There's a lot you can do with walls - paint color, murals, decals and graphics, but one idea we've been seeing more and more of is adding texture with decorative 3-D objects. The most popular are inspired by nature - birds, butterflies and flowers - and they can be made very cheaply with simple materials. 

Today's Before & After comes from Jérémy, a very talented 16 year old designer from Canada. Here he transforms an old vintage fan from boring to bold with just a paint job. 

Italian for "The Rainbow," L'ArcoBaleno is a new magazine-style  retail site that launches today. Exploring "extraordinary" design pieces from across the globe as well as the creative minds behind them, the site combines content with e-commerce for unique pieces that won't be found anywhere else. 

In other news, micro apartments in Los Angeles explore how small is too small, and check out an extreme treehouse. See the headlines after the jump.

With a small space comes great responsibility...the responsibility of finding where to fit everything. Some decide to forgo owning a television completely, but even those living in the smallest spaces usually want a television for the occasional movie night, especially now that HDTV displays come in extremely flat form factors that allow installation in spaces where once no tube set dared to tread...

A ways back I posted about Yarn Bombing: The Knit Graffiti Movement and discussed the international stealth subculture of wrapping yarn around urban structures. This time, I'm diving a little deeper with one of the founders of the movement, Magda Sayeg. Follow me...

This morning I was one among many parents who waved goodbye as my oldest boarded a day camp-bound bus for the first time. I got less than five hours of sleep last night because I had a crazy case of the butterflies, but my son got on the bus with a confident smile. Whether it's a new camp, a move, a trip, or an event, I have worked really hard to ease transitions for our family and stolen good ideas wherever I find them. Here are a few of our strategies:

Sprout Side Table

• $399
• Blu Dot

I've been looking for a cute little side table that would have some heft and not take up too much of a footprint. This is my pick. Based on Blu Dot's popular Sprout Dining table, it's made of lacquer on engineered wood substrate with satin finish and a brushed stainless steel base.

Here's kind of a cool thing. This steel-framed chair had seen better days. Enter Janusz, who has an abiding love for the world's most humble material — cardboard — and for bringing old furniture back to life. Click here to see what he did next. 

I have a friend who has more kids than me, whose husband works longer hours than mine, who cooks and bakes more than I do, and yet her house is tidier than mine, always tidier than mine. What gives? I decided that this week, it was time to get to the bottom of it: what are the dirty little secrets of those tidy families?