide where these should go architecturally speaking — e.g., which rooms should be dark or light, what needs small scale or large, what colors will the rooms adjacent to the papered rooms be painted, etc. So I’m very excited to have a (tentative) decision.

#2. The front room will now be a play room instead of an office.

We’re going to squeeze the office into the guest bedroom, and I’m pretty stoked that we don’t have to put doors on this room anymore. Yipppeeeeee! I’m STILL trying to sell the coffee table, the shelves will get painted, art has been moved, sconces may be installed, leopard rug will make an appearance, and on the opposing wall I think I’m going to buy a vintage deco armoire to house all the toys. Like so:

Or something like this. These come up on craigslist all the time for dirt cheap.

#3. With Sanders‘ help, I am close to deciding on paint colors for most of the rooms in my house.

MOST. Not all. Ike’s room is mostly nailed down, I’m very close on baby room, I have a good start for the bedroom, and maybe I have an idea for the dinette… oh, the dinette.

#4. We sold our good old table (to a blog reader who recognized our house on craigslist!!!) because it was way too big for our new house, and then bought another… ok table.

First, let’s say goodbye to old table. She was a beauty.

Oh, table. I loved you so much. But she’s gone, (she’s gone) oh I’d pay the devil to replace her…

She’s gone.

Thank you, Hall and Oates, for providing the soundtrack to my misery.

And now, drumroll please:

Someone kill me.

We will discuss this travesty in full tomorrow, but I just don’t have the energy right now.

In fact, I think I may need another donut just so I can survive today.

Thanks again for indulging all my hemming and hawing about the office. I think I’ve fully vetted the possibilities and have a pretty good idea of what to do for Plan A and Plan B. I’ve also come to the scary realization that we need to get some doors on that room or it’s not going to matter how pretty it looks — it won’t be functional for an office. So decor for “the office” is tabled for the time being until we solve that problem, and I’m moving on to one of the many other rooms that need attention before baby gets here: Ike’s room.

If you don’t recall, here’s what his room in the old house looked like:

Now for this room I really wanted to give him something different, but I also want to reuse as many things as humanly possible. I have so much stuff to buy for this house that I need to make SOMETHING easy on myself (ha! as if). So, without further ado:

Hmmmm, yeah. Maybe not that different. Let’s discuss the room itself. It’s long and narrow and has zero architectural interest — not even the pair of large windows the other room had. The one small window faces west, so it’s dark during the day and then gets a burst of sun in the evening. There’s no way a light color would work in here, so Sanders helped me pick Deep Secret, a kind of gray/navy that I think will look nice with the sisal carpet and also have some kid appeal (I foresee some hubble telescope posters in here someday soon… Ike is obsessed with space).

I don’t love the white furniture, but I tried very hard to use what I already had, and Ike still sleeps in his crib… IT’S A MIRACLE. Like, he climbs in himself, but we have convinced him that climbing out is dangerous. It’s kind of hilarious. Anyway, when we he outgrows it I’ll get a cute antique twin bed and paint the white table set, or more likely just pass it on to #2.

So the only things here that need purchasing are the curtains, light fixture (hot air balloon fixture is going in baby’s room), a colorful basket, and that leopard stool — which is only $1400. Just kidding, suckers! I’m going to paint the old ottoman and add a cute cushion. Donezo.

I think the basics are here, but it’s missing the wow factor. Does it need wackier pillows and bedding? Or maybe I have a big piece of art I forgot about… Or perhaps I should spend $400 on a roll of this wallpaper and frame a few panels:

But $400/roll?!… I’m thinking no.

Ok, enough of what I think. What do you think?

I need a rudder to steer me through the coming week of energetic Ike plus no school, no grandparents, and bedrest — it’s going to be a long one. What better distraction than wallpaper? And of course it doesn’t hurt that I’ve become something of an amateur expert (not a pardox, I swear) on the subject via long hours of obsessively trolling the internet in search of “The One.” We’ll discuss that very important matter later on in Wallpaper Week, but for today let’s talk House of Hackney.

They had me at the mirror image adverts, but I like the crazy romance of the patterns, too. Wild Card is a fabulous interpretation of Madame Castaing’s famous leopard prints, Dalton Rose has an ombre bottom, and Empire is cheeky good fun.

Wild Card

Dalton Rose Ombre

Empire Stripe

Flights of Fancy

Queen Bee

I’m a little smitten with the Empire prints for a mini gentleman’s room. I would probably only do it on on one wall and frame it out with molding, then paint coordinating color on the other walls — because that’s a lot of look.

