Cheryl Shops

Website of the week
After three and a half awesome years in my current West Village apartment, I am ready to move on. Well, not totally--I love my apartment, but MW and I have decided to move in together, which requires that I move out of my apartment (which is a studio and thus too small for the two of us). I think we've found a new place, and while it's not quite ours yet (long story), I'm already thinking about decorating it. Yes, I know, you're thinking, "Way to put the cart before the horse, Cheryl." But I can't help it. For example, since this place has such a big living room, I want to get a sectional sofa (or as MW calls it, a "sexual sofa"). And the living room has these sconces on the wall for lighting, which is nice in theory, but the fixtures are so not my taste. And since the closet space is not great, MW and I are going to need a big dresser for the bedroom. So after my boss caught me browsing Room and Board's site while I should've been, um, working, he instead referred me to HomePortfolio, the most comprehensive furnishings-and-fixtures home site I've ever seen. Seriously, you can find anything from bathroom tiles to Louis XIV-style chairs. Aside from the sheer volume of products, which is very helpful for people like me who value selection, the cool part is that this stie is a resource only--nothing here is for sale, although they will refer you to where you can buy everything. In other words, the site is an incredibly in-depth free resource for researching furniture, fixtures, objets d'art, etc. You can browse by category, brand, or room, or search for something specific; for example, I know Artemide makes nice light fixtures, so I found this lovely sconce. I also found this awesome sectional sofa that's, sadly, a little too awesome for our budget (of course, I also like the Chelsea, a slightly more tolerable model from Room & Board). Now, the really fun part about this site is that you can create a portfolio (uh, hence the name of the site) and basically create your dream house. (They say you can use it to show your friends or your designer, but, come on, we know it's all for fun.) So now we all know what I'll be doing for the next few weeks. A girl can dream, right?