This week two highly anticipated packages arrived at my door.

“Less and more” the design ethos of Dieter rams and…

A 1950s Braun SK4 record player, or more commonly known as “Snow white’s coffin”.

The name Snow White’s coffin was given due to the player’s clear acrylic cover.

The book covers many aspects of design including other Braun designers like Reinhold Weiss and Florian Seiffert.

There is a neat section with original sketches and the actual finished design on the next page.

The book is quite meaty with a lot of great photography. It’s definitely worth a look.

$98 from swipe

Well, here is the second half of our living room reveal: we finally put up our teak wall unit!

It’s nice to have a place to put our tv, record collection, and have some of our favourite collections out on display.

Jens Quistgaard teak ice bucket for Dansk and Royal Dux cat.

There may be an unintentional viking theme happening…

…Hadeland glass whale and viking.

Also a mjölk theme. Holly from Twice Found visited us, and as a store opening gift she thoughtfully gave us this beautiful vintage Beauce pottery milk jug on the left, and the other two are by a local artist, which Juli purchased from Distill about 5 years ago.

The teak really adds warmth to the white space. Now for some art……..

A couple of exciting things coming down the pipe for us. First, our blog is being redesigned by Sali Tabacchi to fit in better with our shop (and to fix the pesky permalink/navigation system that went haywire about 6 months ago). But the big thing is that, although possibly bananas, we are going on a trip to JAPAN! After much hemming and hawing, we decided we had to just do it. We worked so hard to get the shop going, and since it is just the two of us, we never stop working. The only way to get us to stop fully is to remove us from the building.

And now I will contradict myself. The big thing with this trip is to meet with some of the designers that we carry, as well as scoping out some new design for our shop. Plus, we’ll be covering the whole trip on Kitka – from Edo period architecture to modern, the Muji store, small design shops, cherry blossoms and bright lights. And hopefully we’ll be able to bring back some product to share with you at mjölk!

So, if anyone has been to Tokyo, Kyoto and a cool old timey town/small city somewhere between, we’d love to hear your tips! There’s so much to see and do, I don’t even know where to begin!

Also, the shop will be closed March 29 to April 12. Just to throw that out there. But I’ll mention it again when it gets closer…

Tips please, because sadly the above Wallpaper guide is only for the pocket book endowed.

So we have not thrifted in what seems like eons (literally since our Scandinavia trip, it seems). Monday is supposed to be our day off but it NEVER is. We are always working. So a couple of Mondays ago, we made a point of planning a day to ourselves. Starting with brunch at Mitzi‘s on Sorauren (we love the Mitzi’s on College but stumbled across this location one day when we were out for a neighborhood drive), where we ran into Kate from INabstracto on Queen. This was perfect because we’d been meaning to catch up with her.

Then we went to see our friends down on Queen St East. First it was Martin at Rogue – where we couldn’t help but pick up some Hans Bolling Optimist and Pessimist figures.

Then it was off to see Jake at Machine Age Modern. He let John into his personal stash of Timo Sarpaneva glass and John left with his first piece.

This is where it all starts, a beautifully constructed model.

The interior is white painted wooden slats. I would love to do something like this to cover up our popcorn ceiling but I can’t figure out if it’s part of the construction or added after for aesthetic reasons.

According to Design Milk, the siding is actually black roofing felt. Which sounds amazing.

It took a few days but it’s finished! Our furniture was a bit too big to move out of the room so everything had to be pushed against the wall while one half of the room was painted, and then after the paint finally dried we moved everything to the other side to paint the second half.

It was well worth it. It just feels so good in here now!

We have our PH5 light looking great over the Saarinen table paired with a few black Lento chairs by one of our favorite designers Harri Koskinen. The shape has a familiarity but the legs are actually bent wood which fits perfectly with other Artek products.

We pillaged a few other things from our shop including the exclamation point which was reclaimed from a shop in Helsinki, it’s encased in oxidized copper. And of course the red Crux carpet by Pia Wallen.

We also grabbed a Pure Nature pillow by Danish textile designer Dorte Agergaard to cozy up tv time.

BEFORE: Red laminate floors – nice enough but generally clashed with our furniture (of course this photo makes it look way nicer) and made the room feel so dark, especially since we never see the sun.

AFTER: the room is so bright at night, and feels so much more cozy.

This is actually just the first half of the reveal! We put up something pretty exciting that we didn’t photograph yet. You’ll have to check back with us later this week!