Green Milk. This is exciting! UK-based Greenbottle has recently announced their new milk container that promises a green solution to the waste produced by plastic milk bottles. The new bottle is made of a cardboard outer shell (made from pulped recycled cardboard using egg carton technoloy) and a biodegradeable plastic inner liner (made from corn starch). When the bottle is empty, the outer layer may be recycled and the inner liner will fully decompose in a landfill within six weeks... More

Winning Editorial. The New York Times Magazine put together a stylish slideshow showcasing some favorites trends from last month's Milan Furniture Fair. Because traditional print media can't bring us the information as fast as blogs and the internet, it is wonderful to see carefully crafted editorial photos that blogs don't have the money to produce. Pictured above is the Red-Light District theme...

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Design 101. Similar to IKEA's popular StartBox for kitchens, Droog's Starters Box aims to supply you with the basics. In this case, the basics is a sampling of the Dutch design collective's smaller scale but iconic works... More

Over the Top. We told you it was full of great stuff! In another feature in their Home Design special — The Next White — New York Magazine goes inside the radical redefined rental of Art Advisor Sharon Coplan Hurowitz and her family. Hurowitz hired Amale Andraos and Dan Wood, principals of WORKac, to alter the apartment. Because it's a rental, this means lots of paint and removable furnishings...
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New Baroque. The shift towards neon is pushing forward. Jasper Van Grootel restores Baroque styled antiques and coats them with the a special Soft Skin� rubber. The rubber makes these pieces suitable for indoors or outdoors...
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It's a rare housewares designer who can really call themselves an inventor, but Kat Nouri and her collaborators at SF's Modern-twist deserve that moniker. The company's small housewares line is so far limited to softwares and tableware, but each piece is not only an attractive example of modern organic style, but also uses form or material to solve a problem in an unusual way. More

Don't you like the smooth, glossy appearance of lacquered furniture? But it seems difficult to acheive yourself at home. We've seen rubberized coatings that are available for dipping the handles of tools and wonder if this might acheive that flawless appearance and provide a protective rubber layer to boot!

One such product from a company called Plasti Dip is shown here, with rubber coatings available in dippable and sprayable applications. We'll keep you posted if we can work up the nerve to test it. One obvious drawback: most rubber coatings are available in very limited colors like "blue", "yellow", "red". -regina

Is this really rubber? This rubber flooring has a very leather-like appearance. It is available to the trade through Robin Reigi, though I've not seen it elsewhere. The flooring is available in 4 natural colors and in sizes as large as 39"x39". The rubber is about half the price of leather flooring, wears better than real leather, and is much easier to maintain.

-regina

They so want to be together that you will have a hard time keeping them apart. Rare Earth magnets are so strong that you can even hang a planter from your window on them. We blogged them last winter as the best thing to use with magnetic paint, but you don't need to stop there. More

While we've been doing our own form of spring cleaning (which entails more cleaning out than actual cleaning), and moving things around, we noticed once again how irritating it is that those bulky transformer plugs take up so much space on our surge protectors. Larger surge protectors aren't really practical in our tiny apartment.

Flexity to the rescue! Flexity, which is headquartered in Santa Cruz, is introducing the PowerSquid Surge Protector in July.

What a great idea. It's flexible, easy to use, and has greater reach. It also offers great protection for your electronics -- which makes it worth the extra money ($49.95-$79.95). And the PowerSquid is almost a work of art, in a sea creature/spider-y sort of way.