In 1991 the United States attempted to undermine illegal drug production in Andean countries by boosting legal industries, like flower growing, with duty-free imports. Roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, and orchids began to be shipped north—and U.S. flower farming was hit hard.

The trade agreement has since expired, and U.S. floriculture is bouncing back. Consumers are being encouraged to select local flowers by groups like Slow Flowers, founded by writer Debra Prinzing, and Certified American Grown, which allows farmers to label their blooms as U.S.A. grown.

“The more awareness the American consumer has about where flowers come from, the better for all of us,” says Andrea Gagnon, a flower farmer in Gainesville, Virginia. “It’s just like asking, Is this a local tomato for my BLT? Now people can ask, Oh, is this a local dahlia?”

Read more at National Geographic.

Bedtime treats sound good in theory: You can cozy up with your crew, bowls of ice cream in hand, watching a movie. But a healthy snack—rather than a sweet fave—is more likely to help your child sleep soundly.

“While he snoozes, his bones are growing and his brain is processing all that he learned during the day,” explains Nancy Z. Farrell, R.D.N., a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. “Nutritious foods help foster good sleep patterns.”

The old advice about having a warm glass of milk before bed may have some truth to it. Dairy contains tryptophan, which studies have shown can increase serotonin, the calming chemical that induces sleepiness.

Read more at Parents magazine.

Prevention is the best medicine with your house, as well as your body. “We go for our annual checkups to our doctor and dentist, so why not do it for our home?” says Mike Holmes, host of HGTV’s “Holmes on Homes.”

Annual maintenance will help prevent you from having to make an avoidable, costly repair, he says. For a comprehensive list of important annual maintenance tasks, we consulted with Holmes and other home-maintenance, cleaning and organizing experts. Stick to this basic list each month and your house will run like a machine.

JANUARY

●Clean kitchen light fixtures. Becky Rapinchuk, author of “Simply Clean: The Proven Method for Keeping Your Home Organized, Clean, and Beautiful in Just 10 Minutes a Day,” recommends using a microfiber cloth or duster on glass shades and fixtures.

●Declutter. Examine every room and try to get at least three bags of stuff out of the house, says Jill Nystul of the lifestyle blog One Good Thing by Jillee.

Read more at The Washington Post.

“Richard Powers has re-photographed the houses. He zooms in on the living room of Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Conn., where it seems you might reach out and touch the leather on the black Barcelona chairs, and he transports us to the quiet glade outside the Eames House in the hills of Los Angeles, the tree trunks warm with happy sunbeams. Each study is accompanied by floor plans and a friendly full-page essay by Bradbury. It’s clear that author and photographer love these houses in the way that the architects and owners did.

These architectural representatives show how houses — just like music and literature — reflect changes in the cultural winds and often make those winds blow faster. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the Victorian idea that buildings should be beautiful, with lots of windows and ornate, mass-produced architectural trim, was on its way out. In came the Arts and Crafts movement, which prioritized function and handmade craftsmanship.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

Customize your heart out with these pretty and smart ideas from a girl's room. 

Cute Cubed
As Kimberly proves, storage units can have as much personality as the rest of a room's decor—just fill them with fun canvas bins in colors that complement. 
$10 per bin; landofnod.com

Art Smart
Don't have the right software to create custom art? No Problem. Use CanvasPop's Word Art Maker and choose canvas size, font, style, and shapes—or try one of the many themed templates. Starts at $105. canvaspop.com

Social Butterfly
Create your own kaleidoscope of 3-D butterflies with WallPop's Butterflies Are Free wall decals. They come in a mirrored surface, which catches and reflects light on walls, mirrors, picture frames, and more. $11 for a set of five; wallpops.com

In traditional ground-fought wars, the command post behind the lines would often have hot coffee, good food and dry clothes. Was this because the generals were selfish? Or because they deserved it for having made the highest ranks in the military?

No, it was because if the command fell or experienced low morale, the rest of the troops, and indeed the entire war effort, would be in jeopardy. Those leaders making critical decisions needed to be at their best.

Now think of that in terms of parenting. Parents are the generals of their household. How do you, in particular those who stay at home with children, feel day after day, hour after hour, with no real break in sight? Is your coffee hot and clothing dry? Probably not.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Along with their ability to be custom cut to fit, carpet tiles offer a unique advantage over broadloom carpet: Stained and snagged modules can be replaced without anyone being the wiser. “I love that you can … replace tiles that may become damaged,” says Gunnar Larson, a senior interior designer with Homepolish in Brooklyn, N.Y., who frequently specifies carpet tiles for high-traffic entryways and walkways.

