the man made {coffee table}

The Man has made many things for our apartment and slowly but surely I will show you them all but I thought I'd start with an all time favorite.

The Man is incredibly creative.  I don't get how he comes up with this stuff half the time.  One day he'll say "Hmmm, we need a new _____" and the next day he'll show me what he's started, and every time it blows my mind.

In this instance it was: "We really need a new coffee table..."
And a few weeks later we were setting our beverages on this bad boy:

This piece is made of MDF. Walnut and Acrylic.  In real life the wood is a lot less red/yellow than it came out in these photos, actually, the whole room is a lot less red/yellow!

The table is so gorgeous and unique, and I love how the center hovers above the ground.  Each side is canted at a different angle so as you walk around it the form is always changing, no side looks alike.

So awesome right!

I recorded a video walking around it so you can see how it all comes together.

(please excuse the quality, it's from my iPhone):

coffee table from Aly Flint on Vimeo.

 I love this piece and everything else in the living room, which you can catch little glimpses of in the video, but don't worry I'll show you all of it, one by one!!!

fixin' for a picnic

A couple of weeks ago we went outback to the communal outdoor area of our apartment building and saw that our picnic table was broken.  Remember the picnic table The Man and I built over 2 years ago! I can't believe it's been that long, but I can believe that one of the beams snapped.

With the summer in full force and Independence Day on the way we decided it was time to fix the sad broken table. So we got some new 2X4s at Home Depot and went to work.

So here she was in all her newness all those years ago:

And what a difference 2 years make:

Look at what 2 Chicago winters can do to cedar. Beautiful!!  You can definitely tell which pieces are new.

I love having a productive weekend, breaking out the power tools really makes you feel accomplished!

the hutch {sketches}

I have a pyrex obsession.

Or more like a fancy-dishware-that-I-don't-allow-anyone-to-use obsession.

I've been collecting pieces here and there ever since high school, and although I try to be selective, it's hard not to scoop up a piece when it's at a great price.  So here I am in our wonderful, but lacking in storage, apartment, with a bunch a beautiful dishes and nowhere to display them.  This is where having a furniture making Morning Man comes in real handy.

A few weeks ago The Man and I started discussing what we would want our hutch to look like.  Almost all of the furniture in our apartment is The Man made and it's very modern (and gorgeous!).  I wanted the hutch to fit with our other furniture but I also wanted that classic hutch look with lot's of molding. So we did some sketches, and then he took off with it.

(the final drawing is always the messiest)

It's not complete yet, but I'm getting so excited for the final result.  We decided to paint it black (glossy black by my request) and used knotty pine for accents, so that it would go with the uber-modern totally amazing dining room table he made.

I can't wait to show it to you when it's all complete and stuffed with dishware! Hopefully it will be soon!

wishful wednesday {taking the flor plunge}

One thing this Lazy Lady does best is fantasize about the future.  I'm not very good at living "in the now," I'm always thinking about the next recipe we should make, or couch we should buy, or city we'll live in, or job I could have, and where we'll be in 1, 3, 5, or 15 years.  It's not really the healthy way to live, buuuut sometimes I come up with some really great futures, and every once and a while those futures come true. . .

So, did you notice the floor in my post about that awesome sleeping bag?

We got ourselves a flor floor!!

We finally made some decisions about what colors we wanted (we are seriously terrible decision makers).  It took 3 trips to the flor showroom and lots of hemming and hawing, but we did it!!  Their "Customize your FLOR" tool is a great help to figure out patterns, but to see the real colors you need a sample.  When you go to the showrooms they have mini tile samples that you can take home (you can either buy them or pinky-swear to bring them back:)).  It really helps to see the true colors in your house.

In the end we chose "Toy Poodle," it's a low pile (since we're messy eaters), and we went with a bit of a safe palette with mostly grays and a deep blue thrown in for good measure (cloud, fog, overcast, and lagoon).  So for we haven't stuck the tiles down yet, we're still deciding on the layout

Here's the before. No rug, super plain, icky couch.

