Fall in the DC area is absolutely beautiful. If you are ever here during this time I recommend a visit to Sugar Loaf Mountain where you can sip wine on a patio, listen to live music and hike along the woods and vineyard. Very picturesque and one of the few vineyards that welcome dogs. We spent my birthday afternoon here and with the sun shining, a chill in the air, it was a glorious day.
No birthday of mine is complete without company of AWESOME friends, great food and wine. I am blessed with wonderful people around me. I feel so lucky to have each of them in my life. A few spots that treated us well this weekend:Bezu in Potomac, MD. H
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Shortly after moving into my first fixer-upper old house, my daughter came into my bedroom in the middle of the night, blanket clutched in her fist, eyes wide as saucers. Theres a woman in my room! she whispered.
Of course there wasnt. She had listened to ghost stories before bed, told by the elderly neighbor who had lived next to our house for decades. I have to admit that I listened quite intently too, because the story was about the old woman who had once lived in our house. Rumor had it the woman went crazy upon the disappearance of her only son and even after she passed away, she kept coming back to the house to search for him. The rumor was given life by the sightings: those who had lived in or visited our house claimed to have seen her.
After a few nights of being certain someone was watching her sleep, my daughter came to a sweet solution: the house was haunted.
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I’m a sucker for seasonal decorations. Since there’s finally starting to be a little crispness in the air, I think my anticipation for fall decorating is finally ready to take life. I do always cringe at that person (and we all know one) who puts decorations up 3 months too early and leaves them up 3 months too late, but without being that person, I think there’s nothing greater then a few cheery reminders to celebrate the season! My festive fall go-to for sprucing up the house for autumn: pumpkins! And no, I don’t mean just carving a jack-o-lantern for the front porch.
Here are a few examples of how to tastefully celebrate fall with one of its most symbolic natural elements.
Pumpkins come in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and love how this display stacked pumpkins of the same shape but different sizes and colors. This sim
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Past few weeks have been crazy packed with styling projects, photo shoots and preps that I hadnt noticed that it was almost mid October. My favorite month nearly over and I hadnt had a chance to write a single post. Bad me. Sorry about that. I hope you will allow me to show you what I have been upto. I put together a little behind the scenes glimpse into my life lately. Would you like to see?
A few weeks ago I was approached to do a project involving styling some model homes for Ryan Homes. Basically Ryan Homes was looking to update their promotional images which required updating their existing model homes and injecting them with life for the shoot. It sounded like such a fun challenge and I was in from the start. I had about 12 or so spaces to style.
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Game over. LEDs win. Early in 2011 I wrote about the rapid ramp up of high-quality LED bulbs. Shortly afterwards, the big box stores started selling absolutely flawless bulbs at the eye-popping cost of $39.95. Even at that price the life-cycle payback still beat the old school incandescent bulbs for total cost. The problem was that it was about an 18 year break even.
That didnt keep customers from grabbing these bulbs off the shelf. One big box store I visited said they were having a hard time keeping the LED bulbs in stock.
Now you can walk into a big box store and get a Philips Endura LED that uses only 12 watts for only $24.95. Today I was giddy over the sudden price plummet of these bulbs. You havent seen this kind of joy except from little Japanese girls finding Hello Kitty hats on sale. P
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