By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
Connie Henderson created Amber’s Garden Ready-to-Plant Gardens because her daughter, Amber, loved to garden with her.  Being a parent to small children myself, I love to garden with them also, but the concept of spreading the seeds around evenly is lost on them.  Usually we get a clump of little sprouts and the rest void of growth.
Connie came up with this great idea of threading burlap mats with seeds.  The whole burlap mat is placed on a layer of dirt and then covered with dirt.  Each mat shows what you are planting and where.  There [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
Annie Haven realized that there was an interest in her horse and cow manure from local vegetable farmers and hobby gardeners. As we all know, Gardening 101 teaches us that the best fertilizers for the garden is manure. Haven’s manure became so popular is because all their livestock are fed natural grass, free of antibiotics, growth hormones and pesticides.
So, Annie came up with the idea of creating a new, easy, less smelly, less messy way of spreading manure: her unique Manure Tea Bags (NOT for drinking) which use the manure from her livestock (even the [...]

By Audrey van Petegem, Senior Editor
Living in California it is sometimes hard to tell the difference between seasons. So, it was my internal time clock that told me to start dusting off the winter gloom and bring in some summer cheer.  As I looked around my house I was not feeling very inspired. Time to call a girlfriend and head to Ikea. No surprise that Bernadette and I discovered lots of inexpensive items to update and refresh our living spaces.  I was thrilled to find these:
For the Outdoors
Godis Mix Glasses – These are the cutest glasses that [...]

Spring is finally, finally in the air. It’s going to be in the 70’s here this week. Ah, visions of budding foliage and crocuses and flowers at the farmer’s market. Any day now, any day…
I found a few fun gadgets to could not make flower arranging any simpler. I’ll be ready.
The Perfect Arrangers are nifty little contraptions that nestle the stems of the flowers and decorative foliage in any position that you want. It’s then as easy to create a minimalist arrangement as a very plush one. The Perfect Arrangers come in three sizes and can be purchased here. There’s [...]

I’ve seen Laurie Pollpeter Eskenazi’s ceramics at a couple of art fairs in the Chicago area and find her work completely charming. Given the time of year, I wanted to mention her ceramic hearts as perfect Valentine’s Day gifts. Whimsical, colorful and utterly delightful representations of the Valentine’s Day symbol. And, as a décor item to be displayed in permanence, just one of Laurie’s colorful ceramic hearts can exude the expression of lovely feelings all year round.
You can read about Laurie Pollpeter Eskenazi’s training as an artist here and shop for her ceramic hearts (and her other inspired ceramic work) [...]

I just bought the cutest paper placements by Cake Vintage over the weekend.  I got them as a hostess gift, but I really want to keep them for myself. The placemats come in a large pad of 50 pages (just like the construction paper pads) featuring the hand-drawn illustration of a classic (vintage!) place setting. I love their fun tongue-in-cheek elegance: feel like you totally belong to the born-with-a-silver- spoon-in-your-mouth set while serving mac ‘n cheese. I’m told that kids love drawing on these too, so this is actually a great gift idea for the whole family. The pad of [...]

So, my husband and my kids, and certain friends are quite certain that I have a “thing”, that I am obsessed, fixated on… vacuum cleaners. The stick, cordless, kind of vacuum. I know. So NOT succulent. “But if they made one that worked…” is my defense.
And, I know that I’m not the only one. While at the vet’s office the other day, I spotted one the assistant’s emerging from a consultation room with her little stick vac. I had to ask about it. The whole front office crew got in on the conversation or, shall I say, the lament. We [...]

Like with all my very favorite finds, I stumbled upon One Thread Fair Trade™ by “accident”. If you can call meeting someone through Twitter an accident. Still, right now I am thrilled to be sharing the beautiful product and story of Mayura Kona, the creator of One Thread Fair Trade™. Mayura is a designer at heart (she has a BA in Design/Media Arts from UCLA) and a business person by “obligation” (MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management). Her education is what has enabled her to design her gorgeous product while creating a meaningful enterprise that would improve the [...]

I came across Mandy Budan’s paintings quite randomly through one of my endless web surfing sessions. That particular session ended right there and then as her work stopped me in my tracks.
The first thing I noticed was the familiar landscape. Mandy hails from Ontario, just a few hours away from my hometown of Montreal. Her collection of shapes and colors perfectly captures the indigenous landscape. I recognized it immediately and delighted in her visual interpretation of the local fauna.
Then, her joyful and captivating use of color. Her colors blend, contrast, clash and harmonize. And while, objectively, they often don’t relate [...]

We’re moving the family to Chicago. I’m very excited, but have only been there twice and am entirely confounded by the endless neighborhoods (Las Vegas doesn’t really have “neighborhoods”. We have walled communities and shopping centers!). So I went looking for a map that would give me such a reference. Not just streets and municipalities, but actual neighborhoods by name. My – arduous! – search lead me to an article on PrairieMod (If you love Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie Style, you’ll love this blog) giving me ex.act.ly what I had been looking for: Ork Posters by Jennifer [...]