There is a moment at every good holiday party when someone drifts away from the crowd, finds the drink station, and just stands there happily making themselves a perfect cup of something. A well-styled coffee bar or bar cart does that: it gives guests a place to land, it gives the host a break from…
The dining room has an identity crisis in most homes. Eleven months a year it is the room where mail piles up and kids do homework. Then Thanksgiving and Christmas arrive, and suddenly it has to transform into the setting for the most important meals of the year. If your dining room only looks good…
There is a specific kind of letdown that hits on January 2. The tree is on the curb, the ornaments are back in their boxes, and the living room looks suddenly, starkly bare. After a month of twinkle lights and garlands, the house feels like it is missing something, and the instinct is either to…
Every December, I watch the same thing happen: friends book expensive NYE parties, pay a cover charge, wait in line for drinks, and leave by 12:30 wondering why they bothered. Meanwhile, the best New Year’s Eve parties I have ever been to were in someone’s living room, with a balloon garland taped to the wall,…
Most Christmas decor does not fail because of one bad purchase. It fails because it chases the year instead of transcending it — the trendy palette that looks dated by February, the novelty ornaments that embarrass you by next December. Meanwhile, there is a style of Christmas that has looked right for forty years and…
Most Christmas color schemes do not fail because of one bad purchase. They fail because they never committed to being anything — a little red here, some silver there, a gold ornament inherited from who-knows-where, until the tree looks like a committee designed it. The rooms that stop you in your tracks at Christmas all…
Most Christmas decor does not fail because of one bad purchase. It fails because everything matches too perfectly — the same ornament finish on every branch, the same ribbon repeated until the room looks shrink-wrapped. What is missing is the handmade-feeling detail that makes a decorated home look loved instead of staged. Nine times out…
Most living rooms do not fail at Christmas because of one bad purchase. They fail because they followed the rules too well — the beige garland, the tasteful warm-white lights, the color palette borrowed from a furniture catalog. Somewhere along the way, Christmas decorating became an exercise in restraint, and a lot of us started…
Most apartments do not fail at Christmas because of one bad purchase. They fail because every decorating idea seems designed for a suburban living room with twelve-foot ceilings and a fireplace the size of a studio kitchen. If your “entryway” is three feet of hallway and your tree options range from “blocks the front door”…
Thanksgiving is the one holiday where the table does most of the talking. It is not just a place to eat; it is the stage where the whole day plays out. The turkey rests there. The candles flicker there. Someone’s grandmother’s gravy boat makes its annual appearance there. And when the table looks warm and…
