Around our house, Halloween is right up there with Hanukkah and birthdays so of course we're looking to see what the grande dame of decorating has in store for this spooky season. Martha Stewart's Halloween Central is a great place to fi…
When products claim to make your newborn baby smarter, I can't help to be skeptical. Sure, I want the best for my kids but part of me wonders whether I really need a bunch of special educational toys and other gear to give them the upper…
Of course my child, like yours, is an absolute genius, but even he wasn't able to tell time when he was a newborn. So why get one of this adorable bamboo Baby Owl Clocks for the nursery? How else can you regale your friends with stories …
Telling your child to grab a marker and go scribble on the walls is right up there with asking them to run with scissors. Unless you're talking about Idea Paint , which basically turns any surface into a dry erase board. It's easy to app…
When my boys were babies, I spent a lot of time looking for cool, original things for them -- clothes and bedding and accent pieces for their rooms . But in a strip mall world, that meant a lot of shopping, and no mama has time for that.…
There are a lot of me-too etsy type online marketplaces cropping up these days, though most of them fall a little (or a lot) flat on execution. But 1000 Markets ? So awesome I don't even know where to begin. 1000 Markets is beautiful, it…
My husband has a bit of an obsession with graphic representations of homes, making no effort to hide his loud praise for them when he sees them on our friends' walls. I wasn't entirely in his camp until discovering the handmade little ci…
I'm on a bit of a framing kick lately; instead of buying new artwork we're trying to make use of the photos and odd bits of ephemera we have around to liven up some of the blank walls. So when I discovered the gorgeous handmade frames fr…
My friend tells me she's looking for some robot-themed stuff for her baby boy's room and I start poking around Etsy for her. Next thing you know, I'm drooling over these robot light switch plates from Robot Candy. One is cooler than the …
"Say, is that a 1950's original Davy Crockett costume beautifully framed on your wall?" "Why yes, yes it is." Petrie Point Designs has taken recycling to a whole new level with their Petrie Pint vintage collection. Susan Petrie-Badertsch…
Earlier this week, I was part of a group of design and parenting bloggers flown out to Chicago by Kmart and plied with chocolate fondue, before meeting the talented and extremely passionate Kmart home design team who gave us a big sneak …
I just discovered the wonderful Poppytalk Handmade , and I am wondering where it's been all my life. This online craft fair comes from the minds behind the wonderful Canadian design blog Poppytalk and each month there's a new theme (righ…
With three kids running circles around me, I've made some concessions when it comes to cleaning up. And one of them is that I'm not going to be doing all of it. My philosophy has always been that if my kids can make a mess, then they can…
I don't consider myself to be particularly girlie, but when I was forced to install the safety gate at the top of our staircase, I realized that my screwdriver and wrench skills were not on the level with say, my straightening iron skill…
As someone with Asian heritage, I was immediately drawn to the lovely Asian nursery art by artist and mom Grace Hester. The prints feature original animal artwork, along with the English word and then simplified Chinese translation. What…
Thanks to the lovely stench of PVC shower curtains, I absolutely dread buying new ones. I've always sworn those things have got to be at the top of the environmentally unfriendly list. Turns out, I was right. So here's an awesome alterna…
When I stumbled upon the Second Line Frames etsy shop, I went wow - those are cool. And that's before I knew the backstory. Turns out this Tampa-based cooperative salvages wood siding from homes destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, and tu…
I'll grant you that -- my son's nickname being Monkey, after all -- my fondness for all things primate-related may be a bit beyond that of the average person. Still, if you don't think this little monkey clock by Tree by Kerri Lee is awe…
As the veteran of countless "fancy collages" made for me by my children out of magazine pages and Elmer's glue, I'll confess that I never knew something as delicate and lovely as Linda Solovic 's creations were possible under the "collag…
Once you start a family, your home is in a continual state of flux-- I need a nursery. I need to turn the nursery into a kid's room . Oh shoot, I need to make it a nursery again. And ack, why didn't anyone tell me that the toys would som…
Let's pretend I'm having another baby, and as long as we're pretending, let's pretend I had a budget transplant! Okay? So we're pretending, and I'm heading over to tiny Décor for a couple of the notNeutral Tetra 2 changing table/dressers…
When I was pregnant, I painted three pieces of furniture out in the cold because I was so freaked out about what the paint fumes could do to the bébé. But when you're pregnant is precisely when you decide you must paint right now . Fear …
When it comes to interior design, let's just say that my spirit is willing but my flesh is weak. I admire fabulous design, but possess neither the knack nor the bottomless pocketbook to bring it to life without some serious help. If I we…