La Casita

Better in Person

2012-02-11T16:43:00.003-05:00

Don't you just love it when you order something online and it turns out to be even better in person than you expected? I recently ordered a rug swatch from Pottery Barn for an area rug I wanted to use in a client's family room. It arrived this week and I was so pleased with how it looked up close that I actually squealed with glee when I opened the box. It was was one of those times when you could tell that the online photos weren't giving an accurate depiction of the color or texture, and you suspected the real live thing could go either way: it could be awesome, or totally meh.

From the PB website

Well, I'm happy to report that this rug is awesome, and perfect for the project I'm working on! The clients love modern design--leather and chrome are their favorite materials--but their home is architecturally quite traditional, so my challenge was to design a room that would reconcile the tension between the two styles. This rug is a perfect bridge piece. The color is a muted gray-blue, quiet enough that it won't look incongruous with the traditional detailing (they have a big fireplace and AMAZING coffered ceilings), but at the same time rich enough to stand up to the sleek, dark brown leather sectionals we're having made. But my favorite thing about the rug is the soft, thick, chunky, nubby texture. It's like a thousand tiny pompoms, the kind of rug that just begs to be walked on barefoot (or sat on, or just sprawled across with a big floor pillow for your head). I can't wait to see it in the space!

Here's hoping your next online purchase turns out as well as this one!

Testing the Waters

2012-01-28T09:19:00.000-05:00

Hola, friends. Just thought I'd throw out a little post to see if I might feel like getting back to blogging. Since my last post I've been busy with this little thing:

Photo courtesy of the talented Greg Katsoulis

In there somewhere.

2010-07-12T11:43:00.001-04:00

It's quarter past 10 on Monday morning, and I've had the car serviced, done the grocery shopping for the week, and picked up a book that was waiting for me at the library. So it seems the week is off to a pretty good start! I really do love the flexible schedule that self-employment brings.

On the other hand, I only got about 4 hours of sleep last night, thanks to a mysterious shoulder injury that kept me up 'til the wee hours, trying to get comfortable. (No idea how I hurt it, although the pain appeared suspiciously right after a round of mini-golf with friends on the 4th of July. I'm sure my one-woman test-painting marathon in our apartment on Saturday didn't help matters.)

Also wholly unhelpful in the sleep department was a fascinating blog, which I discovered yesterday evening and could not stop reading. Beauty Schooled is the account of a magazine journalist who is currently enrolled, undercover-like, in a 600-hour course in esthetics (makeup, facials, etc.) to get an inside look at this corner of the beauty industry. Spellbinding, I tell you.

I, meanwhile, have been up to research of a different sort. It is time to have our apartment painted, and I spent the better part of the weekend figuring out what colors we're going to use. Because the casita is not our forever house, we want to go with neutral shades that will welcome potential buyers when the time is right. But as you might imagine, I can't stand the thought of blah beige. Also, it's a small space, so I wanted a tight palette with colors that progress naturally from room to room, creating a sense of calm and cohesiveness. We'll use stronger colors for fabric and accessories, which we can change relatively easily and also take with us when we move, leaving a nice clean palette behind. (Although, note: a small accent wall is not out of the question!)

So I sought out assistance from my favorite color book, Choosing Colors, which I blogged about here. Let me start by saying again that Kevin McCloud is a genius with color. Happily, I opened the book and saw that I had already marked a palette I loved a few months ago:

The scanning and rendering on the computer have altered the colors quite a bit--they all appear cooler here, so the top right color is way more of a coral and less of a pink--but you get the idea. I got paint samples mixed in two of the gray-taupes (numbered 5 and 8 above, though the numbers are hard to see) and I was blown away by how great they look on the walls. The top left color especially, Ben Moore's White Winged Dove, is one of those subtle-but-breathtaking chameleon colors that changes with the light and keeps you guessing. Is it gray? With a hint of purple? Or is it more of a milky white? I don't know, but I love it! Although it did leave me with that Stevie Nicks song running through my head over and over.

Here's how the colors look in our living/dining room:

White Winged Dove is at the bottom, with my other favorite, Ben Moore Frosted Toffee, on top. (In the middle is a peach color that we'll probably end up using in our kitchen.)

Yesterday evening, my paint testing finished for the weekend, I went outside on the balcony to eat dinner/plan our dinner menus for the week/watch the sunset. And looking up at the sky, I realized that the elusive White Winged Dove is in there somewhere, just on the cusp where the warm pinkish-white of the sun on the clouds gives way to the cooler purple-gray of the evening. See what I mean?

Hope everyone has a good week (and gets more rest than I did last night!). And to my friend and client C., I went through the color book and found a few great palettes for your basement too, which I'll be sending your way shortly!

Bounty

2010-07-04T11:53:00.001-04:00

We just hit up the farmers' market in Harvard Square:

On a whim, which is the best way. We'll figure out later what we're going to make.

Happy Fourth of July!

Monticello Makeover

2010-07-03T00:34:00.000-04:00

I originally hail from Virginia and am always happy to give a shout-out to my home state. (Seriously, it's a little ridiculous: I get excited every time I see a car with Virginia plates driving around Boston. Every time. Bonus points if it's sporting a UVA sticker.) So you can imagine my delight at seeing this famous Virginia room appear in the pages of my most recent Elle Decor:

Image via Elle Decor

Yes indeed, that up there is Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. It's located in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just a short drive from Charlottesville, where I had the privilege to live for three years. If you haven't been there, it really is a beautiful part of the country and worth the trip.

So why is Monticello gracing the pages of Elle Decor? That would be because of its recent dining room makeover, featuring a smashing new paint color called "chrome yellow." I can just hear the old guard tsk-ing in disapproval, but I think it looks fantastic. And it turns out to be authentic as well. Apparently the Wedgwood blue that was previously on the walls dated from the 1930s, and the historical preservation folks discovered that the room was actually painted chrome yellow around 1815--while Jefferson was still alive. Who knows how they figure this stuff out, but there you go.

Here's what it looked like before:

Image via The Blushing Hostess

Very nice, but a little sleepy. I can picture a historical re-enactment here, but it doesn't put me in mind of a real flesh-and-blood person, lover of food and drink and all things French, a revolutionary thinker and a brilliant statesman. In the yellow room I can see all of those things.

NB: Jefferson was a lawyer and an architect--he designed Monticello himself. I am obviously following his lead with the whole law/design switch, but someone please stage an intervention if I start talking about architecture school.

Mally Skok Designs

2010-06-30T08:41:00.000-04:00

I can't remember what first brought me to local designer Mally Skok's website a few months back, but her recent feature on Boston Design Center's Style Watch had me running back to her site to take another look at the gorgeous printed fabric she designs:

Mally's designs are inspired by her travels in India and by the fabrics she grew up with in her native South Africa. Maybe it's my never-sated wanderlust, but I go weak in the knees over a good exotic print.

You might expect Mally's design work to be a riot of prints and colors, but she manages to come up with fresh, calming rooms that don't feel the least bit theme-y:

And check out her amazing beach house in South Africa:

That bathroom makes me want to get on a plane right now, let alone the crazy view from the bedroom!

Eat Dessert First

2010-06-27T09:01:00.001-04:00

It's here, Cambridge:

The new Flour bakery, featuring the lovely culinary stylings of one Ms. Joanne Chang, opened this past Friday on Mass Ave near MIT. You'd better believe I got my breakfast on there yesterday morning.

The new space is lovely, familiarly appointed like the Fort Point and South End locations, but with fewer people, so you can admire the beautiful polished concrete floors and fun chalkboard quote.

They even have a fun nerdy clock, which I don't remember seeing at the other locations, a nice nod to the new 'hood:

Sadly, they're not open on Sundays yet, so you can't rush over this morning. But when you do make it there, I highly, highly recommend the sugar brioche. Which I got instead of my usual pain au chocolat because, you know, I was feeling like something "light."

Made with Love

2010-06-25T10:12:00.000-04:00

For quite some time now I have been in a cooking rut. And by "cooking rut" I mean . . . not cooking. This comes as something of a shock to me, because I absolutely adore good food and harbor delusions that I will one day be a domestic goddess. In my former life as a lawyer, when got accustomed to eating dinners at my desk, I would dream of the day when I would have time to visit farmer's markets, source the best recipes and ingredients, and make truly nourishing meals every day to share with my husband.

