Design and Life: I've been reading too many magazines

Somewhere in the past few years I've developed a love of interior home design. Actually that's not true. I made dozens of sketches of my ideal bedrooms growing up and constantly redid how I decorated my high school bedroom (did anyone else go through a phase in middle or high school where every single memory had to be displayed...it exhausts me just thinking about it. I now sympathize with my mom who hated it, but appreciate her letting me go through my various phases of "self-expression") After high school I had a spell of scouring Pottery Barn magazines. It's funny how you can finally land in a place (or space) in life where you can actually define yourself. Interestingly enough, my roommate just came in with pictures of us from 2003-2004. I totally didn't get it then. Scary. But maybe this is the upside of entering the late twenties, as my younger brother so lovingly calls them.

If you've known me only pre-(or even early) New York City, this may come as a slight shock, because it certainly did to me. But. I think I can best describe my design taste as Vintage Modern. I'm sure that there is a more "correct" way to describe this that already exists, but it's the best I can do. I kind of see it as a merging of two opposites that work together poetically. I am drawn to objects with histories that whisper stories. But too many or unpurposefully placed and it becomes overwhelming. What I just realized is how much I appreciate clean lines and spaces and color.

I crave the creative brainwork it requires to meld these two things together. I had a moment of clarity today when I came to realize that it is essentially the way that I live. I literally live in New York City and breathe in it's energy and diversity, drive and creativity. Figuratively, though, I live in a way that is somewhere in between urban and midwestern. I'm incapable of pulling off that put-together look of city girls, but thinking about it, I'm glad that my midwestern roots are still alive and well. I crave the countryside and the smell of the air after it rains, but can't imagine leaving the vitality and ideas that are the city. I will listen to bluegrass, old country and new country all night and the next Sufjan and then Alicia. My reading is the same way: I could live inside a Jane Austen novel or Jonathan Safron Foer's postmodernism.

So. As I mentally decorate the space I don't yet live in, (or even the space I currently inhabit) I plan on a bowl of vintage typeset keys, framed prints of Neruda covers and an antique makeup tray--but placed carefully without clutter so that the objects have purpose, meaning and space that is not impeded upon by an abundance of stuff. Yuck. That word itself is imposing.

Anyway. I added some links that I frequent that feed my brain a mixture of the old and new if you feel like browsing. If I ever find the funds to finance any of my brainstorming, maybe I'll post some pictures. Until then, this teacher salary has to rely on imagination.