bunnyshop shopping fashion blog

Sale Item of the Day

It's still super expensive, but if you've been wanting, like, a designer bed, now's the time—with a few exceptions, everything's  10% off at Design Within Reach. I wonder what they're thinking about the recession: Does it not bother them at all, because the people who are buying $2000 are, like, insulated? Or is everyone deciding that they don't need $2000 beds? We're baffled. We're so building out bed from the trees in our parents' backyard if we can. Actually, we are really excited about that.

Anyway: we love this bed. Min bed, was $750, on sale (only through tomorrow!), $675

Reader Mail: The Used Things

In today's Reader Mail:

Dear BS:

I know you don't always handle furniture questions, but I was wondering what you think about used couches. My mom is telling me their bad feng shui, and I've heard they can even let bed bugs into your house! What do you think? I'd rather get something cool and used on Craigslist then new and boring from IKEA, but I don't want the bed bugs!

Love,
P.

Oh! We hear you. We, too, fear the bed bugs, and we will say that this has been sufficient reasoning for us not to buy used—it's the upholstery and all that that freaks us out. But we can't afford the couch we really want (above), and so, we wait, couch-less, and eat on dinner on the floor.

We'd love to hear from everyone: horror stories? Excellent stories? Fill us in!

Above: Design Within Reach Theater sofa, $3750. To be clear, we find that cream color disturbing, but tragically they did not share a photo of the lovely sage one.

Bunnyshop Hearts: Homemade Headboards

We are not sure if anyone else is feeling our new headboard obsession, but we just found these instructions for making our own on Real Simple, and we are so on our way to Home Depot.

We Need To Steal $2000 From Someone, Preferably An Evil Henchman

We had a friend staying at our apartment in Park Slope, and because she is an idiot, she cracked our (admittedly ugly) hanging-from-the-ceiling lighting fixture. She replaced it with something equally ugly. Now that we think about it, we obviously should have held her ransom for $2000, because we loooooove this "effervescent chandelier" (er, okay) and ... this is the kind of thing that has us wondering if we could still sell our eggs. TMI, obviously, but we sure do like it.

Maybe we could instead become champion glass blower \ designer.

The effervescent chandelier from Anthro, $1999

Muji In London

Muji! We love Muji because everything is adorable, and most of it is so inexpensive. It is full of things we had previously known that we needed, including this bag of little wooden New York things:

New York in a bag, about $10. Also available: Paris, London, Tokyo, suburbs (on sale in the stores) and countryside (ditto).

We had forgotten how big the range is after just going to the Muji mini-shop at MoMA's design store. This is much better.

And! These are collapsible cardboard speakers (about $40). Everything at this store is so much smarter than we are.

Shrink-wrap t-shirts! That is pretty much how we are at Muji, just walking around with little exclamation points coming out of our head. Sadly not available in women's sizes. Shrink-wrap t-shirts, about $20

But everything is adorable, and there's enough stuff to offer an afternoon's worth of distractions ... like this adorable teapot for $5!!!

Sale Of The Day: Trellis Armoire

Oh, dear, we just absolutely love this, and somehow the fact that it is currently $500 off makes us no less capable of purchasing it. Triple tss. Trellis armoire, was $1898, now $1398.95

Bunnyshop Hearts: Unaffordable Home Design

We don't care if this costs five billion dollars (hmm, a little closer to $7,000) but we love this so much, we can barely express it. Obviously. We can't wait until Urban rips the designers off and gives us the $99 version.

"Shipping charges may apply." Er, we bet.

Zanotta Fiore room divider, $7,457

File Under: Things We Can't Afford

Crochet. We are trying to crochet a hat. We are fucking it up. We can't crochet. And still, still, we are convinced that if we can crochet this hat, at some point, far in the future, we would be able to crochet a rug like this one. It is even nicer in the other colors it comes in. Erm, this picture doesn't entirely do it justice, we would like to say. Paola Lenti + Eliana Gerotto crochet rug, price on request

Crochet: It's Everywhere

Really: Everywhere. Try watching 20 art students learn to crochet. This is something we have recently witnessed. It's sort of like teaching cats to knit. It's just not happening.

