Tassels are a fabulous addition to any space and are so much more versatile than simply using them to dress our windows and to tie back the draperies. The word tassel comes from the Latin word tassau which actually refers to a clasp. We have used tassels throughout history in both home fashion and apparel fashion; this is one trend that certainly has staying power. I love tassels and have shopped for tassels around the globe. I have haggled for tassels of all shapes, sizes, colours and designs on six continents; you just never know where you will meet a great tassel. Morocco, Istanbul, Shanghai, London, Cape Town, Bangkok, and Paris are just some of the cities that I have discovered some great tassels but even here at home I have never not found the perfect tassel for the project de jour. What do we do with all these tassels when we get home? Here are my top fabulous tassel ideas.

Mothers day is just around the corner and this year let’s give mom a fabulous gift that is designed just for her. No more token predictable flowers, no no no, this year we are going to think outside the gift box and get creative and personal with our gifts. Sam and I put our heads together yesterday at the Rock House office and put together a list of ideas that we hope will inspire you to give mom an extra special gift this year.

1. My mom loves it when I give her custom-designed front door planters. She’s come to expect the trendiest planters on the block. Of course we start with great planters and even if the planter is a typical ceramic, resin or metal variety, raise the design bar by embellishing the front of the planter with a vintage brass door knocker or a painted wood molding detail or even a wall sconce that can hold a candle. Now for the plants. Plant trailing bamboo, banana palms or another fabulous tropical- and fill with colour coordinating flowers and fabulous textured leaves. Remember, you are creating a living sculpture.
2. Hire a local chef to give mom a private in-house dinner party for her and a few friends. What a great evening and this can even include a cooking lesson. Wrap up the certificate with a bottle of bubbly or even new kitchen linens.
3. Moms are busy people so how about treating her to a day with a professional organizer. The organizer can help her get to those places that she just doesn’t have time to clean out, clean up and organize. Cleaners once a week for the month of May is also a great gift that will help mom have more time for her.
4. We love books and recently interviewed author Angella M. Nazarian, Pioneers of the Possible . This is a great book which shares stories of twenty amazingly inspirational women: Estee Lauder, Mata Amritanandamayi, Ella Fitzgerald, just to name a few. A great book with a beautiful handwritten inscription from you telling her how much she has inspired you is truly priceless. Speaking of books, I love the idea of creating a cookbook in her honor. All of mom’s and her mom’s favorite recipes in one book. Besure to include some handwritten comments from you and the rest of the family and even some drawings by the kids and snapshots of family dinners. Everyone in the family is going to want a copy so be sure to order enough.
5. Moms are notorious for not treating themselves, so this year plan a spa day for mom and a friend or mom and you. Splurge and not only plan the spa but perhaps hire a professional stylist like Sam to consult on a new look, give makeup tips (of course you’ll want to treat mom to all the new products that she’ll now need) and perhaps even a new outfit.
6. Give mom a beautiful completely-filled picnic basket, complete with lunch for four and have a great day enjoying a favorite local park.
7. Register yourself and mom in an art class or a wine tasting or even a cake-decorating class. Not only will you unleash all that creative energy you both have but you’ll enjoy a evening together for the next six weeks.
8. I gave my mom an Ipad at Christmas and she’s addicted. She has cooking apps, Sudoku, decorating and even gardening apps. I knew she would love it just didn’t realize how much.

Us girls at Rock House wish all you Mom’s a most fabulous day!

THIS AND THAT
If you love cooking then you’ll love this weekend project. Create a herb garden. Buy yourself a fabulous tray that matches your décor and then a set of great little pots and plant a single herb in each container. Watch them grow and enjoy snipping fresh herbs as you need them in the kitchen.

We love the look, feel and wearability of hardwood flooring in our homes. Designers have always had a love for natural floor surfaces but today’s hardwood is sexy, colourful and versatile and there is surely a wood species, pattern, finish and colour palette for every style and genre of design.

Designers today are blessed with a plethora of options when it comes to hardwood flooring and I love the opportunities these choices bring to the preverbal design table. At a surfaces show in Asia this week I found some fabulous new floors and just have to share them with you. Plank hardwood is of course still our standard and will never go out of fashion but now watch for opportunities to further distress the planks and create the look of old weathered ship boards on the floor, I love the blues, grays and blacks that come through on this flooring and can see it laid in several of my own job sites.

Another plank standout for me was the thin board, half inch strips of wood planks laid tight with no bevel. The finished result is a refined, elegant and timeless floor that I loved and can see it my next show suite. Taking planks to the next level, were several companies who have started to print patterns and designs onto the planked floors. Super decorative and fun for spare bedrooms, dens and perhaps even the family room.

While I love the look, feel and opportunity of the plank flooring, I have to admit that for me the stand out wood flooring is parquet. I’m thrilled at the opportunities that exist today with parquet. Virtually any colour options and ultra modern patterns make this a must-lay in chic homes this year. I adore the unique patterns available and I love the mix of wood species and colouring in the floor design. I also love that it is engineered which enables us to lay it overtop radiant floors.

Worried that modern parquet may go out of style- don’t be. Real materials such as wood and stone, quality products, well designed and proportioned choices will always be in vogue. I also think it’s imperative to create standout features, unique to your home. This is a worth while investment and an opportunity for great design, floor art if you will.

Wood flooring offers a room warmth and timeless elegance that only wood can bring to a space. They lay the ground work for all the fabulous furniture, accessories and soft goods that you will decorate with, although you won’t want to coverup these beauties.

If you’re renovating or building a new home take the time to research all the wood be possibilities that are out there. That’s how you create a home that is truly and uniquely fabulous- and we all want to live with fabulous!

THIS AND THAT
Place a single branch from a blossoming tree in a vase for organic designer fragrance and style. Celebrate spring and the beauty of new life with a simple statement.

Cherry Blossom Festivals are happening across North America and in Asia and I’m feeling like it’s time to spring into Spring décor. It has been a fabulous couple of months as Sam and I have been blessed with a couple of trips to warm tropical climates, Florida, Rivera Nayarit , tomorrow Shanghai and in a few weeks Sonoma and Miami , of course it’s all work ‘wink wink’! All of our travel is actually for business so when anyone asks us where were going on vacation we usually reply no where “I love my house and love spending time there with the family”. But with all these sunnier destinations we have certainly brought lots of fabulous décor ideas home and home is starting to feel a little more tropical.

There is something magical about natural elements in a home, and when we returned from Florida we brought with us a contact for the most amazing oversized sea sponges. These sponge vases are brilliant in a bathroom filled with towels or soaps or even pool side to hold beach towels. They also look fabulous on there own as purely decorative objects of beauty. We had fun last weekend taking a few liberties with them and actually dying them all sorts of brilliant hues- black, white, orange navy blue and Sam even tie dyed one for her own bathroom. We also love the look of shells casually placed on an end table or amongst your books in the library. Have fun with them and consider gold or silver leafing a large shell or even spray painting it neon pink. Smaller shells can fill glass vases or upstyle an old mirror frame buy hot gluing small shells onto the frame. I’ve seen this done on mirror frames, sofa table bases and even a chair frame. Sand is another fabulous element to bring home for spring, fill a shallow bowl with sand that sits on the dining table, add some to glass canisters or roll a vase that has been sprayed with spray adhesive throw the sand to create a sand vase-fabulous!

On the weekends I have to admit that we are a little obsessed with dye these days. When we were shooting in Rivera Nayarit, we met up with a few amazing artisans who were hand-dying cotton garments. They were brilliant and now several of these dresses are my go-to travel and resort wear outfits but liberating this idea, Sam and I have created amazing drapery panels by dyeing the bottom third of the drape with a tie dye effect. Absolutely love the way we allowed the dye to softly bleed into the base colour. We are just launching a Rock House summer pillow collection which includes tie-dyed throw cushions for all of our favourite outdoor rooms. The tie-dye fabrics looks brilliant and when I’m in China next week I plan to bring home some silk that can be dyed and then stretched onto frames and hung for wall art.
Your rooms should always embrace the seasons so this weekend bring a little tropical fabulousness home and have some fun with these projects.

DESIGNER NOTES
To the designer a house plant is living sculpture. Never neglect or over look their importance and design input. Ensure the pot is fabulous, the plant meticulously groomed and the soil is covered (try glass beads, small shells, moss, or even copper pennies.

