We’re excited to announce this great opportunity for Shelterrific readers from One Kings Lane: sign up now for access to exclusive, three-day online sales of designer home goods from One Kings Lane, and you’ll receive an instant $20 credit.

One Kings Lane has been creating some buzz, and for good reason. Because this isn’t a cut-rate outlet; these are amazing savings — we’re talking 50-70% off — on perfect firsts from designers like Adrienne Landau, John Robshaw, Dwell Studio, Vera Wang, and Serena & Lily. But the savings don’t last forever — each sale runs for just three days, and you have to be a member to access the savings!

So we’re making it easy — sign up now, receive an instant credit of $20 toward your first purchase, and shop the 4th of July weekend sale. This weekend’s sale features OKL Favorites, items that One Kings Lane members already love, like the blue and white Caddy Porcelain Lamp from Anteriors, bamboo frames from Atticus, a musicians tray from Laura & Corrado, plus luxurious homewares from Le Cherche Midi, Siena, and more. A three-day weekend and three-day savings? Sign us up! And look for more fabulous deals from One Kings Lane in the coming weeks.

A note that we’re taking off for the holiday on Friday and hope that you can, too. Happy shopping and we’ll see you Monday!

Short week, slightly shortened blogwatch!

A sneak peek at a home revamp where no piece cost more than $100. Amazing! At Design*Sponge.

Swell new stuff from IKEA PS at MoCo Loco.

Buyer beware? A PayPal horror story from Luann Udell.

A kooky new site of home DIY disasters that’s been making the rounds: There, I Fixed It.

Tuft Love at Revival Home & Garden.

July Must-Haves from Casa Sugar.

Top ten IKEA mods at Lifehacker.

Here’s mine: Picture a traditional Fourth of July picnic complete with hot dogs, beer, and baseball. Now change the hot dogs to some kind of veggie dogs that are a very strange shade of orange, substitute a cricket bat for the baseball bat, and locate the whole thing in the yard of an ancient castle in County Clare, Ireland. That’s where I spent Fourth of July in 1999, along with my sister, a friend who was going to school in Ireland, and an assortment of displaced Americans and amused students from other countries. It was great fun, and made me appreciate even more the unique love that we all hold for our own countries. Have a favorite memory yourself? Please share. Let us know what you’re doing this year, too! (Lucky us — we get to watch some fireworks along with Paola!) –Mary T.

Photo by Kathryn McCallum

We’ve been experiencing some hotter-than-normal temperatures lately here in the Pacific Northwest, which makes cooking indoors an absolute don’t. So when I was prepping some tofu steaks for the grill the other night and started measuring out my brown rice (I love the Cook’s Illustrated Oven-Baked Brown Rice Method) I thought maybe, since I was already heating the grill, I’d just try the oven method on the BBQ. And it worked! I followed the recipe’s exact proportions, but I used a heavy-lidded, iron Dutch oven instead of glass. I placed it on the grill over low, indirect heat. 45 minutes later, I had perfect brown rice and a cool house. Cooking over the charcoal even lent a faint smokiness to the rice that was quite tasty! –Megan B.

Reader Cassy writes to us with this question:

My husband would like to build a deck (low to ground) that will hold a hot tub. He wants to put a pergola over the hot tub. I have never seen one and was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to build one, pictures, or good places to shop for one???

Cassy, thanks for writing! A quick online search found a few sites that might help you out. Lowes has an online how-to on building a pergola — you’ll probably notice that the skill level is listed as “advanced.” Does that describe you? Popular Mechanics also has a pergola DIY — and not only does this one have 3D animation, it calls the project “simple”! And here’s another good article at Reader’s Digest.

We like the look of a pergola, too. Readers — have you built one? Any advice for Cassy?

I like even minor items like tissue boxes to have a little personality, so it’s no wonder I came home with two boxes of these very friendly tissues from Trader Joe’s. They’re decorated with some old-timey artwork, but it’s what the tissue is “saying” to me that I like. “I’m there when you need to pick up icky things,” it says. “I’m there when you run out of toilet paper.” It even offers a kindly reminder to check my pockets before tossing my pants in the laundry. Where the tissues fall short are, sadly, softness. Simply put, they aren’t! (They’re like the Clint Eastwood of facial tissues.) But for 99 cents a box, I guess I won’t complain. –Mary T.

My boyfriend and I share a computer desk. We’ve hooked up both computers, an external hard drive, a printer, an external disk drive and a set of speakers. I’m dealing with the cord situation, but constantly switching out my usb plugs is an annoyance I’d love to avoid. With Fred Flare’s USB tulip hub I could do that with added style! Each bright red flower is a high speed USB port that connects to the computer through one common USB cable. Pick one up here for $22. — Erica P.

I have a great appreciation for puns and, therefore, have great appreciation for Urban Outfitters’ Writing on the Wall coat rack, $24. The block of bright red text can transform a plain white wall and give a witty shot of personality to an otherwise boring entryway. I use mine to organize my scarves with sassy panache. The Writing on the Wall coat rack is available only online. For those who like their coat racks a little more cynical, an alternate version reads, “blah blah blah”. –Katie D.

First, you readers are amazing. Thank you for sharing your stories of dust and woe, most of which were hilarious, almost all of which were recognizable. It makes us feel so much better to know there are other people out there convinced that everyone else’s house is always cleaner than theirs. But there was one story in particular that made us laugh out loud. Is it because there is a cat butt involved? Very, very possibly. But we just can’t pass up the wonder that is this Confess Your Mess story. Congratulations, Cathy! You win!

I’ve got two cats, a one year-old daughter, a sort of absent-minded mad genius type husband, and zero talent or desire for housework. The litterboxes are sequestered in their own bathroom, which does have a gate across it. Sure, we have the usual tracking issues, but lately the chubby kitty has taken to hanging his butt outside of the litterbox when he poops. Apparently, it is “freeing” and I’m just trying to oppress him by asking that he keep his ass inside. The other cat, the neurotic one, would really rather we kept all surfaces clear of clutter and mess. Clutter like my full water glass, my keyboard and mouse, our dinner plates, etc. There are quite a few broken things that need sweeping/vacuuming up.

Then there are the cockroaches. Now, I’m not *that* horrible, but we do live in south Texas. It doesn’t matter how clean you are, you will have the occasional roach, especially in a house as ill-sealed as ours. So I kill roaches, my husband kills roaches, the baby doesn’t yet, but oh she will, and of course, the cats bring down their fair share. While I appreciate our valiant hunters, this does mean we get roach corpses in places that are a bit difficult to get at, i.e. under bookcases.

The kiddo eats graham crackers… everywhere. So there are graham cracker crumbs, you guessed it, everywhere. She’s also discovered the joy of Cheerios. She comes by this breadcrumb trail behavior honestly. I can tell where her father has been by the trail of popcorn bits that he’s dropped. The man eats crackers in bed, y’all. That dustbuster could keep me from sleeping on cracker crumbs! (Which are irritatingly pokey, and you never sweep off quite all of them.)

There’s more, but if I go on, someone might try to take my kid. Actually, if you promise to take the husband too, I’ll continue to dish on why everyone else is a better housekeeper.

Thanks for the laugh, Cathy, and thanks to everyone who entered. Let’s all raise our DustBusters high to toast 30 years of easy cleanup, and many fewer messes. Thanks, Black & Decker!

If you’d like a laugh, be sure to see the rest of the comments on the DustBuster contest. And if you missed the deadline, feel free to confess your mess here — like hanging off the edge of the catbox, it’s freeing!

When we moved west, a friend gave us a Seattle guidebook including unusual spots, among them the Walker Rock Garden. Beginning in 1959, Boeing mechanic Milton Walker and his wife Florence built the Gaudi-like garden of sculpture in rocks, geodes, and colored glass in the backyard of their small home. Imagine our surprise when we were taking a walk one night and realized the Walker Rock Garden is three blocks from where we live, located behind an unremarkable (and a little run down) house. Yesterday, we finally went for a visit.

From the street, you can see the spire of the colorful 18-foot bell tower and a portion of the miniature “Alps.” But once inside the yard, it’s truly amazing — a hill drops down to an incredible display that includes a paved seating area with a fireplace, fountains made with chunks of colored glass and petrified wood, and countless mosaic butterflies adorning walls and stepping stones.

The entire garden took the Walkers 20 years to build. (Makes me feel a little bit better about the projects we’re working on this year.) The garden is still privately owned, so it’s not a perfectly maintained museum — the fountains weren’t on, the ponds are being scrubbed for repainting, and the plantings seem a little overgrown. But the spirit of incredible outsider art remains intact. This is one place we’ll definitely come back and see again. Are there any odd gems in your neighborhood? –Mary T.

The Walker Rock Garden is located at 5407 37th Ave. SW, Seattle, WA, and is open to the public the second, third, and fourth Sundays of the month during June, July, and August. Admission is free. Learn more here.
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