gardening . home decor . online business
Do you entertain very often? I really haven't done much in the way of entertaining for the last four to five years. But this year, my sister and I decided to give my 91-year old mother the "gift of lunches" for a Christmas present. She really doesn't want or need anything, and the gift of [...]
I thought I would be content with my Christmas mantel throughout the duration of winter. After all, it was more wintery than Christmasy. But I felt the need to declutter and simplify the look using some of the same elements. I started with the winter print that I love so much, and worked around that. [...]
Expecting a wintry mix overnight, but hearing the sound of rain on the windows, I was surprised to wake up to a world covered in ice. Knowing that the temperatures were headed upwards to 40 degrees today, I wanted to capture this beautiful stage of weather that halted overnight between snow and rain. Winters in [...]
I had been toying with the idea of filling all the containers I use in the summer on the deck with greens. I have a growing collection of black wrought iron baskets, plant stands, and window boxes that look so forlorn and empty now that the summer flowers are long gone. I have a variety [...]
On a sunny afternoon over Christmas break, I spent a few hours with my daughter, Kate, using her home as a backdrop for a photo shoot for my maps. She lives in an area near downtown Columbus, called Victorian Village. It is a neighborhood with mammoth, ornate Victorian homes on lovely tree-lined streets with brick [...]
I'm sure, like many of you, the end of a year, and start of a new one, leads to rearranging life. For me, this usually means obsessive cleaning and purging. It is an attempt at order, but also, as I grow older, a need to simplify and lighten the load. While purging the other day, [...]
Originally a Nordic tradition, Yule is the name of the old Winter Solstice festivals of Scandinavia, and other parts of Northern Europe, such as Germany. The Yule log is a specially selected log burnt on a hearth as a Christmas tradition. My Yule log was gifted to me on Christmas Eve by my brother-in-law. He [...]
Last year I decorated a few paper mâché boxes for Christmas. Not only do they make great decorations to use around the house, but they're perfect for packaging that special little gift. Here are a few that I made last year. Every year I buy a roll or two of wrapping paper with a brown [...]
I haven't been doing any baking for the office lately, and with a broken bone in my right hand, I haven't attempted making any Christmas cookies either. Most of our office works from home, but there is about a dozen of us who come into the office on a daily basis, and I wanted to [...]
Sunday was a warm day for December, and the perfect time to finish up raking leaves and redecorate the urns for Christmas. I pulled out the fall arrangement of cornstalks a few weeks ago and arranged a trio of birch logs. I follow a blog called Dirt Silver, written by Deborah Silver, a landscape and garden designer [...]