Ahh! I'm so excited! Designers! Designers! Designers!

C was looking for things to do in London tonight and she's found the Grand Designs Live Show on during the 8th-10th of June!! I'm so excited! I am definitely going to go, and I'm definitely going to try and book some time with the BIDA interior designers one-on-one appointments. I am SO excited!

Grand Designs is a show on Channel 4 and More 4 showcasing some amazing houses, and their owners, whose houses are from an architectual and design point of view, pretty amazing. One house, for example, was build one a corner, built with not a single window facing out the street,. However, on the inside, the house was designed around a giant chestnut tree, so one entire wall was a giant curve, using the tree as it's mid point. This section was made entirely of glass walls/doors that could be slid, so as to pretty much open the entire ground floor. And because the outside walls were completely secure, the house, despite being half built with glass, was completely private. My description does not do it justice, so here is the link. This has to have been one of my favorite houses from all of the series. Even if the owners were a bit mad...

I am constantly in awe of the people on these shows, and their guts and bollocks to be able to make such bold and beautiful statements with their houses. And since I've just moved into my first flat (which btw looks heaps nicer now than it did a few weeks ago when I posted my distress at living in a newly moved in tip), I now want to have the bollocks myself to be able to make bold design gestures, rather than just playing it safe.

Anyway, so I am uber excited about being able to go to this show. It also means another night of wanting to go to bed early has gone completely down the pan, as I have now spent the last hour looking up design blogs and websites. Some of note, that are either my favorites, that I visit daily, or ones that I am sure I will start going to are:

• http://www.designsponge.blogspot.com fantastic site! I find so many cool things I can not afford here, but annoyingly most of the things are from the US so are harder to get here in ol' blighty
  
• apartmenttherapy.com - I have loved their smallest, coolest apartement competition. Loved with a capital L. So many cool places, and I've discovered my secret superhero power: to be able to spot Ikea furniture from thousands of miles away! Not as useful as being able to fly but still, I'm proud.
  
• decor8.blogspot.com Just found this a few days ago. The stationary competition has definitely caught my eye, since I am a big fan of paper and all it's parephenalia... Once on a road trip through North France, my friends were less than impressed when I wanted to take a detour to go to the Paper Museum. Why anyone wouldn't want to go to a museum dedicated to the art of making paper I simply cannot understand, but in the end, we didn't go because shouting won the day. And I wasn't loud enough.
  
• livingetc.com YAY! Finally a house/design magazine based in the UK I can look at on the web! There are loads of really good american ones, but again, nice to look at, can't buy anything though...
  
• designersguild.com/ I love their wallpaper!! AND their from the UK! Hurrah!

So that's my list of design sites I'm currently obsessed with. If only I could get enough time during my working day to look at them more often, rather than having to wait until 1am to do so, that'd be perfect.