Now that I am working from home and largely setting my own schedule, you'd think I'd be cooking up a storm, but alas, no. I get focused on my design work, or busy running to and from paint and fabric and furniture stores, that when evening rolls around I can barely manage to throw together one of my old standby (read: played out) pasta dishes. We still eat out way more than we'd like. Planning and shopping for meals at the beginning of the week seems like a good idea, but I frequently get so bogged down in choosing the perfect set of recipes (easy, delicious, good the next day, enough variety for the week, overlapping ingredients so I don't waste anything . . . ) and frustrated when said perfect recipes are not forthcoming, that I end up losing steam even before I finish my shopping list.

Looking for some inspiration to get myself out of this funk, I recently picked up Molly Wizenberg's book A Homemade Life. It's a food memoir. The writing is witty and charming and delightful and the recipes are AMAZING. It makes for perfect summer reading (and cooking).

Molly is the author of the food blog Orangette, and you can go there to get a taste (see what I did there?) of her writing style and her recipes. Basically, it's good honest food, relatively easy and quick, and totally delicious. I love that the recipes aren't all from one gastronomic tradition (French, Italian) but are simply her favorites, provenance notwithstanding. Several of her favorites are now my favorites. I made her roasted cauliflower with cilantro-salsa verde for a barbecue last weekend, and everyone wanted the recipe.

The book is arranged in short little chapters that all end with a recipe, so you get the back story on how each dish came into her life, usually by way of some really interesting character in her circle of friends and family. The little chapters delve into everything from Molly's eighties-tastic childhood to her study abroad in Paris, from her father's death from cancer to meeting her husband (through her blog!). It's good stuff, and she's got an enviable way with words.

But perhaps the most wonderful thing about this book is, for me, Molly's honesty about food. She does not serve perfect three-course meals every night. While living alone in Paris after college, she would sometimes eat green beans, mozzarella and cake for dinner. After she got engaged, she ate the same (amazingly delicious) salad for two weeks straight. I love that her relationship with food and cooking is real--not perfect, just like mine, yet somehow she manages to eat well and share many happy meals with people she cares about. Which, in the end, is really what it's all about, no?

History Repeats

2010-06-15T13:48:00.000-04:00

Why do I always fall in love with things that I should know better than to fall in love with?

This Botkier bag is on sale for a ridiculously good price (well, ridiculously good for Botkier) at Rue La La, and I want it to be mine. And yet! It is essentially a newer, cleaner, version of a gorgeous Charles David bag that I bought a few years ago in a soft beige leather . . . and that proceeded to get completely trashed through the wear and tear of everyday living in the city. I love me a buttery lambskin bag in a soft neutral shade, but I cannot deal with the heartbreak again. Still, there is a little voice inside me that is saying, even now: "Maybe this time it will be different! Maybe if I get one of those nifty little bag hook thingies and never set it on the ground and never wear black when I'm carrying it and always wash my hands before I touch it . . . ." Please tell me I am not the only one with these delusions.

Blue

2010-06-15T10:48:00.000-04:00

A post on recent travels is coming soon. So soon.

In the meantime, I want to share the details on an upcoming photography show that is sure to be fabulous.

Blue, showcasing the work of Sarah Gaw, opens Thursday at the Brookline Arts Center. Sarah is a friend of mine and a wildly talented local photographer whose recent works have a modern, industrial feel. If her images seem familiar to Bostonians, it's because they're of the Forest Hills and Charles/MGH T stops--although Sarah pushes the architecture to abstraction through multiple exposures and artful editing. In the end, she makes something beautiful out of what is, for many of us, just the backdrop to the daily commuting grind.

I love the images above, which would look terrific as part of a gallery grouping--or as a shot of contrast above a traditional carved marble fireplace (think modern-art-meets-townhouse-bones).

Sarah's previous work (which you can check out on her website) is less abstract, and there are many gems there as well. Here are some of my favorites:

There's something so romantic about old bicycles, no? These put me in mind of riding around the streets of Paris or Rome with a baguette and a bouquet of wildflowers in the front basket.

Forest Hills Cemetery--so beautiful in the snow.

Love the dreamlike effect.

A perfect image of summer!

I'll be at the opening reception for Blue this Saturday, June 19 from 5 - 7 p.m. Hope to see you there! All details are on Sarah's website, sarahgaw.com.

Back from the Old Countries

2010-06-05T10:47:00.001-04:00

I'm back in Boston after a wonderful trip to France and Italy! More posts to come once the jet lag subsides . . .

So Freaking Excited

2010-05-19T12:02:00.000-04:00

This is happening in my front stairwell as we speak:

Never underestimate the power of a fresh paint job.

Plantscape

2010-05-19T09:34:00.000-04:00

Just spotted this lovely little planting over at You Grow Girl:

The fab little dish had been lying around the house, too shallow to plant anything else in, and then she realized it would make a great home for a sempervivum mini-garden. Apparently these little guys are nigh on impossible to kill, hence the name. This may have to be my next planting project!

All the World's a Stage

2010-05-18T09:16:00.000-04:00

While we were out in the Bay Area this past week, we stopped in at a few open houses. I never tire of looking at real estate and playing the what-would-it-be-like-to-live here? game, although we definitely had sticker shock looking at places around San Francisco. (How could real estate be any more expensive than in Boston?!) On Sunday afternoon we drove over to East Bay, which is where cities like Oakland and Berkley are located, and we ended up driving around a town called Piedmont that was full of gorgeous houses for sale. Practically on every corner there were about five signs pointing the way to open houses. It was a sign of the times, I'm afraid, but apparently there are deals to be had right now. This one in Piedmont really struck us as a beautiful home:

The staging of this home was the best I've ever seen. Not to knock staging, but I often find the furnishings used are lowest common denominator type stuff and/or things that don't fit the character of the house. This one, however, was spot-on.

Seeing a well-staged home for the first time, I understood the genius of hiring a stager. The bones of the house were lovely, and the owners had obviously spent time and money updating it, but it was the decorative pieces that really made me think: This looks like me. I could live here. While obviously not all the design choices rocked my world, it was fun to see a few items that I own (Natural Curiosities sea coral prints in the living room), have on my to-buy list (gorgeous topiaries and orchids), or have specified for projects (seagrass rugs and coral lamp).

I was very happy to find the card of the talented stager behind all these lovely rooms, Bonnie Pearson of BP Home Residential Staging. Check out her website for more lovely photos.

Adventures in Upholstery

2010-05-17T14:23:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks around the casita with lots of travel, contractors working on the front stairwell, and various other projects going on, including my upholstery class which turns out to be a LOT of work! Here's a little peek at how my French chair is looking:

It took me about nine hours to completely strip all the fabric down to the frame and remove all the itty bitty staples by hand! Tomorrow I get to paint/stain it, and I'm trying to decide between an off-white distressed painted look, like this:

Source: avolli.com

or a more natural wood finish like this:

Source: avolli.com

Having just gotten off a redeye from San Francisco this morning and not having slept much either on the flight or since, I'm feeling about as ragged as a stripped chair myself--and not up to the task of making artistic decisions! Hopefully I'll be back on my game tomorrow.

Goin' Travelin'

2010-05-02T22:17:00.002-04:00

Via orkposters.com

I'm headed to San Francisco in a few weeks, tagging along with the hubs while he's there on business. I'll have a couple of days to explore on my own while he's working. Anyone have any fabulous art/design/shopping destinations to recommend? Design*Sponge did a San Fran city guide back in 2007 that I'm going to study before I go, but I wonder what new places have popped up since then?

By the way, I'm loving the Ork Posters limited edition San Francisco poster pictured above. I know these city posters have made the blog rounds, but this multi-colored print is my favorite yet!

Dessert & Design

2010-05-01T14:34:00.002-04:00

Lately, my husband and I have had a thing for impromtu dessert jaunts. We live dangerously close to the best ice cream in Cambridge, and we often take a quick stroll there for a few scoops (since I can't be trusted alone in the house with their pints). Occasionally, though, something fancier is in order. Around 9 or 9:30 we'll be working at our computers, or driving home from choir rehearsal, and suddenly get the idea that what we need right now is to get ourselves to Oleana or Craigie on Main and spend some quality time with their sweet, sweet confections.

Of the two of us I'm definitely the one with the sweet tooth, but most of the time these high-end dessert plans come from my husband. One night this past week he got home from helping out at the theater and declared that we needed a treat. I assumed he meant Christina's, but he had bigger plans. We've been hearing about the Hungry Mother for some time now, but hadn't made it there yet. We checked out their dessert menu online and it looked fantastic. I was totally sold on the ginger buttermilk cake with lemon curd and cream cheese frosting, sight unseen, so off we went.

