There aren't enough books in The Hunger Games to fill your Edwardian fantasy library.

Every day during one of my endless internet adventures I see a picture like this: 

Lili Aber Regen via Desire to Inspire

Followed by something like: *squee* "One day I'll have a room like this in my house! *end squee*

source?

Trick, please.  Based on the flagrant disregard for cohesive sentence structure in your blog post and/or the three pins I saw before this one that I'm totally judging you on, I'm going to guess that you don't read a lot of books.  Certainly not enough to warrant hundreds of linear feet of shelving space.  

The last book you probably picked up was Snooki's autobiography at Target and whatever remaining shred of dignity you possess rightfully made you put it back on the shelf.  

via Apartment Therapy

I'm guessing the only books that you physically own are probably a few books you were forced to read in college, Skinny Bitch and Eat, Pray Love.  Let's not pretend like you have the time, inclination or comprehensive reading skills to process the amount of material displayed so orderly behind that succulent green curtain.  

You wouldn't know what an antagonist was if it walked up to you in matching UGG boots, ripped the fro yo out of your hands and proceeded to beat you about the head.  Maybe you could block the blows with the Kindle Fire that you tell people you love to read on but really only use to watch old episodes of Dawson's Creek via Netflix.

via Apartment Therapy

Confession: I barely know what an antagonist is and I'm in a book club.

I'm all for gorgeous pictures of books.  I'm kinda posting pictures of them RIGHT FUCKING NOW and lawd knows I've waxed poetic about them in the past.  But I have the decency to not pretend like I'm going to have a library like any of these images. And I actually READ!

Well mostly.  It ebbs and flows.  I've had books on my nightstand for months - ok years -  that I'll get to one day but the hour I could have spent reading is an hour I spent instead finding these pictures of bookshelves.  For YOU.  So sorry, dusty book of Eudora Welty short stories next to my alarm clock.  What's one more unread night when we're already shared so so many?! 

source? I suck at credit today. Sorry.

I knew a girl that used to pull out the "smart" books on her shelf and display them facing outward so everyone could see their titles and therefore marvel how smart she is for reading such respected tomes.  Obviously she didn't think we were smart enough to figure out her sneaky plan.  

I'm much more likely to display my most-read books facing out for easy access like my Sextrology book and Twilight.

From Maison Boheme who you can tell reads.

I'm kidding.  All my shelves are hidden in a cedar-lined closet library installed by the previous owners so I don't display any books for public ridicule.  It's a pretty awesome space and is great for hiding my books about astrology and sparkle vampires.  Or that Anita Shreve phase I went through...  


Andy by 'Anita Shreve' I mean 'every book Suze Orman has ever attached her name to.'

here

Besides, if someone does were to run across a smart book in the open I'm afraid they'll ask me an insightful question about it and I'll have to deflect by screaming obscenities at them and pretending we're about to be attacked by rogue vampires.

Histoire via Plastolux

Beacuse really - have you EVER been in a house where a person had more than two maaybe three Billy bookcases full of books?  Uh, no.

So let's remember kids: Repetition in excess is either disgustingly luxurious, a delusion or a phone call away from Dr. Robin Zasio's furrowed brow appearing at your front door so choose wisely what you want to collect.  

Or what you lie about collecting.

Yep.  They sure do.  But I hate to tell a bitch there aren't enough books in The Hunger Games to fill their fantasy Edwardian library.

Note to self: work on cohesive sentence structure.

This makes me exceedingly happy.

My blogging schedule got all wonky this week because I had a spontaneous trip south this weekend which I'm still happily recovering from.  And by 'recovering' I mean watching Hoarders and finishing a bottle of wine.


I packed my short weekend full of sweet people, salty water and cold sand that my Instagram filters just could not say no to.  I had to do the hipster thing and document the excursion in the form of a stylized ensemble of nature's bounty.  


Also, BP's bounty because that big black thing is most likely a tar ball.


But the tar ball is still going in the giant jar of seashells that I keep for memories.  


And hipster credibility of course.

A house fit for a drunk mermaid. Hint: that's ME!

Fuck red shacks.  You are dead to me.  I want to vacation inside a seashell!  Wheeeee!!!!

I realize this might be harder to find families with abandoned seashell-looking four-wheeler storage on their property just begging to be inhabited for a week by a saucy freeloader but I'm desperately trying to get my mermaid on like Donkey Kong here.

I found these on An Ambitious Project Collapsing and learned they come from someplace called Flying Concrete.  Take to the sky, composite of whatever the hell is in concrete!  Flying Concrete is a dude from Mexico who designs, builds and teaches YOU how to build these things.

