Designer Peter White remembers his dad bringing mom a delish homemade breakfast in bed and the crystal bud vase toppling over into the pancakes. Quelle horreur! In response to the memory, White whipped up this charming breakfast in bed tray with a built-in bud vase. The price tag is a little high at $99, but breakfast is cheap, right? How do you show mom you really care with an inexpensive omelet if not by serving it on an absurdly overpriced breakfast in bed tray?

Note: If the above link doesn’t work, look this plastic tray up on TWEAK directly. For some reason, it’s labeled in the url as “chalkboard-stickers.”

Some mornings are just plain crap. Now you can have a teacup that reflects the crappy mood that was caused by a crappy morning that is probably foreshadowing a crappy day.

And if a crap teacup isn’t making you feel any better, perhaps a teacup featuring a rather snarky haiku that illustrates perfectly just how much selflessness you’re willing to exhibit today. Tea makes a man mean? Sometimes!

HINT: DIY it with a pretty tea cup and ceramic markers

I have no clue how or wear to buy these – other than ‘in Thailand’ and ‘using Thailand money’ or here – but the whole collection is just too cute not to share. It’s Propaganda’s Use Me line, featuring dishware, laundry stuff, bags, and other odds and ends that are ready to do your bidding with a smile.

Adorable! I’m in love!

Dabney Lee Woglom isn’t afraid to own up to her preppiness, and she makes no secret of her love of luxurious trinkets for the home. And I guess I love her? She’s got that eye for colors and patterns that I envy. Bad news: I can’t steal her flair. Good news: I (and you) can buy her stuff.

Woglom’s line of bold and bright accessories for house and apartment can be found at Dabney Lee at Home, her monogram-o-rific online shop. No, really – if what floats your boat involves lucite, sweet patterns, or paper, then she’s the lady you need to look into.

Lucite is a big part of her wares, mainly because you can use it like a window for displaying colorful paper and photographs. It’s also cool and very modern, not to mention the fact that you can easily work lucite accessories into pretty much any decor.

Woglom’s line of bold and bright accessories for house and apartment can be found at Dabney Lee at Home, her monogram-o-rific online shop. No, really – if what floats your boat involves lucite, sweet patterns, or paper, then she’s the lady you need to look into.

Oh, and here’s the best part: Pretty much everything sold in Dabney Lee at Home is customizable with different colors, patterns, and nameplates. Whether you like simple colors or funky patterns, you’re probably going to see something you like! (I did; I got the salt and pepper shakers, if you were curious.)

How adorable is all this stuff from Ninainvorm? She makes cute and colorful ceramics, screen prints, collages, and more, then sells them in her Etsy store way out in the Netherlands. Shipping is as expensive as you might imagine, but if your goal is to brighten up your environment, perhaps it’s worth it?

She says: “I make these name plates as a custom order for children and grown-up loved ones. I use the most beautiful vintage plates from my large vintage plate collection and then add screenprinted images & cut the letters of the name by hand out of colourful ceramic decal paper. Then the plates are fired in my kiln on a high temperature. The result is a unique, personal, sustainable and very cheerful plate.”

She says: “A beautiful medium-sized (contents: about 0.65 liter or 2/3 mugs) vintage 1960s design teapot, redecorated by me with my screenprinted lots of dots pattern in 6 colors. The vintage teapot is still in a very good condition, only some of the glazing on the handle feels a little bit rough, which isn’t something visible but you can feel it a little when you rub it with your fingers.”

She says: “Each set contains the six different postcards that you see on the pictures. In my other listings you can see detail pictures of the large prints that these postcards are the smaller version of.”

She says: “A beautiful medium-sized (about 7.5″”/18 cm diameter) vintage plate to which I added my screenprinted spirograph image. The plate is quite old, but still in a real good condition. This plate is fired on a high temperature and is therefore fit for daily use or to put it on a wall as wall art.”

As if you couldn’t guess, her life is just as colorful as her creations. See more at
her blog, which is well worth a visit!

Vintage pottery is just plain fun. It’s fun to collect. It’s fun to display. And it’s fun to use, because if it’s going to take up space in your home you might at well enjoy it. Plus, as collectibles go, it’s easy to find and inexpensive to buy (especially on eBay). What’s not to like? You can base an entire room around a cool piece of vintage pottery, especially if the piece has great color or lines.

