a birthday squeeze...

i saw this today and considering the amount of birthday carrot cake i've eaten this weekend...i wish i had have had one of these...

a simple tool designed by finnish art and design student maria kivijarvi, it slices cakes into the perfect single slice...just cut and then squeeze the handle to keep the cake slice intact until its on your plate...

all credibilty for images and info to design milk...

design is...

an ode to 1980...

i'm celebrating my 30th birthday on saturday...big year for me in many ways...

anywho...i thought i'd put my tongue in my cheek and have a wee look at some inspiring interiors from the 1980's...if your house is in these hots here's the disclaimer...these guys put their tongues in their cheeks first..

and to think that this stuff might one day be 'retro'...ouch...

moved...

we're having great craic here at 'mc cunks' of 'cunkville' tonight...*

as i mentioned in a previous post, we moved into our house about 3 weeks ago...

me being me and me being superstitious i was adamant we had to move in on friday night, so crazy as she thought i was, mc wife and i grabbed a mattress and some sheets, 2 gallons of paint and painting supplies and we hauled ourselves in, painted our living room that night with the help of a large pizza and a case of america's finest...

up and at em early next morn, we had a u-haul truck to pick up and friends and family organised to help us with the move...and move we did...

the pic above is a very impromptu first dinner party...the table top is a resting on a few boxes, we pulled whatever chairs were closest to the table, mc wife and her co-horts popped out and came back with $50 worth of kfc and we were good to go...

until we realised we had no plates or silverware...so the scramble ensued, and surely before too long paper plates were unearthed from one box and our finest silverware we received as wedding presents was unwrapped and ready for action too...

what a christening for the silverware...paper plates and kfc...we did have great craic around the dinner table, mess or no mess...

anyway...what do y'all think of the blue above?

we've spent this evening finally deceiding on what artwork and photogrpahs we want to use in the space, exactly where the furnitre will go, what lamps are going where and what books, trinkets, phinky stuff is going where too...we nearly have one room finished...yay to me and mc wife...

anyway...what do you think of the blue...???

i'll have a blue book please...no a red one...

colour therapy for your bookshelves...

i want it...

$39.99 at target...STEAL...

canned light...

just like it says on the tin....or not...

what a great idea from fuse interiors...canned light...

this week fuse interiors launched it's 'can lights' as part of their fuse finds collection...this is the first of fuse finds upcoming range of recycled/upcycled home products...

the 'can lights' developed by in-house designer willem heeffer, they are made from reecycled heinz baked beans and campbell's soup cans...with the help of dublin's restaurants and cafes who collect the tin cans, these everyday waste objects are turned into popsical artsy functional pendant lights...

"the lights celebrate the cross over between popular culture and sustainability and look great in sets of three..."

“by taking mass produced everyday waste objects and up-cycling them, the lights represent how inventive recycling can result in new design..."

find out more about fuse interiors 'can lights' here and on their facebook page...

pop...

can't beat a bit of colour to add some pop to black and white...nicely used turquoise, used little but used well i think...

stripe it while it's hot...

check out this funky chair from london based, irish designer kelly swallow...

do you love it or what...???

i'm in the throws of trying to furnish and decorate our living room and bedroom at the moment...and what a source of inspiration...we have an 2seater loveseat and a wingback chair that we are thinking about recovering or finding slipcovers for....

kelly...will you fly out to arkansas for a consultation...

seriously though...i love the chair and the fabrics used and i love everything about the way the final product is pieced together...

each chair is an individually sourced vintage piece...i can already imagine the fun scouring vintage stores and antiques auctions...then, each piece is rediscovered by painstakingly and lovingly choosing an exciting range of fabrics, from vintage to designer to create a new piece of eclectic splendour...

swallow sells ready to go piece's as well as taking commissions and invitations to arkansas...

thinking about...

lamps and lampshades and vignettes and artwork and frames and composition and photographs and consoles and arrangements and form and space and colour and negative space and scale and pairs and not pairs and mixing and matching and agreeing and beer and disagreeing and wondering and compromising and size and shapes and textures and hues and paint and rollers and considering the options and wine and coming to a decision together and whiskey and getting a job done and unpacking boxes and still deciding and not quite sure...still thinking about stuff...

what about a wee tune to start your week...

well i did promise a wee snippet form our wedding rehearsal...so here's a wee quick snippet to start your week...a wee blast of the kerry polka...

there's the lads in the background we hired for the night...they did a great job, and then there my brother steven in the front on the bodhran...my sister andrea next to him on the tin whistle...and then there's my bad self on the piano accordion...

back to regular postings about design and interiors and architecture this week, and next week i'll get to filling you in on our honeymoon to seaside, florida and also our move into our new house...

wedding day pics...

well folks...here it is...i promised this on monday and here it is...our wedding pics...they turned out fantastic...our photographer captured everything we had hoped for and more...

you can check out our feature on her blog and more of her work here...

a poster for cynthia...

i saw this and thought of that song...

heh heh...friday fun...

the program...

and our wedding program which we worked together to create...

i sketched out the church steeple from the church we got married in for the basis of our cover, and we used a touch of green sporadically as our wee nod to ireland...

the invites...

i thought i'd share a bit of handy work from myself and herself...we worked hard together to create these invites for our wedding guests for the wedding itself, the rehearsal evening and our welcome bags for our guests staying in hotels...

the invite... the guest info card...

the rehearsal evening invite...

the tag we put on each of our gift bags...(we included a bottle of shiraz, a reusable arkansas razorback shopping bag, a laser-cut fan for the ladies, a cigar for the men and 2 wee cookies; one with a green shamrock on it and the other with a red star...)

and heavens forbid a body might get lost about the town for a weekend so we made a wee map of all the key locations...