I hope I'm better at tablescaping than walking...

Ye olde ModSauce Ranch has been on decorating hiatus for a hot minute which means I bought a lot of lipstick and ate too many tapas this summer so I'm too broke for pillows.

But mostly I'm broke and on decorating hiatus because constant back pain and no ability to exercise make Madame MURDERsauce weak, poor and despondent and why won't anyone hug me oh it's probably because I still have one ugly swollen cankle from when I fell because of my back problems affecting my walking and I sleep on a naked mattress like a homeless person because I can barely muster the will to keep the bare minimum of a clean house, do the dishes or do laundry oh wait I don't even have a working washing machine so I'm sneaking over to a family member's house to steal their appliance time but I can't lift the basket of clothes out of my car because it hurts so I've been wearing the same dirty jeans for ten days and THAT'S probably the reason no one from OkCankle will message me back and now I want to cry in my dirty jeans which also have a crotch hole in them but I can't afford to buy new ones because I have to pay for chiropractor visits, a new washing machine and a new mattress which is probably the cause of all this pain in the first place.

But mostly the fun part about lipstick and tapas...

So one day when I could walk I went to the antique mall for the first time in months and bought a table.  FOR MY HOUSE SOUL.  

We were in desperate need of something happy around these parts.

My Instagrams on Tumblr.  Yes there are a lot of "lines" here but it wasn't on purpose.

It was less than $50 so I feel like that was worth it and took priority over saving for a mattress. I didn't style it; I could only get it inside the house because my back went out again.  I did have a long time to admire my purchase because I got stuck on the floor in front of it for quite awhile.

But life is good when you have new shiny furniture and it makes you forget your miserable existence for a brief moment and the fact that you do kind of resemble a French bulldog in body shape and skin tone.  

But I don't know how to style it so I raided I Pinterest for help.  

I had a lot of time on the floor.

Emily Henderson

Emily Henderson is of course the expert of making surfaces look pretty.

She always has a good mix of shiny and matte and height and I'll never put arrows in a vase.

We're looking for pointers only...

It's like the matching slim ankles are taunting me.

One time in the early days of blogging long before there was Tumblr porn I accidentally found a blog dedicated to cankle jack off material.  Not joking.  I should see if they take submissions...

I know these are Emily Henderson but I don't know the project/sources...

Ok all this EmHen work is beautiful but it's a little... happy... for my current state of misery.

Chris Nguyen via Analog Dialog

Dark and moody and much better.  Still has a mix of height levels and matte and shine and I definitely like a few plants up there.  I might need to eat it should I ever get stuck on the floor for extended amounts of time again.

via Design Traveller

Sometimes simple is best. 

I can't do simple because I junk up everything even with the best of intentions but I should practice restraint on some occasions.

Donna Griffith for Covet Garden via sfgirlbybay

Restraint in color counts.  I can do that.  I also have a lot of white things because I'm racist when it comes to home accessories.  And pets.

Rug magazine October 2012

Hey this one's really cute OMIGAWD ARE THOSE MORE SHAPELY LEGS THAT ARE TRYING TO RUIN MY SELF ESTEEM?!

Riikka Kantinkoski via Weekday Carnival

I actually have that black IKE-Rah vase on the far right so obviously my table will look as cute as this console.

Source?

Trying to not cry over that nicely made bed...   Note to self: put some shells on things and let's get this party started.  

Anna Gillar

Apparently I have to have binoculars of some kind on my table.  Sure beats hanging out in my neighbors' bushes which is so problematic with a bum back.

Jonathan Lo via Old Brand New Blog

Ok new plan just put pretty things in tray.  Pretty things and maybe some pain killers for easy access.

My preferred choice is always the Kelly Wearstler ode to the Fortress of Solitude like this loverly crystaline funscape.  

Fortress of Solitude is the ModSauce Ranch's nickname.  Also my OkCankle dating profile name.  

Things are starting to make sense now...

When I make the table look pretty and have any gripping (hopefully not crippling) cankle updates I'll make sure to alert you.

Update: I am feeling better - thank y'all for your concern.  The rant above helped and I'm sleeping in my guest bedroom now (on sheets!) which apparently has a better mattress?  Because I love my guests so much.  You should come visit me.  And help me fold my laundry and carry me to the toilet and things. 

Rad pank: colors for a dying summer star.

Every few months the heavens shift, the planets align and somewhere whales sing a special song of simultaneous joy and loneliness and I like pink for a brief period of our miserable time on earth.  

It's like Lacy in retrograde.

more here

Or maybe I'm just holding on to summer and refusing to let go.  This tapestry by Evelyn Ackerman titled Hot Summer Landscape is MY EVERYTHING right now.  

Every time I see a pumpkin sitting on a bale of hay I cringe.  I want to take a flamethrower to the infinite mum display at the front of every grocery store.

If we're keeping this cosmic metaphor, like a dying star I'm intensely fusioning (real scienze word) for bright, summery colors and will eventually burn myself out into an autumnal death.  But it's 85 degrees and I'm still groin-sweating through my pants when I'm mowing the grass so I've probably got a few more weeks left.

