New to My Library

"Rooms to Inspire in the City" is the brand new title, the latest in a series, that again finds author Annie Kelly collaborating with her photographer husband, Tim Street-Porter. The settings are cosmopolitan, the designers represented no less so: Carolina Irving, Peter Dunham, Mary McDonald among them. The New York City apartment shown below was designed by Jonathan Adler.

"Rooms to Inspire in the Country" is the previous title in the same series. I'm so glad the release of the current book reminded me that I hadn't yet picked up this one. The title, I think, is slightly misleading for these are not country "style" homes at all, but weekend retreats and family estates in such far-flung locales as Connecticut, Malibu and Shelter Island. Designers are an eclectic mix too: Steven Gambrel, Martyn Lawrence-Bullard and the incomparable Tony Duquette. The author's own home, pictured below, may be my favorite.



You might remember "The Comforts of Home" from my recent giveaway. It's such a pretty, inspiration-filled book, I had to have one for myself too. Author Caroline Clifton-Mogg shows us how to fashion a cozy yet stylish home in a way that melds with the currently-popular desire to live more simply. Charming vignettes like the one below remind us that the classic basics never go out of style.



"French America" by Ron Katz is at once history lesson and design inspiration. It explores the French heritage in America through an overview of history, culture, architecture and decoration in regions from New England to the Gulf of Mexico. The book is a fascinating read and a feast for the eyes. The centuries-old French colonial and Greek Revival plantation homes that dot the Mississippi Valley are particularly captivating.



"New Classic Interiors" by Alessandra Branca splashed onto the scene last fall amid much fanfare and praise. I don't know why I waited so long to get it for it's quickly become an all-time favorite. I've paged through it more times than most books I've owned for far longer. I love this designer's bold use of color and pattern and this large format book does her work justice with beautiful photography and terrific graphics too. And, really, how could I not love a book that includes this spread?



Color and pattern and sophisticated bohemian style are the hallmarks of "Downtown Chic", the book that chronicles the experiences and wisdom of Robert and Cortney Novogratz of Sixx Design. Over the last ten years, the couple has renovated and decorated several homes of their own and built a thriving restoration and interior design business all while raising seven children. No surprise, then, to find that they're also now the stars of their own Bravo series, "9 By Design", premiering this week, on Tuesday night. I'll be watching, will you?


So many books, so little time! Below, just for fun, is a recent photo of my own bookcase. These design books are in the "library corner" of the living room, near a favorite chair, because I refer to them often and simply enjoy having them around. There are plenty of others in my office, miscellaneous art books and all the less attractive how-to type manuals. That's where I store most of my back issue magazines too but on the bottom shelf here you can see one of my most prized decor-related possessions: every single issue of Cottage Living magazine ( a moment of silence, please). What are your favorite design books? Do you see any of them here? Could you use a recommendation? Or perhaps a 12-step program to curb your addiction? Talk to me about any or all of the above...

Spring Reading

[Cottage Living, March 2007]

Hits of yellow on a creamy white background. Billowy pink flowers. Unique, personal wall decor. Bowl as art.

[Decorating, Spring 2008]

More yellow. A little green. Lots of white. And pattern. Painted furniture. Bare, shiny floors. The surprise of art above a window.

[Decorating, Spring 2009]

Spring green. Apple green. Grass green. Monochromatic collections. Window as art. Weathered finishes juxtaposed with glass and mirror.

[Cottage Living, April 2007]

A cottage garden in Pasadena. Mine could look like that. But who would take care of it? Will study anyway and make notes regarding plantings.

[La Vie Claire, Spring 2009]

Open window. Fresh air. A clothesline! White towels are the best. Turquoise and yellow always look good together. Painted furniture again. I sense a trend in my current preferences.

[Southern Accents, May/June 2009]

Yellow and cobalt with a large dose of lime for good measure. Love that combination. A party out of doors should be just as nice as a party indoors. And there must be lanterns.

[House Beautiful, May 2009]

White kitchens may always be my favorite kind. Fresh flowers are always a good idea. I'd like to add corbels to the undersides of my upper cabinets. Still happy my counter tops are pale so they reflect and multiply all the light that comes in over my sink.

