Matchbook Magazine

Always on the hunt for a great new read, I just heard about another new online magazine via Design Sponge that launched this month called Matchbook Mag. Its a lifestyle magazine for women and is chalkfull of fun stuff like fashion, interiors, travel, art and culture. Check it out here.   
Perhaps with yet another snowstorm coming our way tonight, I will have cancelled appointments tomorrow, and I MIGHT get to peruse this mag in more detail over a hot cup of morning coffee..... (long pause) but I'm not counting on it with the kiddos: )

Photographing Cora's first year

In honor of Cora going for her 6 month check up tomorrow, I thought I would show a photo project I am in the middle of doing.  I've taken a picture of Cora each month since she was born, and after her 12 month photo I am going to make a photo collage of all the months combined.  I always think its a nice way of documenting a child first year without plastering pictures all over the wall.  Originally I had the intention of buying a 12 month size white onesie and taking a picture of her in it each month until she turned one, but I never made it out to grab said onesie.  Instead, I used her birth announcement picture as my guide.  Each month I have taken a picture of Cora in the same position and same spot on our sofa.

Here is the original shot when she was 3 weeks old.

Here are the subsequent shots from month one to six:

1 mo.

2 mo.

3 mo.

4 mo.

5 mo.

6 mo.

Now that I've put them together like that I notice an unintentional trend of red, white, and blue clothing going on.....hmm, well she was born on July 2nd.   Ironically, this is what my living room looks like:

I see a color pattern going on.  Well, people often decorate in the same colors they wear, so guilty as charged! Stay tuned for the final collage in 6 months.    

Wednesday snowstorm

We had quite the snowstorm today.....somewhere in 15"-20" range!  It was a good day to stay inside and catch up on home "to do's" after the holidays.  As much as I love decorating for Christmas, I love taking everything down as well. It just feels refreshing, and uncluttered.  As I was putting things away on my desk I looked out the window and saw this:

Now, I don't know if you see it as instantly as I do, but the way the snow piled on the car looks remarkably like a face, right!  I thinks it is a Snow God chuckling at the new tenants from San Francisco that moved in above us a few days ago.  Welcome to Boston!

Client Dining Room

A couple weeks ago I posted about a dining room I was working on.  We designed a custom console table to fill in a very large blank wall.  So large in fact, that if I selected a table to fit the wall proportionate to the size, it would have dwarfed the dining table by comparison.  The solution was adding some architecture to the room to fill in the space by way of picture frame molding and crown molding.

In every design,  there is a jumping off point.  For my client, it was the fabric I selected to reupholster her dining chair seats (and two new upholstered dining end chairs which will carry the fabric at eye level for more visibility, but they are still being made as we speak).  The fabric is from Calico Corners called Kaiya Shiki.  I'm not sure I've ever had so many people comment on how much they love this fabric.  Everytime I pulled the swatch out at a store, someone would say "oh, love that fabric".   

From there we selected the paint color using the fabric swatch as guidance.  We ended up going with a saturated clay color call Sienna Clay from Benjamin Moore.  

This dining room connects directly to the kitchen which we are also in the middle of updating and redesigning.  In the kitchen we selected bold blue and white damask window treatments, along with a gray/aqua/dark-blue glass backsplash. To tie the two rooms together, I choose a rich azure blue as the accent color for the dining room.  

The draperies are a solid bronze color so they don't compete too much with the kitchen fabric, but I did throw in a hint of pattern with the blue greek key banding on the edges of the drapes. (squint hard and you might see the color and pattern in the picture!)

 Here are the before pics, although the room was painted Sienna Clay by this point, so I don't have the original yellow walls to show you. 

Here are the after shots: