Need to glam up your boudoir on a tight deadline and a tight budget? Add a little pizzaz to the bathroom? Spice up your kitchen? Cover up a surprise crack on the office wall?

Moi has your solution: wall stickers by Nouvelles Images.

This nifty French company offers hundreds of stickers to decorate every corner of your home. [Read more →]

Mother’s Day is Sunday…Moi has a few shopping ideas for the special Mom or Grandmom or Fairy GodMom in your life.

Breakfast in bed or on the terrace will be extra sweet with Bonne Maman Strawberry Preserves…just like Grandma used to make.

This heart-shaped Quimper dish will remind her every day of how much you care.  Hand-painted and signed, at $42 it’s a collector’s item she’ll treasure.

Your favorite Yummy Mummy will love these books that poke a bit of humor at the world of motherhood…and have conveniently short chapters for the busy mommy. Moi fave to gift is Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonay. $10.07 at Amazon, and they guarantee delivery by Sunday!

Louis Vuitton European City Guide 2010 is the chic Mom’s insider guide to 31 European cities. Whether she’s crossing the Atlantic soon, or indulging in some arm-chair travels, she’ll love to discover the over 2000 insiders’ tips to traveling in style. $130 for this boxed set of 9 soft-back books. Available in LV stores or on-line. Moi tip: this set will look tres chic just sitting on her bookshelf!

Trendy Mom will love one of the funky iPhone 3G covers by Kate Spade. She’s fun, she’s practical, and she’ll love how slim this iPhone case is, and how easy to find in the bottom of her bag! At $35 with free shipping, you can’t go wrong!

And for the Mom who’s hard to shop for, gift her a special treat from Treasures Online Brocante by The Antiques Diva. A Chanel bracelet, an 18th Century blue and white Delft tile, a vintage Moët et Chandon champagne bucket: whatever you choose, shopping with The Antiques Diva is sure to please!

Moi son M sent me an email with this title a couple weeks ago (surely you didn’t think it was his mom who could work such crafty magic!) And in honor of Earth Day here’s my going green tip:

Apparently this woman and her son have a recycling fashion business: she takes your old castoff sweaters and reknits them into something fabulous. Who knew? (I think the son’s job is to update the website : ).

At $30 per reknit it seems to be working: Reknit limits to only 30 orders per month, and sold out early in April. After all he only has one mom.

This is a brand-new venture, just getting started in January. In the past few months his mom has reknit new sweaters, hats, scarves and socks. You can even vote on what next months’ reknit will be: baby bib, thong (I don’t want to know), sweatbands and dog sweaters. I can see Mignette wearing one of Moi old reknit Christmas sweaters: how cool is that?

Moi note: don’t you just love mother / son collaborations? Reknit is my new fave, I love the upcoming CookieBar by Dorie Greenspan and son Josh. Do you have any mother / son collaborations to share?

The cupcake frenzy hasn’t diminished, and these cute reversible reusable cupcake wraps won’t be tardy for the party!

These colorful wraps are practical and inexpensive: Party Wraps are 12 for $4.99!

They’re reversible, and come in different patterns. Black and white for an elegant wedding? Blue and gold to celebrate Moi 3 nieces and nephews who were accepted at ND? Pink and blue for a baby shower? Snowmen for a Christmas party? Hearts for Valentine’s Day? Decisions, decisions, decisions…

Moi tip: Buy before April 15: use coupon code GRAND and you can buy 4, get 1 free!

We typically buy our pop in cans, its cheaper and easier to store. But both TBG and I usually only drink 1/2 the can, which results in alot of flat pop and alot of waste. Sound familiar?

On a recent forage to Bed Bath and Beyond I discovered Bottle Tops: plastic, reusable snap-on lids that convert your can into a bottle! I bought 12 for $19.99, less the 20% BBB discount: cheaper than buying it on the internet.

Normally I wouldn’t pick something like this up without having even heard of it (I never saw it on TV) but we had been throwing away alot of flat pop that week, so what the heck! When I brought it home, TBG opened a can of pop, drank half, clicked on the Bottle Top, and stashed it in the fridge. A few hours later, he retrieved the can, and drank it all. Voila: it worked.

The only minor problem was removing the lid: turns out its easiest to crunch the sides of the can a bit before removing the lid, then just wash or throw in the dishwasher, ready to use next time. There were 12 Bottle Tops in a package with assorted colors, so its easy to identify your can.

Added bonus: I don’t like drinking from the can, this gadget was easy to drink from.

