The Unofficial Start of Summer

Memorial Day marks the unofficial beginning to the season of sun and outdoor fun. Even though we were graced with an unseasonably warm winter (except for all that "Snowtober" nonsense!), we're still looking forward to the lazy days of summer and reconnecting with nature. In preparation for the official start of summer, we've gathered a few of our favorite things.

1. Cheery garden gloves from Hable Construction would make lovely companions to their other garden accessories.

2. The Bird Cafe bird feeder from Fred Flare lets your local chirpers nibble in style.

3. No room for a vegatable garden? Have a sunny window? Grow your very own micro-greens (red acre cabbage, mini-carrot, tom thumb pea) in this windowsill planter from Potting Shed Creations.

4. Light up the night with the Soji Pod solar lanterns. Fours hours of sunlight will keep these pods glowing all night long.

5. Soften your step with the geometric hooked indoor/outdoor Patio rug by Company C for Garnet Hill.

6. Capture the moment by snapping a credit card-sized instant photo with the Instax Mini by Fujifilm. After it ejects out of the top, feel free to shake it like a Polaroid picture...

7. Sure you've heard of yarn bombs, but what about seed bombs? Toss a few in the yard for an instant wildflower garden.

8. Refresh your guests from a easy-to-find bright and cheery Hampton bar cart by World's Away from Zinc Door.

9. Feeling the need to read? Leaf magazine is the best of its kind, celebrating outdoor living and more. Look for the summer issue coming in June.

Blogfest 2012: Insights from the Industry's Best

It was year #2 for Blogfest and while the format stayed the same, the attendees and content were fresh. Panels, parties and tours were all packed into three full days planned and hosted by Kravet Inc.

On the second day of the conference, there were many great panels held at Hearst Tower as well as in the D&D Building with editors of several major design publications. There was such great information shared at these panels we wanted to share some of the more insightful tidbits and tips we picked up from the editors and interior designers on them.

At left, the team behind the Veranda panel: publisher Jennnifer Bruno, interior designer Darryl Carter, editor-in-chief Dara Caponigro and interior designer Timothy Whealon. On the right, just one of loads of laughs shared between designer Alexa Hampton and Traditional Home editor-in-chief Ann Maine.
Images courtesy of Blogfest2012.

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2012 NYC Designer Showhouses- Kips Bay & ELLE DECOR

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Showhouse, showhouse, showhouse. It seems like everywhere we turn right now there is a showhouse to be seen. This week’s showhouses happen to be in NYC (not the typical place you think of showHOUSE). As one can imagine, NYC has some pretty amazing talent and access to design and these two showhouses are proof that cutting edge design and trends are being set by these 41 designers who had a hand in designing a space in one of these showhouses.

  

More on these in a second, but first...

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Decoration & Design Building Spring Market 2012

Last Wednesday hundreds of designers, industry luminaries, media and more gathered to see what the showrooms in the NYC Decoration & Design Building would unveil at the Spring Market. As part of the Go Design Go “Bloggers Lounge” sponsored by Editor At Large, Andrew Martin and Hyland Magazine, we were front and center to see all and tell all of what is what from this year's market. 

The day started off with a keynote of one of our favorite authors, Wall Street Journal Magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Deborah Needleman. Debbie shared her highlights of the top influences on interior design trends as well as her much loved style philosophy echoed in her current book The Perfectly Imperfect Home: How to Decorate and Live Well: "having fine things but letting them breathe is the luxury of imperfection." Debbie said the sources of her current interior design inspiration come from fashion photography, trends in the food world and things seen on the runway. Check out the twitter hashtag #ddbmarket to see more tweets on her speech and read how she suggests you "create spaces that are warm, welcoming, and lived in."

After the keynote, we visited several showrooms in the building and found some pretty amazing fabrics, luxurious bedding, trends for outdoor living and a cool new magazine! Take a peek at some of what we saw in our pics from the day that follow. We promise to go into more detail in a future post about the fabrics, bedding and the cool new magazine. So stay tuned! 

Top: It was lunch amidst the treasures at the Fortuny showroom. Bottom Left: Significant items in the Fortuny heritage on display. Bottom Right: Pieces from the collaboration between L'Objet and Fortuny which includes tableware and decorative accents.

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Brimfield Tweetup & VIP Tent

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Last week we found ourselves in Brimfield, MA, for the Brimfield Antique Fair, one of the largest outdoor antique shows in the world. We first found out about the fair from one of our Twitter friends, Cynthia Bogart of The Daily Basics. We longingly wanted to join her at her tweetup event that was held during the show last fall but we had too many other commitments at the time. So we made sure to add it to our to-do list for this spring.

The swankiest tent at Brimfield, and it was all ours...

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