Great Gift for the Kitchen

Love these lucite recipe boxes from Jack and Lulu

Each box includes 50 monogrammed recipe cards.

Buy them here.

Tuesday Tablescape

this is liz lange's home - by jonathan adler

what i really like is the dutch door over on the right...

image from jonathan adler's website

ps. have a great weekend

greeting card by ciao bella ~ artist - pam braun

Living Room Inspiration

I have been thinking about our living room a lot lately.
I want it to be cozy with a lot of seating options.

interior design by ruthie sommers

Roland Bello, Genius Photographer

Gourmet Magazine is done and what makes me so sad is that in addition to the food knowledge, I will miss the incredible photographs. Thank god I can check this website for daily inspiration, endless tablescapes, happy faces, and curious photos that suggest a deeper narrative and leave me wondering.

{This one is for you, Vanessa!}

all photos from rolandbello.com

Feathered Friends

I have discovered a fantastic junk shop nearby. On a whim, I screeched into the parking lot and poked my head inside with Teddy and Athena in tow (not the smartest idea). I think one could get lost in this shop and I almost did, except Teddy kept crying out from his little umbrella stroller every time I ducked out of sight. Athena, on the other hand, was my junk buddy. She stayed by my side and kept saying, I LOVE this store, I just LOVE this store Mimi (her new name for me). I scored a great fireplace screen - 50 bucks - can't beat that.

I was about to leave and then I saw these nestled in a group of decoys (mom, remind me to bring you back there).
This *always* happens to me. On the way out the door I discover that thing -or things- I just can't live without.

These are hand carved and painted and have these little sticks for legs that fit into holes on the little wooden stand. They just spoke to me. The green guy has a bad side - sort of a mean view of his massive beak - but the red one is so cute and cheerful. I love them.

Welcome to the family. I think I have a healthy, but teetering on the verge of unhealthy, love of birds. Sorry if I am going to loose some blog readers since I know not everyone likes birds.
I do: Bird prints, bird feathers, bird baths, bird fabric, bird china...
Hmmm - I was a little worried that Tom would roll his eyes at these guys but he just smiled when he came home to the two birds sitting in the middle of our kitchen island. Thank god I have a patient husband. Now we just need to figure out where to put them and what names to call them.


Here they are waiting to be served a cocktail in our bar.

MeMe Baby

Please check out this short animated video made by my friend, Dennis Witnauer. (You might need to copy this URL http://memebaby.com/counting and repaste in a new window to view)
I think it is so beautiful and fitting for this beautiful and fleeting fall day.

Dennis is an architect/artist/designer, who is married to Jennifer Subrin, my amazing childhood neighbor. Jennifer was a regular in our household on Birch Hill Road and was often left in charge of me and my two younger siblings. I guess my mom thought she was competent to babysit three small children even when she was 9 years old. Oh, the times have changed!

Jennifer is a dear friend, an amazing sketch comedian, and wonderful mother. In addition to these accomplishments, she and Dennis run the very cool clothing company, MeMe Baby. Please check out their designs and feel free to purchase through their website.

picture via memebaby.com

picture via memebaby.com

Also, please note this beautiful heron shirt, below:

picture via memebaby.com

Proceeds from the sales of shirts and bodysuits with this heron pattern are donated to the Hyperemesis Research and Education Foundation (HER).

To learn more about Hyperemesis you can read here...

Lulu Dk

I went to the luludk website tonight to get the wall covering for the below tablescape for you.

It is actually a fabric called Minerva and you can see it here. Maybe Markham Roberts upholstered that dining room wall or perhaps he commissioned the pattern for a paper (anything is available custom).

While there I caught sight of some new patterns. This one is so ephemeral! I love it. Very Bloomsbury group - yet the feathers have an underwater quality about them. I immediately thought about sea life waving back and forth with the movement of the sea.

Thinking it could work very well at my parents' beach house. "Plumes" in colors Rose, Mist, Driftwood and Emerald...

via luludk

Tuesday Tablescape

picture via markham roberts

Beach Babies

I couldn't resist posting this sweetness from the Cape the other weekend...

Do It Yourself, and in my case, with mixed results

A while back (here) I found a nice and very cheap fabric at JoAnn's which I wanted to use to make shades for Teddy's room. Initially I wanted to sew roman shades, but after seeing this post on one of my favorite blogs, Little Green Notebook, I got really antsy and decided to use Jenny's mini-blind makeover for the shades in Teddy's room.

Tom was away this past weekend and I spread out my mess on the dining room table and got to work. Although I read all of the comments about the shades, I still went ahead and used blackout liner (even though most people where having trouble with this)- since the whole reason I wanted to replace the mini blinds was to minimize the light in his room. I thought I might have figured out what they were doing wrong :-) and I went ahead with another technique I came up with. It was all going along slowly but steadily and luckily, my friend Leslie came over and helped me do the math to figure out the number of folds for the shade -- just when I was about to loose steam.

I eagerly glued the shades together and hung them as soon as the glue hardened (hardly). I was so excited! They looked so cute in the window...until I tried to raise them. Uh-oh.

The shades were a crumpled mess - something my drapery guy would SHOOT me for hanging in my home!!! And they were sort of bent (the weight of the fabric + liner was too heavy to keep the cheap metal blinds straight) and let a lot of light in from the sides! Ikes, not functional or attractive.

