Theyre versatile. Theyre inexpensive. And theyre often handmade, by local artisans to boot. The tea towel is more than a dish rag or an eco-friendly substitute for disposable Bounty or Viva these days. Its a bit of graphic art, available in a plethora of patterns and illustrated amusements. We scoured stores and websites for a range of the designs, then asked designers for these 23 ways to use a tea towel.

1. Line a bread basket.

2. Cushion the bottom of the fruit bowl.

3. Wrap up a handmade design as a hostess gift.

4. They also make cute reusable gift wrapping, using them like we do in Japan as a furoshiki, or wrapping cloth, Lookout & Wonderland designer Niki Livingston said.

5. Use stiffer materials such as linen in place of vinyl shelf liner. When the shelves get dusty, just toss the towels into the laundry.

6. Especially during the holidays I love packing up fresh citrus in a tea towel and tying it off with yarn and bakers twine, Culver City, Calif., textile artist Heather Taylor said. This makes for a great hostess gift.

7. A variation on that theme: Use a tea towel to wrap scented handmade soap and leave it out for house guests, suggested Kara Smith, president of SFA Design in L.A.

8. Use large ones as place mats.

9. I love using tea towels as napkins or bibs for those get-your-fingers-dirty meals like crabs and ribs, Studio City, Calif., textile designer Paula Smail said. They look great on the table, and if they are illustrated, they become conversation starters.

Continued here:
23 ways to use a beautiful tea towel

Just months after Kirstie Allsopp disclosed that her sister Sofie had undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, their mother has succumbed to the disease.

Lady Hindlip, an interior decorator, died at their family home on Epiphany, at the age of 66. Fiona had suffered from breast cancer for 25 years.

Last year, Sofie, a 33-year-old television presenter, said she underwent the radical surgery because of fears that she would develop the disease which has afflicted her mother, grandmother and female relations going back generations.

I have spent my life watching my mother struggle with breast cancer, worried that I might lose her, she said at the time. So, for me, it was a very simple, logical decision to remove a part of my body which could potentially kill me.

Fiona married Lord Hindlip, 73, the Old Etonian former chairman of Christies, in 1968 and they have two other children: Henry, 40, an art dealer, and Natasha, 27.

Lady Hindlip was the granddaughter of Harry McGowan, the explosives tycoon given a hereditary peerage by Stanley Baldwin.

When her son Henry married Naomi Gummer in 2012, his godmother, the Duchess of Cornwall, attended the wedding, as well as David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt.

Lady Hindlip underwent treatment for cancer in 1987, which kept the disease in remission for seven years. She was treated again when the cancer returned, and nine years later was diagnosed with a secondary cancer.

Mum was always very discreet, stoic and amazingly brave, but we were aware of the impact it had on her, and it was hard for us to see her suffer. Kirstie said.

The funeral has already been held.

See more here:
Kirstie Allsopp loses brave mother to breast cancer

Just months after Kirstie Allsopp disclosed that her sister Sofie had undergone a double mastectomy to prevent breast cancer, their mother has succumbed to the disease.

Lady Hindlip, an interior decorator, died at their family home on Epiphany, at the age of 66. Fiona had suffered from breast cancer for 25 years.

Last year, Sofie, a 33-year-old television presenter, said she underwent the radical surgery because of fears that she would develop the disease which has afflicted her mother, grandmother and female relations going back generations.

I have spent my life watching my mother struggle with breast cancer, worried that I might lose her, she said at the time. So, for me, it was a very simple, logical decision to remove a part of my body which could potentially kill me.

Fiona married Lord Hindlip, 73, the Old Etonian former chairman of Christies, in 1968 and they have two other children: Henry, 40, an art dealer, and Natasha, 27.

Lady Hindlip was the granddaughter of Harry McGowan, the explosives tycoon given a hereditary peerage by Stanley Baldwin.

When her son Henry married Naomi Gummer in 2012, his godmother, the Duchess of Cornwall, attended the wedding, as well as David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt.

Lady Hindlip underwent treatment for cancer in 1987, which kept the disease in remission for seven years. She was treated again when the cancer returned, and nine years later was diagnosed with a secondary cancer.

Mum was always very discreet, stoic and amazingly brave, but we were aware of the impact it had on her, and it was hard for us to see her suffer. Kirstie said.

The funeral has already been held.

