Category: Design

  • Celebrate Indian Summer

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    jdemontravel
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    For those who are not part of the warm-weathered privilege who either live in a mild climate or chase the sun year round, September is a crucial time to take in summer’s last hurrah. As a four-season dweller, customs like squirrels gathering nuts early and the thickness of a spider’s web are noted and feared.…

  • Before & After – Adding a Dining Room Pendant

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    jdemontravel
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    A single wall construction home in Laguna Beach follows the charm of this surf culture town. Central air is an extravagance when you can simply open the doors for that canned coastal breeze. Temperatures rarely venture into extreme highs or lows and if they do residents revel in having a quaint taste of another season.…

  • How to Frame Art Online

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    jdemontravel
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    While you may have graduated from taping posters to dorm walls, professionally framing your art and you may feel the pinch of your student loan days. There is a way to avoid pricey framers by taking the task into your own hands. Art is key to a personalized home. Beautifully framed portraits style a space.…

  • Ultimate Beach Cottage – Our Laguna Home

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    jdemontravel
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    The idea of experiencing summer year round wasn’t allowed. When raised on the East Coast this is your summons, to follow the calendar year of seasonal appropriate sports and dressing in heavy catalogue sweaters half your town wore. After too many brutal winters where I found my DNA dangerously traipsing into a curmudgeon, I accepted…

  • Decorating with Flowers – Peonies

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    jdemontravel
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    I fall for limited editions. Perfume, ice cream flavors, printed socks–an exclusive holds cache. Peonies exude cache. Every year from late May to early June their tight fisted buds explode into feathery pink flowers that grip us with their scent and style. Part of the attraction is that as quickly as they enchant they then shrivel into the ground, like…

  • Ultimate Surf Shacks

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    jdemontravel
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    Surf shacks bring to mind homes filled with beach finds a crusty sea captain would favor. Surf Shack//Laid Back Living by the Water by Nina Freudenberger proves the contrary. While the coastal-inspired homes do feature sandy spaces and dwellers with salt streaked hair in cut offs, they are also personal and curated. Freudenberger takes an anthropological interest in surf culture.…

  • A New Orleans’ Home Exterior Gets a Bright Makeover

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    jdemontravel
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    A compact house in the Marginy district of New Orleans is so bright, visitors don’t need a house number to find it. Formerly in shades of green, an offbeat scheme to compensate for its lackluster, was reinvented into a sparkly gem thanks to a redesign by Julie A. Babin, Partner and Architect with studioWTA. Babin first appraised the home as awkward and space-challenged, which she transformed…

  • Stay Here: Luxurious Italian Treehouse

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    jdemontravel
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    I want to travel to a treehouse and not with my child. Is there something fundamentally wrong with this? Though Casa Bartel is not your expected fort in a tree made from broken down orange crates for children enacting battles with styrofoam swords. On the outskirts of Florence, the structure is plotted within a family compound that includes other…

  • Ultimate Guide to French Living

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    jdemontravel
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    The French have their beautiful little phrases to sum up life lessons. A beloved style that somehow cannot be replicated unless your passport is from France. Their mannered customs that fail to crumble in a fast-paced world. It’s all intertwined, how life can follow a joie de vivre approach. Americans have a tendency to try too hard. We purchase an abundance…

  • Ultimate Wallpaper Guide

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    jdemontravel
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    Wallpaper has evolved from manor house motifs and the loud prints of a Palm Beach cocktail dress (though we love those too.) Updated selections will give any room pizzazz. Choose from a colorful tableaux resembling Andy Warhol’s take on wildflowers to artistic compositions a muralist would create. Installation options also vary. There is the classic pasted paper method or–renters and…