At Home on Carolina Street

I was at the beach over the weekend, and had a chance to visit the owners of the best little home shop on the Delaware shore: Carolina Street, which I have mentioned briefly in a previous post. Dee Dee and Paul Phillips have lived in Fenwick for-EVER, and they regaled me with stories about old [...]

Designer Samples at The Loft

Got to hand it to Sandy Steele — she’s persistent in the sweetest way! For months she’s been asking me to drive out to Frederick, MD, to see her new shop, The Loft at Antique Imports. Well, I finally went out there, and I CAN’T BELIEVE I didn’t go sooner. Basically, she takes high-end custom [...]

At Home with Tone on Tone’s Loi Thai

I had the pleasure of spending the morning at the Chevy Chase DC home of Loi Thai, the owner of Tone on Tone, the Bethesda shop known for its painted Swedish antiques. Ever since I saw a story about his house in The Washington Post last year (right after he and partner Thomas Troeschel moved [...]

At Home with DHS Designs’ Darryl Savage

Whew — it’s oppressively hot out there today. That’s when I start dreaming of large bodies of water, such as the Severn River, which forms Darryl Savage’s backyard near Annapolis. Darryl owns DHS Designs in Queenstown, very close to the outlets at the 50/301 split that we all pass on the way to the beach. [...]

At Home with Decorium’s Owner

Apologies for my prolonged absense — I’ve been blessed with an abundance of freelance assignments, which have taken precedence this week. But in the course of reporting one of my stories, I was lucky enough to meet Jeff Albert, the owner of Decorium in Old Town Alexandria. I drove there last week to meet Jeff [...]

Totally Awesome Tag Sale

I don’t normally write about sales, because there are so many of them, but I couldn’t resist passing along news about this one, which I saw on My Notting Hill today. Michele’s friend Lori, a home stager, is downsizing to move to Georgetown, and she is getting together with her friends to have a HUGE TAG [...]

A Few of My Favorite Things

Spring cleaning is in the air, because I finally went through the huge box of press kits I collected last fall in High Point, which means those new lines are now in stores. There’s no real theme to any of this — just stuff I really like, starting with bursts of orange from Global Views: [...]

Eclectic Old Town Shopping at Verdigris

I got an e-mail last month from Ursula Baukol, who had found this blog and wanted to introduce me to her store in Old Town Alexandria — Verdigris Antiques and Interiors. She didn’t know that I do a lot of my Christmas shopping in Old Town, or that I had been a docent at Robert [...]

Middle Kingdom’s Alison and Bo Jia: Museum Quality

I first met them when I heard that they are locally based, but manage an operation on China where artisans make their designs and then hand-paint them. Bo, a native Chinese, goes to China at least twice a year to oversee the production. I had written a blog post about them for Washington Spaces, and [...]

What’s in the Cards for 2010?

This card describes my sentiments perfectly as I begin a new career as a freelance writer and design blogger. Thank you Binth, for such a lovely expression.