The Latest: Feb 2018

Amazon’s Goldbox is a location for all kinds of Amazon deals for a limited time. It’s a bit like a digital rummage sale, where you can find everything from sous vide machines to colored pens. We are often sifting through the (literal thousands) of items here at Apartment Therapy to surface the best deals for home. In doing so, we’ve picked up on some trends, like this teddy bear necklace is nearly always on sale.

This week, domestic doyenne and Hamptons entertaining heroine Ina Garten shared her latest home decor acquisition on Instagram, but the reception wasn’t nearly as warm and inviting as her famous kitchen. The contemporary art piece from a French antiques dealer is getting seriously mixed reviews — including from many who wondered: Where was Geoffrey on this?

The bathroom in this tiny house is 10x nicer than the one in my apartment.

This soft pastel has some surprising staying power (and works in just about every room).

Designers continue to push the creative parameters of tiny houses. The most recent examples of their ingenuity come courtesy of the winners of Ryterna Modul’s Architectural Challenge 2018. The competition invited the participants to create a tiny house no bigger than 269 square feet, complete with a kitchen, sleeping and living areas and a bathroom. The other rule is that designs must have zero impact on the environment.

Nothing gives me a lift like a royal wedding. Since announcing their engagement this past November, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry have been the talk of the internet. When is it happening? May. What kind of engagement ring will she sport? Custom by Cleave and Company. Where will the newlyweds live?Nottingham Cottage in Kensington Palace. How will they decorate? Unclear—but we can glean from the Royal Warrant Holders Association what decorating favorites may be on the list.

Good news, IKEA fans. One of the most annoying things about shopping at the Swedish retailer online has just gotten way better. No more adding furniture to your cart, just to abandon ship because of those exorbitant shipping costs. On its US homepage, IKEA is currently touting a new delivery fee policy, where large items like sofas will ship for as low as $29.

For anyone who was sad to see the final Oh Joy for Target decor collection released this past fall, we have some good news. As it turns out, the whimsical patterns and colors aren’t totally gone from Target stores, they’re just in a new (disposable) form. On Sunday, Oh Joy! For Cheeky launched online and in select Target stores. The line of disposable plates, bowls, and cups come in a variety of prints perfect for spring, summer, and beyond. “I love celebrations.

Forget the splinter-prone two-by-fours and rusty nail playgrounds of your elementary school years. The children of tomorrow are getting something a little bit more colorful. British architectural office Alma-nac is set to create The Upside Down House in Green Park Village, located in the city of Reading, England.

Chip and Jo have a new addition—and no, we’re not talking about the baby. The Fixer Upper stars’ restaurant, Magnolia Table, opened Monday in Waco, and we’ve got a peek inside. One of the perks of living in Waco is getting to sneak into @MagnoliaTable for their soft opening. And oh my goodness, it’s utter perfection. Truly heavenly food, and every single detail was on point. The tile floors, menus, all the lettering – my typography loving heart be still.

Care for a venti latte in a tiny house? Well, Starbucks is about to make your dream come true. The coffee mega-chain is embracing the tiny house trend by establishing shipping container coffee shops, Delish reports. The ‘bux actually created their first shipping container store, a 450-square-foot space, back in 2012.

We’ve already shown that we’d rather share homes and rides and bicycles, and we’d rather rent, borrow, or swap clothes and books and food and even pets than own them outright — just to name a few areas of life that have been “disrupted” by the “sharing economy.

Let’s talk, for a moment, about a curious architectural feature of many mid-century homes: the sunken living room. For a while, it was all the rage to step down into your living space, until, all of a sudden, it wasn’t. To what do we owe the rise and fall of the sunken living room? Both Realtor.com and Houzz trace the origin of the sunken living room to Kansas-born architect Bruce Goff, who in 1927 designed a house for his teacher, Adah Robinson.

No more boring walls.

Here's how to win the get-the-best-price game whenever possible.

The IKEA Home Squad is back and ready to makeover some spaces. For the fourth season of their home tour YouTube series, the Swedish retailer sent a team of employees to help customers with projects, and if you love a good before and after, you’ll want to tune in. If you didn’t know the retail giant had a home show, allow us to catch you up: a team of IKEA experts hits the road to help people solve real home furnishing challenges, big and small, and transform their living spaces.

How many unique chair designs can you come up with? That’s a question we’d love to ask designer Joyce Lin because we’re currently obsessing over her super creative chair designs. A graduate of Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University, Lin’s signature chairs are imaginative enough to spruce up any living space. The San Francisco-based designer works with a variety of mediums, including clay, foam, metal, paint, plaster, vinyl and wood.

German photographer and PhD candidate Claudius Schulze built this funky houseboat with plans to sail from Hamburg to Paris. With the help of some friends, recycled materials and six months time, Schulze was able to construct the boat for $9,080/£6,500. A novice boat builder, Schulze built the space to work as his studio. The large glass windows and the deck (complete with disco ball) keep the studio bright and airy.

Blaming millennials for nearly everything you can think of has become an unfortunate trend, but we’re happy to report that there’s a reason to give the generation a thumbs-up for influencing the world in a positive way. In addition to wanting smaller homes and killing off doorbells, please join us in giving them credit for IKEA’s upcoming launch of Hasselblad Masters photography.

It’s no surprise that people love tiny things. The Japanese art of origami is objectively already tiny, where square sheets of paper get folded into palm-sized cranes, boats, cups, and other items. But one artist is taking the form to a whole new (miniscule) level.

Partaking in what sounds like the photography assignment of a lifetime is Andrew Pielage, who has set out to capture every one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s remaining works. So far, he’s photographed 52 of the famous architect’s existing designs, and is totally committed to nab photos of all 521. But this ambitious project goes far beyond cataloguing purposes.

Time to check your kitchen counter: Whirlpool has recalled their KitchenAid brand electric kettle. They’ve recalled around 40,200 units in the US and 47,300 in Canada due to burn hazards. The recall is for the KitchenAid 1.7 Liter Electric Kettles in black, red, white, graphite and stainless steel and cocoa silver. After over 70 reports of the handle breaking off of the kettle and with a few extreme cases causing minor burns, the company recalled the product on February 20th.

Let’s pretend you’re a baker and you’re making a cake. You whip up some batter, stick some pans in the oven with said batter, and, when the timer dings, you’ve got yourself a cake. But wait, you’re not done yet, of course. What’s a cake without frosting and decoration, right? Well, it’s boring, unfortunately, and who wants to eat that? The same can be said for a room with no art.

A few places around the country had little tastes of warm weather this week, and that only makes the thirst for summer all the more real. Thankfully, IKEA is here to feed our fantasies by revealing its 2018 summer collection—and you’re never going to want to go back inside. The collection features playful hues and patterns that really work with the summer in the city vibes.