First The Man wanted to try it so the rug went a little under the entertainment center and a little under the couch.... It was bad.  It was just a weird stripe that just chunked up the room.

Then we tried it the normal way, which is very nice.
Then we tried it the wonky way!  For now we've kept it like this, we like it, but again, we're terrible decision makers!

What do you think, did we make a good choice? How would you lay it out?

holiday cheer!

I'm so excited for the holidays.
The tree is trimmed,

Our house is decked,

The stockings are sewn,

(I took another class at The Needle Shop and made The Man a Christmas Stocking I bought the material to make one for myself as well...

but I didn't get very far)

the cookies are made,

 (Glittering Lemon Sandwich Cookies)

and in a few short hours we'll be eating delicious quiche for Christmas Brunch with my fam in Portland, Oregon.

On Thursday night I got one early and unexpected present.  One of the gals I work with got sick and could no longer use her ticket too . . .

Book Of Mormon!!!!!!!

I haven't been to a play in so long I honestly can't remember when it was.  It was so incredible and hilarious and amazing and so so so so so so so good! great! fantastically fabulous! Now I want so badly to get more tickets so I can take The Man (who not-so-secretly loves musicals) to go see it too.

So Merry Christmas Everyone, I hope you all have a wonderful Holiday and spend some over-due time with your families and people who love you.

checkin' out the neighborhood {amy's candy bar}

Outside it's getting colder and darker.  Gone are the days of leisurely strolling, now is the time for brisk walks to determined destinations.  What with snow on the horizon and a pocket book ravaged by holiday sales, The Man and I haven't been checking out the neighborhood as much as we'd like, but we still, on occasion, find ourselves somewhere new.  And a few months back, when my parents were in town, we made a sweets stop at Amy's Candy Bar.

This place is candy heaven.  The decor is beautiful and the treats are plentiful.

They have every candy imaginable.  From old fashioned to fun and new, and even a little section of nostalgia candies for the young at heart.

 (A gumball table!)

We bought a bunch to try and I ended up discovering a new favorite.  Sponge candy! It's super delicious, and I don't even have to share because The Man hates it! Double Delicious!

wishful wednesdays {dining room}

It's been quite some time since I wrote a "wishful wednesday" post.  They were by far my most popular posts, and also the most time consuming.  I took a break from them because I had less time and less inspiration, but now that The Morning Man and I have moved into a bigger better apartment I've got inspiration comin' out the wazoo!

Now that we have the time and space to really make our house a home The Man and I just can't stop thinking, and wishing, and planning, and (for the first time) doing.  So wishful wednesdays are getting a little re-vamp.  At times they will still be about my fantasy future, but now they will also be about our real life plans for our real life home.  Of course we're renting so there won't be any big over-haul projects, but we plan on focusing on making each room great and perfectly us (and adaptable for when we inevitably move again).

First things up - The Dining Room!

I haven't talked about it too much so far, but The Morning Man is an incredible craftsman.  He designs and fabricates beautiful and unique furniture, and I am the lucky girl who gets to take it all home.  Back in the beginning of July he started working on our dining room table (yeah, we have a dining room!).  He had this crazy idea and with his woodworking skills and my powers of sudoku he created a one-of-a-kind and totally awesome dining table:

Here's a picture of it in the shop before the clear coat and glass.
The table top is comprised of  368 blocks, there are 6 different sizes and they are spaced out so that blocks of the same size never touch (sudoku power!).  The base of the table is really cool too. From this photo it looks like it's just painted black, but look a little closer . . .

and you'll see that it's actually burnt! It's a Japanese technique called Shou-sugi-ban.  It creates a beautiful texture.

Once The Man finished up the table we began our hunt for the perfect dining room chairs.

The table is so strange that it was really hard to find the right fit.  At first we tried out chairs at Ikea.