When we pulled up to the place I did a double-take. Not five minutes from our house, it was an adorable brick building, absolutely charming, well-lit and with flowerboxes in the windows . . . in a spot that had been a total dive bar back in my college days. It's right in the middle of Cambridge, but on a street I never use, and I hadn't passed by it in years. It sure had cleaned up good! Inside, the design was perfect. Warm and chic, a foodie place for sure but without being fancy, it struck just the right chord for me. And no wonder, since it's named for a state park in Virginia, where I grew up, and includes lots of decorative winks at the Old Dominion. The little dining room where we ate was a minimalist take on Southern country culture, with exactly four adornments on the walls: a rustic wooden mirror, the wrapping from a Virginia ham, an old pegboard with a cast iron skillet hanging on it, and a little framed picture of Thomas Jefferson.

Source: hungrymothercambridge.com

It was so spare that it didn't feel the least bit theme-y. And their graphic design was great, too--their logo was done up with a little cardinal that appeared on menus and business cards, so subtly that I only later remembered it was the state bird of Virginia.

Source: hungrymothercambridge.com

Since I didn't have my camera, I snapped a few pics with my husband's phone (which, it turns out, has a flash!? Apologies again to the folks at the next table.)

And then came the desserts. I got my ginger cake, which was excellent, and a smoky hot buttered Lagavulin 16. But my husband really nailed it with the maple walnut tart. Best. Walnut. Tart. Ever. And the rosemary buttermilk ice cream on top was pure genius.

As we were leaving, I happened to look up to see what was arguably the coolest design feature in the place, hanging directly over the bar:

Yep, it's a chandelier made with drinking glasses. It looks like the kind of thing that my grandfather would come up with if a light fixture at our river house should happen to lose its glass housing. Just slap a water glass on top of the bulb and call it a day! The maitre d' saw me ogling the fixture, and very kindly invited me to take a photo if I liked. (I liked.) And he told me that they didn't just put this together on a whim; it's actually designed by an Italian company called Fabbian, and the glasses are Italian crystal. (We deeefinitely don't have any of that lying around at the River.) Of course I had to check out the website when I got home, and I found that it comes in all kinds of configurations:

Looks a little like a dish-drying rack, until you see it like this:

How cool are those shadows on the wall? It also comes in a sconce--my grandfather would approve:

Poking around a little more, I found a cutlery fixture aptly named "Hungry." I would love to see this in person:

All lighting photos via Fabbian.com.

And now my tummy is grumbling. Too bad I already polished off the rest of that ginger cake . . .

Down to the Wire

2010-04-27T16:59:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'm starting an upholstery class at the Eliot School in JP. Very exciting--except that, until about an hour ago, I couldn't for the life of me find a piece of furniture that I wanted to reupholster. I don't have any well-worn heirlooms lying around the house, and I've never had the kind of storage space that would allow me to just pick up pieces of furniture here and there on a whim and figure out what to do with them later. Basically, I needed to go shopping.

My husband and I went to Cambridge Antiques Market on Saturday, but their furniture inventory was really low (perhaps vendors have moved pieces out in preparation to sell at Brimfield in a few weeks?) and they didn't have any upholstered chairs that would work for my class. I had planned to spend all day yesterday scouting, but ended up spending most of the day having the car serviced instead. I did stop by Eddie's Furniture in Somerville to see if he had anything that he hadn't re-worked yet, but his style leans vintage/midcentury, and I was looking for something more traditional. After a few other stops with no luck, the shops were closing and I had to go home empty-handed.

I checked Craigslist and sent out a few queries, but didn't get any responses. I even drove around Somerville after yoga class this morning to see if anyone had put a nice old chair out for trash pickup, but no such luck. Finally, I ended up going back to Craigslist and trying a slightly different search . . . and found this for sale in Duxbury:

So I got in my car and headed south, wondering all the while:

1. Is it going to be a piece of junk?
2. Is it going to fit in my car?

Happily, things worked out well on both fronts. Unlike a lot of the stuff I was seeing in the stores, this is a good solid reproduction with a lovely shape and scale, a down cushion, and pretty detailing on the back and legs:

At $140 it wasn't a crazy bargain, but I still think it was a pretty good deal, and definitely within the budget I had set (even when you add in the gas to get to Duxbury and back). Best of all, I got to meet the very sweet daughter of the woman to whom the chair belonged--who apparently had great taste in furniture and took immaculate care of her belongings. It's nice to know a little bit of the chair's history, and it feels good to be giving a loved piece a new life.

Meet My New Chair

2010-04-23T08:15:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I spent the day at the Boston Design Center, previewing their Treasure Hunt sample sale, which starts tonight. For those who haven't been, this is a twice-yearly event where many BDC showrooms mark down floor models and other inventory they want to clear out, and invite the public to shop some amazing deals.

I brought my husband to the event last year, and although he usually goes in for clean-lined and modern, he loved the French provincial look of the furniture at Grange. It was the one showroom where we were both equally enthralled. Since then I've developed quite a crush on their Napoleon III chair:

I love the colorful paint finishes and the intricate turned-wood detailing, and I can imagine adding a fun printed fabric to the seat to create a spot-on combo of traditional and modern elements.

I was much delighted to stop by Grange yesterday and see that they had marked down these chairs, all in different finishes, to about 60% off the retail price. The lovely showroom manager had ten of them on the floor and needed to move six, and she was willing to knock off another 5% to have me take one home! So here's our new acquisition:

Love, love, love it, and still can't believe what a good deal it was. If you're in Boston with time to kill this weekend, I highly recommend that you get yourself down to the BDC and see what deals you can find! In talking to vendors yesterday, I found a lot of them saying they weren't going to have time to mark everything that's on sale, so if you see an item you love that's not marked down, ask about it anyway.

Happy shopping!

Ugly Betty Interiors

2010-04-14T08:52:00.005-04:00

Tonight is the series finale of Ugly Betty.

I have a special place in my heart for this show, having been a fan of the Colombian telenovela on which it's based, Yo Soy Betty La Fea, when I studied in Ecuador. The US version, which premiered in 2006 with Salma Hayek as its executive producer, has been so much fun from start to finish: colorful, larger-than-life, intelligent, funny, relatable and uplifting. The cast is amazing, the writing is consistently strong, and the sets and costumes are works of art in themselves. I'm very sad to see it go, but I'm glad that the stars aligned in Hollywood, even for just a few years, to give us this gem. Watching it always makes me happy.

As a little tribute to Ugly Betty--and a teaser for any design-lovers who haven't followed it--here are some lovely photos of the set from Interior Design magazine (read the full article here).

Yup, it's pretty much over-the-top fabulous. Of course, we can't forget the other side of Ugly Betty's world--the gritty, worn neighborhoods of Queens, where Betty hails from. One of the things I love about the show is the visual contrast between the sleek Mode offices and posh interiors of characters such as the Meades and Wilhelmina Slater, on the one hand, and the well-worn feel of Betty's family home in Jackson Heights on the other. It was much harder to find photos of Casa Suarez, whose style the New York Times dubbed "colorful immigrant chic," but here's a peek:

Source: DesignTrade.net

Dated it may be, and cluttered with the stuff of everyday living, but with its warm colors and soft lighting, the Suarez house always feels like home. Major kudos to the set designer, Mark Worthington, and decorators, Archie D'Amico and Richard Devine, for mastering such very different spaces. And bravo to the whole production team on a beautiful show!

Source: Daemonstv.com

Disney Does . . . Wallpaper?

2010-04-12T12:32:00.001-04:00

Looking through the New York Times Home section recently, I came across an item announcing the launch of a line of upscale wallpapers based on Disney's 1940 film Fantasia. It's not for kids' bedrooms--unless your kids are design-minded and into muted colors and sophisticated patterns.

These papers take their inspiration from a time before the cliche of "Disney princesses" entered our consciousness, when the company was in its infancy and doing groundbreaking things in animation. Fantasia, Disney's third full-length animated feature, was considered avant-garde when it was released, and much of the animation is abstract, playing with shape, light, and color. The artwork used in the film served as the jumping-off point for these lovely patterns. Here are a few of my favorites:

So subtle and pretty! This would be great to add some texture to a bland hallway. Perhaps my bland hallway.

This looks like an abstract interpretation of raindrops. It would be fabulous behind a mirrored dresser in a room with a handful of black accents.

There is a bedroom in our old family river house with wallpaper very similar to this, so it's got the whole nostalgia thing going on for me. Like Proust and his madeleine, just looking at this pattern takes me there, but in a slightly more modern and reinterpreted way. I might need to pick up a few rolls just on principle.