That's right.  I can build this at the Ranch.  I smell a weekend project coming on....

In 2015.

Maybe we can have a No Expectations party and all do it together!  Do you like how I just invited you to a party where you have to build an entire house?  It'll be so joyous you'll forget you're working as are all my parties!  Except for the time I had a party and lost the wine bottle opener.  I also lost some friends that night...

But THIS party will have enough accessible booze to make my neighbors form a prayer circle to beg mercy for our heathen souls.  It'll be like a drunken barn raising back in pioneer days except probably with more gays.  Just imagine that scene from one of my all time favorite movies Seven Brides for Seven Brothers where they raise the barn and then all dance together in perfectly choreographed harmony and gingham.

For all my recent new followers - welcome!  And don't worry, you are invited to the barn raising/flying concrete party too.  I don't want you to feel left out and the choreography is really easy to learn.  I'll make you an extra big cocktail.

New readers made their way here because I was lucky enough to be mentioned in an Apartment Therapy post about funny bloggers with the likes of the Dowager Countess herself My Favorite and My Best; Design Crisis; Me, You and a Wiener; Ugly House Photos and a few other gems.  Hell, let's invite them all too!

This is going to be the best party EVAR!

Just look at what we'll build!  I love organic architecture like this.  Back in ye old design school I used to draw shit like this all the time.  My teachers hated me.  Probably with good reason because I hadn't the foggiest idea of how to build it or spec it but by gawd I could render the fuck out of it.  They totally stifled my creative energy.  Stop harshing my mellow, assholes!  All I had to do was contact Flying Concrete and he could've hooked me up.  Done.

But now I know where I can get details on mermaid house fabulosity.  With Elven doors.  

Wait, mermaids can't walk through doors...  I may have to rethink this theme.

I will definitely be having some of that clerestory window hotness and vagina-like detailing at my "entrance."  

Wait, mermaids don't have vaginas either...  Fuck!  This metaphor is going horribly awry.

But I think that mermaids, elves, my nosy neighbors, ginger Broadway musical stars and ModSauce party guest/construction workers can all agree that we can party like it's 1899 in this fairyland cavern porch.

I can set up some kind of screen and we'll all watch Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  It'll be magical.

I'm going to paint this shack red.

Unbeknownst to me, over the past few years I have slowly begun my slide into old cranky hermit goat lady like that woman in Cold Mountain.  I spend a lot of time alone (watching OWN on my couch), I spent a good 2 minutes last week deciding if I could really use the wild onions growing in my yard on my food and I've been neglecting my chin beard eyebrow maintenance.  If I wear this headscarf for one more lazy Sunday a goat will magically appear in my backyard.

But the old cranky hermit goat lady did get to spend some quality time with Jude Law so maybe this headscarf thing isn't such a bad idea...

However, no goat lady is complete without her own shack so it's a good thing the Cabin Porn tumblr crossed my dash recently.  Cabin Porn isn't lumberjacks doing the nasty (although there probably is a tumblr for that) but the kind of porn I like: buildings.  

Possibly lumberjack porn now that I think about it... *runs to tumblr*

here

What a great place to nurse Jude Law back to health.  Or write in my journal.  Either one.  Probably won't have any actual goats because they stink and I don't want to butcher them.  I'm not ready to really live off the grid because I'm not good with killing animals and how would I watch OWN then?

here

here

This hermit-in-training loves A-frames.  And hyphenation.

Well hello, slightly-bigger-than-a-shack for a slightly-more-glamorous-than-your-average-goat-lady-hermit.

Josephine Ashmun House by Alden B. Dow here

Here's the inside.  It's a cabin that's nicer than my house.  Maybe I'm ALREADY a poor hermit lady?!??!?!?!?!

Charlemagne is my metaphorical goat.

here

Just a dining room shack.  You could have your goats bring the food up from the kitchen.

Norman Jaffe here

I've been kicking around the idea of taking a solo vacation for one of my weeks off this year.  That sounds really lame but us future-goat-ladies don't care about your close-minded judgment!  I don't want one of those singles cruises because that shit kinda creeps me out but I AM hoping to find a shack in the mountains.  Or the beach, I'm not picky.   

So if you happen to know of any available shacks that are cheap/free - maybe that holds your family's forgotten four-wheeler or where you practice your pagan rituals during the solstices - please let this Madame know.  I promise you won't even know I'm there.  (Except for the snail trail of glitternaise I leave everywhere I go, of course)

here

If it happened to look like this shack instead of that onyx piece of heaven above then that would be just as awesome.  Actually, here in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains that is considered a McMansion.  Where they probably stock it with McMoonshine.  