(The white chair with wooden legs and the ghost chair are not from Ikea, I just loved and wanted them)

Many of the chairs looked liked they'd do just fine in photos, but up close it was a whole different story. There are many things I am happy to buy at Ikea but furniture doesn't seem to be one of them.  When we went in we saw that all of the chairs in our price range were just too cheap, and any chairs that were decent looking just weren't worth the price.  We sat there contemplating buying the cheapest chairs (the all black with metal legs for 24.99) just for the time being, so we could sit somewhere in our house, but even that seemed like a waste when we flipped the chair around and saw how easily the "finish" a.k.a. black paper, had pealed off the particle board.

It was impossible to find and cheap and classy chair option in Chicago . . . until The Man typed "cheap furniture Chicago" into google.

Now why didn't I think of that?

Those three magic words lead him to a place called Interior Express Outlet.  It's a warehouse in a strange vacant area near the airport, and it's chock-full of decently priced, great looking knock offs of chairs that we had never even considered, due to their price everywhere else.  Like fantasy home chairs, your wildest dream chairs, wishful Wednesday chairs! EAMES CHAIRS!!!

That's right, those beautiful, goes with everything, you can't find them for less than $250.00 a piece chairs that we never thought could possibly exist in our own home were only $55.00 each! $55!! AHHHHH!! I'm in love, and his name is Eames Shell Chair.

And now everything is together and we feel like fancy grown-ups, with a fancy custom made dinning room table and six fancy shell chairs, all in our fancy dinning room. And we stare at it lovingly while we eat dinner off of $12 tv trays in the living room . . . where the tv is.

checkin' out the neighborhood {scout and brimfield}

Ok, that wasn't very nice of me, but I didn't want to overwhelm you with so much house-goods awesomeness all at once, so I thought I'd spread it out a little.

Alright, back to what I was saying yesterday:

We left The White Attic (drooling in check) and headed one door down to Scout:

Scout has a lot of furniture and large pieces, like this cool row of lockers in the window.

These dining chairs were pretty sweet, you can't tell from this photo but the fabric was dark green vinyl (and if I remember correctly they  also had a bit of sparkle)


Our last stop for the day was Brimfield:

This place was really fun, and if you like plaid and tartan fabrics then this is the place for you.

They have kitchen items, lighting, home accessories, furniture, and taxidermy.  They also reupholster furniture, and many of the pieces are of course done up in more plaid.

Brimfield is pretty large compared to it's next door neighbors, there were many little rooms shooting off from the main area. I didn't even realize until I was looking up the website to get a link that there is a downstairs! So, next time there will be even more to check out.

I totally want this for when my office/studio is set up . . . when ever that might be.

And my favorite part of this store:

Blankets! Blankets! Blankets! The Man wouldn't even let me think about blankets right now since it's been so darn hot outside, but I'll be back . . . oh yes, I'll be back.

checkin' out the neighborhood {white attic}

We've been living in our new apartment for about six weeks now.  We're learning it creeks and squeaks, and loving every bit of it.  But I must say, my favorite part of our new place is it's spiffy location.

Our apartment is in Lincoln Square, close to Andersonville, and right across the street from a beautiful park with huge willow trees and baseball diamonds. There are so many shops and restaurants, cute corners and sweet spots to sit and relax, and slowly but surely we're checking out every nook and cranny.  So the other week we set out to Andersonville to check out some fun shops.

I wanted to go to Clark St. in Andersonville because I had heard of this place called Scout, and, as it turns out, Scout is perfectly sandwiched by two other great shops!

The first one we stopped in was The White Attic:

 The White Attic finds vintage furniture from the early 1900's and mid-century and refinishes it in fresh contemporary colors and stains.  Every piece in this store was gorgeous, and I wanted to take all of it home.

 This dresser/credenza was The Morning Man's fav.

 There were so many great pieces but my favorite part of the store had to be the lamp bar.

 They had 16 or more base styles to choose from and from there you "build" your lamp.  They have various glaze options for the base and fabric options for the shade, so you can put together your perfect lamp.  The prices range from $245-325, which is a bit much for me right now, but I'm saving up, because these are beautiful!!

After we were done drooling over everything at White Attic, we walked one door down to Scout:
  . . .
And I'll tell you about that tomorrow!