Poetic Home has needed a spring cleaning for many seasons, and I am very proud to unveil the new look, which I believe is much more symbolic of the Poetic Home aesthetic.  The website is not 100% complete just yet, as we have a few bugs to work out, but I’d love to hear your feedback!

With all of the spring cleaning, I’m also hoping to get your input about what type of content and regular features you’d like to see.

Would you like more repurposing goodness, vintage interior design posts, and peeks into chic vintage-inspired homes?  I’m also thinking of introducing new regular posts, such as a weekly round-up of library card catalogs for sale, as well as guests who share photos and stories of typewriters in their lives.  What do you think?

I sincerely welcome and appreciate your thoughts!

I hope that your holiday season has been filled with happiness, cheer, and festivities!  As we prepare to ring in 2010, I thought it would be fitting to reflect upon 2009 and share the nine most popular posts of this year.  Enjoy a very happy New Year my friends!

Can love be considered the most popular blogging topic?  Yes, if you count the fact that the Catalog of Love I made for my husband for our second wedding anniversary was the most popular post of 2009.

If you are like me and tempted by all of the antique and vintage suitcases that you spot in your treasure hunting journeys, consider these seven ways to repurpose antique and vintage suitcases.

Who says ladders are made for climbing?  Revisit some of the best ways to repurpose ladders into useful pieces of furniture in Edition 1 and Edition 2 of Upcycled Ladders.

Be shocked by the ugly upholstery covering this beautiful antique horse carriage before I repurposed it into an entryway bench.

It’s acceptable to write – or type – on the wall, as long as you are inspired by these decor ideas on how you can display your typewriter collection on your walls.

Take a peek into my favorite vintage things, ranging from theater seats to my obsession with antique library card catalog cabinets.

Repurposed bookends come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from brass architectural salvage pieces I found to even vintage LPs and antique cameras.

And last but not least, start of 2010 with a pop with ideas from last New Year’s repurposed champagne cork series!

As the ultimate statement in architectural repurposing, Adam Kalkin has transformed shipping containers into luxurious and irreverent adobes.  Unlike other architects who maintain the industrial, raw feel of the interior of shipping containers, Kalkin mixes them with Victornia archiecture and high end design — creating an eclectic mix that sings vintage industrial chic to me.  Could you imagine living in one of these repurposed shipping container homes (of course, never minding the fact that they could cost anywhere from $50,000 to $2 million)?  The “dream” home I’m always building in my head has new blueprints to consider now.  Via my husband via the tech blog Gizmodo he reads…

Happy weekend to you!  May it be filled with daydreaming about repurposed, creative places to live!

With great excitement, I would like to like to introduce a new weekly series here on Poetic Home entitled “A Few of My Favorite Vintage Things.”  Each week, I will happily feature creatives from around the blogosphere who will graciously share their favorite treasures and the stories behind each.  I can’t wait to share with you the guests (some who may just be your favorite artists and bloggers) that we will have this week, starting tomorrow!

To start the series, I would like to share with you a few of my favorite furniture things.  While I do love whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string, I also love card catalogs and vintage desks.  Here is a peek into my home and some of the treasures that call to my vintage-loving heart.

Antique library card catalogs have historically escaped me.  Some escaped me via a faster driver from Craigslist, while others were simply out of my budget.  However, one day, as my husband and I were strolling through an antique mall, we spotted this beauty — just in time for our anniversary!   I had to wait around the corner to wait for another admirer to walk away before we swooped it and lugged it home.  It was so serendipitous, and indeed, this vintage card catalog is one of my very favorite things.   It has transformed many times — from a buffet in my dining room holding silverware — to its current rendition of a “bookshelf,” inspired by what Darwin may have enjoyed in his home library.

In my world, this is the desk that launched a thousand words.   After graduating from college, I started my writing career at this very desk, whose aged lines exuded literary wisdom to me.   I took the name of this piece, “a 1930s ladies writing desk,” quite seriously and literally.  While my dual monitors and bulky PC tower no longer fit on the desk,  I love sitting here on the weekends and typing letters and poems.   Another favorite vintage treasure in this photo is the “Paris” hat box, which my husband — on his very own — found in an antique mall for my birthday a few years ago.  It was the perfect soul mate to my treasured desk.

Originally from an old San Diego theater, this pair of theater seats is one of my favorite pieces.  Not only does the wood patina glow, but it’s amazingly comfortable and ergonomic too!  Flip up the seats and there are “hat racks,” perfect for a time where wardrobes were more stylish and culture was gentler.  My husband and I drink wine and watch movies from the comfort of these chairs.

Tune in tomorrow for another “a few of my favorite things” installment from a very special guest contributor!

Do you sometimes feel that in your past life (if you have one), you may have been a gypsy?  I find myself constantly lured by the western winds that taunt me to experience a new place (which is perhaps why I have lived in six different cities and states since graduating from college…or on a less romantic note, perhaps it is simply my quarter-life crisis speaking).  If more gypsy caravans were on this side of the Atlantic, I could imagine adopting the lifestyle instantly.  Alas, if only RVs were a wee bit more romantically and nostalgically appealing.

