So as many of you may or may not know, my wife was asked to be the interior designer in one of the homes featured in the Utah Parade of Homes. It’s a home show that features some of the nicest and most elegant homes in the Utah Valley area. She’s been working on it for quite a while now but it opened to the public today. It’s been a busy last couple of days moving all the furniture in, accessorizing, etc. Yesterday we were at the home working from 7:00am until 3:00am last night. We took a couple hour nap, then woke up to get back to work at 7:00am this morning. We worked until the home opened to the public at Noon. It’s been a busy couple of days.

Anyway, for those of you who are in the Utah area and wanna check out her home, it is #17. 1096 East 1450 South, Orem, Utah. In the Berkshire neighborhood by the Riverbottoms. It’s 6100 sq ft. 5 bedrooms. 4.5 baths. Asking price on it is $2.5 million. It was built by Evergreen Custom, a great group of guys. I like them a lot.

In the coming days, i’ll be posting some pictures and video of some of the amazing work Rachel did in the home. She’s amazing.

Here’s the home from the outside. It looks a lot nicer in real life…especially with the different landscaping.

One Elegant reader asked where to get good drapes. My favorite is Eastern Accents. They are store bought drapes, however, they really do give a good custom look. They’re full, the fabric is beautiful, and classy. Not only do they have great drapes, they have amazing beading. Again, store bought bedding that looks custom and elegant. They have beautiful coordinating fabrics and colors, but don’t give the cheesy “bed n’ bag” look.

MSN did an article on the World’ Wildest Architecture. Some of these architects think of the craziest things…

Torre Galatea Figueras, Spain Salvador Dali Theater Museum in Figueras, Spain

Do I really need to label this? Sydney Opera House Sydney, Australia Designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon with a roof in the shape of a ship at full sail.

Longaberger Co. Newark, Ohio This giant basket is home to employees of Longaberger Co., a maker of handcrafted baskets, pottery and ceramics.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Spain Architect Frank Gehry designed the Guggenheim Museum, located in the port city of Bilbao, to resemble a ship. The project was competed in 1997 for $100 million and features Gehry’s signature curvy, free-form sculptural style. Movie lovers might recognize the building from its cameo appearance in the opening sequence of the 1999 James Bond film, “The World Is Not Enough.”

Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum Minneapolis, Minnesota I blogged about this earlier. Architect is Frank Gehry.

Casa Batllo Barcelona, Spain Architect Antoni Gaudi to remodel this 1877 home in Barcelona, Spain. Completed in 1904, the house has a façade covered in colorful mosaics, with balconies that resemble skulls and first-floor columns that look like human bones.

Residential Car-House Salzburg, Austria German architect Markus Voglreiter spent about 1 million euros to build it in 2004. It is a whopping 300 square meters. Constructed of wood and inspired by the VW Beetle, the “Residential Car-House” is thermal-insulated, has an open floor plan and comes equipped with technology to make it energy-efficient.

Ideal Palace of Ferdinand Cheval Hauterives, France Design by French mail carrier, Ferdinand Cheval, in 1879. He was inspired by the shape of a stone he tripped over one day. It took him 33 years to complete...what a project!

Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum Nashville, Tenn. Built at a cost of $37 million, the museum opened in 2001.

I love this room designed by Markham Roberts. So cute and charming, don’t you just want to sit on the porch and sip lemonade?

Weather it’s in a corner of a room, or an entire room; we all need a little spot to pay our bills and check our emails. Here are some great home office concepts.

Check out all these wall vynil decorations. My wife can tell you when, where and how to use them. I’m not the interior designer. But as a graphic designer, I can appreciate this stuff. Tado’s work is amazing.

Photos that caught my eye today.

Nuggets of digital design discovered in some corner of the web.

Jeff Deck and his friend Benjamin Herson are traveling across the country correcting spelling and punctuation errors wherever they see them. How interesting…

I came across these and thought they went perfectly with the background of my blog, so I had to post about them. Aren’t they just so cute? If you want to see more furry little critters, you can find them here.

I love the new popular color combo of grey and yellow. It makes any room so springy and happy with the yellow, and yet so clean and crisp with the grey.

Textile artist Lindsay Taylor has a unique approach to design.  Her work has a antiqued and aged feel to it.  I wasn’t able to get a picture of her jewelry, but it is quite amazing.  You should check it out here.

Interesting design by Swedish designer Sandra Backlund. She seems to approach fashion more like a sculpture than as a seamstress.

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With Memorial Day coming up this weekend I found it only fitting to bring in some red, white, and blue. Even though this designer is from the Netherlands (who has the same colors as we do), her use of colors is so clever. These pictures are from textile designer Sigrid Calon. I love her modern twist she’s incorporated.

Lets face it, doing laundry is not the most exciting task we all have to do. Why not add a little enjoyment to the chore by making you room pretty? Here are some fun laundry rooms:

Escape to the Tuscan country side with this trompe l'oeil wine cellar. The illusion of the arches and hallways also help make the room feel larger.

Oooh how fun!! I love the bright, happy lavender.

Classy and nicely Organized

So fun with the built in cabinetry, I think it's so clever to add tassels to them. The trompe l'oeil sewing machine helps add to the whimsical feel.

I don’t normally blog about girly stuff like this.  But I like this sink.

I like his work.

Check out his flickr page or his website.

“Pablo Garcia Albacete was born in a city far away from the sea, but very close to blue heaven and full of light, he began working in advertising agencies as art director to be able to work with people like the ones of Cocoe, the ones of Wysiwyg, the ones of Publicis, but he never stopped looking around, he discovered that the only way to choose what he liked best was to use a photo camera and as sometimes he couldn’t see very well what he wanted he learnt to master light. That’s all folks, Pablo takes photos.”

I remember studying the famous Roman Discus Thrower (460-450 B.C.). It was so innovative and unique at that time because the subject actually had a sense of motion to it.

Now, almost 2,470 years later, the art of motion has evolved again. Peter Jansen has made some awesome new sculptures showing motion. I can’t even imagine how he did this.

Soccer Player

Arabesque

Heel Daoyin

Runner

Thomas Flair

Inhabitat recently covered an interesting story. World’s first illuminating glass.

Eco-friendly lightbulbs are an energy efficient step in the right direction, but it could be that the bulb’s days are numbered. First we had light-emitting wallpaper, and now Saazs’ light-emitting glass plates. Using planilum technology, these plates are the world’s first active light-emitting glass. Incorporated into shelves and tables, the technology provides beautiful, understated lighting for homes and offices.

Benjamin Verdonck, a Dutch street artist, built a giant nest on the side of a skyscraper in Rotterdam and is now living there.  It hangs 50 meters above the ground and took 6 weeks to build.

What he said the nest was made of:

The crowns of twenty-three silver birches. one birch one willow two straw bales one bucket of spit three bags of sand twelve buckets of glue nineteen cans of polyurethane foam