Though I’d give all you fashionable hip people a heads up re: CB2’s The Selby Is In Your Place contest, which ends on September 15. It’s easy to enter. Just submit three photos of your most creative space, then hustle for as many votes as you can. The grand prize is $10,000 in cool CB2 merchandise and a private photo shoot by Todd Selby. Ooh la la.

Am I uploading shots of my own place? No. My fave entry? I like this interior submitted by Joel and Ashley, a husband-and-wife team with three cats, a lot of plants, and a well seasoned kitchen (whatever that means) who rock hard when it comes to graphic design, illustration, and photography. For real, I am a huge fan of their company, This Paper Ship, for invites of all kinds, wedding logs, wedding photography, and so on. If you like it, too, throw a vote their way here.

I’m tickled pink to announce that the winner of the Dabney Lee At Home customizable monogram desk calendar is the delightful Dale of Light Brown Hare! Congrats, Dale! I and someone from Dabney Lee will be in touch soon to chat about options and shipping.

Gosh, I feel like I haven’t had a giveaway at Manolo for the Home in forever! That’s why I’m especially grateful to the lovely people at Dabney Lee At Home for agreeing to partner with me to host my latest giveaway. For those whose memories are short, I gushed about Dabney Lee At Home a while back in a post that featured a ton of images of their totally sweet home accessories. For real, if you love bright, saturated, and cheerful colors in cute patterns, then you can’t help but love Dabney Lee At Home. There are gorgeous bar trays, napkins, picture frames, ice buckets, salt & pepper shakers, and my fave, the catch all (which is fab for people like me who want someplace to put stuff before it’s put all the way away). Dabney Lee At Home also has beautiful desk calendars, which is what you can win today!

Dabney Lee At Home is offering Manolo for the Home readers a chance to win one of their customizable monogram desk calendars that add 12 months of style to your office! Each month has a fabulous design on the back so you can frame them to add instant sparkle to your office walls, and you can start the calendar at any month you like. Personally, I love them, and wish I could just fix the contest so I win! But I won’t, of course, since I heart you too, too much for that.

To enter to win, visit Dabney Lee At Home and leave a comment on this post telling me which of Dabney Lee’s amazing home accessories you like best. Easy! And for additional entries, do any of the following (and leave a comment for each):

1. You can score one additional entry when you add Manolo for the Home to your blogroll or let me know Manolo for the Home is already on your blogroll so I can link back to you.

2. Or score a whopping three additional entries when you tweet this giveaway or post about it on your own blog!

This giveaway will end at 11:59 p.m. EST on Sunday, June 20, and the winner – chosen via your friend and mine, the trusty random number generator – will be announced the following Monday. Good luck!

Oh. Em. Gee. Apparently House Beautiful celebrated their blue issue by scattering a bunch of absolutely divine blue chairs around Manhattan. It was more than a pictorial — it was a game of finders keepers, with a bunch of really lucky finders. Imagine walking home from the subway and seeing one of these:

I am so damn jealous of the person who just stumbled upon a beautiful blue Eames chair and took it home! (Maybe I can have this, instead?)

Manolo for the Home would like to offer up a big congrats to kt who is the winner — finally — of our vintage-print nursery cards giveaway! Stay tuned for more contests in the not-too-distant future!

I wanted to let everyone know that I’ll be announcing the winner of the recent contest a bit later today — things have been kind of nuts here (work / baby / blogs / etc.) and I’ve gotten a little behind. Sorry for the delay, and thank you for your patience!

Those of us with babies, who are expecting babies, or just have a baby-like sensibility when it comes to decorating have probably spent at least some time contemplating what exactly makes a beautiful nursery. Is it chic and modern nursery furniture? Adorable themes, like circus animals or life under the sea? Or is it the decorations themselves? I like to think you can do a lot with accent decor in the nursery, particularly seeing as how in five or seven or nine year’s time that bouncing baby is going to think of themselves as way too mature for cartoon representations of marine life.

What can you do, right? I suppose you can try to lean as much as possible toward timelessness by choosing nursery decor that isn’t too babyish. Think vintage drawings rather than modern cartoon characters. Right now I’m loving nursery cards from Traditional Toys — they’re perfect for baby’s room but classic enough to make it easy to find a place for them when Little Johnny and Jenny decide they’re just too grown up for that sort of thing.

The cards, which come ready to hang with coordinating organza ribbons feature the artwork of Jessie Willcox Smith, who enlarged the appreciation of children in American popular culture by her enormously sympathetic representations, Maud Humphrey, one of the most popular Victorian illustrators in America and an early suffragette, and Johnny Gruelle, creator of Raggedy Ann.

Like them? They could be yours! To win a set of these very pretty cards for your nursery (or hallway or bathroom or bedroom) leave a comment on this post describing either 1) the origins of your name and why your parents chose it or 2) the origins of your child’s name and why you chose it. On Monday, November 23 at noon EST, I’ll use the trusty random number generator to pick a winner. Good luck!

…Carla, who suggested we feature “more articles on how to use common household items for other things!” I e-mailed you, Carla, but if my correspondence was erroneously channeled into your spam box, get in touch with me at Never.teh.Bride@gmail.com as soon as you can.

Congrats! And enjoy!