This one feels very of-the-moment, with its graphic trellis pattern. I think I'd punch it up with some yellow--yellow and gray being one of my all-time favorite color combos.

This one is a bit more whimsical, and I had to include it because I am crazy about calligraphy. I think I'd use this to line the back of a black painted china cabinet with glass doors, so you could just see snippets of it behind the china.

All of the above patterns come in multiple colorways and are available starting at $59/roll from York Wallcoverings, and you can read the NYT brief here.

Sprouts!

2010-04-05T10:51:00.003-04:00

This weekend we did a major house cleanup in preparation for a big Easter dinner with friends, and in the purge I decided to let my little avocado pit go. It hadn't sprouted (or shown any signs of change) in over a month, and was starting to get a little yucky. I tried not to be discouraged--one no-go avocado experiment is hardly a sufficient sample to determine that I have a black thumb. Besides, this weekend was too beautiful for me to be discouraged about much of anything. Hence my ability to plan, shop for, and cook Easter dinner for 8 people almost single-handedly without having any kind of freak-out (a feat that is totally unprecedented and possibly never-again-to-be-repeated).

And then I checked in on my lavender this morning, and there were three little sprouts! After only a week!

You can only see the big guy on the left, but there are two other smaller ones coming up too

Following the instructions, I removed the plant from its ziploc bag greenhouse, gave it a little water, and moved it to a sunny window behind my drawing table. Hopefully this is the start of something beautiful . . .

photo by Caroline Arber, from Indoor Gardening by Diana Yakeley

Home Improvement

2010-03-31T14:43:00.003-04:00

I am very excited about what is going on outside my front door:

We are finally--finally--having the common front stairwell painted and re-carpeted! I'm not sure exactly how it ended up so neglected, but I suspect that this used to be more of a rental property and that the common areas weren't well-cared for. Our best guess is that the carpeting and paint job date from the mid-90s, when the whole place was gutted after a fire, so we've got about fifteen years worth of carpet stains (thanks, snowy-slushy-rainy New England weather!) and scuffs on the walls from countless occupants moving in and out and coming and going and generally living their lives. Plus, the oatmeal colored carpet and pale yellow walls weren't exactly inspired design choices in the first place . . .

These days the building is mostly owner-occupied, and all the residents are young professionals (with the exception of an adorable five-year-old on the second floor), so it's high time our entry staircase got a rehab! I'm leading the charge, and spent the past two days picking colors, putting up test paint, and having the carpet guy out to do an estimate. Happily, everyone seems to agree on the wall color, Benjamin Moore Full Moon, which is a nice, light, clean gray. My downstairs neighbor (the mother of the adorable five-year-old, and, it turns out, a former professional house painter!) picked out a cool, crisp white, BM Snow White, for the trim. We have found painters already, and I'm working on finding a trim carpenter to take a look at the actual condition of the stairs once we rip up the old carpet. We'll definitely want to make some cosmetic repairs before the new carpeting goes in. This is the first time I've done any of this stuff, so it all seems pretty exciting!

Here are the two carpet finalists:

Option 1

Option 2

Option 1 Close-up

Option 2 Close-up

Side by side

They're both great, though I think #1 looks cushier and therefore favor it. However, as several folks (including my husband) have pointed out, #2 is more textured and variegated in color, so it will probably look better after a lot of wear and tear. I think I'd be happy either way, so we may just let the price decide. (I'm waiting for the estimate right now.)

Once we make this decision and get the work underway, I'm going to turn my attention to door hardware and light fixtures. There's an ugly chandelier right outside our door whose days are numbered!

Out Like a Lamb?

2010-03-29T08:17:00.000-04:00

This was the view out my living room window this morning:

This cold and rainy weather seriously needs to stop. It's almost April!

One Step at a Time

2010-03-26T23:40:00.002-04:00

My new life as a person who grows things is unfolding bit by bit. I'm trying not to take on too much at a time. My little avocado pit hasn't made much progress, but I'm going to give it a few more weeks. In the meantime, I brought these little guys home:

They're jade plants, and they are growing like crazy. At first I had them on my desk, which is in a south-facing bay window that gets very sunny, and they did great. Then I moved them into our northwest-facing bathroom which doesn't get much direct light at all, and they are still doing great. I've been watering them once a week, which I consider pretty low maintenance, but it's possible they could do with less. The only problem is that they are growing so fast I think I'm going to need to re-pot them into bigger containers, which is a new frontier for me.

I also managed to prune my philodendron without killing it. I know that doesn't sound super-impressive to people for whom tending to plants is second nature, but it's a big deal for me. I bought this plant in July to hang out on the balcony but have basically neglected it since then, leaving it outside until well after the weather got cold and then watering it only very occasionally. Somehow, the plant has survived, although its trailing vines had gotten completely out of control and it desperately needed a haircut. So I gave it one, going on instinct and the little I had read about pruning, and when I was finished I was sure that was the end of the plant. But now, a few weeks later, new leaves are starting to sprout at the places where I pruned! I think this is a miracle.

Finally, tonight I started this fun little project:

Lavender is one of my favorite scents in the world. Not the artificial stuff, mind you, but the honest-to-goodness flower and the essential oil that's made out of it. Ahhh . . . so calming. In my lawyer days I kept a tiny bottle of it in my desk drawer so I could treat myself to a little aromatherapy when I needed it:

But this particular lavender came in a bag, not a bottle. It's a Garden-in-a-Bag, and it's supposed to start sprouting within a few weeks. It won't flower for awhile, but I'm happy to wait. It couldn't have been easier to plant:

These are the "coco chips" (from the looks of them, little pieces of coconut shell) that you leave in the bottom of the bag for drainage.

This is the soil that you plant the seeds in. It was light and fluffy and smooth, unlike any other soil I've ever seen, and it smelled earthy and wonderful.

Me spilling the dirt with one hand while taking a picture with the other.

Just add water, cover with a plastic bag and keep out of direct sunlight. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have some little lavender sprouts!

Window Shopping

2010-03-25T15:46:00.002-04:00

Is this not splendid?

So simple, so beautiful. What more do you need in life than a bunch of fresh flowers and a drop-dead gorgeous hand-wrought pewter pitcher?

Oh, right, of course: elegant, timeless pewter flatware. How could I forget?

Okay, and a suite of perfect little bath accoutrements, including a wee vessel for your bath salts. Silly me. Can't live without those! But that's seriously pretty much all you'd need to be totally happy in life.

That, and a wildly talented props stylist. And a not-so-small fortune, because all this stuff is handmade in Italy and you'd better believe it costs a pretty penny. I'm already saving up my euros . . . a girl can dream, can't she?

If you're in Boston, Didrik's in Huron Village sells this line and I highly recommend a trip there to gawk at its amazing beauty. If not, you can check out the website of the company, Match Pewter, to get your online window shopping fix or to find retailers near you.

Calico Corners Annual Spring Sale

2010-03-24T16:36:00.001-04:00

I stopped by Calico Corners yesterday to check prices on some custom window treatments, and found out that they're having their annual spring sale--15% off fabric and 20% off custom labor. Their prices still aren't cheap, but that's a good discount. My favorite fabric in their showroom is this yummy floral print:

Mmm . . . I'd love to put this on a set of Swedish style dining chairs like this one from Oly Studio:

Love it. Wrap it up, I'll take it to go! The Calico Corners sale ends March 27, so if your windows need sprucing, now's the time to make your move.

CB Foo

2010-03-23T12:04:00.003-04:00

Last week I completed a set of design concepts for a client's home office, and one of the concepts was a black/white/gray color scheme with subtle Asian influences. I wanted to accessorize the bookcase with foo dogs, so I included these from Inside Avenue in my design board:

However, at a whopping $487.50 (and that's the sale price!), I wasn't about to recommend that the client purchase these dogs. I figured if she liked the concept, I would scout out shops in Chinatown to find something at a better price point.

I was just browsing through office accessories at CB2 and, lo and behold, they are selling foo dogs for $49.50! That's one-tenth of the Inside Avenue price, which means that you can try out the trend on the cheap and then not feel bad when you've had enough of the foo. They're only available in red, but that's nothing a little spray paint won't fix!

