For Miss Courtney

My co-worker Courtney and I were discussing home redecorating today, commiserating over our inability to paint our apartments. I mentioned some of the great ideas I've gotten off the design blogs I read every day.

So, Courtney, here they are! And if any of you have others you subscribe to, please let me know. I can always use more home eye candy.

Some favs:
Apartment Therapy - A massive site that posts hundreds of times each week. It's not so much with the instructions or how-to's as it is with home tours and trends. It's a great resource for browsing tons of pictures to get ideas of what you like.


Dear Designer's Blog - Features tons of great finds. "Look at this! This is cool!" A lot of times it's furniture and pillows, but sometimes really neat accent pictures like this DIY carton cubby.

Decor8 - My favorite part about Decor8 is their Take 5 Tuesdays in which they feature select Etsy vendors. Like this from Etsy vendor Sarah + Bendrix. It's a great blog for wall art and other accessories.

Design*Sponge - One of my top choices. Cool looking everything. Home tours, various products, how-to projects and tons more. I can't wait to try the instructions for this homemade Valentine's project.

Desiretoinspire - Ah, all the pretty pictures. They group things together - small bathrooms, dining rooms, stripes, etc - to make it really easy to see how to do one idea many different ways. They truly live up to their name and inspire me daily.

How About Orange - Great resource for DIY projects! It's where I got the idea for the starch and fabric wall coverings.

Ish and Chi - Sleek and simple, I love watching the room makeovers and DIY art projects that Ish and Chi posts. I also love that they share my love of typography and combine it with art.

Making it Lovely - She loves pink. And is making her house pink. It's happy and beautiful and fun and wonderful. It's a step by step process, but it's fun to see how little improvements make a big change.

Young House Love - These two are my heroes. A young couple in their first home, they have been completely remodeling every aspect of it. The before and after photos are incredible! Now they're branching out and offering their readers advice on room makeovers. It's just a great site for before and after shots, which I always love.
Before-

After-

Knock Off Wood - Another hero. Ana lives in Alaska and has a taste for expensive furniture. So she taught herself to build furniture. That's right, she builds it. And she blogs her plans so her readers can build furniture, too. Hans and I actually tried one of these plans that I'll blog about in a post yet to come.