Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Tracey Rapisardi

As much as I love modern, vibrant homes, I cannot help but adore cottage chic homes full of pretty pastels. Designer, stylist and retail store owner Tracey Rapisardi is surely an inspiration when it comes to beach style and cottage living. Check out this post I put together last October for even more beautiful rooms designed by Tracey. Images via Coastal Living.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Basement Blues

On Friday, Rachel of Hue posted a slew of fantastic before-and-after images of basements. They were all very inspirational, but this "after" was my favorite. It's such a pretty, yet entirely functional space. Love all the colors! You must check out the before here to really appreciate the change too!

Saturday, April 4, 2009


Oh Darn!! :) Running a thrifty home means making do with what is at hand (or foot :) I actually went to the fabric store while in town to get some darning thread to mend hubbies white socks and was shocked they didn't sell any ... I then asked for cotton floss instead (which they had an abundance). The store worker said I was the 10th person in the last few weeks asking for darning thread. Seems that more people are making do with less and fixing rather than tossing. If you've never darned a sock, give it a try. You can 'google' how to darn I'm sure*. I find it rather therapeutic and rewarding to mend. If you don't own a darning egg, you can use a round ended light bulb to stick in the sock.

[*This only means I'm too thrifty with my time and don't find it necessary to make a darning tutorial when you can easily find one on-line such as here, and here. I'm also too time spent to go dig through our family photo albums to find the one of my daughter Elizabeth ceremoniously receiving her great grandmother's wooden darning egg that was given to her in the early 1900's and used to darn the socks of eleven children and those of her farmer husband.]

photo credit here