The Boston Drawing Project

2010-03-22T10:15:00.004-04:00

Joe McDonald

Red Structure #1, 2006

Enamel + acrylic on paper

This weekend I went on an art gallery tour of the Harrison Avenue neighborhood in Boston's South End, organized by the Rhode Island School of Design. I love the South End--phenomenal restaurants, chic shops and grand 19th century brick and brownstone townhouses make it feel like Boston's own little slice of New York City to me--but I have to admit I didn't know that the Harrison Ave neighborhood existed! We explored many of the galleries in two old converted warehouse buildings that line Thayer Street (hello fabulous original wooden floors and exposed brick and ceiling beams) and it was sooo much fun. It didn't hurt that Saturday's weather was amazingly beautiful, and many of the gallery curators were hanging out outside with their dogs. It was a vibrant little community, and one that I will definitely be visiting again soon.

One of the treasures I learned about during the tour is the Boston Drawing Project. Housed at Carroll and Sons Gallery, the project is a large collection of smaller-sized works in various media (graphite, ink, paint, photography, printmaking, collage) from local and non-local artists. Each artist consigns a portfolio of several works to the project, and the portfolios live in file drawers at the back of the gallery where anyone can come in and look at them. Many pieces are displayed on the wall, so if you see a piece you like you can go to that artist's file drawer and view everything in his or her portfolio. You don't need an appointment, the gallery staff don't hang around making you feel uncomfortable, and, best of all, most of the pieces are priced in the $100-$500 range. All of which added up to a big shift in the way I looked at the art, from my standard "museum visitor" mentality to more of an art consumer mode. This art was accessible, and got me thinking for the first time that I would really like to--and actually can afford to--purchase some original art! We didn't take anything home this time, but I had several favorites and when the time comes to create that gallery wall I've been thinking about for my house, I will be coming back here for sure.

Here are some of my favorite artists currently featured in the project.

Paul Inglis:

Gary Duehr:

Keiko Hiromi:

Karen Kemp:

Isa Leshko:

Nancy Simonds:

Lara Loutrel:

Raphael Griswold:

Jacqueline Ott:

All these artists' works are available for purchase here, and many of them also have websites with additional works. If you're in Boston, I highly recommend a trip to Carroll and Sons to check out the art in person, and if not, have fun perusing the online galleries!

Quiz Time!

2010-03-17T15:39:00.008-04:00

At the beginning of the Apartment Therapy Cure book is a quiz that Maxwell G-R uses with new clients. It helps him get to know their background and tastes, and also what they're looking to change about their homes. I have read the book a few times now, and I always take the quiz. It's fun to see how my answers change with my tastes, and what stays the same.

Since I've just started this blog I thought it would be fun to share my answers here, sort of a little getting-to-know you post. So here goes!

List your favorite in each category:

Actress: America Ferrera, Audrey Hepburn

Actor: no favorite (yes, I know that's weird)

Artist: no favorite here either; clearly I need to go spend some time here

Writer: currently Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma (a fantastic book, which you should drop everything to go get a copy of, but that's another post for another day). I read nonfiction almost exclusively, having OD'd on fiction during four years in undergrad as a foreign language and literature major.

Music: classical, classic rock, 80s and 90s pop, jazz, bluegrass, salsa/merengue, French and Italian disco/pop, Big Band/American standards, current stuff I don't know how to categorize like Ingrid Michaelson and Coldplay, most anything with harpsichord . . . so basically, what I'm saying is I like a LOT of different types of music . . . maybe this makes up for the fact that I don't have a favorite actor or artist?

Restaurant: Oleana in Cambridge

Car: Acura TSX (our current car, which I love)

TV show: Ugly Betty. L-O-V-E it and heartbroken that it's ending.

Clothing: Paige jeans, Rebecca Taylor fitted jackets, Taryn Rose boots, anything by Nanette Lepore

Three words to describe your style: Colorful, eclectic, upbeat

Birthplace: Richmond, VA

Place where you grew up: Richmond, VA

Places you've lived as an adult: Boston, France, Italy, Ecuador and Charlottesville, VA

Role model: my husband Paul

Characteristics you admire in this person: generosity, fearlessness, discipline

Problem with your apartment: decor doesn't reflect who we are, no separate spaces for our many activities, not enough storage

If your apartment could speak, what would it say is the problem?

My owners haven't been willing to commit to me. They keep wondering how long they'll be here and whether it's worth it to spend time and money on me. Also, Laura is afraid of making mistakes and wasting money.

What would you like to do more of in your apartment: Entertain

Eight weeks from now, when you have friends over, how would you like for them to describe your apartment: Happy, comfortable, chic!

So that's it for the quiz. Fun, right? And the really interesting thing is how Maxwell interprets his clients' answers. The "favorites" answers point to a personal style and the "where have you lived" questions can reveal influences, but Maxwell also watches how people answer. Here's his take:

Answering quickly = quick decision maker

Answering slowly = extremely careful decision maker (that's me!)

Leaving blanks = weak sense of personal style (hmm . . . really? Just because I don't have a favorite actor or artist?)

Too many answers = want to fit a lot in, may need editing or help decluttering

Answers are very eclectic = style may not be focused (Ahem.)

Difficulty naming artist or clothing = more analytical and less visually oriented (well, this makes sense given my recent career change . . . )

Definitely gives me some things to think about. Hope everyone is having a Happy St. Patrick's Day--and if you're in Boston, I hope you're enjoying this gorgeous weather!

The Cure

2010-03-15T00:04:00.001-04:00

Apartment Therapy's Spring Cure starts today! For the next eight weeks, I will be making my home happier, healthier and lovelier along with the good folks over at apartmenttherapy.com.

Apartment Therapy was the first home design blog I ever followed, and although I haven't ever met its creator, Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, I owe him a debt of gratitude. First, for writing the little book pictured above, which helped me start thinking about the effects of my physical environment on my health and well-being. Second, for creating a terrific blog and online community that has helped me learn so much about design. And finally, but by no means least, for being the first of many inspiring individuals to cross my path who left careers in other fields to follow their love of interior design. I left my job as a corporate lawyer a little over a year ago to do just that, and I can honestly say that I have never been happier.

I'll be blogging about my home cure here over the next few weeks, so stay tuned! And if you're feeling like your home needs a little pick-me-up, I definitely recommend reading The Eight-Step Home Cure and following along on the website. Even if you don't undertake a single redecorating project, the book will help you think differently about your space and make small improvements that can make a big difference.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

2010-03-12T16:47:00.011-05:00

One of the projects I'm working on for the bathroom is a new window treatment to replace the standard-issue mini-blinds. I was all fired up to tackle Jenny's DIY pelmet while my mom (a veteran crafter) was in town, but our marathon trip to Zimman's to find the perfect pelmet fabric did not yield even one fabric that we were confident would work with the bathroom paint colors.

I had been picturing something white or cream with black stylized floral medallions, along the lines of the pattern in this rug from Inside Avenue:

I had purchased some black-and-cream art for the wall, and was really liking the graphic look and black-blue-cream color palette, so I was hoping to find fabric that continued in that vein:

I was open to other ideas, though. I had painted the window trim gray (to match the vanity) and thought maybe we could find something in gray/cream or gray/black that would work--maybe a trellis pattern, like this one from Duralee:

And so, armed with our paint chips, my mother and I drove out to Zimman's and looked at every single black, gray, white, and cream print (and combinations thereof) we could find. No luck. We did find a lot of fun prints, but it turns out that my gray and white paint colors, Benjamin Moore's Silver Lining (2119-60) and Calm (OC-22), respectively, were incompatible with every fabric we looked at! Silver Lining is a gray with a lot of blue in it, so any fabric with grays that were more taupey looked dirty by comparison. Calm is an off-white with a touch of gray, which itself looks dirty next to purer whites and which makes creams look yellowish . . . . Color is a tricky business, and I am very particular about it, so we ended up leaving without purchasing any bathroom fabric. (This is why, as a rule of thumb, designers start with textiles and then find paint colors to match, and not the other way around! I'll definitely be following the rule next time!)

When we got home I took another look at the gray window trim, which at that point looked like this:

I had to admit that I didn't love it. We had gotten the gray color mixed in a satin finish paint for the trim, since it was supposed to be better for humid bathroom applications, but the shinier finish made the gray look too blue for me and I wasn't crazy about how it looked next to the off-white wall. I was planning to go back to the paint store and have the same gray mixed in an eggshell finish so I could repaint the trim, but now I realized maybe I should just paint the trim the same color as the wall behind it. Getting rid of the gray would hopefully make it easier to find a pelmet fabric that worked, not to mention that it would make the back wall simpler and more uniform--there are already enough intersecting parallel lines in our bathroom and we didn't need the gray trim chopping up the window wall!

