OBSIDIAN, OBSIDIAN, OBSIDIAN! And quinoa.

Look at me being all topical with the Halloween and a bunch of black stuff and the small bags of candy I'm shoving into my mouth.  The candy is unrelated to this post but it's happening at the same time so...  This Ann Sacks obsidian tile is technically unrelated to the holiday but I kinda love saying the word obsidian.  OBSIDIAN, OBSIDIAN, OBSIDIAN!!


*nom, nom, nom*

Charlotte Ballesteros and Hubert Marot via But Does It Float

I don't know what this is but I like to think of it as obsidian in the wild.  Don't ruin this for me.

via weyoume

No obsidian here but wild in another way I like.

Lisa Golightly via Design Crush

Here. "Dream - Spontaneous Combustion" by Olaf Brzeski. Thank you Evolving Critic!

Perhaps I'm in the mood for a campfire?!  Too bad my fireplace is currently a dust collector.  Can you broil s'mores?  I think we're getting ready to find out...

Martha Stewart recipe here

Feed my brain with sessy black artiness but my insides need s'mores and BLACK QUINOA!!  There's only one grocery store in town that carries black quinoa and it is ungawdly expensive but sometimes it's nice to be extravagant with your complete proteins because it's just too delicious.  And fits with the theme of this post.

In the latest installment of 'Things I would hogtie Beyonce's unborn baby for but will never actually wear, own or look good in" comes everything Gareth Pugh designed this year.  Sigh...

The Scar Project is a book of breast cancer survivors photographed by fashion photographer David Jay.  See some of the stunning images here but there is some nudity, obviously, so don't be all "Omigawd I saw a nipple and now I'm going to get fired and then lose my house and live on the streets and eat lizards roasted over a fire in a trash can and there definitely won't be any s'mores there, you asshole!"  But the book's pretty good so it might be worth it.  Your call.

here

And in a complete 180, here's next year's Halloween costume!  Y'all remember this when next October 30th I'm freaking out because I had a great idea last year and can't remember what it was.  

Justin Gabbard via Grain Edit

Shit yeah!

via Rachel Swan Design

Aaaaand some black furniture.  I painted a china cabinet recently that turned out quite similar to this one.  It's not scary, though.  I just hijacked Halloween to tell you about it.  This whole post was really just a segue for the rest of this week where I'll chronicle in detail the making of the black cabinet until you'll either want to die or cream your manties at the awesomeness of it all.  


It could go either way.  


Maybe I'll throw in some broiled s'mores to sweeten the deal.  But not black quinoa.  


I ain't made of money, y'all!!!

This makes me exceedingly happy.

via Bohemian Punk

I don't know about y'all but I celebrate Halloween on the weekend so I can get drunk and sleep in and Sunday and then scare the barista with the previous night's makeup.  But the calendar is such a dick and I don't care what number it says Saturday really is, it's my Halloween.  I need a full day to get ready for the festivities anyway.


I would like to go as the zombie ghost of Biggie Smalls in Black Swan but I don't think I can pull that off and I don't think the gays at the Trick or 'Tini event will really get it.  Instead I'll spend hours piling on my favorite black eye makeup and old belly dance jewelry and just go as the Madame's evil gypsy twin.   


But most likely I'll accidentally fall asleep and wake up too late for any of that fun stuff and end up going as Clarissa the Whitest Teenage Glitter Witch. 

AGAIN.


Charlemagne, clear your schedule.  We've got some magic to attend to this Saturday.

Marking Your Territory

As we lay in the smoldering ash heap of the American Dream of homeownership, let's not forget why we all did this.  THE MONEY!!!!!  

Ahahahahaha!  I'm kidding.  We never had any money.  Only good credit and the twinkle of overextended dreams in our eyes that burned with the intensity of a thousand suns.  Suns which are now just dying embers in that ash heap that we huddle around for warmth because we can't afford the gas bill this month.  

Ahahahahaha! I'm exaggerating.  I can afford the gas if I only get my hair done every 8 weeks instead of 6.  SACRIFICES!!!

I don't know why y'all bought a house but I bought mine because I couldn't stand the kitchen and bathroom in my apartment so I went somewhere with an even uglier kitchen and bathroom.  And paid money for it!  Also, buying a home is what you do when you’re an adult after finally giving up your life of crime and buying cereal solely based on its fiber contents. 

Or trying to pretend you’re an adult by covering up all of your previous failures and heartaches with a few shallow coats of paint and new tile.