Any favorites? That leopard print is sure to make an appearance in someone’s powder room, right?

I’ve been busily (obsessively) taping little scraps of patterns all over the walls, feeling good about some things, horrified by others, and generally overwhelmed by the sheer variety of stuff out in the world. Probably this process was easier when Sears Roebuck offered your choice of three patterns, to be delivered by train or pony. Instead I find myself squinting into a crystal ball, wondering which of said 800 million patterns will be least offensive to me in a decade. Compounding the problem is Better Half Ben’s insistent, rather querulous complaint that all my choices are so “decorative.” That’s gauche, dude. And kind of obvious.

All this is to say that I had an interesting reaction to stylist and socialite Jackie Astier’s home featured in this month’s ED.

It’s all moody broody texture — not much in the pattern department. Now part of me finds this cozy and fabulous, and part of me thinks I’m just backsliding into my safety net. Haven’t I already been here before? Maybe. But lacquered walls and tonal faux bois wallpaper feel so soft and dreamy.

Oh, and grasscloth. Delicious delicious grasscloth.

This bedroom is too girly for me, but I think the color palette feels a little more avant garde than the gray gray grays used elsewhere.

It’s a lot of eye candy, but I also feel like I’ve seen so much of it before. Damien Hirst: check. Mastercraft brass: check. Beni Ourain: check. Milo Baughman Karl Springer Paul Evans: check. Kind of veers into furniture museum territory.

Still, I think she does a lovely job making the space feel more intimate. I’ve been hard at work trying to create layers with pattern, but maybe in some cases texture is the way to go.

What do you think? Are you all about pattern or texture?

[Elle Decor, Jackie Astier]

Seriously. Do. Not. Do it. I warned you. If you actually type it correctly, you will be treated to a panoply of, ahem, somewhat less prurient wonders. Although not exactly XXX, Rose Cumming‘s wallpapers, fabrics, and interiors, do hold a distinct sex appeal of their own.

Her Zebrine wallpaper has gotten a fair amount of interest in recent years, but I’m actually more interested in the starry Galaxie prints (how cool would that be in a dark colorway for an unexpected kid’s room?), and Sheryl — a tufty hot number. The only problem is that RC’s prints are to the trade, available through Dessin Fournir, and I have been to lazy to set up an account.

Anyone know if tufty time comes in colorways other than pink?

Yes, I know pink tufted walls would be cute in a girl’s room. Sorry, but I can’t go there. I may or may not have been traumatized by pink walls as a smallish child (and teenager).

Sidenote: thanks to everyone who left a comment on Friday’s post, or shot me a lovely email filled with well wishes. Still hanging in there.

Yes. Just like that.

[Peak of Chic, Lonny, Loathe Like Love, Peak of Chic, House Beautiful]

I just received the first shipment of wallpaper samples I ordered from Ye Olde Englande (that’s what the English themselves call it, yes?) and I’m already adrift in a sea of choices. I was pretty pumped to start taping samples all over the walls until Ike caught wind of game, and let’s just say I had to take him on as my assistant. Or else. Kid is either going to be a decorator someday, or he’s going to design race cars made of paisley foil wallpaper. Boys are weird. Anyway, let’s check out Round One of Wallpaper Sample Throwdown 2012.

Some cutie pie black and white patterns: Feather Fan by Cole and Son and Abigail Edwards’ Seascape. You may recall I was pretty set on the seascape print for the nursery, but I’m not loving any of the white white fields in this house — I feel like the walls need to go dirtier/creamier.

These are superfly powder room options. From left to right: Cole and Son Wisteria, Osborne and Little Summer Palace, Osborne Mara (fabulous with jewel tones). Any could work in there, but I was thinking of Summer Palace. However, the old teal colorway seems to be gone, and I’m still on the fence about this delfty colorway. Maybe too formal?

It’s kind of… girly, and girls are weird.

Moving on, look how I am artsy AND fartsy. Embarrassing. Anyway, on the left is Neisha Crosland’s Zebra. On the right is Cole and Son’s Silk, which looks like a fabulous tufted fabric with this oddly tactile quality due to the layers of ink that sit on the paper surface. It’s a really sweet paper. I picked these for the entry way but I think Zebra is too dark and Silk is too light. Bummers, because Silk is the one I had in mind, but like I said — not loving the whiteyfied look. I did reorder a sample of Zebra in the stone/beige colorway. Maybe maybe.

