Café Design

Happy MLK Day! I hope you are enjoying a peaceful extended weekend at home. Thank you so much for your kind comments and advice after Friday’s post! You had some great ideas to share!! Per your request, I’ll do my best to keep you posted as we (hopefully) progress. But we’ve been taking it slowly over the last few days, sneaking in some well-deserved moments of rest and relaxation and several Antiques Roadshow episodes. We ran out of bread on Friday and wanting to avoid a trip to the store, we (OK, my husband) found a recipe online and baked bread at home instead. Yum. I also got to experiment with a new pasta sauce recipe this weekend and it was a success (but then again, pasta always is, at least at our house). I’ll share it soon if you’re interested, along with a long-promised Transylvanian sweet bread I baked this Christmas. My mom’s recipe. No kneading necessary. 

As we’re wrapping up the second week of 2021, I feel like digging a small hole, crawling in and crying for my mommy, whom I haven’t seen for over a year now… But the ground is frozen solid so no digging is happening any time soon. Maybe screaming and crying, yes. No digging.  Anyway, ahem… I hope you had a nice couple of weeks into the new year. I thought I’d share with you where we’re at in terms of home and garden proclivities. 

“I have always imaged that Paradise would be some kind of a library.” Jorge Louis Borges

As I sat down to plan my blogging schedule for this week, I realized that as much as I’d like to close the door on 2020 and throw away the key, there have been several highs this past year worth mentioning, despite the overwhelmingly great number of lows. Some of these positives include a greater sense of community and a renewed appreciation for all that’s good in our relationships, but also a heightened interest in making our homes more comfortable, and more appealing. Other highs are maybe less obvious and more personal, but to some of us still important. I’m talking about books and more time to read, and design books in particular. The need to escape in a world that isn’t our own, to be transported and inspired, has never been more present and remains so still, despite there being much hope for the future.

So if you don’t mind, I’d like to look back  with you at some of the best-selling design books of last year and ask your opinion on which ones were your favorite, and what gems have you discovered this past year that haven’t necessarily made it to this list. I’ve looked at Amazon’s Top 100 bestsellers in interior design and decoration and was surprised at how few of the titles I loved were actually on that list. Here is the intersection – Amazon’s Top 100 with Café Design’s preferred ones – in no particular order. (Click on the titles to find out more.) Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.

Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love and Baking Biscuits, by Reese Whiterspoon

Happy Friday! Hope your week was a good one so far. Things have been very busy at our house over the last few days, but the good kind of busy. The kind that gets you pumped, off the couch and accomplishing things. We’ve made good progress with our backyard, which I’m super excited about, although I still haven’t gotten around to painting our basement. I don’t know why but every time I want to pick up the paint brush something else comes up :). (The walls are done but I still have to paint half of the stairs and three pairs of bifold closet doors.) Anyway, I guess I have to keep chipping away at it until it’s done.