Oh well... I have styled the heck out of them here and they look good (a cross between balloon and relaxed romans) in these pictures. These will have to do for now - until I can get more fabric and sew one, for real, this time.

Here is what I learned:

1) This tutorial is awesome - if you use really light fabric -like a see through linen - and don't have to apply a blackout liner. I really think it could work well and the directions were pretty easy to follow.

2) In my case, if I had been patient and made my own real fabric shades, I think they would function better than these since so much light streams from the sides.

3) Do it yourself projects are fun and exciting but you never know how they will turn out until they are finished.

Hope you had a fun and fruitful weekend!

Pecky Cypress Please

When down in Florida at a friend's wedding a few years back, we ended up at a beautiful home for late night. Even after a long night dancing and celebrating with friends I managed to have a lucid moment and snapped a few shots of the interior of this house.

I loved the warmth and texture of this ceiling - and, of course, I loved this lantern.

This is way before lanterns gained popularity...

After a little research I learned this ceiling was paneled with Pecky Cypress which is most commonly used in the South - Georgia, and Florida. It is naturally pocked and marked - hence the name "pecky". Many of the outdoor Loggias of Palm beach have Pecky Cypress as the ceiling material. Keep your eyes peeled for this beautiful wood - and wood paneling as a larger trend (old-school style)! I would (no pun intended) love a library paneled in this fun material. Like applying grasscloth, it would add texture, warmth and visual appeal to an otherwise boring wall or ceiling.

Here are a few other shots of cypress I have from my library:

housebeautiful.com

bunnywilliams.com

myhomeideas.com

Halloween Decorating & Tuesday Tablescape

I love this scary sideboard/tablescape for Halloween.

pic from myhomeideas.com

However, it would just not work with a 3 year old girl in the house! A bit scary. I never thought about how scary Halloween is for small children. It is really funny since I am trying to create a fun feeling about Halloween instead of fear. I am constantly saying, "What a silly looking witch!" or, "Look at those big funny bats and spiders," when our daughter freezes up and says, "What's that!!??"

I have noticed that people in Hingham seem to love the scarier side of this holiday. We were walking to a friend's house the other day and there was a fake dead man in the ivy by the street. He was dressed in sporty clothes (including weird bright crocs) and had a bunch of arrows stuck into his body and fake blood around the wounds. At first I thought it was a voodoo doll for a sporting event but then our friend said it was her neighbors halloween dummy. I just drove by the most clever yard display and will snap a pic when I pick Athena up from school - check back for that pic later.

Due to the tiny trick-or-treaters in our house, our halloween decorating is rather dull and nature-based this year. We have a lovely wreath and some corn stalks tied to the farmer's porch. Trying to keep this holiday "G" rated, for now, at least!

privet with a bow on top

today is my birthday and here is the best present a girl with a new obsession with gardening/landscaping could receive: privets!

although i tom and i do our own landscaping and yard work, what would have taken us at least a week and a half to complete - 45 holes to dig between work and childrens' schedules- has been finished in a few hours with the help of a landscaper, sergio.

i feel very grateful today! i have health, family, friends, and a special home.

Easy Fall Flower Arrangement

This is a fun hostess gift in the fall. I brought this to a friend's dinner party back when we were living in SF (oh the good old days).

Buy a small pumpkin and hollow out a decent hole (remove all seeds etc). Soak some Oasis foam for a while in water and cut it to fit inside a the pumpkin. Then the fun begins: you can arrange dahlias, tulips, roses or whatever fun flowers you have available to you.

TGIF-I hope you have a great weekend. We are headed down to the Cape to my parents' new house. I can't wait to share some pictures of their new beach getaway (which is 1 hour from here - door-to-door - woo hoo!).

Also, thanks to those who have been giving me feedback about the blog!

I *really* love comments and feedback and welcome all readers to this blog.

I hope it serves some purpose to others besides being a fun and creative pursuit of my own. Ciao.

Yassou Vefa

Do any of you have this cookbook?

I need to get it (if not for the jacket design alone). I have a lot of Greek cookbooks - mainstream and church based - (my dad's side of the family is Greek) but this might be the biggest and best I have seen in a while. Would you eat food from this woman's kitchen?

I think so....

Tuesday Tablescape

This image is from the new and absolutely amazing, Lonny Magazine.

View it here and feast your eyes on this new online shelter magazine.

Transformation of a Living Room

Before: Shallow open bookshelves

What you can't see here is the shelves are so shallow that the cable box is practically falling off the shelf. We needed hidden storage! I immediately thought to put cabinet doors over the bottom. We quickly realized it would look much better to start from scratch with better materials and a more cohesive look.

Empty

Construction Begins...

We decide to wrap the bookcases around the wall:

Mahogany tops of bottom cabinets:

Progress and a new mantel!

The Man! Dan, our carpenter.

Looking good -loving the pull-out drawers below:

Completed Mantel

Unpainted, but finished room!

You can see what a difference this makes!!

WE LOVE OUR LIVING ROOM!

Our next steps:

~Get all of the woodwork painted and the mohagany counter tops stained.

~Tile around the fireplace surround (the black part)

~Order knobs

~Change Sconces and add picture lights over the bump-out part of the bookcases and over the freestanding boookcase to the left (not pictured above).

Happy Monday everyone!