Outfit Of The Day (Ochre-Poker)

(edited to add on 6-10-3011: if you like the shorts that I am wearing in the outfit below, they’ve since sold out at Lulus.com BUT you can find an identical pair here!)

The Great Remodeling Project of 2011 has picked up its pace once again. We are doing things! And we’re getting things done! Except it never actually really feels like it.

Case in point: Husband and I decided to spend one Saturday evening a few weekends ago perusing the calm and copacetic aisles of The Great Indoors. We are currently on the hunt for a bathroom vanity, you see–something for our main floor bathroom that is small, yet cool. It has to be cool.

{but not this cool.}

It has to be something so cool that when people come over and say, “May I use your bathroom?” you say, “Yes, please do! Go! Go use it! IN FACT LET’S JUST GO AND HANG OUT IN THERE.” but since you are also a gracious and fabulous host that does everything exactly by the book, you add at the end, “….hang on a sec while I quickly whip up some sauvignon blanc and Totino’s Pizza Rolls and I’ll meet you right there. I call bathtub!”

Except finding this too-cool-bathroom-vanity has been a much harder mission to complete than we first thought. Who knew?

There are just so many varieties to choose from in the world of bathroom vanities. Pedestals! Half moons! Tables! Columns! Basins sinks! Bowl sinks! Trough sinks big enough to bathe in! It kind of makes me feel like a Candice Olson Zombie is eating my zombie-mushy-home-decor-ified brain as I endlessly search for something so inane (it is a bathroom sink for fuck’s sake) yet never quite finding exactly what I have pictured in my fluffy little head. Ugh.

Can’t I just build it myself out of LEGO’s? Paper mache? Does nothing that I learned in elementary school (manners, how to count, how to spell, how to hang upside down on the monkey bars, how to hit someone square in the head with a tetherball, how to build lopsided picture frames out of common household goods so that in case I am ever homeless and living in the woods and it’s raining I can use that dexterous skill to fashion a makeshift tent and clothing for myself out of popsicle sticks and dried macaroni) (that was the point of that ugly little exercise, um right?) actually come in handy in real life?

Apparently not. But I won’t give up the good fight here guys, oh no, because once I find that bathroom vanity I have much bigger fish to fry. Like lights! And paint colors. And more furniture. And plotting to get on to House Hunters International just so I can shriek hysterically and ask if the wicker furniture comes with the home and Husband can fulfill his glum husbandly-duty-on-that-show by shrugging, sticking his hands in his pockets, and then slowly turning while quietly mumbling to a bare and empty wall, “Oh look…a floor. I was hoping this place would have one of those. And a ceiling. It’s….ah. A nice ceiling.”

(It really is weird that we haven’t gotten any further along in this, right? Now excuse me, I see a bright and shiny object….)

I do have a more solid direction to head in with the kitchen however, which does bring me a little bit of relief. It is my favorite room in the house and also the one room in this house that I can close my eyes and truly see finished. It’s a lovely room already (due to no work of our own), so it thankfully doesn’t need much in the way of the really expensive updates. Just some new tile, paint, accessories, and ~~a little~~ a lot of inspiration from this:

{source: trad home by lonnymag.com}

And this is what we have so far (otherwise known as new paint on the walls), slooow clap:

{a whole lotta nothing…yet.}

Next up for the kitchen: black trim, new tile, new fancy kitchen table chandelier, new table, new chairs, new window coverings, and a fresh new big bottle of vodka to help ~~deal with~~ um celebrate it all.

On to my outfit. Notice anything? Prior to painting our kitchen it had never really occurred to me how much fashion and interior design go hand-in-hand. If I can wear the color in an outfit then I can hopefully style it in a room. Duh.

While J Crew has had a few shortcomings as of late, their bronzey, avocado-ochre hues have undeniably been the most reached-for in my closet over the past six months. It is such an unusual (and some might even say ‘ugly’, gasp!) color, but still so fun to wear and paint in the kitchen: