West Elm Wants Your Business

West Elm really wants you to like them. I've seen two - count 'em - two online sweepstakes where you can win thousands of dollars worth of West Elm gear. And, in turn, they hope to win your heart.

Casasugar has teamed with West Elm to offer $5,000 to one lucky registrant. You must sign in, put together your wish list (which can be saved and edited), and wait to see if you're the lucky one. Only select WE merchandise is available to add to your list but it's quite fun to go shopping with fake money. The deadline for this contest is Sunday, August 19th.

Domino magazine is also getting in the game. They're only offering $2,500 (to two winners) but you get to choose from anything WE supplies, including their new stuff. For this sweepstakes, you only need to send in your contact information. The deadline for this contest is Monday, August 20th.

I'm a sucker for free furniture so I entered both sweepstakes. If I do win, here are a couple of items that will surely find their way into my house:

Hudson Nightstand, $259

Wood-Block Rug, $49-$599

Storage Bench, $249

Which lovely things would you choose? Come award time, I might just be feeling generous....

6 & 7

Here are our most recent weekend photos. We're all 6 & 7 caught up. You can visit flickr to see the entire 6 & 7 collection.

Cardboard: left, Porcelain: right

Original inspiration by Stephanie & Mav at 3191

6 & 7

Here are our weekend photos...from last, last weekend. We've had a few internet glitches around design boner HQ so please forgive us. We're getting ourselves back on track. Of course, you can still visit flickr to see the entire 6 & 7 collection.

Cardboard: left, Porcelain: right

Original inspiration by Stephanie & Mav at 3191

Ace Hotel - Portland

I've always wanted to take a trip to the Pacific Northwest. After reading an article in Elle Decoration UK (sorry no web site) on the Ace Hotel in Portland, Oregon, now I REALLY want to go!!! Gone are the usual generic and boring hotel rooms and instead you are greeted with uniqueness galore! All of the rooms feature art work by local and national artists, vintage furnishings, environmentally friendly mattresses, and some rooms even have a turntable with a stack of records to play. I think my favorite element of the Ace is the photo booth (Cardboard and I are photo booth junkies!!!).

Rates seem pretty reasonable, ranging from $95-250/night.

Bonus Bone: Neat Freak III

Neat Freak III, 7" x 5" gocco print for $10 at Etsy

Errrrnt, wrong!

Having lived with a neat freak recently, I had to hear "Please don't leave dirty dishes in the sink" more than any person should. But now that I can finally leave one dirty plate in the sink without bringing the world to a fiery end, this gocco print by treepiminusthree makes me laugh. The simple drawing style, the throw-back polka dots, and gameshow-inspired X combine to make doing the dishes (or at least thinking about doing them) seem like such a silly task.

Check out the other two prints in the Neat Freak series, including "Please keep the toilet seat down."

Neat Freak Series

For these reasons, I, Cardboard, declare this a Design Boner.