Still, we love crochet. And, for the third time, it's everywhere, not just in Alice Temperley dresses. (Above, from net-a-porter.com.) It's in furniture, like this Marcel Wanders crochet table, which is held up, apparently, by epoxy. And magic. Honestly, it's amazing:

We don't know why we should be so offended by its price when we're dedicating half of our space this week to $1000+ handbags, but we are. Tss. Marcel Wanders Crochet table (large), $1945   

But back to the clothes. A.P.C. Fucking love A.P.C. And their website is shockingly functional and friendly. We see how this crochet-neck dress might look a little dowdy here, but with the right presentation it'd be absolutely dreamy. A.P.C. Dress with Crocheted Neckline, $163

And then this is a Sass & Bide crocheted bikini. When we were angry high school students, we tried to learn how to crochet and make bikinis, so as to redistribute the wealth of the skinny, annoying girls we hated. This failed, sadly. We've moved on. This is very hot-Raquel Welch to us.$203

We know. We're a little on the border about this, but it'll look adorable with all those menswear-y shorts they're forcing down our throats this spring. Anna Sui crochet panel top, $144

And okay, we know it's impossible to see, but there's an adorable crocheted cardigan over that bizarre, poufy top. From BCBG, $158. No sales on the site, so it's off to the mall if you're into it. (And really, it's cuter than the picture. Annoyingly.)

Atelier LZC

Atelier LZC makes the most beautifully French things. They make us want to move to Provence and somehow convince an older European man to buy us a house. Convince him with our charm and wiles, rather than some weird older-man seduction techniques. Anyway: Atelier LZC.

Napkins (below)! Everyone needs napkins, right? So much nicer than paper towels. Would like to add here that we're watching the Suze Orman show and imagining the fit she would throw if someone told her about $10 packages of French napkins.

And notecards (way at top)! Even more than notecards! Maybe we could put these in vintage frames for immediate wall art, and Suze Orman would be proud of us for only spending $15 on wall art, which certainly should cost much more. Don't they look like they should go over a nice sofa, perhaps the Amelie from Anthropologie? Er, now the total for wall art + sofa = $2613.

Is this not the most beautiful mirror? We couldn't find it anywhere online, but they do have it at the SFMOMA store (maybe it outsmarted us at their online store) and also at Aime in London, where you'll have the pleasure of paying twice what it costs in the U.S. Nice! Suze would love that. The more we watch her show, the more we know Suze Orman would think we're great, big idiots.

And this must be them, for $30. Legitimate wall art. Without the sofa, $30. But truth be told, we really like Urban's sofas. Tsss. Maybe Suze Orman could come over and cut up our credit cards. Maybe right after we buy that mirror.

Design Can Mirrors

There's only one mirror in our apartment, which is in our bathroom, above the sink, which means to see any below-chest section of our body, we need to stand on the toilet. Obviously, this situation cannot stand, which is why we went to go buy our very first mirror. We were going to cheese out and buy this perfectly nice one from Anthropologie (below) — but then we discovered these clever ones from The Design Can. How could we pass up a mirror with a hawk on it?

Alternately you can go the safe-but-boring route with the $125 etched mirorr from Anthro. Pussy.

Every Girl Needs a Chandelier

We love few things more than going to the Home Depot store under the BQE and buying a gallon of paint. We have started to paint many rooms, and succeeded in finishing none of them. Our ex-roommates really loved this, especially when we tried to paint the living room without a ladder, leaving a two-foot band around the tops of the walls undone. Then our friend Amie suggested we pay a painter. She bought paint, gave the painter $60, and then she had nice, new walls. We bought the paint, spent $60 on magazines and chocolate, and had pissed off roommates.