Originally posted here:
Television presenter Kirstie Allsopp loses brave mother to breast cancer

Kathy has spent many years in decorating, taking an ordinary living space and transforming it to be extraordinary and beautiful. Decorating in various and exceptional forms has been one of her passions since childhood. Long before the terms "redesign" and "staging" were popular, it has been a love and way of life for Kathy. She has combined her professional experiences, attention to detail, talents and creativity, along with her passion for decorating to offer a unique blend of services. Kathy has the ability to take a room that seems dull, uncomfortable or uninteresting and create an inviting and comfortable room. Out of necessity and experience, she has found that one does not need a lot of expensive things to make a room beautiful and desirable. Those who have benefited from Kathy's talents have often said that she can take an ordinary space and make it a retreat that you never want to leave! She can turn the unorganized into functional, the disaster into a showpiece and the lifeless into a vibrant reflection of your personality!

After college, Kathy and her husband lived in the Midwest, where they raised 3 children. Kathy and her husband have lived in South Jersey for over 10 years. Having worked in the corporate world and non-profit sector for several years, Kathy recognizes that your surroundings reflect who you are and who you will become. She has the ability to discover the unseen potential in a space and then create a positive and fresh look for it.

Kathy is certified in interior redesign and real estate staging with The DSA (The Decorating and Staging Academy) and ODDAA (One Day Decorating Alumni Association). She is also a member of RESA, (Real Estate Staging Assocation) and The Interior Design Society and The Interior Redesign Directory.

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Interior Decorator - Kathy Cortner, Cherry Hill, NJ

Open Plan Layouts for Modern Homes
Discover more architectural and interior design inspirations on http://www.homedesignlove.com interior design decorating interior design interior decorating ...

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Open Plan Layouts for Modern Homes - Video

A Tribute to Transatlanticism "Death of an Interior Decorator"
Omri Benami (keys), Tom Earnest (bass), Vincent Kelley (drums), Micah Nelson (guitar), and Caleb Neubauer (vocals) played through all of Transatlanticism, ce...

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A Tribute to Transatlanticism — "Death of an Interior Decorator" - Video

Johnny Interior Decorator
Johnny Interior Decorator.

By: anthony Johnny

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Johnny Interior Decorator - Video

A white picket fence surrounds the cedar-shingle house sitting among dozens and dozens of rose bushes, maybe more than 150 of them. People go by every day and are mesmerized, says Kara Sher, an interior decorator and real estate agent who lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Her roses include about a half dozen purple varieties as well as almost a dozen pinks with names such as perfume delight, ivory tower, Christian Dior, Belindas dream and sweet surrender. There are elegant long-stemmed hybrid teas, clusters of grandifloras and floribundas as well as showy cottage roses.

When Sher was asked what she wanted for the garden of her home where she lives with her children and life partner Jim La Vallee, she started sketching. She drew her dream, which grew out of a visit to a friends farm on Nantucket Island several summers ago.

The farm was nothing short of being storybook, she says. She recalls the yard was filled with nikko blue hydrangeas, pink roses and hot pink peonies.

Today at Shers home, there are roses along the street. Inside the fence, the yard is neatly carved into four beds that are bordered with ilex and separated by white pebble paths.

On clear nights, the family including Michael, 9, and Caroline, 12, gather on two handmade white benches to watch the stars and enjoy the perfume of the flowers. Its like an oasis. You come out here and you feel like you are on vacation, she says.

Or she might have her morning coffee in a wicker chair on the front porch overlooking a hedge of small lilac-pink Caldwell roses that grow in eye-catching clusters. Youll also find these charmers lining the fence along the street.

In summer these bushes explode with blooms, says Sher who grew up in Fort Lauderdale. But it wasnt until she moved to California as a young adult that she planted her first rose garden. The climate was perfect and I fell in love with them, she says.

Returning to South Florida, she worried that she wouldnt be able to grow roses in the hot sun. After all, they arent tropical plants.

But she was driving around town with her mother and saw a yard full of roses. They stopped the car and Sher knocked on the front door but no one answered. The next day she returned to find the owner home. I begged him to tell me his secret, she says.

Original post:
In rose-unfriendly subtropics, Kara Sher’s yard explodes with blooms

Ralph Fiennes has played Prince Hamlet and Lord Voldemort. He has been a Hollywood leading man (albeit briefly) and a collaborator with filmmakers ranging from Steven Spielberg to David Cronenberg. He may be the most acclaimed Shakespearean stage actor of his generation, and has been twice nominated for an Oscar (first for Schindlers List and then for The English Patient). What almost no one has noticed is that hes turned into an exceptional director as well.