Just because you’ve downsized or live in a less-than-spacious home does not mean that you need to live with small style. Grand and fabulous style comes in packages of all size, let me share with you some of the design secrets that we use when creating fabulous smaller spaces for our clients.

Starting with the colour palette for the space when we are designing a small room we work with fewer colours but that does not mean that we work with no colour or neutrals. Dark, deep hues actually recede and can make a space look larger as long as the furniture you are using does not create a strong contrast with the walls or the floor (ie: black walls and beige furniture equals contrast!). Minimize contrast to visually enlarge a space. Monochromatic palettes work exceptionally well in a small space.

Move in the furniture and ensure that you don’t use a collection of small scale pieces. We actually use larger pieces to help create that visual illusion of a larger space. For example, in a living room we may use a pair of love seats and an oversized armoire, in a bedroom a vertically oversized headboard, a dresser and a full size chair. We are always conscientious of the floor space and design the room to leave as much visible floor area as possible by employing wall-mounted pieces such as wall mounted end tables, night stands or even book shelves where possible to help maximize the floor space which in turns keeps the room feeling larger. This trick can be used through out the home. For example, mount a wall-mounted shelf-like table in the foyer to give you a base for a mirror and a stylized place to drop your keys.

Keeping it off the floor continues into our lighting and accessory design. Instead of a floor lamp, use wall-mounted lamps. It’s important to ensure that you have enough light in any space and it’s always better to over-light than to under-light. One key trick for ensuring smaller spaces seem visually larger is to keep your horizontal surfaces like the floor – clean! We do not over-accessorize table tops and mantels, a few well-selected, high quality pieces do the trick for making the room fabulous. This can be challenging and will require constant editing by you but instead of saying no to yourself simply rotate your beloved treasures in out of the room by season. Keep throw cushions on the furniture to a minimum as well. Clutter will make any space seem smaller.

Art is a key element in all of our rooms and as impassioned art lovers, we like to make bold statements with our art. In our small spaces look for high impact display options and install one or two oversized pieces on the wall.

Magicians know the value of using mirrors in their illusions, just as designers know the trick. We often mirror an entire wall or hang a fabulous large mirror over the mantel or above a bureau to help reflect light and enlarge a space.

Keep your window treatments simple and in low contrast to the wall color. Consider wall-to-wall drapery panels, they are true miracle workers.

THIS AND THAT
This week I’m sea-inspired after having just returned from Florida. We should all welcome a little coral or ‘seaspiration’ into our rooms as summer approaches. The designer ‘rule’ is the closer you are to the sea, the more seaspiration you are allowed, the further away you live the more you will need to refrain yourself to using only one or two treasures from the sea.

I keep thinking that spring is coming but instead it just seems that only another cold or flu arrives. Time to decorate to help heal those winter ailments.

How does that saying go? Are you suppose to ‘starve a cold or a fever’? Actually mom says it’s “feed a cold” and “starve the fever”, so this weekend lets feed our rooms to starve both the cold and fevers. Inevitably, we will get sick but if we are prepared we can make ourselves feel a whole lot better when we are feeling less than sunny.

The first designer trick to feeling better faster is to stock the house before we get sick. Keep a couple of good books stashed away so that you can crawl under the covers enjoy the chapters between wheezes and sneezes. Obviously, while you are nursing yourself back to good health it is also the perfect time to catch up on your magazines to ensure you don’t miss an issue even if your under the weather, subscribe rather than always having to get your monthly fix from the bookstore. A walk to the mailbox in your flannels is a lot easier when you’re feeling this crappy than heading down to the corner market.

In the linen closet keep a fabulously soft, warm extra blanket that you can pull out and take with you from the sofa to the bed. I also keep an extra pillow or two as well.

Hot water bottles can feel great on the neck or lower back, be sure to pick one up with a design bottle wrap and keep next to the extra blanket and pillow stored in the linen closet. I also keep several bottles of essential oils in my medicine drawer: lavender for helping sleep, frankincense for achy muscles, and eucalyptus and peppermint to help breathing.

I don’t have time to watch a lot of TV so I PVR my favorites and save them for just such a day. Be ready with a season of Let’s Shop, Million Dollar Decorators or Selling LA.

