I live in Manhattan in uber-modern highrise in Hells kitchen, which is ironic to all who know me. I'm more of a west village brownstone or a pre-war coop type of gal. Prior to getting married, I did live in a gorgeous west village apartment. However, when we went through the premarital consolidation of households, the owned apartment (my gorgeous husband purchased our apartment prior to meeting me) won out over the rented apartment... the sacrifices one makes for love.

Prior to my arrival, my husband's "style" was bachelor pad "chic" (read: black sloping faux-leather couches and wrought iron everything. The man actually slept on an air mattress for an extended period of time.) Needless to say, part of the condition of my moving in was that the bachelor furniture had to go. I don't think he thought that I really meant it, but as soon as he said, "You can sell my couch" that couch was on Craigslist and was gone (undoubtedly to some other man cave). Lest you think I was overreacting, one of my fabulous friends (with whom I had discussed the state of my soon-to-be-betrothed's decor) actually wrote back to the craiglist post I had sent him as evidence for my laments and said, "I see...I thought you were joking." No, no friends it was just that bad.

So, in deciding how to decorate the apartment (over which I had full rein), my attempts to solicit opinions from Mr. Wentworth were usually met with grunts, groans, shrugging of shoulders and gnashing of teeth. After one particularly heated discussion over his lack of participation, (note: my husband is British so by heated I mean that it was actually obvious that we were both annoyed) it finally came out that he didn't have a clue what I was talking about when I was discussing the various pros and cons of going mid-century modern vs. contemporary. So instead of explaining myself in words, on Saturday morning, we sat in bed looking through my archive of every Domino ever printed (up to that point) and pointed at pictures we liked.

And from that, our apartment was born. Lots of ikea, a little bit of crate and barrel and some smatterings of ebay and here we are. More on the actual components and finds later. Send me your inspirations. I'll be sharing some of the fabulous contest entries I've already received later in the week.

Lots of love,
Betsy