Jay and I just got back from our vacation (yay) to the Virgin Islands! It was my Christmas present from him, kind good I know, and we were so happy to get out of Houston for a few days. This City Spotlight is going to be a little bit more about what to do rather than where to shop for cool house stuff because, let's be real, no one can afford to bring home lots of souvenirs with Spirit Airline's 40 lb limit on checked bags. We were happy we could get our dive gear and half a bottle of rum back with us. So I'll show you a few cool stores, but mostly cool things to do!
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For my fall break I went to go visit my big bro Jack who is doing a dermatology research fellowship at George Washington U. Yay Jack! He lives in the really awesome Capitol Hill area in a pretty sweet little row house that I would love to slap a fresh coat of paint on. In this City Spotlight I decided to add a few restaurants and bars in with my home design stores! So Jay is at his parent's house right now getting some wood for a few of our projects. His dad has a sawmill on his property so we have a slight advantage in supply availability, but don't get too jelly, its in Virginia so we can't get anything large back and forth. Since our home projects are on hold while we gather supplies I thought I would take you on a tour of some really cool design shops we went to while we were in vacation in California! Jay and I have spent multiple conversations dreaming about living in San Diego, the outdoors, the beach, the town, love. So of course we were pretend house shopping and decorating when we visited. Turns out downtown San Diego is a cool little home shop hot spot! We were driving out of town on our way up the coast but had noticed a few cool looking antiques shops the day before, so we grabbed a parking spot and popped into a few. Our first stop was this great place called VI Star which had a lot of cool prints, linens, and sculptural things for your house. It also had quite a selection of books and silliness. I was in love with these drift wood sculptures hanging from the light fixtures, but shipping them home would have cost a small fortune. Le sigh. We shall have to admire them over the internet. I really liked the warehouse feel of the space as well and the polished concrete floors. A lot of the pieces are made by local artists too. Our parking meter was running out so we scurried off to pay the meter and continued walking down toward Kettner Blvd. I'll include a map at the end in case you're in SD and want to check some of these places out. By now you should realize how addicted Jay and I are to weird salvage places, so you can imagine our excitement when we found Architecture Salvage of San Diego. This gem has been around since 1996. The people who worked there were so friendly and excited to talk to us about all of our projects. They had some sheets of tin that would have been perfect for the trunk project Jay is "working" on (spoiler alert!) and one of the best selections of old doors and windows we'd ever seen. We weren't able to buy the tin because (again) it was too huge. The people there offered to cut it down for us (cool!) but we hadn't planned on working on the trunk while on vacay and didn't have the dimensions (dangit!). I was also loving the vintage lights that were everywhere; they reminded me of the one hanging in our kitchen. The piece de resistance of this store was the old doors and windows, including some really cool stained glass. I so envy you Californians who can use them in projects at home! Jay and I have talked about using some cool old window frames to separate a room sort of like this. A little bit of space definition but the light shines right through. The bins in the picture above are full of impressively organized odds and ends like knobs, hardware, etc. We did make one purchase at Architectural Salvage... hang on to your seats people... caster wheels! *crickets* No they're sweet. *erreee erreee* Seriously. And (spoiler alert two) we'll be using them on a kitchen cart that is deep in the bowels of the project list. You can tell from our pictures of our kitchen that the counter space is minimal so the cart will be my kitchen function salvation. Eventually. The last stop on our tour is Mixture, who declares itself "...inspired modern living." Yeah that's a little stuffy since Architecture Salvage quotes on their website, "We are preservation-oriented, emphasizing sustainable practices through reuse. And, the store is fun," but The succulents were trumped by something truly amazing in the back furniture room. I don't know how large your home has to be to own this and have it not look ridonkulous but if I ever figure it out I'll buy it and let you guys know. It does seem like a decent solution to saddle storage, but I'm guessing most people don't have that on their problem list. The mid century modern feel of the showrooms upstairs really appealed to Jay, and while I loved the colors and textures, this style of furniture never seems all that livable to me. I mean do you really feel like flopping on this couch and watching a movie? Ideal for a showroom but I'm not sold for every day. I do like the unique bean-shaped ottoman though (its the exact same color as the old Nickelodeon slime, no?) and all of the art in this place was spectacular. Very colorful, very textural. I did make another purchase at Mixture, this time a really nice rectangular white ceramic vase. At $26 it wasn't exactly a steal, but I like the memory of our vacation attached to it. It's brightening up our gloomy storm cloud mantle at home. One more sneak preview on an upcoming project, we really liked this table runner made out of these little stumps. Seems easily enough to cut up some branches and DIY this one. Hopefully we can use it to brighten up the bar in the dining room. So that was our design adventure in San Diego! Hope you guys liked some of the stores we stopped in and get a chance to check them out for yourselves someday. Here's the map I promised courtesy of GoogleMaps! All easy walking distance and close to the airport. Oh and in case there weren't enough horsies in this post for you, here are some more that live on the outside of Architectural Salavage (or maybe the place next door, it was hard to tell!). They're especially awesome because I used to have this exact same rocking horse. I know, day brightened.
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