EASY & AWESOME | If you’ve been casting around for the perfect mid-winter gift for someone who loves flowers but may not be a gardener, we recommend this beautiful low-maintenance no-brainer: flower bulbs in clear glass containers (so you can appreciate their roots) ready to burst into midwinter bloom. Read more
THE CREATIVE SOLUTION | These decorative votive candleholders are an easy-to-make, inexpensive Christmas gift that is both beautiful and useful. Brendan Power, our D.I.Y. columnist, got the idea after he saw something similar in a high-end gift shop. “The patterns on the votive holders I saw were probably either applied as decals or printed directly onto the glass,” he says. “My adaptation is made with photocopy paper, but the look and the translucence is no different from the original.” Read more
BUYER BEWARE | What seems sweet on the surface, can be bitter underneath. The internet is at all times crawling with scammers, but they’re out in full force during Cyber Monday Week (like Black Friday, Cyber Monday is no longer a 24-hour blowout) when online shoppers are apt to let their guard down. Here’s what we know about cyber shopping this week. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | Sometimes the most stunningly beautiful solution to a problem is also the most elementary one—like using candlelight rather than electricity to illuminate a snowy walkway.
How to devise a storage system for herbs and spices and forever do away with novelty spice racks and their special containers—or purchasing extra spice packets you don’t really need.
PROBLEM SOLVED | Has this ever happened to you? You’re ready to whip up a dish from scratch when you realize your recipe calls for a dried herb that, after rummaging among your cache of spice bottles and bags, you appear to be out of. So you rush out and pick some up only to discover later that you already had a bottle on hand—three, actually, stashed away in the dark recesses of the various places you store this stuff. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | I first spotted brilliant orange Chinese lanterns fitted over mini-lights on an organically decorated Christmas tree. This is one way to use them for sure, though I like them better when they are used to create an original Thanksgiving or Halloween display. I love them threaded through a tangle of branches on the front porch or on top of the mantel or on a dinner table. I also love mini-lanterns strung around doorways for a punch of spot-on seasonal colour. Read more
FREE & EASY | Whether it’s branches in vases or individual leaves strewn along a dining table or on top of a napkin or plate, nothing looks more striking than nature brought indoors and left in its beautiful, natural state. Around here, we subscribe to a natural, casual approach when it comes to arranging botanical materials, and a less is more strategy for tabletop décor. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | If you’re looking for an easy, dramatic and glamorous way to wrap a very special gift, nothing has the power to bedazzle like ordinary window screen and wire. Read more
BUYER BEWARE | For years, although I popped into IKEA’s as-is section every time I visited the store, all I’d ever bought was a $10 lamp. Then recently I came across a Karlstad corner sofa in Isunda grey (like the one pictured above), usually $1,199, for $899. I had been thinking about buying a sectional for some time but never did anything about it. Now here was the very one I’d been eyeing for $300 off.
I asked why it was as-is and was told it was a return. Nothing seemed amiss: no snags, tears, stains, dents or sags. The Richmond IKEA has furnished its returns waiting area with Karlstad sofas in the same slipcover and they seem to be holding up well, plus a friend of mine has bought two as-is sofas from IKEA with no problems. And there it was, assembled and ready to go. I bought it.
Here are the questions I wish I had asked. Read more
SHOPPING AROUND | Leave it to sophisticated Europeans to promote a stylish/ecofriendly way to dry your body after bathing. Flip through any of their high-style décor magazines and you’ll run into references to both linen and flat cotton towels, which are a true and viable alternative to those triple-thick terrycloth bath sheets we North Americans appear to prize—a choice that has our dryers set on overtime and our energy bills on the rise. Read more