Going Green And Sitting Pretty - Outdoors

Tidelli Cube line

Outdoor Furniture - Don't You Love It!

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Going green is easy when you're sitting pretty and with this phenomenal style Tidelli outdoor furniture we've got you covered.

The woven chair and ottoman (shown here in red) from the Agua line look like they're straight out of a ’60s Italian flick. The Agua set comes in white wicker, other colors available by special order are: Black, Beige, Chocolate, Orange, Green.

And the Tidelli Chaise Lounge....grrrrrrr! Meow!!!! It's wild! Tidelli is a Brazilian family-run business that appreciates the need for less waste, so they use 50 percent post-industrial recycled PVC for their furniture. The outdoor furniture line is available through your interior designer or online through CurranOnline so, now the only thing you’ll have to plant is your sweet and royal behind.

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If you're in need of an interior designer,take a look at our Interior Design Guide listing professional design firms in your area, listed by state. Working with a professional designer helps assure you get the look you desire while helping eliminate costly mistakes.

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Use Scale & Proportion To More Assuredly Create Beauty

If you want to learn the hows and whys of creating beauty, it takes training, training to look at all things and to see things well. We learn and can apply design concepts and teach our mind and our eyes to discern through practice to really see.

Designers (and homeowners) are often faced with good things we like about a room, or space, but often we also have things we don't like. The room is oddly shaped; it may resemble a bowling alley (long and narrow) or the ceilings may seem too high (your furniture and items look like they are Barbie doll size) or too low (now you feel King Kong-like.) Unless you are blessed with an unlimited budget and structural changes are an option because your spouse is a general contractor, working with the space you have is the plan du jour.

Design concepts including proportion and scale will serve as handy tools in designing a functioning as well as beautiful and pleasing room.

Proportion: In design, proportion is the relationship of one part of an object to other parts or to the whole, and of one object to another. Example: if tiny, spindly legs are used to support a massive table top, we'd say that one is improperly proportioned to the other.

Scale: Scale refers to an object's size in relationship to some constant with that constant usually being but not always the human being (the primary scale relationship is to people). Scale and proportion work hand in hand. and really understanding the difference may take some thought. An example of poor scale would be a large, two story home with narrow hallways, low doorways and countertops and fixtures placed squatty. The scale here is a large house, but suitable for a child.

In learning proportion of objects and proper proportion among different objects we need to understand how they relate to each other. Are they compatible? Are the proportions linked, one to another? How are they different? By seeing the likeness of two objects, you can see what gives each its individuality. A lime is fatter, rounder, and smaller than a lemon. You can use such comparisons when you example the proportions of arms on chairs or of legs on chairs and tables. Go on a practical treasure hunt around your house, exploring the proportions of your objects and their relationship to one another. Is the saucer of a coffee cup in proportion to the cup, not too big, not too small? After some time and practice, this treasure hunt of evaluating the proportions of things can be done outdoors as well as in your friends' houses. Become a student of seeing. What you observe well will train your eye. Observe a tiny garden that is so overgrown with trees and foliage and flowers, you have no room to sit and have a cup of tea. A garden's reason for existence is a person's pleasure. No matter how beautiful something may be, if it gets out of hand and loses its human-scaled proportions, the entire purpose of its existence is defeated.

When I first visited New Mexico my eyes had an adjustment period in finding beauty in the home style - adobe construction and flat roofs with no overhang. In short time I grew to love them, especially when I realized that their form followed function, it kept the home cool in the summer, and warm in the winter, utmost importance in the desert.

However I noticed that the simplicity of the style (in the hands perhaps of non-indigenous, newcomers to the area) could easily cause attempts to add beauty - not - it often caused a beautiful form to now have bad form, or bad proportion. Architectural additions or design elements that work perfectly with other homes overpower these lovely homes. Proportion is an important element in creating, and keeping, beauty.

Proportion and scale do work hand in hand and are perhaps two sides of the same coin - and really understanding the difference may take some thought. I wish you a good 'seeing' treasure hunt.

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This article is one in a series of Design Concepts, to go to the entire list, click here.

Day Beds - Practical And Full Of Style

In designing a space for overnight guests what we want is to offer a place that is warm and welcoming, but limited space often requires creativity - day beds in an office or sitting room are a stylish solution. Visa versa, sometimes we do have the space to dedicate a room for weary travelers, but its still nice to have dual use in between guest visits, as a private sitting room or study area. The secret to such easy transition? An upholstered daybed that's equally enticing for overnight guests and daytime relaxing.

The day bed is an evocative addition to any home - bringing with it reminders of family and friends who have visited and the hopes of dear ones returning again.

This article shows numerous great ways day beds provide function in welcoming family and friends, making them feel very at home and in oh so beautiful style.

An old idea made new again is a summer sleeping space. Screened in porches were popular prior to air conditioning and enjoying the evening breezes while you snooze or a cool and shady spot while you read or nap during the day is an easy thing to do with the addition of a day bed. When it's not being used for a nap, the day bed will provide additional seating space.

