What's the corniest/tackiest/funkiest detail of your home decor?

(So I'm into nest-feathering -- so sue me!)

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2000

Answers

Funkiest is the kids bathroom (Mediarama people: sorry for the repeat). We painted it in Ralph Lauren's Lap Pool Blue, which is basically turquoise or aqua(Is there really a difference?). The texture on the wall is pretty grainy. I got these really cool fish pictures at Target for $10 each and then the Martha Stewart in me got really creative. I bought a small plastic plate with a fish on it, glued a picture hanger thingy on back and hung it on the wall. I also took a piece of tropical fish wrapping paper and stuck it in a matted frame.

I was going to get a shower curtain with fish on it, but I had just bought a new one a few months ago. But the rings are fish rings. The bathroom doesn't have a window in it, but it does have a skylight and when the sun comes through it's very calming and relaxing.

-- Anonymous, June 13, 2000

That sounds ultra-fresh, Shelly. I think ocean themes rule for bathrooms. I keep saying I'm gonna repaint our bathroom and stencil seahorses and starfish on it, but I'm too lazy.

Our tackiest thing is the vinyl wall covering in some of the rooms. Our living room and bedroom is tape&texture, but the bathrooms and the kitchens have the lamest '80s-looking flower prints on the walls. Paul doesn't understand why I want to paint over it. At least it's easy to clean, though.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

Turquoise is more blue and aqua is more green.

I'm planning on painting a rainbow on one wall of my kids' bedroom... is that corny enough?

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I haven't got it yet, but I'm buying a Hello Kitty toaster. It's adorable and it toasts little Hello Kitty faces into the bread. It is, as you would say Gwen, fresh.

It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

my "nekkid lady and her monkey" lamp or my thrift store paintings/photos of unkown women from the 50's and 60's...

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

My Richard and Pat Nixon ashtray. It has various sights in DC around the edges and Dick and Pat in the middle, right where you ash. Or this paperweight I got for college graduation that really defies description. It frightens me that a friend of my father's saw it in an antique store and thought it was something I had to have only slightly less than the fact that it has since really grown on me.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

OK, there is no piece of garage sale or thrift store funk I will not purchase and proudly display. I think the glow-in-the-dark plastic rosary is my best find, tho. But now I want to know how someone would go about getting that sunshine on the swimming pool walls when you're under water look, coz my bathroom could sure use repainting and that swimming pool aqua sounded very cool. Oops; fresh.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I have the Dennis Rodman Wedding Day doll (where he's wearing the Barbie-style bridal gown) on display in my living room. Does that count? Or should I drag out the Sunshine Family dolls to add a little more retro flair to the room? They'd match with the Peace doll from the 1970s Hasbro World of Love collection -- she's perched on the TV.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the Dawn dolls adorning the Dawn Fashion Show setup on top of the old turntable. Gotta love those 70s fashions.

-- Anonymous, June 14, 2000

I've got a wall in my studio covered by 1950s albums rummaged from thrift stores. When randomly buying the albums over a period of months, I had two rules: 1. cover must feature girl in fabu hair; 2. must cost ten cents. Half ended up being from some guy named Ray Conniff. When I moved in to this place, I started putting the records up, to see how many I could display. At the end, it turned out I had the perfect number of records to fit that wall, so I decided it was a total sign and that my miniature house was mighty fine. Of course, I think it looks cool, but I've had more than one visitor stare in silent horror at the sight of that wall.

Scroll to the very bottom of this page to see the true beauty of my decorating taste: http://dellazine.com /covergirl/031600.html

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Ray Conniff! My parents had every Ray Conniff album ever released! I used to make up my own ballet moves to them after I got home from my real and really terrifying ballet lesson taught by the Evil Mr. Nunnery, who hated little girls. Ok, now I'm all envious of your fab wall.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Karen: I don't have a record player, so I've never had the pleasure of listening to my own records. What's Ray sound like?

