I recently came across this etsy shop that has TONS of vintage salvaged hardware (lots of knobs and drawer pulls) that makes me shake my fist for not discovering it earlier. Our apartment was full of hideous hardware that I had to replace, and it would have been so much cooler to use vintage pieces. I see a lot of this kind of stuff at flea markets in NYC, but never this affordable! Great for all your DIY needs.

I’m excited to learn that Noah Bembribre’s Cats Let Nothing Darken Their Roar calendar is celebrating it’s 5th anniversary by releasing a special larger size in addition to the regular size. I have last year’s hanging in my kitchen and I love it. A big one would be fantastic! It’s not out yet, but you can sign up on the website to be notified when it’s ready.

My Swedish coworker just sent around these amazing Swedish clogs by Åsa Westlund that are apparently big in Stockholm right now. I love the traditional folklore painting on them. They don’t seem to be sold outside of Sweden but there’s contact info on the site to order directly from her. Swoon.

pink balloon, originally uploaded by elseachelsea.

There is a crazy story on Radiolab that Shannon Eileen’s lovely new blog, Happiness Is… brought to my attention about an 10 year old English girl named Laura Buxton who labeled a balloon “please return to Laura Buxton” and set it loose into the sky in her backyard, and by some insane chance landed clear across the country in the yard of another 10 year old named Laura Buxton, who was clearly stunned by this discovery. Then it got crazier when they corresponded and finally met each other, only to find out that they looked like twins and had identical lives.

The skeptic in me wants to write this off as a completely untrue story, but I don’t think WNYC public radio would lie to me. Plus I would really like to believe it’s true and know that life is so unbelievably incredible like this sometimes.

You can hear the story here:

chubs, originally uploaded by kate / for me, for you.

Last night I got home after a pretty long, busy day at work, and just planted myself on another chair for the evening and never got up until it was time for bed at 1am. I decided I’d tackle the FAQ section, and while doing it I realized it required some designing and redesigning, and then of course realized that while I was at it, I really needed to make a page about my jewelry instead of always sending people to an empty Etsy shop. Of course that was a huge undertaking, but I’m glad it’s done. As expected, while laying in bed last night I thought of all the things in the section I forgot to include, so it will probably change often. It’s also probably FULL of lovely grammatical errors, but because no one proof reads my posts (well, ok, I do not ASK anyone to but some like to volunteer their anonymous services occasionally) I figured, screw it.

So those of you here via google reader and such, can now direct yourselves to the blog homepage to see the new sections over on the sidebar.

And what does Wendy have to do with those post? Nothing, I just wanted to dedicate this photo to one Mrs. Patty Miller, my friend Gretchen’s mom who apparently reads my blog everyday, and is Wendy’s #1 fan. I felt she deserved a shout-out. I told Wendy about her growing fan club and she this is the look she gave me. “Yeah, whatever. Is it time for food now?”

ps. I even answered one of the not so nice anonymous questions in the FAQ section. Because my answer is sure to make them feel like shit.

Last week was not my favorite, due to a lot of less than awesome things, and it let me a bit grumpy. So when the amazing guys at Circa50 (sellers of all things awesome for your home) told me that after hearing it was my birthday on Saturday, they wanted to bring me a present while they were making deliveries in New York, my obvious reaction was akin to one of those crazy excited people in the audience at The Price Is Right who get picked to play on the show. (True story: The summer between 6th and 7th grade I got up to watch The Price Is Right every morning with my brother. We were pathetic.) So when they were in town they came by and …

… I am now the proud owner of the most stunning butterfly chair ever! It’s medium brown leather with a painted black steel base, and this baby sure is pretty. It’s making my other furniture jealous. Circa50 has been making these chairs for years and years now, and you can see how incredibly well made it is. So far I like curling up in it with a book, as our little couch looks great, but isn’t the most conducive to curling up on. We were really in need of another chair in the living room, and it matches everything quite nicely. I’ve never had a piece of leather furniture before, so this is a good grown up birthday present! They have tons of options for these chairs (I also love the natural canvas with the black frame), and an ottoman, which I just may have to get down the road to match. Morgan of The Brick House posted about the awesomeness of butterfly chairs (she has two lovelies) recently, with a link to an interview with Circa50 on their history – I love hearing that the chairs are all crafted within 15 miles of their store. You may also know about my pining desire to have everything in The Brick House, so now I’m one step closer to being a creepy stalker with my matching chair, and then two steps closer after we finish (er..start?) building that pipe shelving. Shhhhh …

Thank you Steve and Jeff so much for the amazing present, I’m still in shock by your generosity.

our couch is from CB2 (it’s no longer made), pillows from DwellStudio, and metal basket from Three Potato Four.

