Your (Several Times) Daily Dose of Home & Garden Porn

[akirlu]

Do you spend too much time watching dopey shows on HGTV just in case you spot an interesting paint color combination, learn a useful cabinet-hanging trick, or get an idea for what on earth to do about your scary bathroom? Like to spend hours poring over the Crate & Barrel furniture catalogs? Addicted to Ikea Hacker? Trying to figure out a way to hang all your art?

Apartment Therapy may be just the gang blog for you. Now, I will warn you before you go look, you have to have a Really High tolerance for Mid-Century and other forms of Modern furniture and decor, because these will be splatted all over many of the daily posts. But tucked in among the breathless cooing over contemporary sources of (yech) Eiffel-base Eames shell chairs (ptui), you'll find eco news: Ikea is discontinuing disposable plastic bags completely; user product recommendations: the Electrolux Ergorapido is a good stick vacuum choice for pet owners; or an entirely drool-worthy recipes like this one for grain salad with Meyer lemon and spring asparagus.

It's a bit DIY, it's a bit Martha Stewart how-to, and a big dollop of your choice of vastly hip and trendy interior design mags. Above all, it is eye candy. High velocity eye candy, I might add. With gang blogs based in four regions of the country, and several different regular features, what you see at 9:00 will not be what you see at noon, and both will be long gone by evening. If you have ADD-ferret brain and a big appetite for storage and design solutions, you will love it.

Lise got me hooked on this one, with the simple expedient of pointing me to this amazing combination staircase and bookcase in a London loft. It's dizzyingly impractical, and yet, I want it. If you have book storage issues, you'll want to at least take a peek, even if you then run away screaming in horror.

Comments

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Those HGTV and TLC shows are one of the reasons we don't get extended cable service. I spend plenty of time in hotel rooms and at friends' houses watching house porn. I love those real estate house-flip shows in different parts of the country that actually quote prices and add up the numbers (not doing so well lately, but think of the hours I have missed wasting). Instead I keep up with the various networks' fantasy justice systems...

Martha Stewart you say. [Slavering.] And no pesky hardcopy to dispose of. Get thee behind me.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Aw, c'mon. The first click's free... How bad could it be? How long could it last...?

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Didja see that free app on Facebook that lets you import blueprints and furnish the rooms from their Google catalogs and change all the colors and sizes and then position cameras and wave them around? Mmmmmmmm? Scene something.

Took me half an hour just to decide, No, no thanks, not today.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't normally look at Facebook, so I had been safe, but I might have to go check that out. Revenge is sweet, eh?

[maryread.livejournal.com]

I thot you'd like that!

Insert smiley face here.

[kateyule.livejournal.com]

Ohhh yeah. Apartment Therapy is on my regular Wednesday reading list. (Ever since I discovered the "Open all of these as individual tabs" option in Firefox, I've set up mini-magazines of sites.)

Linky-linkyness this morning led me to the KoeKoeK Clock, which would last about 15 seconds in a house with resident cat.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I keep thinking that it's meant to be some sort of play on "cuckoo clock", and thereby wondering how KoeKoek is meant to be pronounced. But yeah, definitely a clock only for the cat-free household.

Tabbed browsing rocks, dunnit?