Twice in the last three years, Fiennes has directed one of the years most intriguing, muscular and uncompromising films only to see it swamped by showier, higher-profile holiday releases. His 2011 Coriolanus is one of the most striking Shakespeare adaptations of recent years, a fearsome and imaginative reinvention of perhaps the Bards most impenetrable tragedy. With The Invisible Woman, Fiennes tackles another titan of English lit, Charles Dickens, playing the author of Great Expectations as an intensely conflicted and in some ways hard-hearted man, who dumps his wife for a much younger woman.

Dont make the mistake of assuming that The Invisible Woman is some sort of polite, actorly costume drama, driven by gowns, sets and showboating. And dont assume its a vanity project for Fiennes, who does not play the most important part and isnt the films real star. As we discussed when I met him in New York a few weeks ago, Dickens is a supporting character in the remarkable story of his mistress Nelly Ternan, played by Felicity Jones in what should be a breakthrough performance (if anyone sees it). Fiennes and screenwriter Abi Morgan adapted Claire Tomalins book about Nelly into a thoroughly unsentimental fable about a young woman navigating the profound sexism of Victorian society, and ultimately defeating it.

In this movie, and quite likely in real life, Nellys relationship with Dickens was essentially brokered by her mother (the reliably terrific Kristin Scott Thomas), an actress and theatrical impresario who understood that a famous writer offered her daughter a promise of security she would otherwise never find. Fiennes Dickens treats his wife, Catherine (Joanna Scanlan), with indefensible cruelty while pursuing Nelly, who isnt at all sure she wants the hypocritical and secretive life of being a celebritys kept woman. Much later, after Dickens death, Nelly successfully reinvented herself as a respectable middle-class wife, even passing herself off as 12 years younger than her real age. Meticulously crafted and full of brilliant, hard-edged performances, The Invisible Woman is a quietly subversive and yes, feminist portrait of Victorian society as the ancestor of our own time.

I was surprised when Fiennes brought up Istvn Szabs great 1985 drama Colonel Redl (set in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I) as a model for this film, but perhaps I should not have been. Its obvious that Fiennes has been watching movies and thinking about them all his life. Sooner or later, hell make one that cannot be ignored.

I understand you had some reluctance about playing Dickens at first.

Well, only because I found it such a handful to direct and act at the same time, doing Coriolanus. The script was sent to me with the offer to direct and they said, If you would like to play Dickens we would like that, this is BBC and Headline pictures. And I didnt know much about Dickens at all. I had almost deliberately moved away from reading Dickens. I had read a little and liked it but hadnt chosen to read more. So reading this early draft of the script and then Claire Tomalins book that completely got inside me and I was fascinated by everything about it.

I mean, he is extraordinary as a character, as a person. But it was also her and her story and her background. What moved me was the story of how she went on and shes this woman holding this past who hasnt had any kind of closure. Thats when it moved beyond just a biopic-y thing. Because it was about interior life, about a person needing some kind of resolution, some closure, some understanding within herself. That moved me a lot. Initially I could see the attraction for Dickens as a role. In Abi Morgans first draft, even then she had great scenes and things. But I kept being haunted by the memory of being under pressure and what it was like trying to hold a film in your head and suddenly go and start acting.

Then, in a weird way, I started rehearsing it without the intention of playing it, because I worked a lot with Abi who was a very generous collaborator. She and I wanted to rearrange and reemphasize things and we did a lot of rewriting, together. I would test bits of dialogue and read all the parts but with her to see how they felt, and I enjoyed reading Dickens. I guess in that process I felt like Id like to do this. And everyone, Claire Tomalin included, said, I just think that you should play Dickens. She was very disappointed that I wasnt going to. So eventually I said to everyone involved, the producers, OK, look, I did approach one other actor, I did approach someone else. But that didnt go anywhere so in the end I did it.

Ive had a couple of people say to me that Dickens seems like a stretch for you. One friend put it that Dickens overlaps, at least in the popular imagination, with Santa Claus. And although I might enjoy the film in which you play Santa, I suppose youre not the obvious choice.

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Ralph Fiennes: Dickens “was fueled by a kind of fury”

Organize: Interior Designer vs. Interior Decorator
Thanks for watching, please subscribe! Blog: http://www.Vanchic.com Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/VanchicDC Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VanchicDC In...

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