This is just to say hiring (cheap) professionals is a good thing, and possibly all that's standing between us and a chandelier, which we really, really want. Mostly because the one our apartment came with cost like $15 and is constantly threatening to fall on top of our head while we're doign something innocent, like watching The Bourne Identity on Cinemax, and it's going to fall and kill us and by the time the police come, it'll be late enough that there's Skinemax on the TV and the newspaper headlines will be about a girl killed by her piss-poor chandelier while watching porn. Summary: Chandeliers, good. Professional help, good. Skinemax, bad.

Our favorite, the Belle Chandelier, for $1400. We're sure we can defer those student loans a few more years.

This is a total masterpiece. Maybe we could buy this instead of a car, or a house. Rody Grauman's "85 Lamps," from mossonline.com, $2090. Don't worry, they get cheaper.

The Norm 69 from Conran is so right for the ski chalet we will one day own. $145

Another Tord Boontje favorite: his Midsummer lighting thing. Is it a chandelier? A garland? We have no idea. Still love it. $75

We could live without the electric candles in the middle — cheesy, forever cheesy — but we're down with the Murano glass fruit trinkets. It's like a charm bracelet in chandelier form. The Venetian Fruit Glass Chandelier, $1000

A swell, budget entry from Urban. If it's anything like the unravelling t-shirt we just bought a few weeks ago, those pieces are going to start dropping to the floor, but we'll enjoy it while it lasts. Though it fails the Skinemax-protection issue. The Two-Toned Beaded Brass Chandelier, $98

Current Obsession: Tord Boontje Curtains

Do you see what's going on there? Those are reindeer, and flowers, and that's part of a curtain. How genius is that? The designer's name is Tord Boontje, and if you're been anyway near a museum store in the past year, you've probably seen his light garlands — we're obsessed with those, too, but now we're all about the curtains. They're Tyvek — that's the same material as Fed Ex envelopes. And did we mention they have reindeer on them? We like the green, but they also come in white, red, and beige. We're going to string them up between one half of our studio and the other half of our studio and convince ourselves that these lovely Tyvek deer have helped us acquire our very own one-bedroom apartment.

A full-length shot of the curtains — ideally, you'd overlap three or so to cover about six feet ... er, laterally, or east to west, or however you'd describe that. $99

And the famous lighting thing. We got butterflies in our stomach the first time we saw it. We are such consumerist whores. $75

PS Have you entered our Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen haiku contest yet? Did we mention the thing about the PRIZES?

One-Stop Shopping: Urban Outfitter's Home Department

This is where we see how much stuff we could get from one store with an amount equal to the cost of our first car ($1400).

We're pretty sure we could get a complete living room set. Because the thing is, we may love shopping, but we really hate spending one. Spending money in one place means you only have to put the credit card down once, which is psychologically pleasing, even if it's a giant scam you're playing on yourself.

We quite like Urban's furniture selections. It's like ten steps up, aesthetically, from most of what we see at vintage shops, and only like two steps up, price-wise.

Moving on:

Bunnyshop dreams of the day she will say to her friends, "Would you like to have a seat on my seating unit?" rather than "Would you like to sit on my drum stool? Or perhaps this lovely egg crate? Or we could sit side by side on my yoga mat!" Bunnyshop has a big empty space in her apartment where she dreams she will one day install a sofa — and this extremely reasonable option from Urban Outfitters would do just fine. $780.

Sorry this picture is so annoying — but you get the idea. We actually like the white one better, too. Sigh. We still love the chair. $220.

Bunnyshop has an antique chandelier in her apartment that her landlord warned her was not in the best of shape. She fears it will fall on her face as she sleeps. This one would make for a more than workable substitution. $98.

This fringe panel could be the kind of thing where you put the receipt in a very safe place, because even as you're buying it, you're realizing that you may hate it, very much and very soon. But we'd love to see if this could magically transform our studio into a one-bedroom, and allow us to go to sleep without being haunted by the specter of all those plates in our sink. $48.

This "wall art" screams Urban but we still like it. And if you squint you can make out a lion! $36.

Everyone needs a nice, normal bookshelf. This may be it. Will provide excellent storage for half-empty 20 oz. Diet Cokes, microwavable pot pie boxes, and scores of books we have yet to finish. $140.

Total: $1320!