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Category: design

the rat mansion: unveiled

  • August 3rd, 2012
  • 2

Whew! I promised in my last post that I would share a lot of goodies about the rats’ new cage when it was finished, and finally, after a month of work, it is. Like many of my projects, I thought it would be a quicker and easier process than it was, but I’m really pleased with the result–and more importantly, so are Ari and Vetty. Their old cage was perfectly nice, but not ideal–it never really looked like it belonged in our living room, they scattered food and bedding all over the floor, and we had to hide all their [...]

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rats are people too: interior design in miniature

  • July 26th, 2012
  • 2

I’m Kate Moore, and I love rats. Still with me? Good. That sentence carries a bit of a stigma. When I tell people about my beloved pet rats, reactions range from the disgusted (“Ugh! Why would you bring a rat into your house?!?”) to the politely baffled (“Rats? You mean…like actual rats?”) to the downright mean. Only very occasionally will I get a positive response, and I cling to those people like peanut butter on the roof of your mouth. The thing is, most of these people haven’t ever met a pet rat. Fancy rats, as they’re called (meaning “bred [...]

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oh, the life of a cat: diy outdoor lounge for a spoiled beast

  • June 11th, 2012
  • 0

How about this weather, Midwest? It’s been gorgeous, although the drought has put a damper on things a bit (fortunately it gave us a nice big storm today). Our garden has been soaking up the summer sun and giving us outrageous amounts of zucchini, a few handfuls of edamame, a nice crop of watermelon radishes, countless herbs, and around 20 not-yet-ripe-but-starting-to-look-delicious tomatoes. Between the garden’s generous production and our Bounty Box subscription (a local grocer, the Root Cellar, provides us with a big box of local and seasonal produce every week), we haven’t needed much else in the way of [...]

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it’s a walk-off: stephens college fashion show

  • April 23rd, 2012
  • 5

I know I usually show inspiring spaces and objects, but today we’re going to take a look at some inspiration of a different kind. Once a year, Stephens College here in Columbia has a juried fashion show, where all the fashion students can submit work for display. I think the seniors have to exhibit a collection as part of their graduation requirements. This year, Jimmy was filming the event for CAT TV, and I was offered a ticket. I also happened to have a brand new camera I wanted to test out, so I schlepped it along. I was seriously [...]

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room inspiration: bright breakfast nook on a budget

  • April 17th, 2012
  • 2

Way back in January, I asked whether you all would prefer the kind of inspiration boards I’d been putting together–without regards to cost–or if it’d be more helpful for you to see some boards done on a tight budget. The budget boards got the most votes, and so I’ve been hard at work putting some together for you. They definitely take more effort; pretty stuff is everywhere, but pretty and cheap stuff is a little more hidden. It totally exists, though! If you can, scour your local thrift stores and garage sales–you can find an incredible number of gems–and if [...]

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spray, girl, spray: paint makes everything better

  • February 23rd, 2012
  • 1

(The title of this post is for my dear friend Emily, who greets me with a Tila Tequila-ish “hey girl heyyyyyy” now and then.) I’ve been feeling the DIY urge pretty strongly lately, but at the moment I don’t have much to apply it to. February is a very, very slow month for me on Etsy, historically, so our budget has been pretty tight; thus, projects like building a DVD rack for the alcove or re-renovating the master bathroom have been put temporarily on hold. For the moment, I’m limited to projects that are either cheap or free. Fortunately, I [...]

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cruelty-free floor: budget friendly diy faux cowhide rug

  • February 7th, 2012
  • 10

Lately I’ve been working so much on the Etsy store, and on the various friends’ weddings I’ve been designing for, that I haven’t paid much attention to the house. Until last night. I arrived back home from a long weekend in Chicago with a carful of IKEA furniture, tingly-numb legs, and a burning desire to finish the alcove project. Specifically, I wanted to finish the rug. If you’ll recall, I wanted to do some kind of faux-pony (fauxny?) or cowhide rug, but obviously not something from a real animal. The look I was going for was this: Of course, as [...]

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room inspiration: the modern mad man

  • January 10th, 2012
  • 3

To anyone who hasn’t been living under a 127 Hours-sized boulder for the last few years, it’s pretty obvious the television-viewing world has fallen prey to Mad Men fever. I am 100% fine with this. While I’ve only seen a few episodes of the show (Jimmy works in television and so doesn’t really like to pay for TV service at home, and I can’t imagine how much more I would procrastinate with HGTV available whenever I wanted it), the aesthetic is beyond beautiful. Pencil skirts, well-tailored suits, Futura, hats, thick-framed glasses (suspiciously similar to the hipstery ones seen all over [...]

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new year, tiny space, big plans

  • January 3rd, 2012
  • 1

Sorry for the wait, kids. I’ve been trying to write a post about the myriad projects I put together for Christmas for a week now, and I just cannot for the life of me find the transfer cable for my camera. I know it’s somewhere in the nightmare pit I currently call my office, so as soon as I get it squared away I’ll have the deets on all my family’s gifts. Suffice to say that in the two weeks before Christmas, I crocheted a scarf, made a quilt, decoupaged photos onto fourteen canvases, made four yarn wreaths, infused and [...]

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i can’t think of a pun on “chair”

  • November 29th, 2011
  • 1

Finally, finally, after hours of watching my MacBook search through unallocated space (which falls just below watching grass grow and just above watching Jersey Shore on my scale of exciting things to do) I managed to recover the photos of the chair redo that I so foolishly deleted last time. After looking at the handful of pictures my scattered brain remembered to take, I’m not sure those hours were very well-spent, but eh. They’re here. There are myriad tutorials out there on how to do a simple reupholstery job like this one; you can probably find much, much better instructions [...]

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