Photo Friday: Can I PLEASE Come Live at Your House Edition

Good morning!

I forgot my USB drive with my family photos on it when I came to work this morning (I got Fridayitis, obviously), so I'm afraid I'm back to my thief-in-the-night tactics of borrowing some of the most knocked out, cuckoo, crazy awesome photos Flickr has to offer. I'm sorry, internet! I'm sorry, Flickr users! Please see it as an act of the sincerest flattery that I borrowed your family photos to share here on my little corner of the blogosphere.

This week's entry comes from a late midcentury family as portrayed on this user's Flickr stream, mainly composed of his grandfather's photos, year of our Lord1968. I love the sharp clothes and glamorous looks of the ladies and gents in these photos, but MOST OF ALL, oh my God, their uninhibited flair for gorgeous late sixties' interiors.

I mean, really, how was I supposed to resist this?

See the enormous lamps to either side of a couch I could only dream about at night? Look at it! Look at how insistently awesome the color pattern is it. Judging from the wall paneling, I think this couch is actually in the same house as the prior couch, which should be against the law. It should be illegal to inspire this level of couch jealousy in my heart. How can you have two couches this awe-inspiring in the same house? Ugh! I die! I don't know if I'd be brave enough to pair them together, but either one is freakin' amazing. The user's grandmother, who must be in her forties' or fifties' but doesn't look a day older than her newly adult children, is in the checked skirt, and the user's father is the tv-actor looking guys in the turtleneck on the aqua colored couch. I really can't get over how amazing either one of these couches is. And LOUD, Lord, loud!

I know these are the kind of decorating choices made in the sixties' that older people tend to look back at and go "Oh, what were we thinking? That x clashes with that y. I hate to think of the colors!" My own mom, which I mentioned the other day when extolling the virtues of maxi dresses and insane seventies' prints, h-a-t-e-d me wearing the same clothes she'd worn in high school, circa 1972-1976, to my own high school, circa 1999-2003. "I can't believe we wore stuff like this back then!" she would groan as I buttoned and zipped myself into a full length, Foxy Brown-esque trench coat in a light brown naugahyde-like material. But how wrong she was! Stuff like that coat, or these couches, are SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING than the boring basic primary color things you could grab at Sprintz today. Where the chutzpah? Where's the individuality!

I think the living room above must be an aunt or an uncle's house, but I found similarly jealousy-inducing (but much more sedate) furniture choices in the aforementioned grandparents' house. Just peer into the backgrounds of these photos. Can you even handle:

The pinch pleat wall of ivory drapes and the awesome tension pole lamp in this photo?

The mantle piece and like-something-out-of-a-movie Art Deco meets late sixties' French provincial meets atomic age clock above it in this photo?

The gold glittering wonder of the sectional in this photo? [Side note: I swear, this user's parents always look like they just stepped off a guest appearance on a late night talk show or a club date...how about the dad's blue pants and black cardigan? The (at left) mom's keyhole black shift? Razor sharp dress sense!)

While this (I think aunt's) ensemble of red and gold brocade dress suit and pearls is elegance itself, I have to admit to crushing on those dining room table chairs and the built in wall planter with most of my human heart. It's not fair to look so swank in such swank surroundings!

Have you seen any photos of interiors lately that just knocked your socks right off? Do you parents or grandparents register deep chagrin at old photos of their houses, when you're busy trying to figure out if any of the furniture of the same photo are still in the family somewhere? What vintage design are you still waiting on to fill out an otherwise sedate decorating scheme? Let's talk!

Check out the rest of the user's stream here, including photos of MUHAMMAD ALI in candid pose with his grandfather among others (I am not even kidding! It's amazing!).

That's all for this week, kiddos! Have a fabulous weekend, and I'll see you back here next week. Til then!