With Thanksgiving coming  up, there will be lots of family, friends, and food.  From elaborate to simple, you can create a pretty table to enjoy it aound!

Oranges with clove initials for placeholders are pretty and smell wonderful!

Cream colored pumpkins with cute placecards attached are easy to do and a nod to the traditional.

For centerpieces, something as simple and easy as candlelight is made a little more special with the addition of some dried citrus slices glued to the bases of the candles.

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Plaid has been all around lately, everywhere I look!  I love the traditional and casual cozy feel of it, plaid just seems to warm up whatever space it’s used in.

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Melissa, aka the Lil Bee, and author of the Feather Report has just announced a new app for your iPhone!  Since she does a much better job explaining it than I ever could, I’ll let her do the honors:

Dearest friends, bloggers, and colleagues,

I have a little announcement to make…actually, a big announcement (I hope)!  Some of you have been following my blog, featherreport.blogspot.com.  It’s a site that offers daily style inspiration for NYC girls, based on the weather forecast.  Fashion + Weather = Feather Report.

After a lot of hard work, trial and error, I have launched Feather Report: the iPhone application!  So, what does this mean?  Well, if you have an iPhone, or if you’re thinking about scooping one up, you can now think of Feather Report as your personal style consultant no matter where you live or where you’re traveling.  Here is the scoop…

• Using a GPS weather tracker, Feather Report serves up a new outfit to your iPhone each day, based on your specific location.
• You can shop all of the looks directly from your phone.
• Outfits are categorized based on body types, occasions, and weather patterns.
• You can search for outfits based on your individual needs. So, let’s say you’re a Curvy Cathy, going on a Date Night, and it’s a Hot Mess outside. Plug in that info and voila! An outfit emerges, just for you.
• Plus, you can store your favorite looks, get weather forecasts for your upcoming travel plans, and score the inside scoop on deals & steals from amazing stores.

If you have an iPhone and would like to download the app, you can do so here: http://appshopper.com/lifestyle/feather-report.

If you don’t have an iPhone but want to check out Feather Report, just visit my blog, http://featherreport.blogspot.com. In the coming weeks, I’ll have giveaways and updates, so check back in regularly.

And if you love love love it?!  Tell your friends, tweet it, FB it, email it, blog about it… whatever it is you do, I would greatly appreciate it:)

Thank you so much!!  I’m a little scared to think of what a big undertaking this will be, as I will be creating all of the looks each and every day, but I’m super excited to be taking the leap and doing something I love.  I hope you’ll love it, too!

Melisa
xo

Do you have an iphone?  What are your favorite apps?

One of the nice things about having a house is the fact that we have the space and are able to have friends and family come and stay with us.  But as of late, and especially after the wedding,  our guest bedroom had really become a no-man’s land full of things that didn’t really have a home.  It certainly didn’t reflect a welcoming feeling.  With 3 sets of visitors coming to visit and stay with us this fall, I decided that it was high time to do something about it.

But here’s the thing:  with budget being a huge issue, I needed to re-use and re-purpose what I already had and make it work.

Armed with 2 gallons of paint (that I got on sale over Labor Day!), I got to work.

Here’s an embarrassing view of what it looked like before:

It wasn’t pretty!

I decided on a wall color, thanks in part to Mrs. Limestone and her own guest bedroom, and also decided to paint all the furniture an antique/off white so that it would look less mis-matched.

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This was the response I got a couple of weeks ago while shopping in New Orleans with one of my friends.  We had stumbled into a vintage furniture store, and they had a pair of  Brno chairs by Mies van der Rohe.  I, having studied him and them in some of my college design classes, was excited.  It’s always so cool to see things like this in “real life”.  My friend, however, was taken aback by the price tag - over $2500 for the pair!  To me that wasn’t a surprise, knowing what true liscensed furniture like this is worth.  And so a dialogue was started.

Most people who buy pieces like this consider them like functional art.  They are beautiful in form, and are timeless in design.  These pieces will never go out of style.  Not to mention that the true licensed pieces are so well built that they will last you a lifetime.

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Hello! I’m Rachel. You may know me if you have been reading EAD weddings as I write a weekly column over there about our wedding planning leading up to our English country wedding in June. You might also know me from my blog where I write about weddings, fashion, lifestyle and anything else which inspires me.