Stray paint footprint from a renovation via emma's design blogg

Not enough hugs growing up?  Buy a house and give all your love to it!  That'll show 'em! *sob, sob, sob*  I'd rather work out my childhood traumas on real estate rather than birthing my own children and ruining their lives.  Considering how often I kill plants, my unborn children are lucky.  I love you too much to actually give birth to you, non-existent babies!  You're WELCOME.  Now excuse me while I slowly kill this bush with my unending compassion and nurturing neglect.  

Because I OWN this bitch.  

And because I own it I've scraped grime out of the cracks in the floors with dental tools, torn down the ugliest wallpaper man has ever designed until my eyes bled (probably because of the asbestos), hosed down the ceiling to scrape the popcorn off and then washed the filth that dripped down the walls (probably from the years of chain-smoking), stripped paint until I thought I was going to die (probably because of the fumes), painted almost every inch of this house more than once, dug holes in the yard until I almost passed out (probably because it was an old buried brick wall and not a root) and stripped, drilled, nailed and screwed countless other details in this place that are way less sexy than the words stripping, drilling, nailing and screwing might imply.  But this place still never felt like home.  It was familiar and comfortable, but not Home.

Of course, during all that work the pervert ghost of the former of occupant was still patrolling the hallway so it was hard to feel like you're at Home when you think someone is watching you change clothes.  And most of that work was (is) spent fixing his DIY bullshit.  I wasn't making the Ranch my home - I was unmaking it HIS.  And getting dressed in the closet.  Because ghosts can't see through walls. Obviously.

This is how you do a real height chart.  via dolescum

But somehow over the last year or so there was a shift.  The ghosts of the past went away and I didn't kill as many plants.  Most likely it was related to the exorcism of the kitchen or the fact that I invested in succulents.  Both are likely possibilities.  

But it wasn’t even the new kitchen – it was the damage I did to the new kitchen and everywhere else.  The accidental knife gouges on the butcher block counters, the one door trim that I painted like shit but was too exhausted to fix and still it sits, the spot on the hardwood where I dripped paint stripper and that corner on the new kitchen door jamb that Charlemagne rubs her face on every day before dinner that has left a dirty smudge but I just don’t have the heart to wipe off.  Partly because I can't believe a clean all-white cat can make so much grossness and people should probably study it and because kitty filth is kinda the cutest.

Except for hedgehog filth.  I bet that's pretty damn cute.

Home is mine.  Or Charlemagne's depending on what part of the door jamb we're currently discussing...  These aren't the things I've purchased, but the way I inhabit the things I have.  Home could be a house or a voice or a body, a car, a job or a community.  

Ownership isn't a necessity although it definitely helps for the tax credits, but merely a feeling that you were able to put your mark on something.  Maybe someone.  Perhaps it's even put its mark on you.  Like a little knife gouge or animal pee right in your heart.  Awww....

Home is where you rub your face on the wall and dry hump the sink, leave footprints and chart your growth and one day scrape your own grime out of your bathroom.  Just generally mark a territory with your own sweet brand of personal stench.  And nobody washes it off.  

Until you die and someone buys your house and they clean up your filth while you haunt them and watch them sleep.  That’s the circle of life for renovating.

Taking part in another Let's Blog Off blog carnival today where internet people ask what a home really is.  Skeedaddle over here to read the other participants.  If you do I'll rub my face on you!

Jefferson Starfish is the interiors blog of the future.

Veranda mag via Everything Fab

What's up, Interiors?!  Long time, no see here at the Sauce.  Probably because you've been sucking this summer and everywhere I look it's this:

ehhhhhhh via here

Which is cool if you want to be that sort of thing, Interiors, but that's not me and you know it and it feels like you're purposely denying me the goodness.  WHY ARE YOU DENYING ME THE GOODNESS???!!!  

Whatever.  I don't care anyway because I've been busy doing really important things lately like painting my living room, drinking a lot of Pomojes and avoiding modern stairs.  Those last two things are probably related...

But this lately you seem to have brought the goodness back:

via The Designer's Attic

The pale pink and ocher-y yellow in this space is rather disgusting.  I love it!  But I'm rather fond of disgusting things.  And blackness.  And big art.  But not strategically placed shopping bags.  Are we not over this yet, Interiors?  

via Rooms for the Revolution

But you have redeemed yourself with this nap-worthy retreat.  There is so much squee in here that I literally popped an ovary and my body was flooded with angel babies and glittery buckets of estrogen until I overdosed on fabulosity.  True story.  There's some paranormal activity up in the Ranch in the form of blogging.

via Remodelista

That's the good thing about smooth interior to exterior transitions: my dead-from-fabulosity body could claw its way along the floor trying to get outside like one of those legless zombies from Walking Dead.  If I couldn't make it someone could just swivel the door and scoot the rest of my glittery carcass (or passed-out party guests, hobos, etc.) outside onto that delicious patio.  

Drippin' swagoo.

