Color, It's a beautiful thing!

House Beautiful Color: The Perfect Shade for Every Room, is a beautiful book! Illustrated with hundreds of photos, it's organized around color, with every chapter illustrating a color, including white! At the beginning of these chapters, there is a fun fact page, with tidbits like "The ancient Greeks believed wearing white to bed insured sweet dreams," or "green is the color used for night-vision goggles because the human eye can discern more shades of green than any other color." One nice feature is a list of different paint shades of each color with brand names. Another nice feature is that each chapter has a few comparison pages, say if the color is green, then they compare how that color goes with other colors using accessories and objects of those colors. Even if you aren't decorating your house this is a fun book to spend an evening with. Lovely! ML

Bringing the Outside In

Woodland Style by Marlene Hurley Marshall is a lovely book about bringing natural elements from the outdoors to decorate your home. Featuring many beautiful photographs, the book explores decorations made with foraged twigs, vines, moss, flowers and bark. Also featured are holiday and seasonal decorations as well as recipes that use wild edibles. There are photos of artworks such as carved wood and jewelry using acorns. Fantastic, I'm looking forward to setting in front of the fire on this cold spring day and reading this! ML

Simply Irresistible!

Do you have a small space that needs some TLC? Check out Janet Lee’s Living in a  Nutshell: Posh and Portable Decorating Ideas for Small Spaces for some striking projects. She is a veteran apartment dweller with bold sense of style. Although her style is based on her mother's vintage elegance, I love the modern quirkiness and innovative use of everyday items. Her suggestions are not only colorful and entertaining but time-saving too. Janet uses snappy shortcuts and inexpensive materials for a designer look. She really thinks outside-the-box. Fabulous---darling! DB