I'm burning hot for these Kate Spade earrings too which is sooo preppy of me.  I told you I was in retrograde.  Fortunately I'm not groin-sweating through anything when I'm online shopping so that's good to know.

OR AM I?!?!??!?!?

Jessica Helgerson

I think the key is that I gotta put some black with it.

Marja Inez

Or cats.  Cats are always good.

NG Collective print on Etsy

Or blobs.  Blobs are always good too.

Sorry, Marie...

Me.  Wearing makeup.

my Instagram

I actually have been going against my usual preference of looking as bland as humanly possible and wearing super bright lips.  Don't worry, the rest of me is still the Gap version of goth bland so it's kinda like I'm a walking funeral for my butterfly mouth.   

For my fellow makeup enthusiasts, I'm ADDICTED addicted to NYX.  It's candy for your lips.  I love every color and they smell like what cartoons rainbows would probably smell like and you can put that on your face.  They don't get sticky or bleed and are super cheap at Ulta and I'm now your candy facerainbow pusher.

But if you like painted canvases instead of painted faces I've also been enjoying all of MFAMB's paintings lately...

Jenny Andrews Anderson of MFAMB

She always has squee-worthy pank down in the Hotlanta.

Skeleton Clock III

Also check out my Twitter friend, fellow Tilda Swinton enthusiast and pink pimp Matthew Best.

One day I'll get around to buying so good art but until then...

my Instagram

PLANTS!   My track record with green things is... checkered... we'll say but I feel victim to the bromeliad's flashy center bits.  It was just sitting there whoring it up for me and I couldn't resist.  Also, it kinda matched my pink and orange shoes so I figure the Universe WANTED me to buy it.

If I kill it let's pretend this never happened.

here

I was also momentarily seduced (remember, Lacy Sauce in retrograde) by these blossom thingies until a plant smart person (thanks @_emily_rose) told me even dummies can grow zinnias.  GUESS WHAT I'LL BE PLANTING NEXT SPRING, Y'ALL?!??!

That's right, lipstick plants.

Until then...

Chatelaine Magazine via Design Milk

...hot pink and orange pumpkins?!  I don't know how I feel about this but I'm putting this here for you.  Because I care about your front porches and seasonal tablescaping.

But I'm still thinking about bright furniture and summer plants so y'all just keep pinning those recipes for pumpkin spice sex lube and I'll be hanging out here...

Elle Interior Sweden

Carrying this.

Kinda Khalidy

And tablescaping like this:

Patrick Cline for Lonny

Just kidding I can't tablescape.  I just throw my mail in artful piles and call it a day.  Hhmm... maybe we need to talk about proper 'scaping soon because this dying star is clueless.

Prepare for pink dump...

via Little Green Notebook

here

Thomas Jackson

James Welling

Yes all things gradient pink and orange please.

Erica Fae

ME. I wish.  But this IS my hot orange/red/pink lipstick life muse and I love everything about her and whatever brand of magic is going on this picture.  This shade of red/pink (heretofore known as rad pank) is where my heart is.  I think it might be the color of the year for 2015.  But maybe I'm talking crazy...

via YNG

Jay Stewart Photography

Or I'll take this and some freckles please and I think I'm having a girl crush moment...

Put some black on it.  And see the other amazing fashion illustrations by Daryl Feril here.

And if I'm not thinking about rad pank I've been completely consumed with this:

BigBadRobot Etsy print

I'm not ready for it to be over.  I'm still grieving and refuse to take off my Blue Sky-inspired nail polish.  I've been watching old episodes again - no shame.

Good thing that bromeliad was so cheap so I can spend some money on posters inspired by tv shows.  Am I really that person now?!

Who cares as long as my lipstick looks good.

A 'farewell to summer' tour coming to a dirty creek near you.

I think I'm having a Peter Pan moment regarding summer because I'm not ready to grow up and have it be Fall.  Fuck your pumpkin spice everything (until next month).  It's just now gotten bearable outside even though I'm still considered a personal Ryan's Buffet for all mosquitoes that reside below the Mason Dixon Line.  

Maybe that's why I've got sparkle eyes for these rafts like I'm a hongray skeeter looking at the business end of a Ryan's Buffet of Lacy.  (Pro tip: if you're not a mosquito they're all pleasure ends. I don't know what that means but it sounds kinda sensuous right?!)

I also want to go to the ocean because I bet they don't have mosquitoes there and these rafts look like something Peter Pan would create if Peter Pan was a hippie hoarder.  

They're all created by street artist Swoon (a laaady street artist) and created using found object and tour the rivers of our great, littered country gawd bless Americuh.

As we know, I have a weakness for "found" structures and long time reader(s) might remember my trip to the tallest tree house in the world here and here or if you've read my blog for more than a day.

Been there, did not do that.

He built it because Jesus told him to.  I think Swoon has different, less creepy motives but I appreciate both varieties of architecture equally.