I live in London, England, in a Victorian flat with my husband. M is a fine wine salesman who has been known to turn his hand to writing now and again. At the moment M is our sole income provider as I was made redundant a month before our wedding so he is very busy working and I am enjoying being a housewife! Or rather, I am so busy job hunting, helping out in a friend’s vintage shop, making and selling bunting and blogging about it, that I don’t really have time to be one at all. Our flat has all the basics {wooden floors, high ceilings, bay windows, fireplaces and mantelpieces} and we are enjoying the process of turning it into our marital home {until the day when we are able to buy somewhere}.

I am really excited to be contributing to EAD Living as M and I are spending more and more time at home these days, post wedding. We therefore spend a lot of time cooking, eating, drinking wine, sorting out our flat, and (I at least) spend a lot of time thinking about and reading about fashion and interiors. I suppose, therefore, that my posts will be about a myriad of subjects, all of which have some relevance to me or our life and which I find interesting or inspirational.

{Image by  Katie Thompson Photography}

A couple of months ago I stumbled across a new design blog that totally rocked, Kelly+Olive.  With great tips and ideas to “steal”, and a design manifesto that really hit home with me, I was an instant fan.  Their blog is so inspiring, I instantly wanted to run out to buy some spray paint to transform some of the ugly things that have been hiding in the  garage!

I also wanted to know more about Lauren and Courtney from Kelly+Olive, so what better way than a little interview?

1. How would you describe your style?
C: you’d think i’d have an answer for this by now!  i love white, and bright color, i love graphic pattern, i love modern clean lines, i love vintage, especially mid-century.  what style is that?  you tell me.
L: for me, i think the best description would be something like…flea market modern? i love the old and handmade and wacky, anything with an interesting history. but i also bold graphic lines and strong modern furniture…i walk a line between living in a cluttered thrift store and a sleeker mod pad.

2. Who or what are some of your biggest influences?
C:definitely really influenced by scandinavian design, and not just ikea!  i read over a hundred blogs, so it’s pretty hard to pinpoint who exactly.  i’m definitely influenced by lauren too…she helps me put some humor in my decorating!
L: that’s so funny because I was going to say the exact same thing about courtney … we really have a symbiotic relationship here!  and how did we live before design blogs!?!?! we’re no longer subject to the tastes of the big shelter magazine editors. I love looking into the homes of ‘real’ people with style and creativity and seeing how they solve their design dilemmas and make their homes their own.
C:  oh, real homes definitely.  apartment therapy house tours changed my world.

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Hi!  I am a small but comfortable round backed side chair with caning under my graciously curved arms.  I am small enough to be moved around the house as needed, but I can still offer enough comfort to a guest through a long football game.  Yesterday, I was living in one of the coolest consignment shops around.  My crime?  My outdated upholstery and old patchy finish.

But my new lady took me home with the hopes of turning me into the real beauty she knows I am!  With a little paint or stain, and a new, less strange fabric choice, I know I can look as gorgeous as some of these former wallflowers-turned-beauties:

*above 3 images from Again and Again consignment shop

With a little paint or stain, old furniture in good condition (and lamps, for that matter) can be turned into that unique one-of-a-kind piece that’s also budget friendly!  So stay tuned for my “extreme chair makeover”!!

Recently, I had the opportunity to sample some “Thank You” notes from Minted, which came at a very very opportune time for me as anyone who reads my other blog knows!  I still had the last few of my wedding thank you notes to write and send out, and I had just run out of the other note cards I had been using!

*above 2 images from Minted

Minted was very easy to order from!  It’s great because you can personalize your notes to say anything you would like, from a basic “Thank You” (like mine), or something more elaborate with your names and a date, or even a favorite quote.  You can play around with it online and see what the design and wording will look like before you place your order, and after you order you’ll receive an email “proof” showing exactly what they will look like.  After I approved the proof, it was only about a week until I received my cards in the mail!

They are a nice weight of smooth paper, not glossy, and are a good size for notes - folded, they are around 4.5″ wide by a little more than 5.5″ long.  I love how friendly they were when I called, and how easily you can customize your cards.  Since these are not inexpensive, it makes them special that you can have them say whatever you want them to!

Stencils used in design are everywhere - and I’m not talking about rooster borders around the tops of kitchens. Stencils can be simple or dramatic, and can embellish anything that you can paint on!  What’s wonderful about them is that stenciling is something that you can do yourself at home for very little money.
Here are some beautiful examples of stenciled work:

These next images come from a great blog called Designamour.  Melanie has a beautiful blog filled with beautiful images of all kinds of decoration, especially surface decoration!  You should go and check her out - she gives wonderful tips and has great ideas.

*image #1 from Domino

*images#2 and #3 from MyHomeIdeas.com

*images #4 and #5 from House Beautiful

*images #6 #7 and #8 from Designamour