I may never come back...

here

I am so NOT thinking about putting a bush on it, I'll tell you that much!

Little Big House by Room 11

Up North by Peter Baker

If your family's four-wheeler storage unit just happens to be near Gatlinburg or Pigeon Forge, TN that would be the most glorious and sequined thing ever.  I haven't been to Dollywood, Dolly Parton's theme park - yes that's right - since I was a little girl and it's like my Mecca.  

here

BUT if you only had a shack like this one in Californ-I-A I would totally deal. It's really far from the healing powers of Dolly Parton's roller coasters (that's not a boob joke) but I think I could still let my hermit dreams loose out west.

here

Or in Maine by a lake...

Casa Garoza by Herreros Arquitectos here

Or wherever the hell this place is.  Dreams just loosin' all the place.

Cadyville Sauna by Dan Hisel. See more awesome pics here.

This is a mirrored sauna.  A totally acceptable shack if you happen to have access to one otherwise I'll just DREAM ABOUT IT FOREVER.

here

I wish I had a time machine to go back to this cabin.  Maybe I'll just locate some white cropped pants, an egg chair and a few goat friends to recreate this scene.

here

Aside from manipulating the spacetime continuum, I'm really I'm totally fine with this cliche 'girl and some tea surrounded by nature and shit' (within a 50 mile radius of Dollywood or the California shore).  According to Cabin Porn, this loverly red paint is called Falu red.  It's made from the tailings of copper mines in Sweden and used to help preserve their wooden buildings.  Look at all this learning you're getting today on the Sauce!!

Just imagine all that and more that I'll be able to provide if you would so generously share your meth shed with me for a week while I recharge my glitter batteries.  So if you have any destination recommendations holler at me.

But please, no goats.  There's only one thing allowed to have a chin beard around here.

Whatever you, your donkey and a Victorian chair do on your own time is none of my concern.

When I started blogging I wanted to make sure everyone knew how cool and 'down with the hipness' I was so I put 'modern' in my name.  See above.  You may have to tilt your head...  I did it because I'm a 'modern' girlchild woman/madame, enjoy the kind of 'modern' that usually follows the words 'mid-century' and wanted to be on the cutting edge of vagina jokes with my 'modern' comedy.  

Well, I think we can agree those are all true.  But I have realized over at my part-time job pinning things on Pinterest and zhushing up the olde ModSauce Ranch that I might be a bit more traditional than I realized.  

via Little Green Notebook

I have no shame in saying I give mad props (although I should feel shame for using that phrase) to Celerie Kimble.  I don't know if I could live here forever but I would visit the fuck out of this place. 

via Inspired Design

Maybe I could do a little more simple.  It's a traditional I could handle even if it didn't have the more "modern" gold donut art. I might eventually put up a gold croissant or cruller piece of art because overall I like the vibe... Of gilt breakfast pastries.

In related news (not related to donuts - although I MOTHERFUCKIN WISH! - related to traditional interiors...), I finally hung some curtains back up this past weekend after taking them to the dry cleaners.  Three months ago...  And I realized "hot damn, I love curtains!"  And truly modern people aren't supposed to like curtains I think. 

I like them not only because I won't be forced to put on pants when I go into the dining room anymore (that really ruined my Sundays) but also because they frame a window and are just plain pretty.  Also, the weather can be a real dick.  Thermal shades really ain't cutting it here in the bible belt where Jesus's watchful gaze burns with the intensity of a thousand suns.

Thank you, Instagram, for making my dining room seem cooler.

Some ranchers don't need curtains but mine really does.  It's the kind of house that is modern in thought but has crown molding.  Perhaps it has a small personality disorder as well.... 

Nuevo Estilo via Full House

Also nice curtains in here.  And table.  And appropriate number of decorative accessories to make this "traditional."

You know what other traditional-esque things I like?

Brooke Shield's apartment in AD via Coco Cozy

Murals.  Like this one by Zuber.  I like all the other stuff too - a lot LOT - especially the lamps.  Although a different black chandelier might be wickedly nice. 

via Apartment Therapy

Some people might lose their shit over Ryan Gosling but bergere chairs are much more likely to incite dry humping and tears from me.  I like that they are still comfy upholstered but done so neatly and crisply without looking like an Ashley Furniture store vomited up some leftover pleather for you to cry and dry hump your Pinterest board dedicated to Ryan Gosling in.  

