Zuny Animal Bookends

The stylized characters in this fun and whimsical collection of animal bookends are handcrafted of leather and filled with iron sand to hold up most heavy items. Use them as bookends, paperweights, or even as a doorstopper... in the kids' room, on the night stand, on your desk. Anywhere you'd like them to call home.

The Zuny collection is available in a limited edition of 9999 of each figure. There are four styles available: Boar (Babu), White Lion (Tumo), Dinosaur (Bobo), Sheep (Nell). (via generate design)

See all four styles here

Modern Birdhouses

This is probably as close to a cool mid-century modern house with a butterfly roof as I'll ever get! Pretty sweet... lucky-ass birds!

From the website:

RICHARD (top) was inspired by the Case Study Houses designed by Richard Neutra, and recalls the floating, sloped roofs of three of his unbuilt homes.

J.R. (middle) was inspired by Case Study House #1, designed by J. R. Davidson and built in 1946. The elemental simplicity of the flat roof recalls the minimal nature of Davidson's design.

RALPH (bottom) was inspired by Ralph Rapson's iconic Greenbelt House design (Case Study House #4), which features an enclosed garden and angled rooflines.

Modern Birdhouses' Case Study Masters Series honors the architectural pioneers who participated in the Case Study Houses Program. The Case Study Houses Program was established in 1945 by John Entenza, the progressive editor and publisher of Arts and Architecture magazine. Entenza commissioned architects to design simple and innovative modern homes for a growing post-war housing market. The resulting homes took full advantage of industrialized building processes and continue to broadly influence modern architecture. Participants included such icons as Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen.

Check 'em out here...

Gigposters.com

If you haven't visited this site for designers to post their work done for musical acts and concerts, you need to. Boasting over 100,000 poster designs by more than 8,500 designers, the site has a stunning variety of contemporary examples of poster art. Sometimes raw, sometimes polished, sometimes something in-between... you could spend the better part of a day browsing these collections. Believe me, I've done it. Go ahead and check it out... I promise, you'll be glad you did. gigposters.com

Simpatico Homes Prefab

Being a former architecture student, most of my friends know that I'm a big fan of some of the modern prefab home designs that have come about in the last few years or so. In fact, most of those same friends are probably sick of hearing me drone on and on about these architectural fantasies. The cool, slick modern design features such as eco-friendly bamboo flooring, recycled concrete/glass/paper countertops, gigantic view windows, ethanol burning fireplaces, modular vs SIPs construction blah, blah, blah... I could go on and on, trust me.

Well, even though the dream of Prefab becoming widespread and available to everyone has taken a big hit because of the sorry state of the world economy and the closing down of one of the industry's major players (Michelle Kaufmann Designs), I'm still keeping the faith.

Now, I've had many a favorite prefab design over the years, starting with some of Kaufmann's work, and I'll probably have many more in the years to come. My latest crush though, has to be an entry by S.F. Bay area firm Simpatico Homes that features many of the things mentioned above as well as a green roof, a floorplan the perfect size and layout for my lot, an awesome roof deck area to take advantage of my north/northeast mountain views, and just a great overall design and green/sustainable philosophy.

Now if only that elusive Lotto win would just come my way I'd be all set and could actually afford one of these prefabs. Ah well... one can still dream right? You can check out the latest object of my affection at the simpaticohomes website