When we were first looking into making an ofuro, one of the things we considered was pouring one out of concrete. The good thing about concrete is that the material is cheap, and with a little hard work it lends itself well to the DIY approach. We quickly bagged the idea because there is no possible way our floor could support the weight. This morning I stumbled across an old post on Apartment Therapy with a gorgeous DIY bathroom built for under 3k which includes a concrete ofuro. The soaking tub only cost about $200 according to the owner splat girl. She did mention that it was a lot of work though.
Check out her flicker photo set and the Apartment Therapy post.

With all the post holiday sales starting up it’s a great time to get online and do some shopping. CB2 currently has things up to 50% off. I noticed all of their Christmas ornaments are about half off, so if there is something you wish you would have gotten for your tree, here is your chance.

They also have quite a bit of furniture on sale like this Track Sofa for only $799. Thats a pretty great looking sofa for a reasonable price. The Peekaboo Spark Bunching Table is another great deal at 50% off. The thick molded acrylic side table has black graphic bursts underprinted on the sides to add a nice touch to the simple design.
More sales at CB2.

I received a lot of great gifts this year, but perhaps the one that captures the Christmas spirit the best was this shirt from Rosaloves.com. If you haven’t heard of Rosa Loves before, you should definitely check it out. Not only do they have some great designs printed on American Apparel t-shirts, but by buying a shirt from them, you are actually doing some good. The idea behind Rosa Loves is that everyone has a story. They find someone who is in need for whatever reason, design a shirt for them, and then donate all the proceeds of that shirt to support and help them. So in a way it really is a gift that keeps on giving.
Fitted Tee’s are $25 and proceeds always go to a good cause.

Since I won’t be posting on Monday or Tuesday of next week I though I would post a link for anyone looking to kill some time during the Holidays. Grace over at Designsponge has been doing a great job compiling all sorts of different guides that are very complete. Product guides include pictures prices and a brief description. I could spend a lot of time sorting through all the great info she has put together.
Check out the Designsponge Guides.

I just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas from Grassrootsmodern!

Pictured to the left is our tall scraggly crooked Christmas tree that we love. It stands almost 12 feet tall and was hand picked and cut by my little family. We got all the red decorations from Ikea in the “as is” section for $3. There were actually a lot more in the bag that we just didn’t use.
Last year we had a big dilemma trying to figure out if we were going to buy a real tree or a fake one, and which was actually better for the environment. We ended up buying one from a local tree farm, and felt good about supporting a local business. This year a friend reminded me that for only $10 you can buy a tag to go into the national forest and cut your own. I checked out the info page on cache national forest, and it turns out that by cutting your own tree you are actually encouraging good tree management in the forest. Who knew that we could save money, have a great time, and help out the forest all at the same time. Continue reading for some pics of our adventure.

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We have been doing a lot of shopping at Ikea lately thanks to our 20% cash back sofa credit. We bought two KNAPPA pendant lights for our front room, and last night I put one together and hung it. It comes with a plug end, but I cut the cord and hard wired it into the ceiling. I have to say that at $25 the KNAPPA looks 10 times more expensive than it really is. It totally transformed the look of the room, although admittedly the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling wasn’t doing much for the ambiance. Not only does it look great, but it was fun to put together too. I think it actually gives you a little bit more appreciation for the light having put it together yourself.

Available from Ikea for $25.

With our construction updates settling down some of you may be feeling a absence of affordable modern construction conversation. Luckily Grassrootsmodern isn’t the only site out there determined to build an affordable modern home. The folks over at 100khouse.com are determined to build a house in Philly for under 100k. Sounds ambitious, but if you consider a thousand square foot home at 100 square foot it starts to sound pretty doable. They are currently in the design phase, but it looks like they are well on their way to meeting their goal.

Check out 100khouse.com

Some times it’s the little things that are hard to find. A prime example is a coat hook. Seems like it should be easy to find an inexpensive nice looking coat hook right? Well not as easy as it sounds. David M from Seattle looked all over until he found this Duet Hook for the entry way of his house. The design is simple and unobtrusive, and at $5 the price is right. To make things even better, looks like they are made by a local company called Three By Three who has all sorts of other goodies. Modern, affordable and local, looks like a winner to me.
Available from Tiny Living for $5.

Thanks to David M for the tip!

Well yesterday was our last day in NYC. We didn’t get everything done that we wanted to (thanks for all the great suggestions) but we did get a lot of it done. Picture posts straight from the iPhone were courtesy of iPhoneslide.com It’s a handy service, but posting times were totally erratic. Some posts took almost 24 hours to get up, so sorry about the delay.
Saturday we visited the new Muji store in SoHo. Of course I absolutely loved everything in there. I was surprised a bit by the prices though. Some things were pretty affordable, and others definitely were not. I ended up leaving with an assortment of kitchen goods for a decent price.

Someone asked me what the best part of the whole trip was, and to be honest I can’t really pin it down to one thing. I have come to the conclusion that it is impossible to pin New York down. It’s really the conglomerate of things that makes it so great. We had wonderful food from Little Italy, Little Brasil (which is quite little) and the favorite next to our friends house, Georges Pizza, not to mention lots of great street food along the way. A special thanks goes out to Jon and Emily for letting us crash their great pad for a week and showing us around. We’ll be back.

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posted from iPhoneSlide.com

Today we went to MoMA and it was absolutely amazing. It was incredible to see all that great art up close and personal. Being the ID/Furniture geek that I am my favorite part was the design exhibition that featured my favorites like the classic Eames leg splint and chairs shown above. They also had some temporary exhibits of Seurat and Puryear which were very impressive.