It's also virtually impossible to find a nice bergere - let alone a pair - at my local junk stores.  So weird, right?!  That's another reason I like them - they belong in pairs because they are friends with each other.  Who doesn't like friends?  If you buy only one it's like adopting one sibling out of a family and WHAT KIND OF HEARTLESS MONSTER DOES THAT????!?!?!?!

I think I've blogged this before but I don't care. But I forgot where it came from... source?

Look at those curtains AND settee!!  Sex on a stick.  In front of a window.  But they can do that BECAUSE OF THE CURTAINS!!

 from Bijou and Boheme

Giant busts of historical peoples are traditional and let people know you are smart and shit.  Or that you steal from archaeological digs.  Just kidding - you probably steal them from Z Gallerie.  

Rue mag.  I think...

I squee til I break in half over chandeliers.  The tackier and crustier the better.  

I don't have the source for this either... ??

Just cuz I like it.  And by 'it' I mean velvet upholstery.

source?  I'm sucking at blogging today, y'all.  Sorry.

Everything that is sessy about this room is almost ruined by the ridonkulous puddling of the drapes on the floor.  I fucking hate puddling.  It's dirty.  Even the word puddling sounds dirty.  Puddling. *gross face*  Like something you and a Mexican donkey might do in an above-ground pool.  

But I will admit to loving bedskirts.  Ruffled, pleated, tailored or any combination of those things are good for me.  I like tall beds (I prefer standing to get out of bed not rolling onto the floor first like a drunk hobo waking from a platform bed) and super tall bedskirts are necessary for hiding my junk.  They also hide the fact that Charlemagne has destroyed the lining to the box springs while playing hide and seek.  DESTROYED.

Gubi catalog via Solid Frog

Hello, architectural moldings on the wall.  I love you too.  I'll stand on a bergere and make out with you.  The bedskirt can watch as long as there's no puddling involved.

Jackie Astier via Design Crisis

But I think I prefer my traditional with a little edge.  There's still grasscloth on the walls (not at my house - I'm still recovering from removing the old wallpaper from 3 years ago) but there's a fur rug on the floor with some brass legs on that table and that's pretty damn nice.  Maybe even a whimsical headboard if I'm feeling drunk one day.

Or 'traditional with an edge' kinda like when Traditional Home magazine interviews RADICAL people in the back of their magazine as to why they're traditional with their insane wingback chairs in their LOFTS for chrissake!!  Can you stand it???!?!??!  Remember when they interviewed Jesse James and he explained he's traditional because he fucks anti-Semites on button-tufted camel back sofas?  

I could have sworn that was what he said...  I want less edgy than that.

And maybe less edgy than this:

awesomeness by Kennedy James via Design Milk

Zoinks!  Just some light Japanese bondage with your antique chair.  No big thang.  But I would buy a dozen if they were bergeres, of course.  Another reason they come in pairs is because they're doing kinky things with each other all the time.  DUH.  

BUT NO DONKEYS ALLOWED!!!

They're a pain in the ass to clean up after.

(Apparently I'm on the cutting edge of vagina jokes AND donkey puns!)

This makes me exceedingly happy.

How many people are blogging about this today?

It's the saucy new illustrated Kama Sutra by Malika Favre for all you graphic design nerds who are also dirty dirty sex freaks and are bored with reading Cosmo's position-a-day and need to raise the bar this holiday.  Now you don't have to attempt to figure out how to defy gravity doing the Rotating Praying Mantis by looking at old hippies with bad hair.  Or maybe that was just me when I was a teenager reading the Kama Sutra in secret...

I'm so grateful for something else to look at other than "modernized" hearts.  I don't dislike Valentine's Day but I hate the heart shape.  If you're going to profess your undying love for me do it with a circle because that's my favorite shape.  That's not a wedding ring joke, I just prefer circles.

I'd post more of the illustrations because they're super cool but I draw the line at featuring cartoon BJs no matter how much I dig the way they're drawn.  But feel free to check them out along with Malika's other prints. 

Also, Malika really tweaked my cartoon nipple because look at this header:

HEEEYYYYY!  

Remind you of anything?

Bladow.  I just realized that my mole is a circle.  Apparently I'm some kind of weirdo narcissist...

Anymole - praying manti, Whitman's samplers and heart shapes aside, let's make an effort to support V-Day this month.  It's the organization that helps end violence against women started by Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues.  Usually the play is produced this month all over the country and proceeds from tickets sales go to local organizations that fight violence and sexual abuse.  It's a great show - for men too - if you've never seen it.

If you want to paint on a fake mole so we could all look alike when we go see the play that's totally up to you but might be really cool.  Just sayin...

*mole tweak*