These two photographed by Rob Fiocca via Desire to Inspire

Still dead.

John Minshaw via Desire to Inspire

Hey look at those stairs that have zero percent chance of mangling myself on AND that lick-worthy banister that it no way detracts from this space!  Thanks for listening, Interiors.  You were there for me all along and I just wasn't paying attention.

Laura Resen via Head Over Heels

Ok we're cool, Interiors.  You have redeemed yourself from this summer's previous transgressions of absolute boredom.  Just don't let it happen again.  I can't just regrow ovaries like a damn starfish!  I have to maintain a baseline of some squee so the spikes do not cause eruptions.  


However, if I could regrow ovaries I would be harvesting my eggs for dozens of dollars (Madame babies go for premo bank) and then use that money to buy loverly interiors like these.   And then I would have a blog called Jefferson Starfish (because why not?!) and show you all my egg-bought interiors.


Damn you, not-yet-feasible-human-echinoderm-hybridization!!

The Sunday Set

 

Something about these pictures reminds me of where I grew up in the South.

Because we played on giant coal mountains!!!!!

I'm kidding.

But this one definitely.  I'm pretty sure I drank a Zima underneath that bridge.

A mile from my house...  (or every field in the summer below the Mason Dixon line but whatever)

I think this IS my house... ???!!

All pictures by Daniel Shea. For tons more fabulosity visit the rest of his portfolio.

Elementary school.  Swear.  

This dude is stalking my life - then and now.  Time traveler/photographer/magician is what he is! 

Y'all have a good weekend.  I'm going to go check my memories for stalkers.

Modern stairs are from the debil!

Check out this supremely sexy place I want to live in/dry hump with its giant wall of windows and the even gianter dark wall of goodness and all that contrasting woodness and ruh ro I see a problem...

Quezada Architecture via Houzz

Call me a loser but I'm very particular about modern stairs.  Despite sublime feats of sexy engineering I cannot handle floating treads.  I'm a clumsy bitch (I broke my arm on a flat surface.  In BALLET class.)  so just seeing those gravity-defying planks makes me break out into hives.  I will, without a doubt, miscalculate the projection of my foot onto a tread and put said foot too far in and slip, pushing my extremity through the abyss of the stairs a twist my leg into grotesque formations of unending pain. 


Or because I'm scared of the mangled split I might get myself into, I will avoid the abyss by stepping only on the front three inches of the tread and I'll most definitely fall UP the stairs.  Or down.  Or sideways.  I'm just fucked all around.  


I could avoid these totally sane issues if there was a handrail I could desperately cling to for my life and inch my way along like I do when I'm at a skating rink.  STOP LAUGHING AT ME, Olympic-level 8 year olds!!!!  But guess what?  Modern houses are too fancy for handrails because it fucks up their "lines" or whatever.  Well la-di-fuckin-da, people with good taste.  I think safety is important because I care about PEOPLE more than buildings, assholes.


And by people I mean me.  And by me I mean my 6 inch platform heels because I sure as shit ain't giving those up and I can barely walk period in those let alone navigate height differentials.  


We all have to make sacrifices.  Because otherwise, this is my life:

Exactly how I dress at home, btw.


And no you can't borrow my boa.  

Design pulp. It's better with a little haute sauce.

After *coughtwoyearscough* of blogging I thought it was about time I got out from behind the dashboard and give the Sauce's site some much-needed zhushing.  This IS the epicenter for fabulosity and it's time it looks that way!  


Well, it'll look that way later when I have more time (read: money) - for now just a little botox...  new pair of shoes...  a little lipstick on a pig.  We'll turn that pork into a legitimate powerhouse of the interwebs one day soon though!


However, I happen to suck at site design and graphics.  I'm excellent a gesturing wildly about what I want something to look like or writing a rambling stream-of-consciousness dissertation about the scale and color of my avatar as it pertains to the cycles of the moon but can't execute shit.  That's okay - you don't have to know how to do everything when you're a madame, only where to find someone who can.  So I turned to Susie Q of Eye Spy which you might remember from last week's MINTY glory.


Oh you can't see me gesturing wildly through email, Susie?  Well I guess I'll have to consult my TJMaxx shaman to find the answers to questions like What does the Sauce really look like? and What is the essence of my style? and How can we use the Franzia logo without copyright infringement? and then make eleventeen moodboards which you will then need to interpret into a 400 pixel masterpiece of a new banner depicting my SOUL!!!  But no pressure...


So here's a peek into the evolution of one of the moodboards as we find out what it is someone really does with the thousands of images they've hoarded.