I have a favorite tea that I started drinking in China and now it’s my winter staple and it’s especially yummy when you have cold. Heat organic fresh squeezed orange juice to boiling, add fresh lime, lemon, apple, or any other combination of fresh fruit cut into small pieces, steep with a green tea bag and add honey to taste. You may enjoy this enough just to get sick so you can have the tea.

On the night stand or the end table next to the comfy sofa you curl up in when you’re under the weather ensure that the lamp is on a three way switch so that you can keep the light turned low so as not to bother your eyes or aggravate a headache. I also use an iPad as an clock in the bedroom on the end table and when I’m feeling up to it I can always do a little designer research or even take the time to shop on line for great new accessories which always make me feel better. Live fabulously even when you’re not feeling quite so fabulous!

DESIGNER NOTES
The colour red was all over the Oscars last week be sure to bring some into your wardrobe and your home décor. A fabulous red throw over the arm of a favorite chair or new red throw cushion or a coat of red paint in the foyer. Consider pairing with pink as did several fashionistas on the red carpet for an ultra spring colour fling.

One thing that we always ask for is more time in the day and this year we get a gift of just that, granted it’s only one day but a day is a day! What do you plan to do with your extra leap day February 29th? If you haven’t already made plans, let me give you some ideas and inspiration for a few decorating projects you could tackle.

1. Stop in at your favorite table wear store and pick up some linen dinner napkins, and or hand towels for the powder room or even a set of beach towels for the lounge chairs that you will soon be occupying on the patio and then head over to the local monogramming shop and have them monogrammed with your initials, your last name, or even the name of your house-you know we love to personalize and this is just the perfect way to start.

2. We love messing around with paint so get creative with an ordinary glass vase or canister and paint the inside to really up the design value. Take a basic glass container and using ordinary house paint in your selected shade pour an ample amount inside the glass swirl and roll it around until all is covered and then drain the excess paint back into the paint can and turn the vase upside down and allow to dry on newspaper (not on top of your favorite design column). When it’s dry display with pride, we’ve also played around with multiple colours including metallics and this looks fabulous, just remember that you will need to leave some glass uncovered in order for the
next colour to show through.

3. Hand written notes are a dying treasure. Always keep a supply of ‘thank you’ cards and gorgeous note cards or paper on hand for when the need or the time allows you can put pen to paper and send a simple note to a friend that will make there day.

4. Spend half of your extra day visiting vintage, antique and or thrift stores. Look for vintage silver frames, bowls or water jugs and then head home to find the perfect side board or end table to display your new old treasure.

5. Bake cookies, nothing makes me feel better than I do with a fresh batch in the oven. Take your basic chocolate chip recipe and substitute the chips for broken Skor bar bits or use Bernard Callebaut chocolate bits, dried cherries and ground (Kathy Ireland taught me this tip a long time ago during a conversation we were having over family and baking- I never like to bite down on a hard chunk of a nut so now I always grind mine) walnuts. This is one of my family’s favorite combinations.

6. Bring on spring; plant some fabulous flowering bulbs such as paper whites or tulips into a beautiful bowl or glass vase and in a few weeks you’ll have fresh flowers to enjoy.

7. Make a lamp shade, last week my daughter Sam had us making a lamp shade using coffee filters. We folded the filters in half and then half again and again and then the filter flowers where hot-glued onto the shade-wow, unbelievable and you’d never guess that once was a simple linen shade was now this amazing piece of art. For simpler shades, you can glue bullion fringe and drapery trimmings onto the edge of the shade, add a tassel or a few silk flowers to the outside of the shade, cover the entire shade in wine corks, metal beer bottle tops or using paint pens write or graffiti the shade.

8. Make a pillow, hand stitch silk flowers, a vintage brooch, stuffed child’s toy, drapery or upholstery trim onto an otherwise ordinary throw cushion. Hand paint a picture or write a poem onto the front-be creative but create something creative for the special chair.

9. Of course you could simply pick up all your favorite designer magazines and spend the day with a pot of green tea and the magazines getting inspired.

10. Whatever you do, make sure you spend this extra day giving your home a little extra love. You deserve it!