Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

Virtual L™


STORIES
VISUAL ARTS
Chicago Art Galleries
SUBSCRIBE to
CRUMB is Centerstage Chicago's Weekly E-Newsletter.
Enter your email to get
our weekly newsletter:

Tools To Stay Connected
Bookmark This Page:


RSS feeds, get em while they're RED HOTSubscribe in your favorite reader using the links below. To learn more about feeds and RSS, click here.
Centerstage Chicago Nightlife City Guide Arts Entertainment Chicago Illinois
Articles Sections >> >
Apartment Therapy
Heather Blaha scouts out the most delicious designs in the city and on the Web.
Monday Sep 04, 2006.     By Jessica Herman
Centerstage Chicago Nightlife City Guide Arts

Heather of Apartment Therapy.
Along with her co-editor, Janel, Centerstage's very own Heather Blaha is the co-mistress of Chicago's Apartment Therapy, a go-to blog spot for local designophiles. Founded in 2004 in New York by designer Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, Apartment Therapy's local branch arrived on the Chicago scene earlier this year.

Schooled in English literature and art history, Blaha has been writing about art and design for years, but she'll be the first to tell you that she's no expert when it comes to product scouting and interior decorating. During her average 20 hours a week dedicated to working on the site, Blaha reads magazines like Dwell and Domino, window-shops and admires the new Bodum coffee cups at her friend's dinner party...then blogs about every last bit. Lucky for her (and for us), with the growing appreciation of artistic design and the DIY revolution underway, the climate's just right for this sort of site.

What's the gist of your blog?
The gist of the blog is bringing a place where people can bring together ideas for how to make their apartments–(pause) I feel like I'm reading the mission statement–beautiful and healthy.

If I read your blog today, gimme one thing I'd learn.
You'd learn that people are passionate about looking at the way that other people live. The house tours are the biggest deal on there. People really want to see in other people's windows. They're not only passionate about looking at the way other people live but they're into telling people what they think about.

My computer is surrounded by...
Pens, everywhere. I have vintage postcards and magazines.

How do you pay the bills?
I manage a bar, Briar Street Theater, and sometimes I can pay bills with other writing gigs.

When you aren't loving blogging, you're loving BLANK in Chicago.
The lake. And thrift shopping; I like to hit up unique thrift stores all over the city.

Name a local blogger extraordinaire.
Design Boner; it's hosted by Porcelain and Cardboard.

Jessica Herman likes peeking into other folks' lives, which sure helps when she's grilling hip Chicago bloggers. If you'd like to shower a little love on a local blogger whose antics and anecdotes are your favorite flavor of procrastination, shoot her an email.