Oh, just ignore this post. I’m just trying to get design ideas but I don’t want to bookmark all these sites nor do I need all these tabs open. Most of these things I can’t afford but it wouldn’t hurt to find something like it.

via Vintage Looks

There may not be room for a small dining table or bar table but I could always put a cute stool up next to the kitchen counter.

Pretty pretty wallpaper. Both items via Anthropologie.

Mostly when I look at decor sites, I just keep thinking of stuff I could make myself. There’s a real awesome tutorial on how to make this record cabinet. I’d probably make two. One as a coffee table indoors and one as a shoe crate for guests or muddy shoe days since there is carpet at this place.

Painting the walls and maybe the cabinets has been the biggest thing I want to do first. Furniture & little details can come later because I think painting a wall can set the tone for how I want the rest of the place to look. I don’t think I want to paint all the walls. Apart of me really likes the neutral of white so I’m pretty crazy about just doing color blocking or color fielding like in this photo above via The New Domestic.  Although I may just paint one wall, here’s my favorite example of color blocking:
via here.

Bali Turquoise by Ralph Lauren may be my absolute favorite since I can’t decide between blues or greens:

Another thing I’ll do first is place a partition, most likely a sheer curtain, between where the bed is and where the rest of the studio is. Bed space is personal space and I’m sure I’ll sleep better and feel a lot more comfortable defining borders of my small studio:

Apparently Ikea sells curtain tracks but they don’t seem to sell them in sets. I think that would make for a confusing set up so I’ll probably resort to an easier way to hang curtains from the ceiling.

The least important thing I’ll be doing is the downstairs, garage-like space that the real estate agent/owner said I could use as my own. I think it would make a great office/studio and extra storage space. There’s no heater or air conditioner down there but if I’m excited enough about it, I could find a way to make it work. So far my thoughts go to chalkboard walls and indoor tents. Since I really don’t have a vision of how I would like that to look, I’ll just post my last and favorite image of a small space:

via design sponge

I like how there’s a color palette there on the bottom. I think when I look at the colors I want in furniture and paint, I notice I like a lot of creams and whites but I also like orange and turquoise. My bed frame is wood and I have a nice red chaise lounge chair so I guess I like the mix of bright colors and natural materials. Overall, I just don’t want to overdo it. I’m glad I’m thinking about it first, My other place, I was just lucky that everything that went into it looked perfect together but I want to be more thoughtful about this place. Especially since it’s smaller. I know the second I get approved, I’ll be in there with a measuring tape and sketchpad. It’ll be harder to go all willy-nilly with just over 360 square feet. But I’m ready!

I haven’t even turned in my filled-out lease application yet and am already surmising that I will be spending a large amount of time at Home Depot and maybe the Ikea store way in Round Rock. The design challenges of a smaller place will be really difficult but I am so thankful for google images and Apartment Therapy. The hardest part will be that the apartment is not a complete railroad design. It’s more of an backward L-shape. I’m pretty aware of where my bed will go. The bottom L part is to the left of the front door so it will go there. I’m thinking my beautiful bed frame is going to have to be left out of this move though. Just one more thing to stub my toe on.

My kitchen is straight ahead from the door so I’m wondering how I will have a couch, chaise, or a couple of chairs. I love the couch I have but it’s way too bulky. I might need something a lot simpler. I could do a chaise and a nice chair. I’m thinking I want to make my own bar table with a stool if I can’t find one thrifting. It would probably make for a good place to eat and to work off of. I like this collapsible wall-mounted table too:

I want to partition off the space with my bed with a gauzy curtain and maybe one of the smaller Ikea Expedit bookshelves, although I think if I made a series of sturdy milk crates attached together that may work (and may be a cheaper solution). Totally not my style but I could probably paint them. I could find some way to make them less grungy and more cutesy. Speaking of paint, I’m am so allowed to paint my space! I like that blue in that first picture. I’m liking the idea of a light green also but am interested in pretty wallpaper such as this. I probably wouldn’t do all the walls. Color-blocking seems to be a good idea. I have some cute artwork to hang but a part of me really likes white walls. Color-blocking seems like a good way to just get a splash of color without it being overwhelming.

I think the difficulty in doing this is that I like a lot of styles. Vintage is probably my favorite but bright colors that make things look overly futuristic is fun too. Simplicity is key also so I just want to have the best storage. The bathroom and bedroom have lots of shelves but my freestanding storage boxes and chests will have to fit somehow in the process. I think I could take a few tips from nice hotels. I forget how comfy hotel rooms are despite their size. I want to have a place like that only more unique.

The idea of it being completely D.I.Y. will be difficult too. You don’t often find good furniture or decorating pieces for spaces this size. A lot of things will have to be modified or made from scratch. That will be pretty scary but this will be project numero 2. I’m pretty excited and will be crossing my fingers that the application gets the go-ahead and I can get to work!

(maybe Dad will help :)

If I had a kid, even a teenage kid, I would yank them out of school & take them to the park. It’s so pretty today. Listening to Born Ruffians & workin’ on my sketchbook. (Taken with instagram)

It’s almost fall. And also, my old neighborhood. I needs to move somewhere soon. Going home doesn’t feel like home. It just feels like the nicest hotel you’ve ever stayed in. $500 live-workspace or $595 pretty apartment in an awesome secluded area. Both sound appealing. I just wish I was homeless sometimes. Don’t know why.