I encourage everyone to make their own record wall. It's fun and easy, too! Hee.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

when i was little, one of my bedroom walls had a big wallpapered mural of animals in trees...i hardly remember details of it now, but it was cool when i got my bunkbed b/c i could climb up-top and hang with the sly-eyed blue cat up among the leaves, or lie down below and feel protected by the gaze of the sheep knitting in her(/his??) rocking chair.

i'm all down with corny-yet-original murals/rainbows/whatevah on a child's wall. hell, i'm down with corny shit on Anyone's walls.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

For anyone who's been to The Purple Living Room, you know the answer to that... it's The Purple Living Room. The purpleness itself (blue on the ceilings) competes with such decorative touches as our Sno- Globe Collection (The Husband-Type Man maintains that his Nixon-Elvis Commemorative Sno-Globe is the kewlest, I know it's my Spam Sno- Globe), my Literary Figures Shot Glasses, my 90210 Stuff (including my Brinda doll), our Chilluns Books Collection, my favorite picture book (which Klee will know, "Charlie the Broadway Chicken"), my desk (which is basically a plain Ikea table that I've written assorted poems and quotes all over), the Travel Souveniers, which include my favorite pilgrims-going-to-Canturbury-Cathedral tippy pen-

The Bathroom is also pretty special, since we got each other (unknowingly) Very Important Shower Curtains (1 sparkled, 1 goldfish, and 1 flowered) as respective Easter gifts this year. The glow-in-the- dark frogs kept falling off the bathroom mirror, though....

The Dining Room has the competing factors of my Paper Chinese Lantern collection, his New York Stuph collage, and, of course, our Signed Wedding Invitations from members of Duran Duran.

The Bedroom is not kitschy, believe it or not.

Few things can compete with my friends who had the Duran Duran bathroom... completely covered with posters, pictures and stuff. YOU try peeing with 16 different Simon LeBons staring at you!

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I collect Catholic stuff (I'm a huge Catholic wannabe), and I this great old prayer box with a figure of Jesus in it that I found at a flea market (I'm a flea market junkie). My husband freaked when I told him I was gonna hang it in the bathroom. He made me call my mother first to get her assurance that Jesus wouldn't be overly offended hanging there.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

SarahJane: I'm not sure how to describe the late, great Ray Conniff (at least, I think he's dead). He did instrumental music. Think "Orchestra Lite." He may even be the Godfather of Muzak.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I like toys. I wanted that bouncin' Tigger so bad...I did get the Elmo that sings "1-2-3" by the Jackson 5. I also collected "Cupie" dolls until my husband insisted "the little bastards keep looking at me".

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Ummm...maybe the NunZilla my friend Karl gave me last year? It's a wind-up nun that spits fire. (We both survived Catholic grade school.) The autographed photo of John Taylor I got a few years ago for filming him in Venice Beach? (What a doof.) My collection of handcuffs and cat-o-nine-tails hanging from every doorknob in the place? Good grief, I have no clue...

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

We got a Sacred Heart of Jesus wall clock for a wedding present, and it holds a place of honour on our oxblood red dining room wall. It's a big old painting of what we like to call Open Heart Surgery Jesus with a clock over him. Whenever one of us asks the time and we check that clock, we say "you can always count on Jesus."

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

Hmmm...where do I begin?

I've got a great '50s store sign for replacement soles that I got off an old shore repair place on 2nd Ave. that was being remodeled into a Wendy's.

A yard sign for some fringe candidate for Metro Council who couldn't get on the ballot in his district, so he over-printed the signs, blocking out his district and adding the words, "Ask for and receive a write-in ballot!!!!"

A 3-D Jesus picture in a gold fufu frame with a space for a light.

Or maybe my finest objét is the "Mommy-To-Be" doll, a Barbie-scale doll who is knocked up, but her belly snaps off, and there's this little baby doll inside, and when you pull it out, her flat belly springs up. It's freakish and gruesome.

-- Anonymous, June 17, 2000

Cannot compete with my friend Lake, who has painted every inch of her house with fluorescent glittery colors, including the couch, bathrugs, etc. Everything is painted, I should clarify, EXCEPT the walls, because it would be too much trouble to unbolt the shelves holding her nudie girl collection, alien toys, robots, 50's pulp paperbacks (lust at the bowling alley!), Spawn toys & other action figures, gadgets, art, photos, etc.

We do have a lot of stuff on our refrigerator and lots of toys hiding around the house if you look. Oh yeah, despite not being an Official Beanie Collector [thank goodness], I think I have every standard- sized cat-shaped Beanie baby ever made. There's also a set of Beanies- -unicorn and dragon--on top of a bookcase in the dining room. The real madness is downstairs, where the Collections are hiding...

-- Anonymous, July 10, 2000