Carpet tile currently accounts for about 25 to 30 percent of carpets installed today, according to Spectra Contract Flooring, and is suited for projects on a time crunch since tiles do not require a separate carpet pad. Below are the qualities Fogel and Larson look for in a good tile, both on and off the spec sheet.

Certifications
NSF/ANSI 140 Sustainability Assessment for Carpet recognizes commercial carpets and rugs with a silver, gold, or platinum status depending on their evaluation by NSF International and ratings in six categories: public health and environment, energy-efficiency, bio-based content and materials, manufacturing, reclamation and end-of-life management, and innovation. Fogel also looks for the Carpet and Rug Institute’s Green Label Plus, which, she says, “recognizes carpets, backings, and adhesives with low VOCs.”

Also called modular carpet or carpet squares, tiles can help unify otherwise disparate programmatic areas. Gensler senior interior designer and associate Megan Fogel, based in Atlanta, recently specified carpet tiles for the new global headquarters of financial technology giant NCR Corp. “Since this is a campus, there are various … areas that call for a different look and feel of carpet,” she says. “We stuck primarily with carpet tiles for flexibility and durability.”

Read more at Architect.

Recently, Google opened its own coffee shop on its campus in Mountainview, Calif. Branded the Coffee Lab, its décor is reminiscent of a Starbucks, with warm wood paneling, plush upholstered seating and chalkboards that advertise daily specials and upcoming live music. This action is not headline news— especially when you consider how many corporate campuses have coffee shops on location. But it’s a signal that the landscape of workplaces is changing.

The Coffee Lab is evidence of how organizations are trying to provide employees with access to environments that offer some of the relaxed amenities of home, dubbed the “first place” by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, and the energy of a corner coffee shop—an example of a “third place.” Leading organizations are blending these concepts at work, the “second place.” “Google’s solution provides workers with the vibe they are craving from the workplace,” says Frank Graziano, manager of advanced applications at Steelcase, who recently visited the new café at Google. “The Coffee Lab becomes a third place on campus, literally. This kind of place is a neutral territory. If you want to meet with outside vendors or partners, it’s like a front porch to the campus.”

More than just a workplace fad, the merger of first- and third-place attributes signals a long-term change in the way work is happening around the world. During the last few years, work has become dramatically more intense. Business tasks today are more varied and more challenging, and in some countries workers are increasingly mobile and distributed. Some organizations embrace the idea of employees working in a coffee shop or other third place for a variety of reasons. Employees may need places where they can relax or work undisturbed. Or organizations may simply want to manage their real estate costs by having fewer bodies in the office. Other organizations feel strongly that people need to be together in the workplace in order to innovate and do their best work. And in many countries, the culture or the availability of “third places” simply does not support a mass exodus from the primary workplace. Regardless, employees in every organization are working longer and harder, and they need a physical environment that not only supports them, but also re-energizes and inspires them.

More at 360 Magazine. 

A beach cabin on an island in the San Juans was charming in all the wrong ways when a family from Seattle discovered it, tucked amid wild cherry and overgrown evergreen trees. To start with, there were the walls, made of 2x3 studs without any insulation. Then there was the roof that had to go, the numerous openings for critters, the lack of heating ... the list went on. 

"It was in the right location, it had a form that was fairly workable, but it needed a lot of work," says John Hoedemaker, managing partner of Schuchart/Dow, the builders who handled the renovation along with interior designers Rocky Rochon and architect Stephan Sullivan. The whole team instantly saw the potential. 

The cabin serves as "the front door," as Rochon calls it, to a nearly 200-acre property that was formerly an 1890s homestead and, later, a summer resort. As such, the property includes a scattering of additional buildings as well as a main house. But it's this cabin, which likely dates to the '20s or '30s, that visitors see today when they land by seaplane in a private inlet in front of the building. 

Read more at Gray magazine. 

With cute, furry friends come hairy (and sometimes icky) situations. Clean them up with these products.

Read more at a newsstand near you.

For homeowners with champagne taste and a beer budget (and isn’t that most of us?), it’s time to take another look at tile. Whereas a full kitchen remodel might set you back a few years of savings, a smart mini rehab might involve only painting cabinets, replacing appliances and installing a stunning tile backsplash or flooring. “Tile is an easier splurge,” says designer Kelly Emerson of Maryland’s Aidan Design. “Tile is hundreds of dollars; very rarely is it thousands of dollars.”