For all of us, however, we can still live the dream — for about 70 pounds a night via gypsy caravans for rent!   France is home to the first caravan, while West Wales is the charming location of a historical gypsy caravan that maintains its yesteryear charm.   Aren’t these fantastic alternatives to hotels?

What are your plans for the weekend?

Perhaps a pinch of gypsy freedom is in order for all of us!

We all enjoyed stylish Courtney’s fantastic typewriter light, and today, we are truly treated to visiting her home in this House Without a Key installment. Each room presents a medley of eye candy, complete with vintage treasures that all have a fun story to tell. Without further ado, I welcome you to chic Courtney’s casa, located “inside the loop” in Houston, Texas.

My coffee table serves as a rotating library for all of my favorite-of-the-moment art books. Right now I have it paired down to a box set of vintage Japanese books, which we do pick up and read from time to time. The fireman’s hose is one of my favorite oddities. It’s never been used, so the brass ends are still wrapped in their original burlap. I also have a thing for vintage science posters and found the Genetics chart while rooting around a prop shop on Houston Street in New York City. I like to hang them from curtain rod holders so they stand out from the wall and have a three-dimensional feel.  (pH note: I love Courtney’s combination of old and new, and the genetics chart is such a refreshing piece of conversational art!)

I’m still as in love with Anthropologie’s Ditte Sofa as the day I bought it 2 years ago. It’s deep enough to fit my 6’5″ husband and long enough for us both to stretch out. When Elle Decor dubbed it “the best make out couch,” it was an immediate buy for my husband!

For our second anniversary, we drove to Pieces in Atlanta and invested in some furniture. We love our woven fiberglass chairs and because they’re insanely light, we’ve dragged them all around the house for additional seating where needed. The metal medical cart in the corner is our makeshift bar. With two shelves and a drawer, everything fits perfectly and it’s even mobile!

In the 70s, my Dad worked at a bank in Louisiana that was undergoing a remodel. When they started tossing Bertoia chairs to the curb, Dad snagged 6 for his unfurnished patio. 30 years later, I had them chromed dipped at a local metalworks shop. My dining buffet is from the now defunct Storehouse and the lamp is a thrift shop find. The vintage orange and white enamel cocktail set is from Austin Modern and the mirror is an old Kirkland’s purchase my mother-in-law had in her previous house.   I love how big and gold it is! We’re huge John Derian fans in this house as he’s one of the few artists my husband actually loves as much as I do. We exchange his pieces every holiday and it’s a fun common interest. My favorite are his Hotel Algonquin series, one hangs above the frog.

My husband and I love to ride our bikes around the neighborhood on weekend mornings. Someone was having a yard sale and I almost flipped over my handlebars when I saw this ratty art easel that’s covered in layers of paint and oil. For $3 it didn’t pay to leave it behind, so my husband rode the rest of the way home with it over his shoulders. I have a few funny (and granny) needlepoint embroideries and the hawk was a perfect fit for this nook in our bedroom. I, too, have the ubiquitous “For Like Ever,” but I don’t care. I love the fluorescent colors and teen slang, and it brightens up our overly brown room. My nightstands are a dirt-cheap Craigslist find and I had my husband build up the bottom so they’d be 8″ taller. They’re now more suited to our bed’s height and I use the extra room underneath to shove unsightly things like routers, modems, and endless cords; no one’s the wiser!

In Round Top, Texas, I found these neat hotel door numbers and knew I had to bring some home. I hunted down numbers to spell out our anniversary, “4″ “20″ “5″ (we were married 4-2-05) and placed them above each bedroom light switch.  (pH Note:  How incredibly sweet and romantic!)

My “office” is located in the second bedroom, so it tends to be a more personal space for me than any other area. When I moved to New York, Mom framed a print of she and my grandparents in 1958.  (As seen against the right wall). My Grandfather, Arthur Ory, owned an appliance store in Louisiana and won a trip to NYC for selling them most Fedders Air Conditioners in his region. They put his name in lights on Broadway and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world for having this piece of family history in my house.  (pH Note: If only every office could be so personalized with stress relievers and nostalgia. Mixing old and new perfectly is certainly Courtney’s forte!  Doesn’t the vintage mannequin somehow look appropriate amongst her laptop?)

Thank you SO much Courtney for graciously inviting us into your inspiring home!

My love (read: obsession) with vintage and antique treasures stems from the unique ambiance each piece exudes. I love (read: secretly relish and profit from) having vintage pieces that none of my other friends can have…ever. With that said, here are fabulous photos for your vintage inspiration board from Stox , a talented photographer who captured beautiful ambiance in Paris. My favorite is the whimsical princess…the castle built of dreams is the most beautiful one yet!