Whats Poppin?

Are you ready to meet the raddest office supply store ever? Poppin sells sleek, candy colored office supplies all designed in house. The fun, graphic product photography was enough to suck me right in and the witty product descriptions sealed the deal.

Back to school shopping season is right around the corner and even though I'm not headed to school and don't have kids to shop for I still love the stock up on new notebooks and pens. Thanks to Poppin I'm adding a new stapler and tape dispenser (and maybe some highlighters, a few clipboards, binder clips, okay somebody stop me) to my "back to school" shopping list.

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ModernEmotive - Back in Business

modernemotive, an ecofriendly paper goods and design company, opened its doors to esty about a year and a half ago selling simple and modern greeting cards printed on FSC certified paper made from recycled materials. Adele, the shop owner and one of my favorite twitter friends, made a business decision that I incredibly bold. She took her beautiful shop, that was picking up steam and becoming more successful, offline. It was a difficult decision I'm sure but it gave Adele time to evaluate her business strategy, outsource printing, prepare for wholesale orders, and most importantly design a new line of products.

The modernemotive shop reopened last month and I love all of the new products. The work + life notepads for home, office, and kitchen are especially great. They are beautiful and functional with just the right amount of humor mixed in.

I am really happy to see that the calling cards are back in the shop. I loved them when they were initially released but never ordered them for myself. I searched for other calling cards while modernemotive was closed but couldn't find other designs that I like as much as these. It's time for me to stop procrastinating and finally order myself some cards!

What do you think of the new line of products at modernemotive? What's your favorite new item? I think mine is the "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day" notepad.

A Place for Everything...

I'm sure you all spent the weekend scrubbing your hearts out with the home made concoctions we learned about from homemakers of yore. So now that your bathrooms are spic and span and free of all those nasty harsh chemicals there is the issue of stuff to deal with. Bathrooms are stuff traps. With all of the cleansers, toothpaste, toothbrushes, toilet paper, cotton balls, makeup that we need accessible everyday is hard to figure out the best and most pleasing way to store it all. Michelle Engel Bencsko shared photos with me of her recently renovated master bathroom and I spotted a lot of great storage tricks that would work well in any bathroom.

Apothecary jars in various sizes keep items used daily neatly contained but still right at your finger tips. Michelle chose to store the more unsightly items like toilet paper and her toilet brush in decorative vases. Functional and beautiful, I love it!

Installing this modern floating sink created a ton of storage space below. Michelle now neatly stores all of her bath and hand towels in baskets stashed underneath the sink. Hands down my favorite feature of this bathroom makeover is the slim floating shelf installed above the sink. I'm a big fan of getting things up off of counter space and this does that very effectively. Toothbrushes are still with in reach but housed in pretty cups and up on a shelf they look more like a display and less link clutter. Great job Michelle, I love what you've done!

Photo Credit: Michelle Engel Bencsko

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In Sight, In Mind

For lack of a better and less cliché phase, in our home "Out of sight, out of mind" is definitely the rule. If the yogurt ends up in the back of the fridge it doesn't get eaten; stash the backgammon away in a drawer somewhere and we never play it; and as is the case with my jewelry collection, buy some pretty and inexpensive jewelry to spice up the wardrobe, wear once, stick in a dresser and never wear again.

Hopefully this will no longer be the case. If I keep the jewelry on display right next to my closet there is a chance that I will actually wear it more often. And a bonus, it's pretty to look at. I'm sure I could have come up with a DIY solution but, as we discussed yesterday, I'm not allowed any new projects until I finish the ones I've already started. I didn't want to wait until then to tackle this little problem so I found a simple solution. I ordered this birdcage inspired jewelry organizer from Urban Outfitters this week and I love it.

If you are thinking about working on a DIY solution for your jewelry storage a quick search around the web turned up a bunch o great ideas. Follows the links for more information about each project pictured below.

left: mom generations right: paisley wallpaper

top: homemade by jen bottom: paula wessells

Photo Credit: Top 3 photos - Michelle Verdugo; All others linked below photo

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