And thankfully, tile trends tend to hang around for a while, so you can feel good about getting your money’s worth. Today, they reflect larger design trends — such as graphic pattern — as well as advanced technology, which is letting individual tiles get bigger and thinner without compromising their strength. We spoke with Emerson, Samantha Klickna of Case Design/Remodeling and DeeDee Gundberg, director of product development for Ann Sacks, to determine which trends are worth following.

Read more at The Washington Post. 

India has been straining for years to reach an ambitious goal of educating all of its children, but is still struggling with low engagement in the classroom and a high dropout rate. Resources and ideas from countries with similar goals could help.

Haffizul and Abdul Rehman, brothers, rise from their shared bed in New Delhi, India, brush their teeth over a drain in the floor, and wake themselves up with a splash of water from a water barrel. They are getting ready to go to school.

This moment in these Indian boys’ morning—readying for the day—is something their parents and their parents before them experienced. The type of day that follows, however, is something entirely new. Instead of going to work as a shopkeeper like their dad, or as a tailor like their mom, the boys, ages 12 and 14, are suiting up for a day at the Lord Krishna Public School. They are preparing for a different life in a different world.

India’s government is undergoing a massive and admirable effort to educate every last one of its children, having implemented 11 five-year plans that touch on education. But the hurdles here are many: infrastructure is lacking, and sometimes so are school bags, notebooks and food for lunch. Many children who attend school are the first in their families to do so. Often parents don’t understand the value of completing school or how to support their children, sometimes taking them to their home village for months at a time. These students often fall behind. Ultimately, India still faces the reality in which four percent of children never start school, 58 percent of children don’t complete primary school, and 90 percent of children don’t complete their secondary schooling.

Read more at 360 Magazine. 

One turn-of-the-century barn, like so many of its kind in Eastern Washington, had become a relic of its former farming days, nestling lower and lower into the ground each year as it fell into disrepair. The valley surrounding the structure was dotted with abandoned farming equipment and tools, all rusting and sinking into the land right beside it. 

"The barn was one of those neglected agricultural buildings you see a lot of when you're driving along I-90 on the other side of the state," says Eric Walter, an architect and principal with MW Works Architecture. + Design, the Seattle firm tapped to transform the barn into a residence. "They're just ghosts of the barns that they were."

Thanks to a united vision between Walter, the homeowners, and interior designer Nelleen Berlin to save the barn instead of demo it--an arguably easier route--the building still stands today, a preserved piece of history in Dryden, Washington.

Read more at Gray. 

I am a journalist. When I sit down to work, whether I'm pitching an an idea to a new magazine or writing an article for a favorite editor, I feel that familiar fog of inadequacy settle in. Then, my mind travels back to my senior year, and I see my English professor, Patricia Skarda stare me down from behind her desk in Seelye Hall (the line of students outside her door finally gone on a late midwinter afternoon), and I hear her ask: "Lindsey, what do you think?"

Miss Skarda, as she preferred to be called, was advising my honors thesis on the British author Thomas Hardy, and we were stuck--mainly because I kept coming back to her with ideas by other scholars. I kept trying to provide the right answer, but Professor Skarda wanted me to try out a new answer. As she pressed this questions, with the twilight hours pushing pink and purple across the sky behind her corner office, I was perfectly speechless.

Over 10 years of writing since, I've found that one of the most important tools I need is a backbone strong enough to listen to criticism, and strong enough to keep on going. I need to be able to face the daily rejection of editors who don't like my story ideas or copy editors who cut my favorite words. More important than my laptop or cellphone is my belief that I have something worth saying. This is the kind of lasting gift that the best of professors can give. Pat gave it to me tied with a ribbon.

As her student, I strove to prove myself worth of her already high estimation of me. I left my declared, half-done biology major to keep taking classes from her and from the other "great minds" she pointed me to. After I presented my senior thesis, she presented me with chilled Champagne at her house next to campus. A couple of years later, I moved across the country to take a shot at writing for a national publication: I ultimately became the assistant managing editor for Architect magazine and then the monthly shopping columnist for The Washington Post. She taught me how to network. She celebrated every internship and job and article I shared with her. She always knew I could do it, even when I didn't. 

Read more at the Smith Alumnae Quarterly.

Is the art room the new playroom? It would be if Megan Schiller of Mill Valley, Calif., had her way. After time spent in early childhood education, and then experience running her own children’s art studio, Schiller now helps parents design mini art studios for their kids in their homes. She calls her business “The Art Pantry” because she believes that it’s just as important for kids to have room to do art as it is to have room to store and make food. “It’s about letting kids develop a creative confidence at a young age,” she says. Schiller wants to help all families have a dedicated creative space, even if it’s only a drawer in the kitchen for storing markers and crayons. “It’s a long process and it takes time but it’s really worth it,” she says. We talked to Schiller, whose own daughters are now 7 and 4, about the why’s and how’s of an in-home art corner and where she goes for creative inspiration.

Q: Why is it important for kids to do art?

A: It’s about letting kids develop a creative confidence at a young age. They don’t have to have a passion for the arts … it can develop into growing up and using power tools. It’s about knowing how to use supplies and take them into their life. For example, if they’re playing with their toys and they want to have a rocket ship, they can go and build one. It’s not about the product and what it looks like in the end; it’s about letting them touch things and get messy. A lot of kids like to squeeze a whole glue bottle out because they’re learning to use their muscles. I like to let them do that, because it teaches them what’s too much glue. If they’re allowed to explore, then they learn why, and that will carry with them as they get older.

Q: Why is it important to have easy access to art?

A: In general, if kids have access to supplies, then they can develop confidence—though, I don’t let a 2-year-old have complete access to paint and things. If kids always have to ask permission, they won’t feel confident and they might not use the supplies very much. If supplies are accessible but disorganized, they might not use them either. In a dedicated space, with easy access, art becomes a part of their life. Imagine if kids had to ask permission to play with a stuffed animal—that would change the way that they play.

Read more at The Washington Post.

Here’s a little secret that all parents know: When you’re flying on a plane and there’s an inconsolable baby or running-amok toddler, the mom or the dad of that child is far more stressed out than any annoyed passenger. (Or they should be!) Controlling children in a confined space and keeping them quiet for hours is not for the faint of heart.

Before my first-born was a year old, I flew with him alone on an airplane eight times to three different states while my husband was deployed to Afghanistan for nine months. Then, my baby became a toddler, I had another baby, and we did a lot more flying for a temp job in Vancouver, B.C.; a move from Washington, D.C., to Milwaukee; and more visits to family and friends. I’ll never forget one of those flights from the East Coast to the West Coast when we had a layover in San Francisco and my husband and I seriously contemplated renting a car and driving the rest of the way to Seattle. It was that bad.

But my message is not doom and gloom. Flying with kids can be done! Here’s how.

Know that every flight is different. Each time we fly, my kids are a bit older and in a different developmental stage. You can’t just assume that what worked last time will work again — you have to game-plan again. Keep the big picture in mind when planning with two words: safety and sanity.

Book flights during the day. You might think that a red-eye is a good idea because your children will sleep. The truth is that it’s much more likely they’ll stay awake, disturb the sleeping passengers and then be wired the next day.

Whenever possible, buy a seat for your child if they’re mobile. Babies can sleep great in baby wraps. When they’re older, it’s so much easier on everyone if you can strap them into car seats they’re already familiar with. And make sure any lap-sit child gets boarding passes upon check-in to avoid trouble at the gate.

Read more at The Washington Post.

When a pair of civic artists looked for a durable material for a mural that would be the heart of a brand-new library in the United States’ Midwest, the answer was CeramicSteel. The artists, Shane Allbritton and Norman Lee of RE:site in Houston, Texas, wanted to illustrate an encyclopedia’s wealth of images in 331 accordion-like panels, and knew from previous projects that the material’s UV-resistant surface and specialized printing process would keep their work vivid and long-lasting. The library in Brooklyn Park, outside of metropolitan Minneapolis, is the latest new build that the Hennepin County Library system undertook in its updating, and is more than double the size of the 40-year-old building it replaced—at 39,000 gross square feet. The exterior of the building is made with timeless materials: slate, zinc metal panels, and cedar wood siding. The one-story building has large clerestory windows to maximize the light inside throughout the long Minnesota winters, which made it imperative that the interior materials be timeless as well. “We needed a material that was really durable in harsh sunlight,” Lee says, as that streaming light would hit the mural every day for hours.

Read more at Polyvision. 