So I repainted, and am much happier with the result:

Much more light and open, no? And the best part is that making this change helped me rethink my pelmet concept and come up with a new plan that I really like:

Plain black fabric:

Plus fun little blue trim:

I love this trim from Renaissance Ribbons, but it is only available by the spool and costs about $80. I don't need nearly that much, nor do I want to spend that much, so now I'm on a mission to find blue trim locally or from an online source where I can buy by the yard. Any readers out there, suggestions are welcome!

Work in Progress

2010-03-11T12:17:00.001-05:00

I saw my mom off at Logan this morning after a wonderful week of visiting, cooking, fabric shopping and lots of work on the bathroom! While the room is far from done, we made a lot of progress this week--which included taking a few steps back in order to move forward.

In light of all the work yet to be done, and in the interest of keeping it real, I'm posting a few "before" and "now" photos, rather than waiting until the end of the project when everything is picture perfect to do before and afters. Our home is an evolving project, and if I waited for perfection I'd never share any photos! So, without further ado:

Before

Now

Before

Now

In progress

Much better!

More details and in progress photos to follow, once I'm caught up and back to my normal routine. And to my wonderful mom, a thousand thank yous!

In the Garden

2010-03-04T10:45:00.008-05:00

So Restoration Hardware has a new garden line:

If only I had a proper English house in the countryside that I could retire to of a weekend for a little croquet and poolside lounging. And, of course, the wonderful hobby gardening that I am on the brink of taking up.

Top of the morning to you, rustic English potting bench!

Or perhaps we should move to warm and sunny Southern California, where we could enjoy year-round outdoor lounging from our terrace overlooking the valley.

I laughed out loud at the name of this piece: the Spartan daybed. Ah, the irony.

But, back to reality, the hubs and I are happily in love with our little casita in the city. No lawns for croquet and no room for a pool, but we do have a nice little balcony off our bedroom and small shared patio space and wee yard. And while a $6000 wire daybed is probably not in our future, there are a number of items in this collection that would nicely spruce up our outdoor spaces without breaking the bank. To wit:

Lights for the balcony: $35 - $39.

Valencia pillows: $32 (and they come in LOTS more colors).

Sheer outdoor draperies: $69 - $99.

Antique copper planters: $99 - $179.

I'd get the square ones and plant some boxwoods to flank our balcony.

Classic trowels: $69.

Maybe I'll cherish the dirty work more if my tools are stylish?

Here's to hoping, anyway!

Picking and Choosing

2010-03-03T23:13:00.003-05:00

Has this ever happened to you? You're ready to redecorate, you've saved your favorite photos from shelter magazines and blogs, and you have a general color scheme in mind. You head to the hardware store to pick up some paint samples. You get to the store and begin studying row upon row of color chips, looking for that perfect color. You find one you like, then another you like that's totally different, and when you hold them up together, neither one looks so great. You start squinting, realizing that the fluorescent lights aren't doing your eyes (or the colors) any favors, and think to yourself that maybe you just need to find the perfect trim color and that will make the wall color decision easy. So you start looking at all the whites and off-whites and creams and beiges . . . your head starts to spin. How many versions of white can there possibly be? It has been fifteen minutes and you're about at your wit's end. You take all the samples you have pulled and leave the store bewildered--and no closer to choosing a paint color.

A lot of us have been there, myself included. It's overwhelming and can be counterproductive, putting you off the whole redesign project because the universe of choices is just too great.

Source: Benjamin Moore

To avoid all this agony, I have vowed to never again enter a paint store without either:

1.) the specific names of paint colors that I want samples of or

2.) a physical object (fabric, book cover, scrap of paper) whose color I like and want to match.

Trying to match the color of an object can be time consuming, but it's a lot easier than trying to imagine what a 1-inch square patch of color will look like all over the walls of a room that's completely different from the one you're in. As for pre-selecting colors, my two favorite secret weapons are House Beautiful's monthly Color feature (a round-up of designers' picks, many of which are archived here) and this excellent book:

Source: Book Depository

Choosing Colors by Kevin McCloud is a beautiful and thoughtfully researched collection of color palettes. It includes detailed notes on the origins of the colors and how they interact with each other. For some colors, the author even comments on the whether the hue tends to hold up well under different light conditions or whether that beautiful green-gray is likely to become a sickly yellow in the wrong light. Best of all, every single one of the colors is indexed to an actual paint color so you can go out and find it in the store. This is how I chose the blue for our bathroom, which we love just as much in person as we did on the page.

Once you have a few colors picked out, it's time to hit the paint store--armed with a plan, for a change. First, find what you're looking for. Then it's okay to branch out a little: check out the colors that are nearby in the display to see if a shade lighter or darker might suit your fancy. You can even do a run-through of all the colors that are similar (light blues, or deep burgundys) to see if there is anything you like more than your original choice. But that choice keeps you anchored; it narrows the scope of your task to something a mere mortal can reasonably achieve. In the end, hopefully you'll come home with four or five good options--and you won't be stuck helplessly staring into a sea of a thousand tiny color chips.

Let There Be Light

2010-03-02T09:20:00.002-05:00

I went out to run some errands at around 8:30 yesterday morning and as soon as I hit the pavement outside our house, I knew that something was different about the light. I'm one of those people who are super-sensitive to seasonal light changes and I have been very happily watching the days get longer bit by bit throughout January and February, but yesterday it was the quality of the light that had changed. It was like someone flipped a switch and suddenly it's spring!

Now I live in New England, so it's still cold and blustery, and I know the flowers won't be blooming nor the birds singing for a few more months. But at least now I can look up at the sky and see that warmer, greener days really are on their way.

In the meantime, I've been doing some research on lighting fixtures for a long-overdue upgrade to the front entryway and stairwell in our house, and I've been swooning over these pieces from Motif Designs. They sell to the trade only, but they have some gorgeous lighting and I just couldn't help but share.

The Insignia Chandelier. I believe this will need to be mine someday. It's got the clean-lined sensibility of a classic dining room chandelier, and it manages to feel fresh and historical at the same time (the shape reminds me of a medieval family crest.)

The Cinema Pendant. So dramatic! Makes me think of this fabulous 1920s movie theater near where I grew up. It also comes in a smaller size and in a flush-mount option, all available in brass or nickel. And if you prefer a square shape there's the Theater Pendant that gives the same look.

The Hudson flush-mount. A classy upgrade from those cheap ceiling light fixtures from the hardware store.

Filigree swing-arm sconce. I can see a pair of these flanking a bed or a library sofa. The subtle Asian fretwork detailing is really lovely.

Greek Key sconce. Can you tell I am a sucker for a touch of the exotic?

Classic Floor Lamp. Don't be surprised if you see these in my house at some point. In both colors.

Minimalist Sconce. Perfect for a small, unfussy space.

Sterling Table Lamp. This is a great gender neutral piece that would look sharp in a home office. In fact, I might be able to find a spot for it in a project I'm working on . . .

Danish Chandelier. So simple and working the whole rustic/modern vibe. I can see this feeling right at home over an small-scale antique gate-leg table.

So there's my lighting round-up for today. Enjoy--and then get outside if you can and soak up some of this great natural light!

A Gift to Yourself

2010-03-01T11:18:00.003-05:00

Sometimes my husband comes up with these wonderfully poetic ways of thinking about everyday things. A few months ago, I was worrying to about some odious item on my to-do list--I can't even remember anymore what it was, but I was suffering from an acute lack of motivation to do it--and he turned to me and said, "You should just think of this as a gift to your future self. Won't she be happy when she finds out you've already done it?"

It was a gem of a thought, and totally spot-on. I will be happy the day of my dinner party when I find out that my past self has thoughtfully already made the soup and prepped the other ingredients for me. I will be grateful to discover that she has cleverly arranged our vacation travel plans so that I don't have to worry about finding plane tickets at the last minute. I will be relieved on tax day when I see that she submitted all the paperwork to the accountant six weeks ago*.

*Any resemblance to actual events in my life this year is highly unlikely.

And so, this week I am setting out to give myself many little gifts by getting a lot of mundane items off my list. Not exactly glamorous business, schlepping around doing errands and hunkering down on projects, but it will all be worth it when my future self is sipping margaritas by the pool without a care in the world. Or, you know, just realizing that she doesn't have to pull an all-nighter to finish her tax prep.

