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Once upon a time, in a land far, far away a castle awoke from its slumber, shook its traditional roots and decided it wanted to be thoroughly modern. Well almost. A fairytale castle always has to be just a little bit fairytale. I love this modern take on a traditional home. Katrine Martensen-Larsen of KML Design always finds the most wonderful places.

I love the name Mixed Pickles for a vintage shop. We heard about a very cool vintage shop of that name though San Francisco based photographer Christina Schmidhofer, who happened to have photographed it. Christina put us in touch with the owners and they provided us with a bit of history:
Mixed Pickles is Sharon Hoyle, Roger Williams and a big pile of really great vintage stuff. Sharon opened the first location in North Berkeley in 1998. Roger wandered into the shop in 2002. They struck up a conversation about 1920’s Jazz musicians, and have been talking ever since. The opportunity for a great new location in their hometown of Oakland presented itself. The new bigger & brighter shop opened as a partnership in December 2010 when the contents of their two homes reached maximum capacity. Favorite things: Salvaged and architectural antiques, advertising signs, furniture with clean lines, and finding new uses for vintage items. We dislike things made of brass, and the color lavender.
(Check out their blog and website for info, particularly their latest finds). The shop looks like a place I could spend a ridiculous amount of time in scouring each and every little square inch. Too bad it’s so far from Ottawa…

I’m easing back in with a photographer we really love at D2I, Joe Schmelzer. (See earlier posts here and here.) Yesterday when things were grim I promised to post something pretty today but Joe doesn’t do pretty. He does pretty fab! Enjoy!

I want to thank everyone for their kind words and wave of support. You had me tearing up. The water is dropping and the first stage of the disaster is almost over. Now the hard work begins. Cleaning, rebuilding, healing. We’ll get there but it will take time. Yes we’ll get there.

Susanne Schanz is a food and interiors photographer who wanted to share her work with our readers. She sent along some photos from her latest interior shoot and I also grabbed some off of her website. They are so pretty and calming and evoke a sense of naturalism. A beautiful way to end a Wednesday.

We received the following email recently from Ewelina: I am a young interior designer from Poland (Europe), taking my first steps in designing. It’s not easy in my country to change peoples’ mind and attitude as far as interior design is concerned. Many people still don’t care how they live, but hopefully it’s changing, slowly but still it is. Ewelina sent along photos of 2 of her projects which I’d love to share with our readers. (Check out the second one, my favourite, after the jump).

First set of photos is my latest project of a living room combined with kitchen. It’s an old apartment, so it required to be change almost entirely.The only thing that hasn’t been changed so much, is the kitchen. Before the renovation the kitchen had olive-green colour, so that the room seemed to be sad and dark. Thanks to the great material that it is made of (oak) I decided to change only the colour, despite it would be much easier and cheaper to make a new kitchen. All the shelves where hand-painted!. It took a lot of work form my carpenter 🙂 The living space has a silk curtains and cushions, and a silver and glass accessories, such as table and the bracket next to the door. One of my favourite thing in this interior is a crystal table lamp, it gives romantic, warm light.

My second project, it is the white kitchen that reminds me a bit of Provence. It was a completely new apartment, that didn’t demand many changes, only a good functional project. Characteristic are the scones on the wall. They are shabby chic style and were ordered from France. The kitchen work surface is made from american walnut (so it’s called in Poland 🙂 ).  **Note: I ADORE the lights over the little breakfast bar!