envy

I know they say that green is supposed to be the colour of envy, but lately I can't seem to get enough of white.







I love the ceiling beams in this room so much!

And, of course, I can't talk about rooms I would kill for without talking about my most-coveted room, the laundry:





And, ok...maybe a little green.





I never would have thought of putting spring green and pale aqua together, but I love it!





I keep reminding myself, too, that I really want to look around more for outdoor inspirations. I have no "outdoor" area of my own, but every time I see something like this, I'm completely captivated...





This reminds me a lot of the various "yurt vacations" I've been seeing everywhere lately. (Apparently this is the new big thing in camping?)

And, of course, there's always classic rustic:






In other news, I think I have temporarily reached a state of detente - or, at least, cease fire - with the hideous suspended ceiling in my bedroom. The funny thing is, this surrender (ok, yes, it was more a case of my surrendering to the hideous power of that ceiling than a mutual lessening of tension) came out of what was actually a really great accidental brainstorming session this weekend with my friend Ali.

Because my birthday is coming up and not all of my friends are available to celebrate with me, she treated me to my first ever manicure this past weekend. (I could not be happier about that! I've always wanted a French manicure, and I think I'm hooked!) While we were waiting for our nails to dry, we happened to glance up in the tiny manicurist shop to notice that the entire ceiling (a suspended ceiling, mind you) seemed to be covered with a pattern, as though the individual tiles had been papered over. This lead to ideas such as covering my ugly tiles with wallpaper, cloth, or contact paper - and even Ali's ambitious suggestion of using fabric to cover the entire ceiling and then affixing simple flat dowels (along the lines of a Japanese paper screen) to conceal the ugly. And then there's always the old standby - something like Armstrong's decorative ceiling tiles.

After mentally going over all these ideas, however, I've done a cost-benefit analysis. The bottom line of which being that I really don't own my apartment (nor would I want to!), nor do I plan to stay indefinitely (frankly, I'm moving as soon as I start earning enough to afford a new rent...any, uh, year now...), and much of this would require that I lay out money and effort I would never see a return on... Alas, for the moment, I surrender.