One Perfect Room: Steven Gambrel

2010-02-26T12:42:00.001-05:00

One of my all-time favorite rooms that I have archived from the late, great Domino magazine is this stunner by Steven Gambrel:

source: Domino

To me, this room is perfection. It's pink without being overly girly or cloying. It's exotic without feeling ethnic theme-y. It's modern but conveys a sense of history. It feels like you could really live here and be comfortable and chic at the same time. (The comfy + chic combo being one of my life's great missions: what use is a beautiful room, or a beautiful outfit, for that matter, if it makes you feel uncomfortable and not yourself?)

source: Domino

For me, the most unexpected element is Gambrel's clever twist on the red/green complementary color scheme. I never would have thought to use bright green accents with pink, gold, and cream, but I think this is exactly what makes the room work. Take away the Parsons desk in the corner and the lovely glass vases and you have a totally different look--one that doesn't quite have the same punch.

Coincidentally (or perhaps not--maybe I am secretly a pink/Indian print aficionado?) this room is very similar to the comforter I just purchased for my bedroom. Maybe I should give the green accents a try?

Crate & Barrel: Reflections and Roundup

2010-02-25T12:43:00.017-05:00

A little bit of local news today: Crate & Barrel Furniture in Harvard Square has started carrying selections from the beloved (and well-priced) C&B kitchen and housewares line. Locals fondly remember the separate Crate & Barrel housewares store that, until early 2009, made its home in the glass-and-concrete Design Research Building on Brattle Street:

Source: eileansiar via Flickr

Apparently the popular demand for the housewares collection has been so great that they've decided to incorporate some of it into the Mass Ave furniture location. I stopped in this morning to see the new setup, which was put together last week, and to chat with the sales folks about the change. The re-vamped store looks great and everyone is excited about it. And in addition to the usual stuff I discovered that they're now selling Marimekko fabrics for $4.95/yard!

There is a bit of bad news, which is that they have closed the third floor furniture clearance room, a perennial favorite of bargain hunters. But floor samples will still be available for purchase throughout the store, and the salespeople are more than happy to point them out. They may be looking to open another outlet in the area sometime soon, possibly in Wilmington, MA.

All these changes got me thinking about my shopping habits at Crate & Barrel and how they have changed over the years. When I first graduated from college and started receiving their catalogs (those clever marketers and their demographic records!) I loved poring over the pages and dreaming about the deluxe kitchen I would one day have and the expert cook I hoped to become. The moderate price point of their housewares made the brand accessible, while the image it conveyed was (for me) aspirational. I could feel comfortable walking into the fun and colorful store and many times I would actually walk out with something like a new kitchen gadget or some fun table linens. And one of their dining tables (from the ready-to-assemble division, not their more expensive furniture collection) was the first "real" furniture I owned.

When my husband and I got married we registered there, and we love everything we received, from our china to the Cuisinart that I use almost daily. But although I still get that familiar warm and fuzzy feeling from visiting their stores, I can't remember the last time I went in and purchased something for my home. These days, now that my kitchen is pretty well established and my taste in furniture and home decor leans more towards smaller-scale production and fine detailing, I find that a lot of C&B's wares feel a bit generic. So I thought it would be a fun challenge to round up some items that would feel right at home with my current aesthetic but at the reasonable C&B prices we all know and love (everything is under $50).

This centerpiece bowl has classic lines and looks like it could be a lot more expensive than its $49.95 price tag.

This iron tub is meant for chilling party drinks, but it would also look very farmhouse-chic as part of the little container garden I am determined to have this year.

One of these large scale vases would be great in a corner vignette with a few sculptural branches tucked inside. The rich green blue color looks better in person.

You see these glass jars everywhere for a reason, and that reason is that anything you put in them looks like an expertly styled display. They look great alone or grouped, holding anything from cotton balls to candy to flour. At a party last summer I used the large one as a punch bowl for some yummy vanilla lemonade, with lots of ice, lemon slices and the vanilla bean floating on top.

These elegant napkin rings have beading that reminds me of a mint julep cup and they are four bucks, people! If only they had styled them with an actual napkin, instead of what appears to be someone's diploma . . .

And finally, the classic trifle bowl. I'm not sure why I don't own this yet, seeing as 1) trifles are great for entertaining, since all the work is done by the time your guests arrive and they present like a dream, 2) trifles are TASTY, and 3) you can fill it with lovely things for a centerpiece display when it's not holding delicious desserts. I clearly need to get on this.

Hammer and a Nail

2010-02-24T00:06:00.002-05:00

Today I'm off to my first woodworking class at the Eliot School.

As someone who has spent her working life in the world of words and ideas--first as a staffer in a university dean's office, where I did lots of writing and editing, and then as a lawyer--I'm pretty darn excited about making something with my hands, something I can touch. My high school didn't have a shop class, and I never really had an occasion to learn how to build things, so I'm a total beginner. But as the Indigo Girls would say, I need to learn how to use my hands, not just my head. And making something out of a piece of wood seems like a pretty good way to start!

Company's Coming

2010-02-23T11:10:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I got word that two of my sweet cousins from Virginia will be visiting Boston for spring break! They won't be staying with us, but I thought it would be fun to throw a little dinner party for them and their hosts while they're here. What better incentive to tackle some household to-dos and get things looking good?

source: Globe-Trotter

Lucky for me, my wonderful mom will be visiting then too, and has graciously volunteered to help out with house projects and dinner preparations. With just two weeks to go there isn't enough time to take on some of the bigger projects we've been planning, but hopefully we'll have time to complete the little bathroom facelift we've been working on. Here's my to-do/wishlist:

1. Finish stripping, sanding and repainting vanity

2. Coordinate with plumber to look at bathroom and sink drain issues

3. Upgrade window treatment from horrible mini-blinds to something nicer and more colorful

4. Replace wastebasket and recycling bin (yes, we have a separate recycling bin in our bathroom)

5. Purchase new doorknob to replace standard spec knob

6. Purchase and hang new mirrors

7. Find new over-vanity lighting and exhaust fan and contact electrician to install

8. Cover navy blue tile in shower with porcelain refinisher a la Lauren's bathroom sink makeover

9. Purchase new towels

10. Pick out new toilet and figure out how to have it installed

Looking at the list, I don't think it's realistic to try to get all 10 items checked off in two weeks--in addition to planning a dinner for 8!--but I'd be thrilled if we could get through the first five. I'll post on my progress and hopefully have some good before-and-after shots from this project.

Total Steal

2010-02-22T08:47:00.017-05:00

Someone needs to buy these pillows:

They are two for $29.99 plus $2.95 shipping at Overstock.com. Crazy good deal for such a cute print, but not the right color for my client (or, sadly, for moi). They're listed as outdoor pillows, and they're making me think of warmer days when I can actually go outside and enjoy our little balcony!

Available here.

Tasty.

2010-02-19T12:46:00.002-05:00

My friend Alison recently introduced me to Tastebook, a website where you can design custom cookbooks with your own recipes. I currently print most of my recipes from the web and keep them in a file folder in our great big lateral file. It sounds organized, but in practice not so much. Our file cabinet is not in the kitchen, and it is a bit of a hassle having to march into the guest bedroom, retrieve the file and then dig through it (since there are a lot of printouts and they're stored in no particular order) every time I want to make something I've saved. And after a few runs those printouts end up covered with spills and stains. What can I say? I'm a messy cook.

Compounding the problem is the fact that my recipe file is mostly filled with recipes I have clipped from magazines or copied from friends, intending to try them out someday. Some of these babies have been sitting there for three, four, five years, and I haven't gotten around to making them. At some point you have to either do this stuff or admit you're never going to and just get rid of all the paper.

Enter Tastebook. You create an account with them (for free), enter in your favorite recipes, and upload your own food photography if you're so inclined. When you have enough recipes for a book, you purchase it online (prices are quite reasonable) and they print it up with laminated, removable pages, so you can be messy to your heart's content and just wipe off the pages when you're done. And you can add recipes by ordering extra pages, so you can keep your collection growing.

Okay, so far this is nothing you couldn't do yourself with a laminator and a pretty binder. But the kicker is the design. The books are beautiful and super-professional looking, thanks in large part to the G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S food photography you can use for the cover, some of which is shown above.

I think my favorite is this one:

Although I could also be persuaded by this one:

Do I wish there were more options to customize these beauties? Of course. The size of the title text is too small to my eye, and I'd like more font color choices, and, at least currently, you can't use your own photos for the cover or the tabs that separate the sections into appetizers, soups & salads, etc. (You can use your own photos on each recipe page.) But I think I can live with those things, if it means that for thirty or forty bucks and a few clicks of the mouse, I can get get an elegant solution for keeping my recipes organized, close at hand, and safe from spills.

