White kitchens

I'm drawn more and more to a white kitchen, with panelling and detailed tile work.

via House Beautiful

Attic conversions = vaulted ceilings!

Seeing this picture made me wonder if we could remove the attic from our (future) second floor and have vaulted ceilings like this house. I did a little google research, and it's possible -- just some insulation and venting needed, drywall as well and -- oh yeah, a whole lot of demolition. But look at what's possible!

*Please note the fabulous use of GREEN as well!

via Apartment Therapy

Inspiration boards

I'm thinking I should start one of these soon, they're useful and pretty.  To see more examples, check out the Inspiration Boards flickr group.

Ideas for container planting

Pretty, pretty.

I'm going to keep this year's garden purchases for my containers (I did a count and I've got 12 pots/boxes and 3 baskets).  I'm trying to get a few ideas for plants and plan things out a bit -- I've decided on a colour scheme of greens (surprise!), purples, creams and whites.  I really like the idea of playing with texture too; last year I added cabbage and kale to the containers on the porch, and they worked out really well.  Here's a few ideas I've seen:

Good for shade.

A cute salad garden.

So you can use hostas in a container (I was wondering about this).

All green.

Bedroom inspiration

When we go away, I like to check out the small boutique hotels -- they always have something more interesting to offer than the chain hotels (and sometimes at an equal or better price!).  One of our first stays was at Hotel Deluxe in Portland, where we found the inspiration for our bedroom*: 

Another hotel that we stayed in last month was Hotel Max in Seattle:

And, most recently, I won a free night at Hotel Murano in Tacoma (yay twitter contests!!):

*no photos of that, it's in the middle of a major ensuite reno and looks like a disaster