Bridget Otto Thursday

It's Bridget Otto Thursday and she's served up a double helping of interior design news.In Free Style, Otto writes that some furniture retailers have on staff designers to help make your experience as "fun as buying shoes." Shelly Greenwood says, "We work best to educate the buyers so mistakes aren't made." She helps buyers with scale and balance. In store designers advice is free, but they do

The Garden - outdoor entertaining destination.

We've posted about The Resort Effect, the move to take the inside of your home to the outside. In fact, Troy-Bilt, a leading manufacturer of lawn and garden equipment, predicts that in 2007, gardens will continue to be viewed as an extension of the family room and grow in their role as an outdoor entertaining destination.Savvy Gardening has some tips for your garden that will get the

Green Homes

Last Sunday, I wrote about The Resort Effect and noted that ...creating a resort at home becomes more attractive as transportation costs climb.Pure Contemporary in Behind the Curtains has an article about GE,A blueprint for building green homes called ecomagination Homebuilder Program.This new program helps residential developers and builders design homes that are not only comfortable, but that

Neighborhood Notes and The Pearl

Neighborhood Notes takes exception to The Oregonian describing Landfair Furniture's move, in Storefronts, as a move to the North Pearl Design District ...becoming known as the Design District, with Globe Lighting, Bedford Brown, Kravet and other related businesses within a few blocks of one another She notes While I understand the need to market the North Pearl, I think it's a mistake to label

Storefronts

by ANNE LAUFELANDFAIR FURNITURE AND DESIGN GALLERY What's new: This spacious furniture store, the first tenant in the new Pearl Design Center, opened in March on the northern edge of the Pearl District. Where & when: 1636 N.W. 15th Ave. at Savier Street under the Fremont Bridge, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. What's cool: Landfair carries an eclectic array of home furnishings -- from

Oregon Passes New Bottle Bill, Artists Deprived

Beginning Jan. 1, 2009, Oregonians will have to plunk down a nickel deposit on every bottle of water they buy. Yes, the Oregon House passed the Oregon Bottle Bill. The Senate passed a similar bill, so Oregon will recycle instead of dumping. Oregonians buy nearly 200 million bottles of water each year and most are not recycled. The state Department of Environmental Quality estimates that

Woman Power: Are You Surprised?

C.B Whittemore posting at Flooring The Consumer writes that "Women hold the power of the sale". A big change is coming to retail in the world of retail:Consider this: The majority of retail operates in a world designed, owned and managed by men for women consumers. Whittemore says these retail establishments are "not connecting with their woman customer."Connecting successfully means truly

May 17th Open House

Beverly (left) and sister Carol celebrate Open House on May17th at Landfair Furniture + Design Gallery in the Pearl Design Center.Beverly and husband Michael look proud of their creation.

Shakti Space Designs

On May 20th we posted about Organizing tips from Mary Carol Garrity in Organizing: Think outside the basket, One of Garrity's suggestions for organizing was to create a message center in your home and suggested painting a door to look like a chalkboard.Lo and behold I find out about Lucinda R. Henry owner of Shakti Space Designs, LLC. Lucinda does Custom Wall Finishes, Old World Plasters and

Bib Aprons, A Great Impulse Item

Recently. I posted about impulse items in The $80 tube of Toothpaste. The secret to high priced toothpaste, that the big box stores use, is the careful placement of impulse items. Today, I learned that Popularity of aprons is remarkableLong, short, frilly or barbecue-style, the apron has withstood the test of time, becoming a cultural icon of sorts.In Arizona, local retailers suggest ● A

The Resort Effect

On May 12th I wrote about the advent of Hularo, a man-made, totally weatherproof fiber, but unlike other plastic fibers it contains no PVC, will not crack or fade and does not give off toxic fumes. The unspoken story is that the hottest trend in America is moving outside.The ideal outdoor room takes the comforts of the house's interior to a nearby outdoor space, usually one that is attached to

Organizing Tips

Mary Carol Garrity, the proprietor of three successful home furnishings stores in Atchison, Kan., and the author of several best-selling books on home decorating, writes in Organizing: Think outside the basket at InsideBayArea.com. about organizing your home and increasing storage by suggesting: Cute containers for small items like stamps and office supplies Get the family to hang up their things

House Markers

While driving around Forest Heights last Friday, we noticed that many homes had very special and big house numbers. Now we've been to Home Depot and glanced at their numbers and generally they have individuals in black and brass that you nail or screw up individually. Not the kind seen in Forest Heights! I tell Mike on occasion that I want some of those big numbers that can be seen with ease

Alexa Hampton designs for Kravet

Interesting article in the Sun Sentinel about Alexa Hampton, the daughter of a famous designer Mark Hampton. (She is) a busy designer for discriminating clients, she also designs furniture for Hickory Chair and fabrics for Kravet.In the interview she was asked, "When do you think a room needs updating?"A. Rooms that are done in the heat of a trend tend to need redoing five to seven years later.

Our Open House Was A Success

We moved to our new location in the Pearl Design Center on March 15th and Thursday night invited designers and friends to our open house. It was a wonderful night and many dropped by to wish us well and loved our new location. Face it, Macadam Avenue is just not that easy to get to, if you are coming from somewhere other than Lake Oswego or West Linn. We are actively getting involved in the

Wickes to close its five Minneapolis-area stores

And concentrate on Portland, OR.The Top 100 company will close all five of its Minnesota stores and its Brooklyn Center, Minn., distribution center and “part of the company’s continuing strategy to focus its resources in high-growth markets including California, Chicago, Portland (Ore.) and Las Vegas,” Wickes said in a release.[...]The company said it is opening 10 new showrooms in those markets

The $80 Tube of Toothpaste!

That's what good retailers like Costco and Target get for toothpaste, because you may have just stopped in for the toothpaste, but you bought impulse items that are strategically located around the store.While few people would say they go to Target or Costco for pleasure, these retailers have gained an edge in luring people in for everyday products, and then enticing them to fill their carts with

Green Hularo

Traditionally outdoor furniture has been made of teak, wrought iron and plastic. Teak was used because it wouldn't rot and wrought iron because it wouldn't rust. Now there is "hularo". From the Post-Bulletin:During the past few years, a new material called Hularo has become the staple of high-end contemporary design for exterior furnishings. Hularo is a man-made, totally weatherproof fiber, but

Artistic Metal

From Ocala.com, Metal shows off its artistic mettle/Designs of all types are popular as wall decorYou might see decorative metal wall art pieces and grills outdoors, but they're now making decor statements inside the home.These often-ornate pieces can be made of iron, other metals or even faux iron with the look of the real thing.Pictured are some examples from Global Views: Square Wall Panel -