Often I sit around San Antonio and ask myself why did I leave Denver. After this short weekend’s trip up there I finally understood though. And I understood it in the most positive way.

My two days at Titwrench were phenomenal to say the least. I was terribly ill the entire time (thanks endometriosis!) but it felt like the most important experience to have. Here was this festival set up by this amazing woman who is the ultimate organizer. And the wonderful thing is that she’s a fan like anyone else who just wanted to see more. And so she did something about it! Then of course, there were all the amazing women who played and were apart of the festival. I was seriously in awe, and sometimes even intimidated, by these female artists. It was almost as though I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. Before I always understood female empowerment but maybe seeing it in this specific form made it more real than ever before. That sounds dumb because it’s not like I don’t have strong women in my life. And all these marches with UniteHere, I see more women than I do men. And of course there are heroes like Angela Davis and et cetera that you hear about so often. But being a witness to it at this festival with such diversity in music and so much effort being put in to make it happen felt like the best example of how things are changing in the feminist community. It makes the movement so multifaceted and you don’t get to see that often. It’s always the same old arguments. But here was a chance to do something. The festival was about action more than talk and I loved that.

Can I also say I found out about a lot of awesome bands that really blew my mind! My favorites that came out of it were Tine who just brought the funk. Sin Desires Marie who apparently played their last show. BUMMER! It was the same drummer for both of those bands and she was definitely one of the biggest reasons I liked either of them. Married in Berdichev was an unexpected enjoyment. And I rarely go to shows where you can just sit or lay on the floor while listening to live music. Her performance was both intense and serenely beautiful. Christina the Hun, in contrast, was both hilarious and simply interesting for using just her voice and drums. I couldn’t understand how she did it but she did! Here’s a link to her performance a year ago. I only got to attend the first two days so to be able to round up my short stint there with Tulip Wars was the best. They were incredibly fun! When I got back to San Antonio, my immediate reaction was to look up all these bands and find a way to make them apart of my playlist. I’m so thankful for all the new music I experienced. Denver, wow, y’all really have something special up there.

And that brings me back to why I left. Honestly, I was really lazy in Denver and when I go back, I realize all the things I should have done. But I also find Denver to be a really odd place where I don’t want to do anything but watch its craziness unfold. I find the city to be haunting. Haunted by the living. Denver is in the smack dab middle of nowhere and despite it’s growth and despite it actually being a real city, it’s almost a ghost town. The absolute perfect place to have an awesome counterculture. You have booming California on one side of them and, I don’t know, maybe Chicago on the other side and they’re not being influenced by any of that. At least not in some major way. And for whatever reason, that scared me. Granted there are a ton of other reasons Denver is scary, but I felt both lost and confined in such a city. It was both a blessing and a curse. It was almost a compounded feeling to already being a young person so far from home. I was saying, thanks Denver, for making me feel that way even more with your oddness. Could I have felt that way if I moved or went to school in Austin, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta? Maybe. But Denver is definitely bizarro world and I was both ready for it and not. I’m extremely grateful for such an experience but I’m happy to not live there anymore. I’m happy to experience that city on a lesser level now.

I hope I can continually go places and be apart of events like this. I hope I can temporarily stay in a lot of cities and understand their scenes and culture a little better. I always speak of these “extended vacations” because I’d honestly want to go somewhere and spend 3-6 months so that I could see it more for what it is. I would have never heard of this festival had I not done this nor would I have met an amazing person (Sara Century!). I got more than the tourist perspective. I want to meet all these amazing people doing amazing things for their community. People being proud of where they come from while also criticizing it and making steps to change it. Being able to watch a city change while being an outsider but also being apart of it. That’s what I got to do in Denver a few years back and I would love to continue to do that in other places across the country. It makes me love San Antonio more. And I have to say, humanity doesn’t look so bad either when you put yourself out there to new things.

Thank you Denver. You’re an amazing place. Thanks Titwrench. Keep growing, keep going. Keep inspiring.

Can’t decide if I like hipstamatic or instagram better. Either way it’s fun taking quality pics with a phone. Just gotta keep making prints for my collection!

So I took several quizzes and helper-outers in figuring out where I would like to live come September if I don’t remain in San Antonio.

Of course, NYC came up a million times but not for the reasons most people think. Lots of those sites say it’s good for someone who’s a little more introverted. Plus, I LOVE museums and I think I punched that in a lot of these things. But as much as I want to be in New York, I feel like I’m just not ready. And NYC is such a big step, I think I would want to explore and live in other regions of the US before I head to a place that could be sort of permanent for me.

Other cities that I got frequently: Nashville, TN. Athens, GA. San Francisco, CA (which ranked least, surprisingly, despite my love for the city). Austin, TX. AND DRUMROLL PLEASE:

San FRICKIN’ Antonio. Yup, my own hometown is pleading with me to stay. And I guess a part of me would not like to move either. But I think it would be nice to get away for a few months at a time. It’d be nice to call SF home for a little bit or a town in the Southeast and then come back home to San Antonio. Too many decisions. The future is so complicated.

feltron:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mserinnicole/4423088961/

Sometimes this place drives me crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.