If you haven't already checked out Slow Home, your missing out. I first heard about it from my parents, who are quite active with the Slow Foods movement with their creamery and handmade artisan cheeses. It seems slow home is an idea that follows a lot of the elements of slow food. The idea behind the website is that too much architecture is mass produced, wasteful, and made without much thought to the user. It focuses on those people who are looking to change all of that and design well thought out spaces that are individualized and concious of the environment. Besides just being a great idea, the website has some great features. It is of course a blog, but it also has a folio section that catalogues different people, projects and products that are useful for the slow home movement. It even has a slow home tv section with all sorts of video clips.

Check it out and let us know your favorite find on Slow Home.

I have been meaning to update my blogroll for a long time, but somehow it seems I can never find time. Here is a great one for anyone who lives in, or loves Utah. Your Heart Out is "a blog dedicated to shopping, dining, decorating, entertaining and traveling—generally living your heart out in Salt Lake City." I have been following it for a while now, and they do a great job featuring all sorts of great things to do in Salt Lake. They even scour Craigslist for all the great deals out there so you don't have to.

Check out all the goodies at Your Heart Out.

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.

Modern parents rejoice. Apartment Therapy, one of my favorite modern design blogs, has launched a whole new branch of their famous blog just for parents. The Nursery looks like it will be a promising addition to the rest of the Apartment Therapy group. They already have blogged about some of my favorite nursery goodies, and I am sure that they have lots of great stuff in the pipeline.

A couple days ago I posted about the accent wall you can see in the background of the picture above. Eric from Modern Self definitely has the affordable modern vision. This week he is back with more goodies. In his quest for the perfect Mid-Century Modern Pendant lamps, he stumbled across the ALANG table lamps from IKEA. At $29 a piece, they were way cheaper than any other option he had come across. With a few simple modifications, the two table lamps became two pendant lamps, and the rest is history. For all the details, head over to Modern Self

Comments? Post them here in our forums.

Affordable is good, but lets face it, you can't beat free. So when it comes to calendars for next year it doesn't get much better than the very free Blueant Studio Calendar. There are strings attached though, you have to make it yourself. They have included all the beautiful pictures with dates below, you just have to print them all out and bind them if you wish. They look to have been made with Apples iPhoto program and have Applelicious layout and design. While you are over there, make sure you check out Blueant Studio's blog, they have some nice eye candy. Available at Blueant Studio for FREE. Comments? Post them here in our forums.

If you haven't heard of curbly yet, you are seriously missing out, but don't feel bad, I just found out a couple of days ago. Curbly is a community of people who, well love where they live, and want to help other people out. The website has a great modern design, and an even better community of people willing to help each other out. While not strictly modern, a lot of the content is. There are great DIY projects, a question and answer section, and a place for everyone to have their own blog, and homepage with photos and such. It's pretty much what I wish I had the talent to transform GRM into.

Right now they are having a contest, where you can win $200 at IKEA just for signing up and posting a picture of your happy place and why you like it. So make sure you get over there an give it a go.

Make sure you check out my homepage over there and say hi.

Comments? Post them here in the forums, or comment over at curbly.

One of my favorite blogs, Design Sponge, has been going through a lot of big changes over this last year. Grace was finally able to quit her job and turn her blog into a full time job. The website has been completely redone, and has lots of great new additions. Most recently she has launched a Design Sponge Shop that carries exclusive and limited edition designs, all hand picked by Grace. If you haven't already, make sure you check it out, and congratulate Grace on living her dream.

Design Sponge Shop

Comments? Post them here.

On my anniversary earlier this year, I posted about a card that I had gotten from a local store called Artichokes and Company. Unfortunately at the time I didn't have a website for the designer of the card. Luckily today Leslie of Mingo Design, stumbled across my website, and gave me a link to her blog. It turns out that Leslie is a Salt Lake City based designer that is making beautiful cards, as well as some very cute little modern onesies. All her wholesale prices and minimum orders are listed on her page, and the prices are great. For all you local SLC folks, lets do our best to support a local artist. Mingo Design

I just wanted to give a quick Friday shout-out to a local guy I met at a friends party the other night. Gabe Holland is an aspiring Industrial Designer, who just finished up his second year of ID school at BYU. Shown to the left is one of his projects, the Couch Cubed, which is a couch with easily configurable cushions. His website is currently under construction, but make sure you check out his Fickr set, he's got some good ideas.

It's no secret that the DIY approach is one of the best when it comes to trying to ad some style to your flat without breaking the bank. Unfortunately not all of us have the time or the resources to make all our furniture and decorations from scratch. That doesn't mean that we can't use the same creative spirit to combine some pre-made parts into an affordable creation of our own. People have been combining a variety of Ikea parts together for a long time to make original pieces. Now there is a website dedicated to it. Ikea hacker is updated frequently with all sorts of great DIY Ikea hacks to inspire you to get a little crazy with those flat packed boxes of goodies.