Things like this make my hoarding tendencies seem "artful" and not "symptomatic of larger undiagnosed issues."

Obviously, I like swings on slightly dangerous structures.

Other than 'when are we going to take a Beasts of the Southern Wild-inspired, Peter Pan pirate cruise in a river shack made of floating garbage?' I think the real question here is what would your street artist name be??

There should be some kind of Cosmo Mad Lib quiz about it.  Like, randomly pick an adverb followed by the name of the first person you kissed.

Mine would be Lithely Eric.  (at least that's what I think his name was...  I remember it was during Interview With A Vampire but I think that was the last time I saw him since he rolled my house the next day...?  He wore a very large gold chain so but did have a soft top Jeep so I had conflicted feelings about this outcome being that I couldn't drive yet.)

Or use the Swoon formula and just pick a verb that doesn't have such terrible, self-esteem-damaging connotations in which case I think my street artist name would be Punt.

Yeah, Punt.

So if you're ever hanging out in Burning Man-meets-the Mighty Mississippi and see someone wearing overalls and a feather headdress named Punt it's probably me.  Please help me reapply sunscreen.

all pics via Supersonic Electronic and Wired

Now I don't know whether I need to raid a junkyard or go cry about Hushpuppy and Beasts of the Southern Wild AGAIN.  It took me about three months to control the sobbing the first time I saw it.

Ok new street artist name: Hushpunty.

Punty Pan.

Peter Punt.

I can't stop...

Things that are making me exceedingly happy but mostly 2 Chainz and Twitter.

Good things are happening around the MS Ranch this week.  Let's review:

-  a big project at work is successfully finished so I've stopped anxiety-scratching my arms til they bleed at night.  Ahhh sweet relief.

-  the excruciating and immobilizing pain I felt all weekend due to my tailbone somehow (looks at Charlemagne) getting popped out of place is now gone thanks to my chiropractor's magic hands of tough love. I can walk again and it is glorious.

-  I ran out of real pasta so I had to crumble lasagna noodles into bite size pieces to make dinner and it actually turned out not gross.

- I saw a cute elephant cuddle.  On the internet.

So...  basically my life has been upgraded from really terrible to just mildly sad and pathetic now.

VICTORY!

Let me share with you some other things that are making me happy lately.  It's the little things, y'all.  Don't ruin this for me.

here

Solitary mason bees (Illuminati bees?!) make larvae nests from flower petals that are so pretty I kinda of want to cry.  We also need to have a discussion about bees soon.  I'm turning into one of those people.

In related color coolness (it's a real thing), I've been looking at these gifs nonstop since July and can't stop.

via This Is Colassal

These are macro shots of oil, ink and soap from Russian designer Ruslan Khasanov.  You should light some candles and grab a towel and watch the full video.

Pacific Light from Ruslan Khasanov on Vimeo.

It's like pure sex.  Throw in some naked people and this is what my dreams look like.

This is what some of my other dreams look like:

Erwin Wurm via But Does It Float

Make of that what you will but it still makes me incredibly happy.

In more celebrity-centric happy Lacy news, 2 Chainz - rapper, big booty lover and 'diffrent' bon vivant - has released a cookbook called #Meal Time on iTunes if you buy the deluxe version of his latest album.  

It looks like The Colbert Report was in charge of graphics.

I haven't bought a full rap album since Dutty Rock because 27 of the 32 tracks on that album were gawddamned skits and I'd had enough.  

But for this?!

via Grubstreet

I might make an exception just for the chainz in the background.  Food bloggers, this is how you do shit up right.

vis Jezebel

You need to enlarge this recipe immediately.

2 Chainz also has other helpful tips like "Put on your Versace apron." and "Call Fergie, invite her to watch a movie on Netflix.  Once she accepts, start making green beans."  I'm not making this up.  Read more here.

In other celebrity news, I think I might be one now because of Twitter.  I recently sent this 140 character gem out into the cloud:

Obviously, comedy gold.  I think I then bantered a bit with @turnageb and @mommyboots about some weird shit (I'm not humiliating them on purpose - just to let you know it takes a village) which resulted in this:

Look, it made sense at the time.  If you're not on Twitter you wouldn't understand.

A very nice person @toddcaton then alerted a Twitter artist @lambchops1  to such fuckery and asked him to draw it because this is a thing that happens on the twitters.

And he did.

You guys.  This is probably the best thing that's ever happened to me and could only be surpassed one day if an actual tiny David Bowie goblin got freaky with my belly bloat.

My favorite part is the accuracy of the face.  Little did I know when I snapped that awkward selfie for my avatar that it would be end up being such a universally applicable expression.

I'm going to keep riding that cartoon-inspired high through the weekend because my birthday is Saturday! I turn 33 which feels like a really good year and a really good number to be.  

Maybe I'll make some recipes from 2 Chainz's (2 Chainz'?) cookbook in hopes of eating enough to summon a goblin to reenact the sketch above.  

Without the feds watching.