[Cottage Living, May 2007]

2010 will be the year I finally make this lemony dessert. Five ingredients and four steps. Even I can manage that.

• • •

These are my thoughts—on things I like or would like to do, change, make and create— as I sit on my sofa paging through a stack of magazines from springtimes past. Do you do that? Review your magazines seasonally? Images that didn't stand out in 2008 or 2007 suddenly look new and necessary. March, April and May are what I am reading now. June, July and August will come out later for a summer review. Then September, October, November for fall inspiration. December primarily for Christmas. January and February offer ideas about winter but mostly make me hopeful for spring. Which is where we are now. With so many great ideas.

Which magazines do you save and refer to again and again?

How have your old friends - your old magazines - inspired you in new ways this year?

A Few More City Farmhouses, Jill Brinson and 21 Things You Need

With my last post, I showed you scenes from the NYC apartment of designer, author, home designer/builder and Country Living magazine contributor Randy Florke. His style of dressed up country is my personal favorite and, in this post, I thought I'd show you a few more examples of the same by other designers. Here are some of my favorite farmhouse-in-the-city spaces :

The space above and the two below were designed by Hillary Wallace for an Oklahoma native turned TriBeCa loft owner in New York City. The farmhouse elements: Clean, creamy white walls. Warm wood flooring. Simple window treatments. Textural fabrics on traditional furniture shapes. Rustic accessories and needlepoint rugs. The city: A wide open floor plan. An L-shaped sectional helping to anchor one of two separate seating areas in the living room. Recessed ceiling lighting to create illumination throughout. Art framed in a contemporary fashion.

In the bedroom, below, the designer used feminine pieces like a small chandelier, curvy bench, and lacy white linens as counterpoints to the loft's original brick wall. See more of this space here at countryliving.com.


In his own Scottsdale, Arizona condo, designer Christopher Coffin left the kitchen's white marble floor as he found it and built a French-inspired kitchen on top of it. This is all pretty fancy as farmhouses go (click on the photo to see the rest of this gorgeous home), but what I think is important to note is this: farmhouse can be dressed up or dressed down. With its vast use of marble, curvy iron center table and faux limestone walls, this is definitely an uptown look.


Christopher Coffin again mixes plain with fancy in his dining room, below. It should be noted too that while Hillary Wallace's farmhouse design for her client was reminiscent of American country, Coffin's country look is of French descent.


Mary Jo and Jim Donohoe brought the feelings of the French and Italian countrysides to their new home in Bethesda, Maryland, asking their architect, David Neumann to "capture the feel of an old French barn". This is a grand room and a beautiful home (to see more, click on the photo, below) . However, there are many elements you can borrow to use in your own interpretation of farmhouse: rustic wood, iron details, provincial pottery and utilitarian furnishings like the antique corner cupboard. The "city" here? Brand new construction and modern efficiency in the heart of a bustling suburb.

This 1932 brick Tudor in Atlanta, below, could have been given an overstuffed, collected over time English treatment, but designer Kay Douglass chose to keep it simple. Her pared down, clutter-free designs focus on texture and form with a minimal use of color. Where she does use color, as in the room shown here, it is to great effect. Bright solids on chairs and in the artwork and accessories give this farmhouse look its contemporary spin.

In an even more colorful "farmhouse" in another New York City loft, textile and interiors designer Annie Selke joined forces with Country Living magazine's Jennifer Vreeland to bring loads of country character to blank, boxy spaces, below. Together they layered on warmth with natural wood, textiles, and leather. Clean profiles, rich textures and personal collections create the character of a country house within a cozy retreat that offers all the conveniences of modern city life.

Of the pale blue walls and liberal use of white linen the designer says "The colors were chosen to inspire a bit of calm from the city experience, so you come in and feel relaxed without giving up sophistication." Hits of classic country red appear throughout the apartment to provide continuity and fun.

I know this particular look, whether you call it "farmhouse" or "country", is not for everyone, but I do think there is something to be learned from every well-designed space. Traditional or contemporary, transitional or modern, whatever you gravitate toward first, it's been my experience that most people prefer "a little bit of this" and "a little bit of that" in their homes.

