Grassrootsmodern has been stumbling along for a long time with what I think is fairly mediocre web design. Problem is I've always been too cheep to shell out any cash to get "professional" help. Well folks, the time has come. I actually need a good web designer/ graphic designer for a couple different projects. I have three specific needs. If you fit one or all of the above, contact me or leave a comment.

1. A competent wordpress template designer.

2. A plain jane website web designer.

3. A flash designer (don't even get me started about how much I hate flash, just trust me on this one.)

In all areas I'm looking for someone who can produce a simple clean web standards compliant site. Bonus points for thinking outside the box and not costing me my firstborn. Yeah, did I mention I'm a cheapskate?

Interested? Contact me! This could be the beginning of a beautiful new relationship.

2008 was a big year for us hear at Grassrootsmodern. Like the year before, we experienced a huge growth in our reader base. A special thanks to everyone for spreading the word about the website and helping fuel the affordable modern revolution. Our most popular posts of 2008 were;

1. Dwell Studio comes to Target
2. FreeGreen Modern House Plans
3. Conduit Fence
4. The last bathroom update - from our old house
5. No Baseboard Details - from our new house

In addition to our normal content of 2008 we also had a wildly successful Affordable Kitchen Contest with close to 20 entries and over 600 votes. Not only did we get to see some beautiful affordable modern kitchens, it also gave me some great inspiration for our own kitchen remodel (which is getting close). We are planning on doing an Affordable Modern Bathroom Contest in 2009 and possibly others. Stay tuned for more details.

We also saw our little family grow in 2008 when Capree joined us as a blogger. She has been delivering up some quality content and brings a fresh new angle to Grassrootsmodern. In 2009 we also plan on bringing on a few new bloggers. If you are interested, make sure you drop us a line and let us know. Good writing skills and a passion for affordable design are required.

Besides running Grassrootsmodern we also branched out a little this year and started up Utahmodern.org for the locals that have an appreciation for modern design. It's only been up for a couple of months now, but we have seen a slow but steady growth of our little community over there. If you live in Utah, make sure you stop by and check it out.

The super observant reader may have noticed that we have a new blogger here at Grassrootsmodern. Capree is not just an amazing photographer, but she is also an all around lover of good design. According to her bio she "is a photographer, doodler and hooligan. Though, according to some, her hooligan skills are downright shonky." I'm not quite sure just how shonky her hooligan skills are, but her eye for design is the cats meow. We are super excited to have Capree joining our little family here and look forward to having her perspective on the affordable modern world.

Since it's inception, I have always wanted to be able to give something back to the design community that supports Grassrootsmodern. We figured what better way to do that, than to give away a wad of cash. Of course we are the "affordable modern blog", which mean we are a bunch of tightwads, so we are only giving away $125, but it's a start right?

So here is the deal. We want to see your affordable modern kitchens. We aren't going to get too caught up in what "affordable" means, but the Bulthaup, Henrybuilt, Poliform crowd probably don't count. Entering is super easy, and you can win $100 for your hard work. You must enter by Nov 7th, and the winner will be decided by Grassrootsmodern readers.

Check out the Affordable Modern Kitchen contest page to enter and win!

I have been vowing for over a year now to get up a decent links section to all the other wonderful blogs that are out there. I'm finally determined to get it done, so if you have a blog that our readers would be interested in, contact me and let me know and I'll add it to my links. I'm especially interested in starting a SLC blog list, so even if you have sent me a link in the past, do me a favor and resend it. Thanks!

It's been just over two years since I updated the look of the website here at Grasrootsmodern, and in those two years we have seen an incredible amount of growth thanks to you. So much grown in fact that we were starting to look like a fat man in a little jacket here. Our sidebars suffered the most with a lot of navigation and other content being pushed down way to far by advertisements. So we loosened our belt and added an extra column just for our sponsors, after all they make it possible to pay some of the hosting bills. Being the cheapskate that I am, I did all the coding myself, instead of paying someone so if you see something funny please let me know. Also if there are any improvements/features that you would like to see, speak up! Hopefully you all like the new look.

I've always been jealous of people who get to go to great modern furniture fairs like ICFF. Unfortunately for me, I never have the time or the funds to make it to those shows, so I'll have to settle for the next best thing. This morning I'm heading out for a quick overnighter down in Las Vegas for the summer Las Vegas Market. With over 1,500 exhibiting companies and 5 million square feet of space, I figure I'm sure to run across something good. I will hopefully be doing some moblogging with my iPhone now that wordpress for iPhone is out. Stay tuned..

It looks like Design*Sponge isn't the only one who has a new look. The fine ladies over at Better Living Through Design gave their site a major overhaul recently. I love the simplicity of the new site, the navigation is intuitive and the clean layout really lets the products speak for themselves. The new design also features some additional sections, such as a Remodel section, a Read section, and a Travel section. If you haven't checked them out recently, make sure you do.

I'm sure that most of you already know that Design Sponge finally left blogspot and can now be found at designspongeonline.com. If you haven't already checked it out, make sure you do. Grace not only has a great eye for design, but she is also doing some great things to give back to the community that made her a success. Her new site will feature a job board, and scholarships for starving artists. For the ladies, Grace has been sponsoring Biz Lady Meetups around the country, one may be coming to your town soon.

