MONEY WELL SPENT | You should be using cloth napkins every day not only because doing so will save you money by cutting down on paper waste but also because you deserve nice things, and cloth napkins are nice all around: better next to the skin than paper ones, generally larger and more absorbent. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Some people call French clafoutis (pronounced cla-FOU-tee) a pancake-like dessert, while others say it’s more flanlike. No matter how you describe it, if it’s made with any fruit besides black cherries, it’s technically not a clafoutis but a flaugnarde—though no one we know, including superstar cookbook author Donna Hay, whose recipe we’ve adapted here, uses that term. So we’ll continue to call our favourite summer dessert—the easiest/sweetest thing you’ll ever make—a mixed berry clafoutis too. Read more
GET THIS | I can’t help but think that if for some mysterious reason Fog Linen Work, a Japanese company that produces an exquisite line of linen products coveted by design devotees everywhere, were to suddenly go rogue and use microfiber rather than Lithuanian linen to make their kitchen towels, they might make a waffle-weave product like the one pictured here from the American company Eurow & O’Reilly. “Yes, aren’t these towels awesome,” my designer friend Margo concurred when I enthused about how attractive and effective hers were as we stood hand-drying dishes after dinner at her place awhile back. Read more
MONEY WELL SPENT | If you workout routinely and experience soft tissue aches or muscle knots as a result, The Stick, a self-massaging tool used by gym rats and sports physios alike, could be your ticket to relief. Read more
THE CREATIVE SOLUTION | Being fashionably dressed is expensive enough, but imagine the financial damage you can do creating the “latest look” for your home—which is why most of us play it safe with our furniture by sticking to classics. The trouble with this approach is that sometimes safe can mean boring. Fortunately there are ways to be current without taking a vow of poverty.
I suggest using quick changing accent pieces to modify your décor. Here I put my DIY skills to work transforming a classic—and already attractive—slingback patio chair—into something more topical and unique. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Whenever I have a dinner party and, pressed for time, serve the attractive ready-made gluten-free dessert pictured here, my guests are often astonished to learn it was purchased at a home furnishings store. “No way,” was how one incredulous friend who knows my penchant for purchasing sweets put it recently. “I would have sworn you picked it up at some pricey little Euro-type bakery.” Read more
SWITCH IT UP | Because so many elements of a garden’s design are fixed I sometimes like to shake things up by introducing objects that can be repositioned according to the season or to whim. In my own garden, I have three metal crows that travel from tabletop to fence top routinely, and two, old wooden obelisks that have at one time or another bunked in every quarter of my suburban lot. Read more
GET TO GIVE | Do real men wear mittens? I don’t know, but real women do. I could totally see myself mittening manfully (thanks Dylan Thomas) on all sorts of doors wearing these stripped hand warmers designed by—that’s right, you guessed it—Britain’s coolest menswear designer Paul Smith. Smith’s mittens, produced exclusively for Holt Renfrew as a Movember fundraiser to help support men’s health causes, come in three colour-ways and two sizes, the smaller one being most likely to fit my dainty lady hands. Read more
FREE & AWESOME | Have you seen Adobe’s new Kuler app?” my friend Giorgio Verzoletto of vanhit.com asked when we met up for coffee last Monday. “Watch this,” he said, waving his iPhone camera at the Frugalbits website displayed on the laptop screen in front of us. As G gestured with his phone, five circles on its screen bounced around like metal balls in one of those old-fashioned handheld puzzles, changing colour repeatedly depending on where the phone was directed.
When he snapped a shot, the circles turned into rectangles forming a band of the dominant colours in the image and creating what Kuler calls a colour theme on his phone screen. “These themes can be used, modified and shared in so many ways,” G said. “Anyone who works with colour is going to love this.” Or anyone who loves to play with colour, I added. Read more
GOOD TO KNOW | I have a very narrow foot with a very high instep, which is no biggie for me except when it comes to buying workout shoes. Very few athletic shoe brands fit my feet straight out of the box; usually, I need to add orthotics. Recently, though, I’ve been able to eliminate this extra purchase by lacing my sneakers using a method that actually improves the way my workout shoes fit my feet. Read more