I just got a tip from Moi fave pilates studio, Pilates Shop/Yoga Garage, that they’re being featured on Groupon. This is the 2nd time in 24 hours I’ve heard of Groupon: my daughter just told me I have to sign-up in NYC, she’s a member in Chicago. So, I decided to check it out. And am I glad I did!

Groupon describes itself as: collective buying power:

1. Each day we feature something cool to do at an unbeatable price.
2. You only get it if enough people join that day… so invite your friends!
3. Check back the next day for another awesome Groupon!

[Read more →]

Back again at our Sunday outdoor market, Mignette dragged us to the cheese booth. TBG claims he’s sampled there before, but this was Moi first visit to Ardith Mae Farmstead Goat Cheese. It won’t be my last visit.

First step, sampling the cheese plate:

Selling cheese for barely a year, Ardith Mae Farm was established by ex-New Yorkers; they sell goat cheeses at markets in New York and Pennsylvania. The cheeses were great: Moi fave was the feta, salty and firm; TBG was torn between the doolan and the mammuth (we were told they’re named for people around the farm). Mignette couldn’t decide: she liked them all.

Then for Sunday night dinner, steaks and a salad de chèvre:

Bon Appétit!

more & more Antiques is the kind of store you’ll pass several times before going in. It’s on a good corner (78th and Amsterdam) but the storefront windows look, well, busy! And they are: on this March day the three windows framing the entry are cluttered with dishes, dangling Easter eggs, chocolate foil and papier-mâché bunnies, gilded mirrors, lamps, secretaries, silverware, glass fruit, paintings…and more.  It’s all too, too!

Get over the clutter, open the door, and go in. You won’t regret it.

[Read more →]

Antiques: Luxury Recycling

Recent articles are touting the comeback of the antiques market: prices are generally at least 20 to 30 percent lower than two years ago. We’ll be testing that theory at the NYC semi-annual Pier Antiques Show  March 13-14, at Pier 94.

The Details:

Moi Tip: The New York Times usually has a $5 discount ticket coupon several days before the show.

Be Green – Buy Vintage

Shopping means different things to each of us. For TBG, shopping equates to buying. For Moi, shopping is most frequently free, and involves looking and thinking and deciding and training my eye to love new things, or to adjust my view of old, everyday things to new uses. I shop very slooooowly, but when it speaks to me…

I spend alot of time shopping; shopping is looking at everything out there…whether its in a shop window, worn by a passerby on the street, glossily glaring at me from a magazine, blinking at me from my laptop, carelessly displayed on a cluttered flea market table, or stashed away in a forgotten corner of my closet. And sometimes, when I’m very lucky, design inspiration occurs.

I had a design need. Years ago I re-appropriated my old lingerie chest as a jewelry chest. I like to keep the boxes that nice jewelry comes in, so I’m lucky to have my drawers cluttered with boxes from Cartier, Hermes, Tiffany, Georg Jensen, Baccarat, and Louis Vuitton. The boxes make me happy! But they take up alot of space, hence the jewelry chest.

For my everyday casual fun jewelry I went to the Container Store and purchased little organizer trays that come in different sizes and stack…so I can have a stack of earrings, a stack of necklaces, a stack of bracelets. Very convenient, very useful. Fit easily inside the drawers.

But I have my standby, everyday go-to jewelry that I throw on without thinking or planning as I head out the door. I keep them tossed in a little tray I bought in Madrid, and its grab-and-go as I’m heading out the door. Until recently.

The last year or so I’ve developed a passion for long and dangly neck chains. They swing casually, decorated with different charms I’ve re-purposed (and I shared with you and The Antiques Diva!).

Great, right? Wrong! Long dangly chains become a tangled mess when all thrown into a little tray. I needed organization, but it needed to be easily accessible. I considered the options:

• bff The Antiques Diva has re-purposed an old glove mold into a jewelery organizer in her tres chic Berlin toilette (look to the far right on the counter)

• CoMo bff S turned her serviette kitchen towel holder with hooks into a necklace display/organizer

Moi? I didn’t have a plan, yet… I have tiny little NYC apartment, and introducing things or adding clutter is just not an option. but… Our dry cleaner closes TBG’s shirts with little plastic clips that I save and use as paper clips. Brilliant? It gets better. I had a stack of these little clippies on my my jewelry chest, adding to the clutter. I had a tangled mess of long chains that I was trying to untangle so I could wear my silver chain with the dangling baccarat earring. And I had design inspiration.

I took a dozen of the clips and clipped them over the top of the lampshade that was on my jewelry chest, leaving each clip protruding up about 1/2 inch. I hung one of my long necklaces over each of the clips. Voila: no more mess. No more tangles. And no expense.

Before:

After:

Design Inspiration!