I like these two better for the hallway. The left is Cole and Son Malabar and the right is Cole and Son Malachite. Bonus points to C&S for making non woven papers that are supremely easy for even a village idiot to hang (see my post here). Both are popular papers, but I think the tone on tone colors give them some new life. I’m not digging anything overtly graphic for the entry since you see it from both the dark teal room and the living room — midtone neutral with a little something something is the way to go. I’m still not so sure about the metallic aspect, as I’ve actually been trying to cool it on the bling blung front (yeah, who am I?), but I like the way the patterns appear and disappear.

And then there’s Thibaut’s Cheetah. I don’t know what I had planned to do with this paper… maybe powder room? Maybe upstairs hallway? Maybe paste it to my face? It’s pretty amazing.

It’s also totally ridiculous. I’m trying to avoid anything over the top, but… it’s talking to me. I’m just not sure what it’s saying.

Stay tuned for Round Two of Wallpaper Sample Throwdown 2012, which should be arriving any day now.

In the meantime, please tell me which ones I should choose, and which I should burn. Thanks.

This one’s not really a big deal. Oh it’s just an evil monkey on acid. And a masked man cradling a cudgel like nobody’s business.

Let’s unpack this nightmare.

Eyes Wide Shut scary harlequin man is obviously sidling up to tweety with malevolent designs in mind. Hello? That’s not a flute. Flutes are for happy things. And demon face devil monkey is up to no good — check at those murder hands. You know, the ones where his feet should be. Meanwhile Timmy the turtle is carrying on like this is some ho hum everyday shit and we all know it isn’t because even the cherub is hanging on for dear life. Between you and me, I think he’s turned to the dark side. Sorry, Jesus.

Put this in a kid’s room and warp their sweet little minds FOR EVER.

Scalamandre’s Venetian Carnival.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you that this wallpaper may strangle you while you sleep.

Now that I’m firmly ensconced in my “forever house” (as if such a thing existed for capricious creatures like me), I’m planning to wallpaper the bejeezus out of it. The entry shall get the royal treatment, as will the powder room, the upstairs hallway, and maybe the kids’ rooms. Ok, almost every room is up for grabs. I have a little inspiration board going on at Pinterest with some of my best and brightest, and I thought y’alluns might like to behold some of my bolder choices. These are the papers that will probably (maybe?) never end up in my house, but I love looking at them.

I’m really into big scale wallpaper, and this Jordi Labanda pattern fulfills all my megalomaniacal desires. It’s not the vibe I’m going for in my house, but I want someone else to do it and then invite me over for martinis so I can down a few and then stare into the face of god. Or, you know, some flowers. Martinis can do weird things sometimes.

Tune in next Friday for more funky wallpaper. Until then, may the floral force be with you!

I can’t believe how behind I am on blogging. Sorry to all of you whom I owe comments and emails and proof that I am alive and breathing — last week just whipped my ass. I’m back in full 75% force and I’m here to tell you that designing a kitchen on a tight timeline is stressful business. But after endless Ikea trips plus a drive to the cheapest granite showroom ever in San Antonio, I think the inlaws have a fancy plan in the works and it’s going to be awesome. The material palette is pretty basic: white cabinets, black granite counters and white subway tile. Clean and classic, but homegirl is going to need accessories. Let’s discuss.

The kitchen is fairly small, so a monochromatic palette filled with interesting objects would be lovely.

As much as I’m dying to spread some wallpaper all up in that joint, I don’t think there’s really enough wall space. Otherwise, this would be my secret plan…

Simple, colorful art and accessories are a possibility. Owls need not apply, however.

I know this is kind of cheating since the kitchen isn’t really all white, but I love the natural drama that the plants and buddha bring to this (admittedly spectacular) space.

Of course Naomi over at Design Manifest is an expert at this sort of thing, being a kitchen designer as she is. I love her suggestion of using a colorful rug to bring in the bling.

Although a part of me is still holding out for this poppy setup…

Currently this is my favorite idea for jazzing up their particular kitchen. Interesting shades and a few small vases and bowls totally transform everything.

That’s it for today. I’m still kind of sleepwalking, but tomorrow I will be 100% awesome.

85% Guaranteed.

[Laura TJ, M Design LA, Elle Decor, Living Etc, Design Manifest, M Design, Maison 21]