Moodboard option #834837492374893729374:

here

I started by just turning my brain off and pulling things that I my inner design cavewoman responded to viscerally at that time.  It depends on the moon cycle of course.  Designer cavewomen are fickle as shit.

from my inspiration files - photographer??

HORSIES!! 

here

Vintage-y sunset over industrial complex?  *grunt*

*smart grunt*

here

*I'm not a lesbian but I like purple tights and gingers grunt*

Ann Woo

This is probably where my designer cavewoman lives.  Are you starting to sense a color theme yet?  I hadn't yet - my cavewoman brain is slow to pick up on such things.  Evolution and all...

Sam Weber

Uggggg.  Me like fire.

Brock Lefferts

Me like pretty kaleidoscope art better.

via Whorange

*double grunt* for retro futuristic cavewoman crashpad

here

Apparently designer cavewoman covets some Latisse.

Best movie ever.

AND has excellent taste in movies.


As well as music.  I had a mild obsession with this song and the video seems quite appropriate for this color story I didn't even know I was creating yet.  Until I took a step back and realized that FUCKING PURPLE was up in my grill yet AGAIN!  This time with her jazzy friends black and gold.  


I'm on to you purple.  Don't think I don't see what you're trying to do to me!!


I know purple and gold are big right now but I didn't know this two months ago.  Apparently my inner cavewoman did and is trying to tell me something about purple.  I ain't listening to any of her bullshit because me and purple have a dicey relationship.


To escape grape overload I had to bring in some things to tone this red-hat lady bitch down.

Dethjunkie maybe...?!  Sorry.

Laura Bell

I don't really have a direction in mind (unless I'm escaping the wrath of plum) which is the fun part of moodboards.  They don't really reveal their true intention until the very end.  Delightfully mysterious fuckers.

Emily Carroll

I blog because I like to document things that make me squee in hopes that other people might enjoy a squee sometimes too.  Within that process, I get to uncover and refine what it is that really lights my cavewoman's fire.  Other than glitter of course.  Sometimes it's green ladies dry humping snakes.  Whatever...  

I would highly recommend making moodboards for yourself.  It is enlightening and fun and what they hell else are you going to do with those thousands of pins I know you have too?!

Just turn your brain off and Olioboard ON!

here

I don't know - I like circles.

Leif Podhajsky via But Does It Float

Nope - I like this.  A LOT.

Christine Tillman for sale on Little Paper Planes

Ok but for reals, circles.  Remind me to buy this.  For my cavewoman...

Julie Evans and Ajay Sharma

When I felt I had exhausted every corner of my inspiration folders and the interweb, I sent this to Susie:

Click to make it larger or see it better here.

Behold the power of the moodboard!  It's nothing fancy but it made a big ole hot mess of random shit I like into a clear and cohesive board of pulp.  Well, as clear and cohesive as all this crazy shit can be.  [MS sidebar: I should have named my blog Design Pulp.  Dammit.]  Part of the accompanying dissertation included something like the "shallow depth of hyper-saturated reality" and "How much kitsch could a Lo-Pan kitsch if a Lo-Pan could kitsch pulp?" and "Me like round!"  You know, helpful common sense things a designer really likes to hear from a client.  

But in the end I said do what feels good because I just wanted a fun new banner for a while.  My shaman and cavewoman had a pow wow and they said to trust in the powers of real graphic designers and so I gave my pulp over to the master and let the magic take over.  

Susie was a pro when confronted with this (and even more moodboard ridonkulousness) and she did some peyote magic with the shaman (allegedly) and now I have a new banner.  It looks like this: 

In real life I would fill this with glitternaise.

Zing!  Unbeknownst to me, Susie crafted this saucy little number just for fun and it was too damn silly not to use even for just a little bit.  I'll have to get used to staring at my mug every day because it is rather odd.  Awesomely odd in that I know get to be an honorary member of the Little Debbie/Aunt Jemima/Cap'n Crunch club but still, rather odd.  STOP LOOKING AT ME!  

I can save 'over-saturated reality orgasmisplosion of what-the-fuckery' for later but for now an experiment with some haute sauce.  I think this is a lesson in not over-analyzing because really?  Pictures of mountains and forests and shit?!  Oy.  I punch myself in the face.  I think we understand 'moody,' Madame.  Christ.

But it was still a super fun lesson.  Making a moodboard (or eleventeen) for yourself is like making a 2D movie of all the best scenes from all your favoritest movies.  Everybody wins!  Especially shitty movies from the eighties. 

It'll go live tomorrow - I really didn't want to ruin the surprise of this post.  Which, instead of a surprise bottle of madame sauce, might be that I'm the best/worst moodboard creator/client there ever was.  You're welcome, Susie!  But thanks for being such a badass about this process, anyway.

I'm still copyrighting design pulp, by the way.