An art nouveau dream - the whimsical and nature inspired Barcelona home designed by Gaudi

Possibly Gaudi's most beautiful masterpiece, the Casa Batlló was one of the highlights of my 9 week European trip this summer. Once you see these pictures you'll see why.

The exterior. The locals call it the "house of bones" because it's organic, skeletal appearance.
Read more about the house here on Wikipedia.

The amazing staircase on the ground floor that leads you up to the main parlor and other floors

the top of the staircase

The front parlor and it's gallery windows is one of the most impressive house features.




The ceiling of the parlor is also beautiful



The parlor as it appeared when the Batlló family lived in the house


Gaudi thought out EVERY little detail and in every little detail drew inspiration from nature. Check out the organic shaped sliding wood ventilation panels in the door.

This fireplace has a two-seat bench at one end, and a one-seat bench on another, which is where a chaperone could sit and mind a young couple cozying up by the fire.




The dining room as it appeared



The center of the house is open and acts as a giant skylight and spreads light throughout the home. The tiles create a gradient - the bottom floors have the lightest blue tile, to reflect light, and the top floors have the darkest blue tile, to absorb more light.





One of the split level staircases


The attic floor was my favorite. It was white and everything was organically shaped. The arches were like a giant ribcage.



I loved the window frames and shutters

A detail of the window




The mosaic and tile roof is also amazing


Isn't the wall treatment that was used throughout the house beautiful?


You can also take a virtual tour at the official Casa Batllo website.

Since I featured West Elm's fab new look yesterday, I thought it'd be a good time to showcase West Elm creative director's home.




Unfortunately those are all I have!
What do you think of her style as compared to West Elm's new style, which I featured yesterday.
as seen on Country Living

Below are some random pretty images, also from Country Living.

What do you think of the wallpaper? Too much?



A sweet little bedside montage. Some great must haves for a guest's bedside table.

A post-holiday orgainzation special: Those new electronics=more cords. How to manage them

Here's a DIY for you. When I saw the cord explosion behind my parent's entertainment center - all I could think was - "project!" Especially since I had it on good authority that the holidays would bring a couple of more cords into the mix, it was time to find a system to manage them. I'm sure everyone here can relate to this in some way, and this DIY costs $0 - not a penny.

Before - Here is the mess

Pretty bad huh?

Get yourself a dusting cloth, or electronic wipes, and your vacuum cleaner. Take this opportunity to wipe of the cords, consoles, and equipment while you're back there anyway. When you unplug cords or cables LABEL THEM so you know where they came from and what they go to. I used blank adhesive address labels and folded them around the cord at each end. Each end would be labeled with the name of the hole or device it goes into. You'll see this in the example below.

The end of each cable is labeled with the corresponding hole, i.e. " AV 1" or "Front Speaker - Left" You may find a labeling solution that works better for you based on your equipment.


In the middle of the project - don't worry - things might look worse before they look better.


Analyze if anything is hindering you from keeping the space organized and easy to maintain. For example, on the back of my dad's entertainment console, there were only two small holes for cords to be fed through. This made it really hard to ad a new device or change the settings on something.

So...being that the backing of the console was only fiber board, I traced a rectangle with a pencil and cut a much larger opening with a hacksaw. This allows easy access to the back of equipment, and provides better ventilation.

After cleaning and wiping everything, and labeling the cords, I put all the equipment back in the cabinet, rewired everything, and utilized regular household twisty ties to bundle the cords.

Labeled cords coming out of their respective equipment...


Cords bundled with twisty ties, with excess slack coiled up, and plugged back in. Using a power strip makes it easy to turn off everything in one easy action.

Labeled cables going into the back of the TV

The finished view from the front.

So what do you think? Do you have a mess of cords you've been wanting to organize in your house? Any good tips for managing cords?

For more cord management and electronic tips, check out last week's interview with Apartment Therapy's Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan on Techorating.