What’s not to like? You can base an entire room around a cool piece of vintage pottery, especially if the piece has great color or lines.

I’m not advocating smoking, but if you’re looking for ashtrays that don’t scream truck stop, vintage is the way to go.

(more…)

Love her or hate her, Julia Child exerted a great deal of influence over the evolution of American cooking — a book I love, Something From the Oven, touches briefly on just how much. But that sort of history is best left to authors of food tomes and cookery bloggers. What I’m interested in is her kitchen. Want to see it? There’s an amazing reproduction of Julia Child’s kitchen in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. I’d post a picture here, but I’m unsure about the legality of doing so, which means you’ll have to be satisfied with the link above.

Isn’t that a beautiful kitchen? Julia Child’s kitchen was not particularly pretty in the sense that a staged kitchen in House Beautiful is pretty. Rather, it’s a lived in kitchen… a worked in kitchen… a kitchen that is beautiful in its perfect usefulness. The knives, the colanders, the parts for the KitchenAid are all accessible. I somehow imagine that I could walk right into Julia Child’s kitchen and start whipping something up without much trouble. I doubt anyone could say the same for my kitchen, since not much beyond my cast iron pan and my teapot is accessible without digging around in cabinets and drawers. Could someone say the same for your kitchen?

One thing I’m very thankful for on this Thanksgiving Day is all of the readers who stop by to check out what’s new at Manolo for the home and to share their thoughts with me. It’s a privilege to write for all of you, so thanks! And happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the states!

(Photo by Lane & Anne)

Thanksgiving, at least in the States, is less than two weeks away, and for the second year in a row The Beard and I will be serving up dinner here at our very own home. Our extended families will be elsewhere, and we will miss them as we chow down on a Celebration Roast instead of the turkey they’ll be eating. Last year we had a guest, but this year the roster of diners will be limited to ourselves and the baby who can eat just enough real food to enjoy her own Thanksgiving feast.

Our table? Will be simple. We resist the urge to serve up the mashed and stuffing on plates and in bowls embellished with gaudy cartoons of pilgrims and Indigenous Americans. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, though if you were to ask me I’d tactfully suggest steering clear of that whole bushel of iconography. The holidays should not be an excuse to lose one’s sense of good taste.

So what have we got here…

Personalized napkins are awesome, eliminating as they do the need for place cards. Plus, guests can take them home at the end of the meal! Country Living has simple directions for the DIY crowd.

Printing coordinating menus, place cards, wine glass labels, and other paper goods for the table is easy. Just choose a color palette to coordinate with your tablescape and clip art to jazz things up a little. Conversely, sites like Paper & Cake sell print-at-home kits that make printing everything you need for your Thanksgiving table easy-peasy.

Martha Stewart’s Thanksgiving tables range from the fresh and cool to the modern to the downright dowdy, complete with pine cone turkeys. Note that pine cone turkeys are fun for the very young and the very young at heart, but do look silly. Can’t help that.

This table was DwellStudio founder Christiane Lemieux’s American Thanksgiving design, featuring plenty of DwellStudio products, natch. It’s sort of busy and understated at the same time, which isn’t entirely off putting.

Love the pitcher. Like the use of leaves. Love the chairs. Love love love the sunshine! My ideal Thanksgiving would be hosted by someone else (preferably a vegetarian, but I’m not picky) in a sunny and very warm locale. Screw autumn.

Finally, here’s more of what you can do with printable templates from Paper & Cake. Yum!

New purple kitchen cabinets means Never teh Bride is on the prowl for coordinating dinnerware! Yay! Right now I’m digging on dishes, glasses, mugs, and tableware from Rosanna Bowles, creatrix of collections of charming ceramics like so…

Her current offerings include wonderful things like chic black serving trays and cake stands, holiday plates that aren’t covered over with dorky smiling snowmen, eye-catching jet teapots, colorful dessert plates, mugs that feature your initials, pate knives, and more.

Wait, what? I need specific knives just for pate? I think I’ll pass on those, but as for everything else, bring it on.