Designer Jill Sharp Brinson's gorgeous Atlanta home, as recently featured in House Beautiful magazine, has rushed around the blogs like wildfire. Apparently, her brand of country appeals to a lot of us! (click here to see and read the online article) Brinson's style is definitely a European take on farmhouse design with influences from Belgium, France, Italy and England. Toss in some Morocco and Mount Vernon, and it's a unique version indeed. In her interview with house Beautiful's Lisa Creagan, Brinson explains her attraction to farmhouse this way: "We live in total denial that we're smack in the middle of a big city. My husband, Rob, and I have a love affair with rural settings... It's part farmhouse, part loft. The style is a blend of our interests in both humble, rustic houses and turn-of-the-century industrial-style warehouses". I'll just let my favorite photos from the article speak for themselves :

Luckily for us mere mortals, Jill Sharp Brinson is the Creative Director of Ballard Designs. She brings her great eye to this popular source for decorating ideas, inspiration and a huge variety of products that provide the crossover appeal of the country in the city look I've shown you here. I used their Eldridge Pendant light at the top of this post. Simple but sophisticated, it illustrates perfectly the look of modern country. If you're not familiar with Ballard, click on the graphic below to go to their website. You'll be taken first to a fun feature in which they've collaborated with Traditional Home magazine to show us twenty-one things every well-designed, efficiently functional home should have.

Now, you and I both know that this feature is meant to help sell Ballard merchandise. But I think it's a good list to keep in mind—wherever you go to get the things you need—when you're rethinking the spaces in your home. How many of these "must haves" are you lacking?

1. a place for your drink
2. a nomad console
3. a lamp to read by
4. knock-your-socks-off art
5. a cushy chair
6. party-friendly portables
7. grown-up dinners
8. a versatile bookshelf
9. natural fibers
10. a welcome entry table
11. a pretty place for laundry
12. a hang-out bed
13. a mirror mirror
14. a french connection
15. a place to put your feet up
16. a truly comfortable sofa
17. a pillow wardrobe
18. eye-catching accessories
19. patterns that make a statement
20. a touch of modern
21. a well-adjusted dining table

While you're taking inventory, look around and tell me, if you don't already live in an actual farmhouse (lucky you, if you do!), what elements have you seen here that you would like to add to your interiors? What favorite farmhouse things do you already use?

Lighten Up

That's it.

My one and only, multi-purpose,

one-size-fits-all

New Year's resolution.

Lighten up.

Allow me to elaborate: in 2010, I resolve to. . .

1) Lighten up my attitude. 2009 was a very serious year. Serious lifestyle changes took place that I wasn't entirely happy about—although it all worked out well in the end. Serious news about our bad economy was on the air and in the newspapers every day. Ugh. Some seriously dull work was done—not design work, but the other work I do that gets my bills paid til the decor biz gets "bizzier"—but it's my own fault that I didn't balance it better. In this new year, I resolve to have more fun. Live life lightly. Look on the bright side (which I really am pretty good at). Play more music. Eat pancakes for dinner. Or maybe a banana split! Make and paint and build and craft things just because I can. Reacquaint myself with my garden. I have a ping pong table. What's more fun than ping pong?

2) Lighten my load. (No, I don't mean lose weight. #4 will take care of that.) What I mean is clear out the clutter that's been weighing down the progress of my projects whether personal, professional or home related. After fifteen years in this house, there is just too much accumulated, unnecessary "stuff". My College Girl was happy to benefit from some of our redundancies and we have plans to continue in that vein—starting with a big ol' yard sale at her house with the cast-offs from mine. She does all the grunt work and gets to keep the proceeds; I get de-cluttered. Win-win.

3) Light up my interiors. Literally. I have plans for new, much needed lighting in both the kitchen and living room. The colored walls that I've loved for so long are crying out to be white. Art in dark frames wants to be replaced with glinting, gilt-y frames or none at all... as in unframed canvases or found objects. And... anything that's begun to look more like clutter and less like decor, no matter how sentimentally attached I am, is being retired or repurposed (or yard-saled, see #2) in favor of light and space. My home wants to breeeathe.