I read some time ago that Muji, one of my favorite stores, officially launched a US website. I was thrilled at the idea, because it meant that all of us design lovers stateside could now order products without having to pay shipping from the UK. At least that's what I thought it meant. I checked out the site recently and it doesn't look like anything is for sale. In fact it doesn't look like much at all. I know that they are opening a store in NYC this fall, but what about an online store? Anybody have any insight into this one?

Voting has been open at Remodelingmyspace.com for a while now. If you are looking to kill some time, head on over and check out all the contest entrants. There is a good collection of bloggers doing everything from small remodels to whole house renovations. After you look through them and find your favorite, make sure you vote for your favorite blog. The winner of the contest gets $5,000, which is almost enough to start another affordable modern remodel!Vote for Grassrootsmodern here.

For some time I have been double posting everything to our forums, thinking replies would be easier to search there. Some people still are commenting below the posts here.

{democracy:4}

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.

Looking for yet another way to cut down on your productivity at work? Google is here to help out, yet again. I noticed today while I was doing a google image search, that at the bottom of the first page there was a link called "Want to improve google image search? Try Google Image Labeler." Little did I know that it would lead to a huge waste of time. It's really genius, as Google tends to be. It pairs you with another sucker person, and for one and a half minutes you are shown pictures and asked to label them. Apparently you both have to enter the same label to move on to the next picture. It's a nifty little game that essentially gets two humans to label photos for google, something a computer could never do.

If your looking to waste some time, and build the Google kingdom, check out the Google Image Labeler.

Comments? Post them here.

I was getting pretty bored of the old website, so I took the opportunity today to make some changes that I have been wanting to make. First off I finally made the switch over to the newest version of wordpress (the blogging software I use). I had been using a pretty old version, so things from the back end are much nicer now. I also updated the look of the website. Let me know what you think about it in the forums. Speaking of forums, I also got rid of the old software I was using and converted it all over to Vanilla, which is a lovely forum software. It's a little different, but once you get used to it, a lot nicer. If you have any problems with logging in, let me know. Take a second to head over to the forums and let me know about what you think.

Ohh, and as far as affordability goes, its all open source. Viva la open source baby!

I've added a poll to the right, asking what direction I should take the website. I have always had a bigger vision than just another blog, but as a grassroots supporter, I think that the movement should be of the people, for the people. I am trying to make this site the best it can be, so tell me where you want it to go! Rest assured, no matter what happens, I will continue to blog the same as before. Please take the time to vote, it takes just a second and it helps a lot. We get over 700 unique readers here a day, so I expect some good feedback!

In the meantime, I'll keep this post on top as a reminder.

A lot of you have forgotten about the forums. They are a great place to write in and get some great advice. I think it's really the community effort that makes affordable modernism possible. We recently had a plea for help in making a pretty un-modern home look a little better. Check out the responses, and see if you can't lend a helping hand. Here's a preview.

domanicapital: Hello all. I recently discovered this website and think its great. I'm building a house (pictured above) and need to decide on an exterior. Unfortunately, the home style is not very modern, but I'm wondering if there is a way, despite the traditional look, to jazz up the exterior in a modern style.? The interior will be easy because it has a nice open floor plan,.

Dallas Ward: Hmm, you could get rid of shutters and reduce your trim. Glass and aluminum garage doors could be cool. Metal roofing if yours is in need of some replacement? Do something custom and interesting with your attic vents. Find an interesting color and do a monochrome look.

Any other ideas? Post them in the forums.

I know that this will most likely appeal to a very limited number of you, but you should check it out. I went ahead and made an RSS Screen Saver for Grassrootsmodern. Yep you heard me right a RSS Screen Saver. For those of you that are not super techno-lingo suave (ie you non-geeks) RSS stands for Real Simple Syndicate and basically means a simplified version of a news page or blog. They are a great way to get your daily fix, and now a great way to protect your computer screen. Of course supper cool stuff like this is only available to Mac junkies, so you will have to have a Mac and be running OSX Tiger for it to work. If you are lucky enough to be one of the few that own a Mac, and have Tiger installed, just download this file here and put it in your screen savers folder (user/library/screensaver) and select it under system preferences, screen savers. Having done that you will now have a screen saver that automatically scrolls the newest blogs from the site. Pretty rad, and very geeky!

Get the Grassrootsmodern RSS Screensaver here.

EDIT: Sorry to those that tried downloading it, I had a broken link. It should work now, so let me know what you think.

Ok, so I know how annoying it is to have a favorite blog that only updates every couple of days, so I am making some long overdue changes around here. I am quiting my job so I can sit around all day and post blogs for you to read ... Ok, so that may be a little extreme, but I do promise that there will be at least one new post every morning. As usual I promise to stay commited to only posting about affordable design. I figure if I can't afford it, it's not worthing posting about. There are plenty of blogs out there that feature expensive out of this world design that I could never afford. So stay tuned for a bunch of great new affordable content.

A special welcome to all you BLTD fans. Feel free to poke around, and see what goodies we have here. Make sure you check out the archives to see the posts from the past couple of months. Also, check out our GRM Forum and Link Database for more great content. And of course, if you like what we are doing here, let us know.