Via Apartment Therapy

This post comes to you via Shelterrific, a great little blog. It about a nice alternative to hanging your towels on a hook.

During our trip to Los Angeles last weekend, we stayed at the Avalon Hotel in Beverly Hills. What could be more glam than a chic mid-Century modern hotel with a kidney-shaped pool? In addition to the Eames chairs and Nelson lamps sprinkled about our room, we also really dug this clever space-saving towel rack in the bathroom. We suspect that this is actually a magazine or newspaper rack fulfilling another task by sporting rolled up bath towels next to the shower stall. After a little surfing last night, we found a few mod racks online that could work well in this way. Check out this Rosendahl Wall Magazine Rack at themagazine.info, $150. A more minimalist style, The Gus Wall Mount Magazine Rack, $300, at artafax.com, could easily work for hanging towels. And for a bargain, either of these from boconcept.com for under $60, could be just dandy.

For those of you looking for a last minute gift for that special mother in your life, make sure you check out BLTD. Last week they picked some affordable treasures for moms that you won't want to miss. They even broke it up into categories by price, under $25, under $50, under $100 and over $100 so there should be something for everyone's budget.

A little bird told me that Josh Spear was re-launcing his website with a whole new look. Personally I just can't wait to be able to have pics will my rss feeds finally. Congrats on the new site Josh, and keep up the good work.

My wife and I bought our home less than a year ago. While we were looking for something we were absolutely disgusted with the lack of decent affordable modern housing. Basically it doesn't exist. We opted to buy a tiny home in a good neighborhood, and do a modern addition to it (more on that soon, plans are almost done). For those of you living in the Denver area, check out 5280mod.com Colorado based realtor focusing on modern housing. While everything might not be affordable, at least they will know where you are coming from.The pics to the left are of a ufo home (I remember one of those in dwell) for $129, and another mod influenced MCM home for $210.

Also check out Shannon's blog on livemodern.

I know, I know, you are already completely overwhelmed with the number of design blogs out there. I feel your pain. That said, if you just can't get enough, run on over to tejay's backsplash, the blog backside to a new design firm called lightcouture. Not a whole lot of news about lightcouture yet, but we look forward to seeing what they can do in the future. About the blog, well they had some nice stuff too. I really loved Kai Linke's felt dahlia, but unfortunately have no idea where to get it, or if I could even afford it.

Here is a link I found via Cribcandy. The website is called Design Without Reach, and it does my heart good to see another poor modernist out there trying to make waves. I mostly liked the idea that there really are other people out there that are frustrated with all the unaffordable modern furnishings. The site features a few ideas that you can do on your own to make designer style furnishings for your home. Kind of like something that you would see in Ready Made. My personal favorite were the Eames Playing Cards. If I didn't already own a set, I might even do it.The whole thing is put up by Twart Design, which incidentally has some great stuff as well.

It's hard to keep up with all the new blogs these days, and to be honest it gets pretty tiring trying to. Unless you find a blog that is aimed specifically at a small niche that is not covered in any other place the chances are you won't really find anything new at yet another modern contemporary blog. We hope that GrassrootsModern can fill the modern and affordable niche, we'll let you be the judge. If you are looking for modern baby stuff, well then, BabyGadget may be worth checking out. Modern design for the little guys has been a huge new market, but I have yet to find any blogs completely dedicated to the subject, until now. Baby Gadget is run by Jenna Park, a Popgadget veteran and toddler-chaser. Looks pretty promising to me, I even took the time to add it to my selection of RSS feeds.

Carina over at Mid-century Utah pointed out to me the other day that Laurie Smith of trading spaces has her own line of fabric. I don't have a TV, but secretly I am a junkie for those design shows, and trading spaces does have its good moments. I am usually a little skeptical about any designer lines that come from those type of shows, but I have to admit that Laurie Smith does have a nice selection of fabrics. It looks like Hancock Fabrics is the exclusive carrier, and they are all 25% off right now. Looks like it is time to break out those sewing machines, and make something mod for the holidays. If you aren't the best with a needle and thread, consider using the fabric to make some wall prints a lå the poppycotton wall hangings

It's no secret that CB2 is one of the big hitters when it comes to sources for affordable modern furniture. I think its always interesting to find out the story behind the company, and aparently so does the crew over at Apartment Therapy. They recently sat down with Marta Calle, the Product Manager at CB2, and asked her a few questions. Check out the full 1/2 hour audio interview, or text highlights here.