4) Get light on my feet. Move more, sit less. (Easier said than done with both a job and a hobby that require hours at a time in front of a computer.) Take a walk, with or without the dog—but mostly with. I know he'd appreciate it. Do some actual heavy lifting (as opposed to the existential kind—there was enough of that nonsense in 2009). Garden. Hammer. Install. Paint. Move. Improve myself as I improve my home. Even an impromptu living room dance party does wonders for my attitude and, done more often, would surely work those same wonders on my waistline.

5) Bring more light to the blog. Were you wondering why it looks better—brighter— today? (please say yes) No more yellow background. Crisp, clean, light and bright white. Took a little more effort than you'd imagine as some of my sidebar images had drop shadows on a yellow ground blah, blah, whatever. It looks better and I'm happy with it. I hope my lighter attitude comes through in my posts too—not that I've ever been morose or dark here—what's dark about decorating? (well, yes, I know there's a trend toward black walls and dark rooms, but that's for another post—and, no, I'm obviously not embracing that trend). It's just that, if I'm writing this blog because it's fun for me, well, then, shouldn't it be fun for you too?

The rooms pictured here are some that have inspired me toward my decision to whiten the rest of my walls. I painted out the golden yellow accent wall in my living room about a year ago and have been very happy with all white. Next to go will be the yellow in my dining room, which opens onto my already-white kitchen. I'll continue to use my favorite bright, happy colors and patterned fabrics as accents, as did the designers of these rooms—Kathryn Ireland in the top three photos and Windsor Smith in this last one, above. (The four in between were not identified in my photo files. Irresponsible, I know, but still inspirational.) And I promise, any of my own lighter, brighter work deemed "blog-worthy", will appear here for your perusal.

Do you have a resolution (or several) for yourself

or your home?

Whatever they may be, I wish you luck and light and love.

Happy New Year!

Silver and Gold Christmas Wishes

As usual, I don't have much of a Christmas list this year. My wishes tend to run toward the practical: I'd really like to get my car detailed, my kitchen needs painting, and my master bathroom needs a fairy godmother to wave her wand on it because I continue to drag my heels on that whole mess. I could definitely use the services of a personal shopper to update my wardrobe. But those are all things that can't be wrapped up in a box. As material goods go, I'm lucky enough to have more than I really need and most of what I want. But it's that time of year, when my mailbox is stuffed with catalogs full of pretty things and I couldn't help but notice a few. Among the things that have caught my eye, a pattern emerged. Silver and gold. Grey and taupe. Call me predictable, but I'm always drawn to these combinations when it comes to clothing and jewelry.

First up, who can resist a snow globe? Especially one as simple and perfect as this one, above. Trouble is, it's the watch inside the jar that's for sale. A one-of-a-kind mix of vintage faces linked together. Very intriguing but if it doesn't come with the snowman, maybe I don't want it after all. (anthropologie)

These I'll take just as they come. Sparkly daisy ear studs. Silver and gold. Better together.(anthropologie)

Less sparkly but just as much fun. A taupey-grey cardigan with appliqued leaves and flowers. Can I pull this off? I suppose I'd have to try it on to know for sure. But I do love it. (anthropolgie)

I also love the look of mixed up charms on a great chain. My favorite kind of necklace from the source of some of my most-worn pieces. (sundance)

Speaking of chains, silver and gold on pleated chocolate leather. The latest discovery in my ongoing search for the new perfect handbag. What do you think? Are chains over? I don't really care about trends but I don't want to look ridiculous either. (nordstrom)

And, finally, here's something I want that, sadly, can't be bought. . .

It's an image I saved from an Anthropologie email ad promoting their Christmas ornaments. I can't tell whether it's an actual shadow box put together to showcase birdies or if it's totally photoshopped. Either way, it's charming. Greys and golds and taupes and silvers plus a bit of color for fun. I just want to look and look and look at it. It makes me happy. And isn't that what the best gifts are meant to do?


Click on the images to go to their source. Except the shadow box. It's mine, all mine.