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Slide Show Of Beautiful Day Beds

(Click To Start)

Chic So Chic Daybed Slideshow

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Decorating Ideas From Nate Berkus

Nate Berkus began his career in design at a young age. “I was barely in grade school when I helped my mother rearrange the living room furniture for the first time.” With his allowance dedicated to buying things for his bedroom and his mother’s influence (she’s also a decorator), Nate began a life-long passion for design.“I think I was the only kid on the block who knew about furniture scale by thetime I was 8.”After graduating from Lake Forest College, he took a job with Leslie Hindman Auctioneers. It was from this position, as well as an internship with Dominique Aurientis, one of the most dynamic designers from Paris, France, that he really developed a love and knowledge for the decorative arts and furniture. From his auction house experience came a deeper understanding of how to shop and what to buy. Self-taught, Nate then went on to form Nate Berkus Associates in 1995 at the age of 24. Moving from the auction house to interiors was a natural evolution for him.The firm grew to include projects for Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, Barney’s New York, W hotels, as well as a prestigious list of private homes and clients.In 2001, Nate was invited to make over a small space for “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” From there, Nate became a featured design expert for the show and continued on to become a regular contributor to O at Home magazine. “It’s funny, as a kid, I think I rearranged the rooms of almost every house onthe block,” laughs Nate. “I feel like I’m still doing the same thing. Except, now I’m coming into your living room through the TV, the pages of Home Rules and my collection at Linens 'N Things.”

Book By Nate Berkus
HOME RULES:
TRANSFORM THE PLACE
YOU LIVE INTO A PLACE
YOU'LL LOVE From Amazon.Com

The Bedroom Collection

Shop the Nate Berkus Collection at LNT.com

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HOW TO MAKE YOUR ROOM

LOOK ITS BEST

• Not everyone can afford a complete room makeover, but anyone can take Nate's decorating advice and transform any room!


• Your home is an expression of you. Before you buy one more thing for your home, stop and think about what really makes you happy.


• Hang something other than artwork on your walls, like antique objects or your favorite collectibles.


• Frame meaningful notes to hang on your walls or to put on end tables or bookshelves.


• Bookcases aren't just for books anymore: Mix souvenirs from vacations in with your books.


• Put books on display that spark your interest.


• Replace harsh overhead lighting with a few cool lamps.


• For a sophisticated look for not a lot of money, include one piece of sea life, like a starfish or some coral.


• One odd, unmatched chair that you love can add extra charm to a room.

Art By Natalie Erwin - Happenin' In Dallas

Dogs in Dallas are lucky. Natalie Erwin is a local girl.






She's also known as a much sought after local artist - who comes to your home, plays with the pup, and gets to know her person-, er, dogality. Then she paints your four-legged friend lounging on her favorite pillow or posing in another choice spot and it is part of this thing she calls the 'Dog Portrait Series'. Need more puppy love? Natalie tucks a handwritten note from your pet into the back of the frame. You know, like a thanks for throwing her a bone.




Natalie also has a few other things going on, there's frenzy in the art world about her stuff. Her bio presents what she calls her bank note series, tree gallery, pattern gallery, ranch series gallery, dog series, art and architecture gallery and carousel gallery, and her shows are succesful, including the one she did at Sothebys.

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Natalie Erwin

Upcoming Art Show
March 6, 2008

Nest Gallery NEST,

6731 Snider Plaza Dallas (214)-373-4444

www.nestdallas.com

Natalie Erwin (817-832-1981 or natalieerwin.com).

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If you're in Dallas in need of an interior designer, Dallas Interiors At Legacy is part of our Interior Design Guide of professional design firms. Working with a professional designer helps assure you get the look you desire while helping eliminate costly mistakes.

Two Great Interior Design Books - Practical And Beautiful

Rooms to Inspire: Decorating With America's Best Designers

Annie Kelly's new book investigates the personal style of designers and decorators.Ever wonder how the designers decorate their own homes? For Rooms to Inspire, a dozen world-class designers opened their homes to our curious eyes, including Kelly Wearstler, Muriel Brandolini, Miles Redd, Jonathon Adler, and Marian McEvoy. See all their best ideas in one place. Published by Rizzoli International Publications; 240 pages








Design Directory of Window Treatment

Everything you ever wanted to know about window treatments, and then some. Serious truth in advertising here. This is a design directory (and handbook, dictionary, encyclopedia, etc.).
Published by Gibbs Smith; 583 pages.

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If you are in need of an interior designer, click here to check our Interior Design Guide to find a designer near you.

Shake It Up Baby - It It's Pretty & Works For You, That's What 'Goes'

If you don't want a coffee table in your room, don't have one. Or, top an ottoman with a tray for holding drinks when you temporarily need a table. Or, use a stack of art books as a table.

Or if you are a mix and match kinna' couple, you're 'Park Avenue' and he's more 'Green Acres,' give him his bale of hay as an ottoman. New York fashion designer Cynthia Rowley literally did this. One of the most recognized personalities in fashion, Rowley designed her first dress at age seven, she's even designed a concert tour shirt for Bruce Springsteen and she had a friend make a bale of hay ottoman.

If it's pretty and if it works for you, that's what goes! Don't be afraid to mix things up. Opt for the unconventional, such as this great lucite stool cloaked in mink rosettes by designers Heather Hoyt and Alison Diamond. Toss out all those old rules, its the juxtaposition of low- and highbrow that makes this stool work. Similarly, top two sawhorses with a slab of glass and you've got your dining room table.

Sometimes old rules are broken because of space limitations. In smaller homes, not only does every piece of furniture or item have to be pretty, but we want it to be multifunctional (as in the case of the secretary desk shown here). When space is precious, don't let a room's name tell you what to use it for. Forget the name. Use rooms for the way you really live, call it luxuriously casual, if you like. Screens are terrific for creating smaller areas within larger space and their portability makes them perfect for temporary changes.

Photos, Breaking the Rules:

Home Style for the Way We Live Today

For More Info On Fashion Diva

Cynthia Rowley, click here.

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If you are in need of an interior designer, click here to check our Interior Design Guide to find a designer near you.