I Like Magazines!

I am embarrassed to admit to this, but you will find out eventually. In an earlier posting I made a brief comment that we hoarded cooking magazines. Well, the fact is that unfortunately it goes a bit further than that. Our (mostly mine) obsession is not limited to just cooking magazines, but also shelter publications. And I do not just mean a few. I mean most of them. For some reason I just have never been able to throw one out. For years I held on to every copy from the basics such as Elle Décor to the not as basic as Australian Vogue Living – which happens to be one of my favorites. Occasionally I’ll let a subscription lapse,
 so I may miss an issue or two but generally I keep up until a particular title
goes out of print.

I think this obsession started years ago in our first house. In my mid twenties and with very little money to decorate, especially to buy real art I framed the magazines. I bought dozens and dozens of black picture frames and used the front covers. I used whatever we had laying around the house, from Time to Newsweek to Architectural Digest. I tried to keep some consistency by framing only those with a celebrity cover. I had everything from the cover with Cher in her see-through Oscar dress (I had been holding on to that copy from the mid 1970’s!), to the Playboy cover that featured Joan Collins. Stacked vertically and horizontally, one on top of the other, I filled all four walls of our small media room. People still talk about that room!

YEARS ago I stopped using the framed magazine idea, but even then I could not force myself to part with them. They are still packed away in the attic of the garage. Who knows, maybe it’s time to bring them back! Probably not!

More recently I had been trying to control the magazines as to not allow them to pile up around the house, but it was getting out of control. Preparing for the renovation, we knew we were going to have to move out of the main house so we built a guest house. Today, I use it as my studio and office, which includes a dedicated space to my collection.

Even though they are reasonably housed, I still try to justify holding on to them and honestly there just is no reason.

Until now!

My habit was to turn down pages of any article or feature that I liked. So I now have a fifteen foot long by nine feet high wall of blog material!

Get ready. Because I will be posting the best of the best.

Here are a few random rooms from some fairly recent Elle Decor and Met Home issues that fit the A.J.Barnes mood.