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I always adore the styling in the Toast House and Home catalogues.  This is basically what I want my next vacation/summer months to look like.  All images from Toast SS11 catalogue.

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Do you guys ever get the wanderlust?  You know, that insatiable need to hop on a plane and fly to someplace new, exotic, and far away?  I have this feeling pretty much all the time, but am especially feeling it this morning.  If you could get on a plane right now, where would you go?  I'd go to England, where the snowdrops are probably signaling the very beginning of spring, and have a nice visit with my sister.

photo by zsita on flickr

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On that (new) note.

A bright and colorful window shopping collection.  (Svpply makes window shopping really fun.)  Really, it's all about those tights.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

(Oh and I have no problem listing these things through links as above.  Because we are just looking, not actually shopping...)

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If you read this space somewhat regularly, you may have noticed that I haven't posted about clothes lately.  A while back I was thinking about my own relationship to materialism and became slightly disturbed by just how much my blog was devoted to the notion of wanting things.  Specifically, wanting things that I don't really need and that I have no business trying to purchase at this moment in my life.  

Since September I have been on a self-imposed spending freeze.  It started slowly at first, more out of need to drastically curb my spending, but after a while I just decided to keep up with it.  And with the exception of buying Christmas presents (including a few items of on sale clothing for myself) I have stuck to it, more or less.  And it's been surprisingly easy.  Yes I still dream about the perfect pair of Rachel Comey boots, but I'm getting by without for now, and that's OK.  Pretty soon I will have to temporarily freeze my spending freeze out of necessity (more on that later), and I will feel totally OK with that as well.  

In the meantime I have continued to troll my favorite blogs, perusing the internet and magazines and pausing when I see something beautiful that I like.  It's like window shopping--you get to have the nice part of looking and admiring without having to really try anything on.  And it's fun.  So I've decided that bringing a few "pretty things" back to this space is alright.  Because it's nice to appreciate, even from afar.

photo by Lieke Romeijn, one of my favorite photographers

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I'm not even sure why I'm posting these images.  They are from a historical house in NSW, Australia, and for some reason they intrigue me.  Maybe it's because I tend to like things that aren't overly "done," in the sense that things are so decorated that they look twee, or overly matchy.  I think good interiors, like good homes, tell the stories of the people who have lived in them.  And when I look at this old house I can't help but wonder about the people who have lived it, including as the article indicates, Miss Aphrasia Maughan.  Aphrasia Maughan, now there's a name.

images and article from Real Homes