The House

I’ve written about my friend, Flip’s house a few times… here and here. She’s got incredible taste and an unerring eye for amazing pieces.  She and her husband took a 19th century townhouse, formerly divided into numerous flats, and pulled it back into one amazing home. She’s even been featured on Apartment Therapy where she won rave reviews from their hyper-critical commenters! Now Flip has started her own blog, an off-shoot from one she was doing with a shop here in Baltimore.  Her blog is called The Caledonian Mining Expedition Company. I am sure that there’s a fascinating explanation in there somewhere, but I haven’t heard it!

Here’s one of my favourite posts to date. It features some jaw-droppingly fabulous images from le Château de Moissac-Bellevue, like this, and this…Take a couple of minutes, wander over to the Caledonian Mining Expedition Company, say hey to Flip and then let me know what you think!

I think Flip’s fantastic!

For the third year in a row, Easy and Elegant Life’s Editor, Chris Cox and I are pleased to host APRIL FOOD DAY, Bloggers Fighting Hunger. Here’s what you can do to help!

You can add the logo for Feeding America, the national food bank, to your blog. Feeding America has also set up a special URL for donations, here.

You can tell the story of how many people in America:

• In 2009, 50.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, 33 million adults and 17.2 million children
• In 2009, households with children reported food insecurity at almost double the rate for those without children, 21.3 percent compared to 11.4 percent.
• In 2009, households that had higher rates of food insecurity than the national average included households with children (21.3 percent), especially households with children headed by single women (36.6 percent) or single men (27.8 percent), Black non-Hispanic households (24.9 percent) and Hispanic households (26.9 percent).
• In 2009, 7.8 percent of seniors living alone (884,000 households) were food insecure.

You can tell your readers what a contribution to Feeding America, or a local food bank will do to help those who are hungry:

• Feeding America provides emergency food assistance to approximately 5.7 million different people per week.
• Among members of Feeding America, 74 percent of pantries, 65 percent of kitchens, and 54 percent of shelters reported that there had been an increase since 2006 in the number of clients who come to their emergency food program sites. 

Here’s what else you can do:

• Add the Feeding America, or April Food Day link to your Facebook status
• Tweet about April Food Day
• Link your post here, so we can see how many participants we have.

On behalf of all of the people you will be helping, thank you so much!

I just returned from attending a fabulous lecture by published author, and fellow blogger, Emily Evans Eerdmans at the equally fabulous Evergreen House in Baltimore.

Emily took the audience on a historic trip from the time of Napoléon and his consort, Joséphine, along through the 1800s and right up until Madeleine Castaing’s death in the early 1990’s. A fascinating journey in beautiful rooms and stunning interiors, all with a thread connecting them through time.Emily is just a delight… smart, funny and very well-versed. And she’s gorgeous, too!  One of the most interesting things that Emily said in her lecture is that Madeleine Castaing is the Coco Chanel of interior decorators. Her innovations, though sometimes subtle, are all around us in so many ways. And Lisa? Lisa is my friend Lisa Simeone, former host of NPR’s Weekend All Things Considered and all ‘round gal about town. She and I attend a lot of these great lectures together!  Here we three are in the Leon Bakst Theatre at Evergreen. You can just see the stenciled roosters in the upper left of the image.

I’ve just posted information about April Food Day 2011 on the April Food Day blog. There is a copy of the 2011 logo, and a link to the donations page at Feeding America. I will be posting a links list on the April Food Day site so that you can add your post about the event. Connor’s favourite “baby” is a little stuffed pig with no arms, called Army. Connor has pulled all of the stuffing out of its head now, so I had to buy him a new one today. Of course, all this is a round-about way of saying I’ve finished the arms of the slipcover (and one of the three back pillows). The newest version of Army has gone on both of our walks with us this evening, and I anticipate it will be sleeping close to Connor tonight. Here’s the other arm, sans Army. I think I am going to make a pleated skirt, but can’t figure if I just want a few box pleats or a lot of knife pleats. I’ve also figured out that I am going to have to put a zipper down the back of the sofa so I can get the slipcover on and off with some ease.

The brilliant Emily Evans Eerdmans will be the premiere lecturer at this year’s House Beautiful Lecture Series at Evergreen House in Baltimore on Wednesday.

Here’s what Evergreen has to say about Emily…

Napoléon's consort, Joséphine, was renowned for her flawless taste and the creation of the severely chic Empire style owes much to her influence. Nowhere did her personal style more crystallize than at her country house Malmaison. Join design and decorative arts historian Emily Evans Eerdmans as she discusses Malmaison’s interior decoration and its revival in the mid 20th century by such legendary designers as Madeleine Castaing, George Geffroy, Henri Samuel, and Emilio Terry.

I can’t wait, and hope to see you there! Tickets are here.

I always look forward to the last Saturday of the month when the WSJ. Magazine appears for just two short days. If you don’t pick it up on Saturday or Sunday, then it disappears into the mists of time.

Rita Konig has penned an excellent piece on English decorator and blogger, Nicky Haslam.  The story is about Nicky’s country house, once the home of John Fowler, late of Colefax & Fowler, and leased from the National Trust. There are some marvelous images of the house in the magazine, and a totally different set of images in a slide show on the WSJ. Magazine’s website, here. The entire article is here.

Time’s ticking. You’d better get your print edition ASAP!

Three years ago, Chris Cox, the editor of Easy & Elegant Life, and a former copy-writer, and I, a fund-raiser, put our virtual heads together and came up with a day and a way to raise money to help fight hunger. At that time, the financial crisis was just a few months old, and none of us knew how long it would last or how its effects would reverberate around the country… and the world.

On Friday, April 1, we will be hosting April Food Day – Bloggers Fighting Hunger.  We are working with Feeding America, as well as several food banks around the country to raise much needed funds to fight hunger. Chris and I hope that you will join us in this effort by posting about hunger and food aid on your blog on April 1, 2011, and adding a link to either Feeding America, or your local food bank so that your readers may make a donation.

I will have additional information next week, including April Food Day logos for your blogs and a specific link to the donations page at Feeding America.

Thank you for helping us help others.

Yep, it’s that time again. I am de-accessioning. I love that word… dee-ak-sesh-uhn - to sell from a collection, especially with a view to acquiring funds for the purchase of other works. Hmmm. Sounds exactly like what I am doing.Even though I’ve only lived in my house for a few short years, it’s filled with things I’ve collected, but no longer want or need. So, over the next four or five weeks, I am going to be adding a lot of things to my Etsy shop. There will be great bargains on books, china, silver, french ivory cutlery, fabrics, pillows and a lot more! Let me know if there’s anything you’ve seen in my posts that you’re interested in. Let’s make a deal!

My friend over at Maxminimus recently did a post about television shows of his youth. He mentioned some of the classics like Green Acres, Gunsmoke and Petticoat Junction. We didn’t have a television when I was little and when we finally got one, we could only watch on weekends. I still barely watch the telly, although I must admit I was pretty fully addicted when I lived in Wales.

Anyway… Max omitted one of my favourite shows from my childhood. It was called The Persuaders and starred Sir Roger Moore, later 007, and Tony Curtis as Lord Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde, two millionaires swanning about the Cote d’Azur and some of the better houses in the UK, solving crimes and looking delicious. I found a few episodes on YouTube, and was just amazed by some of the interiors they showed, including this stunning set of curtains from Brett Sinclair’s London Flat.  Of course, what’s even more amazing are the clothes the gentlemen wear. OMG. I am quite taken with orange lately, and I also need to start looking for some new curtains. While I love these, I am not sure that they’ll be what I need.