A lovely birthday weekend with lots of walks in the perfect weather, Wendy in a particularly wonderful mood, those previously mentioned adult beverages at Dutch Kills (the best cocktail I’ve ever had is there), and then a resulting hangover Sunday that kept me at home making jewelry all day. Billy got me an amazing collection of new and vintage dishes and glasses from Fishs Eddy (some shown in the first few photos) and I made sure to put them to use with lots of tea and bacon bacon bacon. Some wonderful friends came out and made me feel very loved, despite the MTA bringing on the worst weekend of train service changes you could imagine. A true sign of friendship:)

And thank you thank you thank you for all the birthday wishes! I wish I could share the cupcakes my friend Emily made me with all of you. They’re vanilla with a raspberry filling, and lemon cream cheese frosting. Just pretend you’re eating them right now, ok? Trust me, you love them.

*, originally uploaded by Harry Bloom.

I’m excited for this weekend because it’s my birthday tomorrow, so that means that everyone has to be nice to me, and I’ll get tipsy (ok, drunk) on fancy cocktails- something I never do. Those are the good parts of birthdays, right? Tonight Billy and I are going to dinner at a fancy place we would never go to on our own dime with a gift certificate a client gave me (so nice of her!) and tomorrow a couple close friends are meeting us in my neighborhood to try out Dutch Kills. I’m having a grown-up birthday this year, apparently.

Thank you all for being the best damn blog readers a girl could have, and please do have a wonderful weekend.

ps. are you signing up for the calendar swap? I am!

I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for your unbelievably wonderful comments on my anonymous jerk commenters post, and to the people who reached out to me via email as well. It’s clear to me that the lovers outweigh the haters, and I should keep this in mind more often. But what is such a bummer is that a lot of people shared their own experience of dealing with mean, hateful people on their own blogs, and that really gets my blood boiling. If someone does not like what we post about, or for some reason doesn’t like us as bloggers, then they have this amazing ability to just click away. There is a BIG difference between constructive criticism and hateful commenting. I will be the first to admit that sometimes I read a blog post and respond IN MY HEAD something snarky and mean, but do I comment it? No. But clearly some people do not have this kind of self control. Or maybe they forget that we too are people behind these blogs, not just text and pretty pictures on a page.

So this is why we need our blogger gang, and with your suggestions I decided we will look like something that’s a cross between these:

We will be the Anti-Hate Blogger Gang and we will kick the asses of all mean anonymous commenters. This gang also works for those of you who are pacifists, since we can’t actually locate anonymous commenters and we would probably be arrested if we did (and we shouldn’t hurt people?) Now, if you would like to let people who comment know that you are part of this gang, you can change your comment form text to include a message that says something along the lines of “I am a member of the The Anti-Hate Blogger Gang, and leaving anonymous, hateful comments is not allowed. Please be nice.”

If you would like to do this on blogger, go to your settings, go to “comments” and there is a box called “Comment Form Message” where you can enter something in. I don’t use other blogging programs, so if those of you who do know how you can do this on them, like Typepad and WordPress, please comment and let us know! Much appreciated. Or, you could just put this text on your sidebar somewhere. I’m not a blog tech wizard outside of Blogger so I can’t help you outside of those templates.

There is no initiation to get into the gang, you just have to virtually pinky swear me that you have never left an anonymous mean comment on a blog. Ok?

UPDATE: OMG, awesome awesome awesome Kim has designed our gang logos!! I wanted to do this but I didn’t have time, so she gets some mad props for this. I love the brass knuckles one:

http://www.thehavingfunclub.org/antihatebloggergang.gif (This one is supposed to be the Blogger logo altered as brass knuckles)

http://www.thehavingfunclub.org/antihatebloggergang2.gif (For bloggers not using Blogger :)

Thanks to Andrea, one of my favorite albums that’s on constant repeat is Charlotte Gainsbourg’s 5:55, so I’m very very excited for her new album IRM – and, according to Pitchfork, Beck wrote the album’s music, co-wrote the lyrics, produced, and mixed it!

You can download the album’s title song for free on her website.