stay home & feather
Forget the candy-coated commercial shape of hearts and go for a Valentine gift that is pumping with personality (and anatomical accuracy)…
left to right LOST IN THE WOOD crochet heart brooch / DECEMBER THIEVES porcelain heart wall vase / Ingela P. Arrhenius for KITSCH KITCHEN corazon pillow / MACON & LESQUOY heart in osmosis pin / LIGHT + PAPER SHOPlaser-cut heart
We take a scroll across an Instagram find that channels a stroll across one of our treasured Canadian cities…
As much as we love Instagram, it’s getting a bit ad-rich, and maybe getting it wrong re. targeting (according to Insta, I am a late-20-something yoga-pant wearing mom of two with mild bladder leakage on the hunt for Ritz Cracker-based recipes… close, but no.)
But props are due when they get it right, as in the case of art supply chain DeSerres and their recent posts featuring Stephanie E.M. Coleman, and her studio and shop, Mezari.
The posts about Mezari leapt off the feed and into our design-hearts for their bold and quirky style, and upon a deeper dive, revealed Stephanie’s beautiful toile de jouy prints, applied to home textiles and wallpaper, that are based around landmarks of her hometown of Montreal.
We teeter with a toile… Done badly, it is fussy disaster. Done well, and it draws the viewer in and on a whimsical journey, eyes dancing from pocket to pocket of intricate linework.
What grabbed us about Stephanie’s work is the joyous celebration of Montreal through the familiar. The humble Dépanneur (that’s “corner store” to the non-Québécois) storefront is wrapped in thistle and vines, almost as if the long-time survivor of the cheeriest of apocalypses.
And anyone who has strolled Montreal’s Plateau quickly gets a sense for the uniqueness of their facades, so to see them celebrated on organic cotton tea towels is a treat.
Montreal is explored landmark-for-landmark in her Toile de Ville wallpaper. Statement-making while remaining delicate and delightful.
Peruse and shop Stephanie’s work here, or visit the Mezari bricks-and-mortar shop at 365 Duluth Ave. East in Montreal.
Top a tired table with a bit of punch in less than 10 minutes!
This plain tiny purple table has been kicking around Social Nesting HQ for a long time.
A Habitat bargain (I think we paid £10 for it on sale), it served us well, but was suddenly showing signs of age… a bit of scuffing and a chip here and there. Not enough to kick it to the curb, but enough to warrant a facelift.
Newcomers to the Circuit phenomenon, we don’t have a Cricut machine but we love the adhesive foil, and we are currently obsessed with (and covering everything in sight in) the Matte Gold.
And you don’t need a Cricut machine for this project. We simply cut a few pieces to cover the tabletop, going at it with a craft knife to create a jagged centre. This may look a bit weird as we craftily cut it out of scraps (waste not…), but you get the picture.
A few minutes to carefully apply and the tired tabletop gets a bit of comic book punch in chic matte gold…
…and becomes the perfect resting ground for some fellow gold trinkets.
Two recipes (one classic favourite, one newly found) come together to make one kicking cookie…
Our no-fail go-to for a gingerbread cookie is this classic one from Donna Hay.
No matter how you roll the dough, or how you vary cooking times slightly, you get a version (thick and soft or thin and with a snap) of a delicious cookie that we sadly eat the way others consume potato chips: by the fistful.
For some reason, as we crept toward the holidays, we were not able to leave delicious-enough alone. We had a batch of these cookies already made and were looking for a way to dress them up. Enter a lemon, and this Bon Appétit recipe for Lemon Cream Sandwich Cookies from 2009.
We whipped up a batch of the filling, though we stopped after one and a half cups of powdered sugar as this was plenty for us.
And when we sandwiched the Donna Hay Gingerbread Cookies around this divine lemon cream, the Ginger Lemon Cream Cookie – a spicy-tangy-sweet explosion – was born.
Like we needed another reason to eat more of these cookies…
The door to Christmas at Social Nesting HQ opens with a very special wrap job, and this year, some very special company stopped in to help…
Aside from the tree, the Christmas Door is the one bit of decor we border on giddy about. It just isn’t Christmas without the presence of an oversized present lurking in the corner of the room. So without further ado…
Out came the trusty tools, the wrap from World Market and some jute ribbon from Michaels, and the template we made to get the whole for the door knob and latch in just the right spot…
…and how special it felt to be able to have the episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show – the one that inspired this Christmas decor staple – on in the background as we did it.
So for those who missed the countless retellings of this story: it was the mid-70s, and a young boy was watching a rerun of a Christmas episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The original airing, in December 1970, was while he was in-utero, but who’s to say it didn’t make its way to the womb then too. Just saying: one should never underestimate the power of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Anyway, back to the mid-70s… so, when he saw the most exciting decorating touch he had ever seen, Mary’s front door wrapped like a giant present, he vowed that one day, in a place of his own, he would do the very same thing.
And so it came to pass that we are on year eight of a wrapped door. And every year it is as thrilling to create, and to share with guests, as that very first sighting was.
Come on in, won’t you?