In 1939, in the dry, desert foothills of the McDowell Mountain Range of Scottsdale, Ariz., a young man asked an older man for a job. The young man, a 22-year-old named Pedro E. Guerrero, was trying to start a career as a photographer. The older man, at 72, was Frank Lloyd Wright. At the time, Guerrero lacked a degree in photography and was unaware of Wright's celebrity-architect status—he only knew that Wright was a man building a house in the desert (the house, of course, was Taliesin West). "I had no idea who this man was," he says. "If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone." It was perhaps this innocence that appealed to Wright and led to Guerrero's career as the architect's preferred photographer. Guerrero went on to photograph the work of Eero Saarinen, Marcel Breuer, Philip Johnson, and Alexander Calder. But, he now says, “I don’t imagine that anything could be better than working with Wright.” A sweeping exhibition of Guerrero’s career, “Photographs of Modern Life,” opens today at the Julius Shulman Institute at the Woodbury University School of Architecture in southern California. Guerrero, now 95, shared with us his stories of being Wright’s trusted photographer and friend.

Did you find photography or did photography find you? 
I left home [Casa Grande, Ariz.] on my 20th birthday, seeking a better opportunity besides being a bilingual clerk or something like that. I went to Los Angeles, which I thought was a big enough town for a squat little man. I had a brother that was quite talented in art. He attended the Art Center School [now the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena]. I was drawn to L.A. because he was there. I thought that perhaps I should study art too, although I didn’t have any talent. And then I got there, and they told me that the art courses had filled, and rather than go back home, I asked them what else I could take. I said, “I’d like to investigate photography.” I got a camera, developed my first roll of time, made my first print, and fell absolutely in love.

Tell us again that famous story of meeting Frank Lloyd Wright. 
There’s a great ideal of what an architect should look like. But when I saw him he was wearing a white polo shirt, khaki shorts, white athletic socks, and open-toed sandals, which wasn’t very impressive to me—except that he had a porkpie hat and a cane, which gave him a certain amount of elegance. He was waving good-bye to guests that were just leaving, and he looked out and said, ‘Who are you?’ I said, “My name is Pedro E. Guerrero and I’m a photographer.” I had never introduced myself as “Pedro E. Guerrero, a photographer” before, because I had never made a nickel from it; I had never had an assignment. I showed him the most embarrassing bunch of photographs.

He said, “What are you doing now?” I said, “I’m looking for work.” So he said, “Well, would you like to work for us?” This is 15 minutes after our first meeting, by the way. I didn’t know what “working for us” meant, but I said, “Yes, I’ll work for you.” He said, “You can start right now if you want to.” Of course, I hadn’t taken a cab or anything, but I was delighted to have the job. I wound my way back through the desert through drywashers ... and chaparrals until I got home again and announced to my family that I had a job for an unbelievable 72-year-old man who was building a house out in the desert out of sand and rocks and cement. That was the beginning.

Read more at Architect magazine.

We may think we spend most of our time in the kitchen cooking or in the family room watching TV. But the truth is, we spend one-third of our lives ­sleeping — so the bedroom wins. And yet, this is not where our decorating dollars go.

“A lot of people want their bedroom to have personality,” says Rebecca Atwood, a Brooklyn textile designer, “but they’re not sure what to do.” If your bedroom is basic but you want beautiful, Atwood and Annie Elliott, a paint-color pro and owner of Bossy Color in Washington, have some ideas to revive it.

The first might be the hardest: Clear out the clutter. Organize clothes and find somewhere else to store the gift wrap. “The surface clutter is a huge problem for all of us,” Elliott says.

Think through color after that, and throw convention out the door. After all, this is the room that you start and end the day with. If a room is large, go with a light color, Elliott says, and if it is small, embrace it with a dark, cozy selection.

Then look to subtle, relaxing patterns — think watercolors, dots, embroidery. “An injection of pattern can enliven any space,” Atwood writes in her new book, “Living With Pattern: Color, Texture and Print at Home.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

“Fall is in full swing, and paint companies are dropping their color forecasts for the coming year. Recently, Pittsburgh-based paint company PPG Industries released a three-color palette of a warm beige, a saturated ginger orange and a muted turquoise as predicted trends for next year. Behr also chose a palette of warm neutrals and gentle hues, among others, for 2021. Sherwin-Williams named a warm dark brown called Urbane Bronze as its 2021 Color of the Year. Benjamin Moore will name its 2021 Color of the Year on Oct. 14.

