apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Entertaining at Newport’s turn-of-the-century seaside “cottages” (read: “humongous mansions”) was clearly not a casual affair. But after last year’s austere holiday party season, we must admit that we find the over-the-top opulence of these dining rooms kind of appealing, even if there aren’t exactly any formal banquets looming in our future.

Printing napkins, coasters, or glassware with custom graphics or text isn’t as expensive as you might think and doesn't necessarily even require graphic design expertise. We love the idea of sending our guests home with a one-of-a-kind brandy snifter or other personalized glassware as a party favor.

Wes & Kayla’s admission in yesterday’s wonderful house tour that getting their apartment looking just right took a lot longer than they expected really hit home for us. It’s been over two months since we moved in to our new place and instead of plowing through projects, our to do list just keeps getting longer and longer.

Recipe card boxes may seem like a quaint idea in the Internet age, but these Joseph Cornell-inspired upcycled boxes by Karen Malcolm make me start to rethink my recipe (non) organization system.

We realize that there’s no replacement for good old fashioned sunshine, but leaving work today and finding only darkness outside left us with a sinking feeling that the S.A.D. days of winter are right around the corner. So we thought we’d find a few products and ideas that might trick us into believing that sunlit evenings aren’t actually gone for good.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is one of our top sources for design inspiration in London, but since it’s quite a long journey to the UK, we were happy to discover this first set in a series of limited edition pattern books published by the V&A featuring diverse patterns of The Fifties, Indian Florals, William Morris, and Digital Pioneers.

We spotted the striped bathroom in the first image while photographing a Massachusetts home for an upcoming house tour and were impressed by how some subdued stripes can make a small space feel like the inside of a pretty jewel box.

Transmission Atelier Inc. works with museums, art dealers, and private collectors to produce affordable print editions of antique artwork, mostly of a decidedly dark bent.

Our affinity for rooms with a touch of the dark, gothic, or strange is a year-round kind of affair, but we know we’re not the only ones with a taste for the slightly sinister, especially as Halloween fast approaches.

One of the few unpleasant aspects of our mid-century home is the icky gray 50-year-old linoleum that occasionally interrupts our otherwise lovely hardwood flooring. In our search for an inexpensive alternative we keep stopping at plain old vinyl tile used creatively to form interesting patterns.

A few days ago we wrote about a gorgeous contemporary home on Providence’s College Hill, but the neighborhood is also where some of the city’s most interesting historic buildings can be found, including many that served as settings for noted 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft’s stories.

We spotted Alec Thibodeau’s work at Craftland a few weeks ago and thought that his bizarre and colorful silkscreen prints would be perfect Halloween décor that could easily stay up year round.

Providence’s steep hills offer some killer views, and this residence designed by Friedrich St. Florian Architects takes full advantage of them. We’re not surprised that Rhode Island Monthly chose it as the winner of its 2009 Design Awards.

Dario Argento’s 1977 cult horror classic, Suspiria, is one of our Halloween DVD musts — not for the ridiculous amount of gore or the kooky plot line — but for the over-the-top color-saturated interiors that are just so wrong they’re right.