And, best of all, the prospect of a book of my own is actually getting me to cook my way through all those old recipes from the file folder, Julie/Julia-style, and edit my collection down to only the Tastebook-worthy.

All photos from Tastebook

Getting My Green On

2010-02-18T08:21:00.003-05:00

I have never been a gardener, and I think it's time to start.

Some people swear there are green thumbs and black thumbs, people born to bring life from the earth and those who kill everything they touch. I don't know what color my thumbs are because I've never actually tried to grow anything. But I love the idea of having a little urban garden, and certainly some lovely indoor greenery to cheer me up during these chilly winter days. I've also heard that our little green friends help improve indoor air quality substantially by removing the foul toxins that are everywhere in our homes. While I have been hard at work cutting down on the chemical nonsense I bring into my home (via cleaning products, cosmetics, food, and other materials) I know that everything from fabric to furniture is potentially off-gassing like crazy all around me, and plants are about as natural an antidote as there is.

via Chronicle Books

I picked up a copy of the Alys Fowler's Garden Anywhere from the library last week and, let me tell you, it is a great read. A sunny optimist and a candid story-teller, La Fowler is helping me get comfortable with the idea of making things grow. The photos of her at work in her garden are especially charming, and so real that they make gardening seem accessible. She's not out there posing for the camera in full makeup and a fresh blowout, pretending to clip an already-perfect little bonsai. The girl is working. And although she has had years of training and a glamorous career as a TV gardener for the BBC, she makes me feel like I could work it too.

via Chronicle Books

This book is not about spending all your money on fancy plants and accoutrements from the garden center. She is all about the free and cheap solutions, from using old wine crates as planters (restaurants throw them out, but they look so chic in her garden!) to cultivating seeds from the fruits you bring home to eat. Oh, how I would love to have an indoor lemon tree someday:

via Apartment Therapy

And so I have set out to welcome some green life into my home. I am starting small. Project number one: trying to sprout an avocado pit. Did you do this in your basement as a child, with the pit suspended in a jar of water? I am trying it in a dark corner of my kitchen. It has been about three days now, and I can tell that something is going on. The surface of the pit has wrinkled a bit and there is a large crack in one side. I wonder if any life will come of it, or whether it is just drying out on its way to shriveling up?

My little pit

Out of Stock

2010-02-17T09:37:00.007-05:00

We need new bedside tables. Our current ones are fine, but we have a lot of space on either side of our bed that could be put to much better use with larger pieces. More storage is the goal, so I've been on the lookout for chests of drawers that can double as bedside tables.

As a side note, the dressers-as-night-tables idea came from this photo:

via Apartment Therapy

I know it's hard to tell, since you can barely see the dresser in the corner, peeking out from behind the bed, but I remember reading an interview that accompanied this photo (in the Domino archives) and it was all about how to deal with the challenges of small space, and one of the solutions the designer used was full-size dressers as nightstands. There may have been another photo that shows the dressers in all their cleverness, but since the Domino archives are now defunct I'm having a hard time finding any other information on the shoot. I believe the designer here is Steven Gambrel, and I'm chagrined that I don't know for sure. (I found this photo back before I had a good system for recording and organizing such information.) If anyone has more info I'd be grateful!

Anyway: great idea, but tough to execute in our case. The problem is that our bed is fairly low, so our night tables can't be much taller than 24 inches. It is not easy to find chests that short. I'd love something antique-looking, with a shape like this dresser from Layla Grayce:

But I haven't been able to find a two-drawer version anywhere, including antique stores.

One option would be to find two old federal-style two-drawer sideboards and cut the legs off them to make low chests. A friend of mine did this with a family heirloom and it looks fabulous. (It now serves as a bench and blanket chest, and you'd never know it was meant to be anything else.) But I'd have to find just the right piece, at just the right price, and then I'd have to find another one similar enough in style and build that I could use them as a pair. It hasn't happened yet.

I finally came around to the idea of shortening a 27" Ikea Anes two-drawer dresser by cutting off the legs to make it our desired height. It's more modern and boxy than I'd like, and I'm not wild about the cutaway bits (I'd prefer actual hardware drawer pulls) but the dimensions are spot-on and the price is right, especially since we need two of them.

I figured I could fix it up with paint and maybe even add some turned wood feet if I had any extra height to play with. After all, if a Rast dresser can be turned into this beauty, surely I could make the Anes work for us.

But alas, the Anes is out of stock, both online and in my local store, and the good folks at Ikea "do not have any information on when it is expected to be re-stocked." Hmmm. At least it isn't discontinued?

Craiglist and eBay do not have any Anes listings. I will have to come up with another plan.

All the Pretty Colors

2010-02-16T11:29:00.005-05:00

A few years ago, my husband and I instituted a monthly Weekend of Repose. Our jobs and lives were crazy hectic at the time. At some point, as I was regaling a friend with my Tales of Stress, she helpfully suggested that my husband and I set aside one weekend each month just for relaxing and spending time together alone.

I was incredulous. It would be impossible, with all the work-and-weddings-and-work-and-traveling-and-work-and-rehearsals-and-work-and-social-engagements . . . . Our calendar was already so full of commitments that we had to look several months out just to find a date to meet friends for drinks. The thought of cutting our available weekend time by 25%, saying to people, "Sorry, we're in town and free that day, but we can't get together because we plan to be hanging out at home in our jammies" just didn't compute.

I went home and talked to the hubs about it, and he didn't think it was so crazy. We were both running ragged, and maybe this radical plan was just what we needed to restore some balance. We decided to give it a chance for a few months to see if we could make it work. The rules were simple: with the exception of our weekly choir commitment on Sunday mornings, we would make no plans with anyone but each other.

On our first Weekend of Repose we visited the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art in its new home on the South Boston waterfront. It was a blast. I couldn't remember the last time I had been to a museum, or the last time I spent an afternoon looking at art and talking with someone about what it might mean. The building is amazing too, with its dramatic glass and steel cantilever overlooking the water. I could see it every day from my then-office, but had never made it over to visit.

The new scheme took a little tweaking. We went through a run of weekends of repose where we didn't get around to making any plans, and those devolved into doing house projects and stressing about one thing or another. We eventually adopted a second rule: we had to get out and do something we'd never done before. It could be as close to home as walking around a part of Cambridge we'd never explored on foot, or as far-flung as driving up to Portland, Maine on a whim (which, by the way, led to one of our best seafood meals EVER at the charming Street & Company).

At first we were hesitant to tell people about our Weekends of Repose, and on occasion we would claim to be going "out of town" by way of gently declining a conflicting invitation. But as we started going public, we found that our friends totally got it, and most actually thought it was a great idea.

Occasionally we have to break the rules if something very important comes up on short notice, but usually the big can't-miss events, like weddings and concerts, are planned far in advance, so we can plan our weekends around them. We can usually find one weekend a month when nothing else is going on, and we mark it on our calendars and then stick to it.

Which brings me to this past weekend. On Sunday afternoon we drove out to Northampton and Amherst, MA, just to see what they were all about since we'd never been there before. Our only plan was to visit Rao's Coffee, home of some of our very favorite coffee beans, which we did (with delicious results). But an unexpected bonus for our casita was a lovely little home goods store in Amherst called The Claw Foot Tub. They have a website in the works, on which I will keep you posted, and you can see for yourself the gorgeous cotton printed quilt we picked up there--styled with the many, many Benjamin Moore color chips I pulled that are inspired by its palette:

I am mesmerized by all the pretty colors sitting on my bed. Not sure yet which ones I'll use, or where they'll end up (the walls? the trim? a fabulous furniture makeover? ) but I am thrilled to finally have a respectable quilt to cover us up at night and a color palette to guide our long-overdue bedroom redesign. We've been looking to update our bedding for, literally, three years, but I am a stickler for waiting to find the perfect thing. And now, at last, here it is!

Something New Underfoot

2010-02-15T11:04:00.002-05:00

Sheepskin rugs have been on my shopping list for quite awhile now, and last week I finally sealed the deal! Koo de Kir in Beacon Hill was running a terrific promotion to benefit the Boston Housing Coalition: bring in gently used home goods to donate to and receive 20% off your purchase. My husband and I had several home decor items in our outbox from our recent de-cluttering pass, and this was a great opportunity to let go of things we no longer needed, get a nice little discount on something new for our home, and provide some help to families transitioning out of homelessness. A win-win-win!

The rugs were out of stock when I went in to buy them, but they arrived last week and we LOVE them. It's an absolute joy to wiggle my toes in their fluffiness. They're currently parked on either side of our bed and they definitely make getting up in the morning a little easier.