It’s a fun time to choose one of these trendy colors to make a statement with a powder-room update or a bold accent wall. Or, if it’s your style, go wild with the color of the year in a living area or bedroom.”

Read more at The Washington Post.

When cathedral Mason Foreman Joe Alonso can’t sleep at night, he counts. One, two, courses of broken limestone per intermediate pinnacle. Eight pinnacles. Which makes 16 damaged pieces of stone that need to be replaced on the central tower of the Washington National Cathedral. But this counting just adds to Alonso’s restlessness as he remembers: To get to those 16 broken pieces, he will need to remove a total of 64 pieces of heavy, carved, bonded, unbroken stone on top of them.

And when Alonso goes to work, more numbers: 300 feet tall; 150,000 tons of stone; 83,000 square feet; 517 feet and 8 inches long; sixth-largest Gothic cathedral in the world. He tallies the damage done by the August 2011 earthquake and sees the future construction zone. He wonders where to position the cranes, thinks about how many workers he’ll need. “All these numbers are swirling around my head,” Alonso says.

Washington National Cathedral—formally, the Cathedral Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul—is a building with a history as old as Washington, D.C., itself. Pierre Charles L’Enfant first mentioned “a church for national purposes” as part of his 1791 plan for the nation’s capital. The Right Reverend Henry Yates Satterlee secured an initial 30 acres on Mount Saint Alban—between Georgetown and what is now Tenleytown—in 1898. Workmen laid the first stone in the presence of President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907, and 83 years to the day later, Alonso was on hand to help set the last stone on the southwest tower, kissing the finial after it was in place.

With the eight-decade construction project complete, Alonso turned to maintenance. Since the oldest parts of the building were more than 80 years old, there was much to do: masonry repointing, cleaning water-damaged stones, rebuilding the main organ. But last year, a 5.8-magnitude earthquake rumbled the East Coast from Georgia to Maine, with an epicenter only 85 miles south of the capital. The quake shook Washington and its monuments, and the mass of the sanctuary's stone was such that though the building remained structurally stable, the seismic energy pulsed up to the spires and pinnacles, rattling them like lids on steaming teakettles. In just 20 to 30 seconds the cathedral’s preservation priorities were upended completely. “From 1991 to August 23, 2011, 1:51 p.m., we spent 20 years maintaining and upkeeping,” Alonso says. “And now we’re back to construction.”

Read more at The National Trust for Historic Places.

If it’s something you’re going to look at and touch every day, you want it to be perfect. Case in point: the water glass. Yet finding one with the right weight, shape and height can be a challenge, says Peter Miller, a cookbook author and owner of a Seattle-based architectural bookstore. “There are three main qualities for a good water glass: looks, durability and performance,” he says. “Two out of three is good. Three out of three is rare.” To find the best, we asked five experts what they use to get their daily dose of H2O.

“Crate & Barrel’s Working Glasses are super-durable, well priced and come in a variety of sizes,” Virginia interior designer Lauren Liess says ($2-$4, crateandbarrel.com). “I’ve used them in vacation homes because they’re almost indestructible.” Bonus: Buy lids if you want to seal in smoothies and snacks.

What does a chef use at home? Cathal Armstrong, a best Mid-Atlantic chef nominee by the James Beard Foundation and owner of Restaurant Eve, uses Duralex’s nearly indestructible Picardie Tumblers ($27 for a set of six 11-ounce glasses, surlatable.com). “They’re stackable, lightweight and more comfortable to hold than anything else,” he says. “Just a perfectly contoured glass.”

Read more at The Washington Post. 

To fit a homeowner’s big, bold statement pieces into her new Seattle Tudor revival required some visual sleight of hand by designer Lisa Staton.

Since the home had so much character, the challenge was preventing the transitional and modern Scandinavian furniture from competing with the beamed ceilings, arched doorways, elaborate window and door trim, angled nooks and arched inset windows.

To start, an alabaster white was painted inside and out. The architecture of the interiors now recede enough into the background to allow for some design sass, yet still maintain the character of the 86-year-old house. The design team also lightened up the color of the oak floors with a clear, natural coat to help it recede.

In the living room a brand-new custom soapstone fireplace mantle changed the scale of the room enough to allow for the deep-blue Italian sectional and French antique chairs. “Creating the bold, modern, but elegant and simple fireplace was the key and allowed the large-scale furniture to feel correct in proportion and visual strength,” the designer says of the decision.

Read more at Luxe Magazine.