Dial Your Next Party Up to "Special"

Irwin Weiner ASID - Jay and I love to host parties. We hope you do, too. If you enjoy interior design and creating a lovely home, then the natural extension of "home love" is to share it with family, friends, and neighbors. Entertaining is an art, and if you don't do it very often, it can be a chore. But if you keep with it, and mix parties for a small group with bashes bringing in a larger crowd, you'll feel right at home being sociable. The slideshow above show scenes from a small dinner party we threw this Christmas Eve. Total attending (including the two of us): 11.

We hand-selecting international dishes for their "yummy" factor and festive colors (the slide show contains a menu), and we began by serving Admiral Russell's Christmas Punch, a big hit and so festive and tasty! I went to a local Walmart and selected holiday ornaments to fill four footed bowls running up and down the table, we added madcap color-changing electric candles in votives, and I bought coordinating fabric and made the tablecloth and napkins (are you impressed?!). And we did fun things we'd never tried before, like using wooden paddles to hand-roll individual balls of butter and printing out our menu and putting it by each place setting on little snowflake placeholders. It was lots of fun! As we approach New Year's Eve, everyone at Design2Share hopes you have an amazing 2013, and your home is filled with the sound of entertaining, good parties, and celebration. (And a big thank-you to the amazing Jana Kolpen for taking the photos in the slideshow.)

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.  

Boxing Day Special: Boxer Art

The Boxers, Michael Mavian, 2010 (1st Dibs)

Irwin Weiner ASID - Boxing Day is December 26, and please forgive the pun, but I thought it would be a good day to accent boxing artwork. Visitors to my home in Pennsylvania know that I have a beautiful mid-century serving plate from Italy hanging on the wall of my dining room, and it features a stylized boxer. I like boxing art and decor for its active elements, enlivening a room. Perfect accents for dens, family rooms, and (obviously) man caves, boxing art is an underappreciated part of decorating that I just wanted to reinforce today. So happy "day after Christmas" for those of you who aren't used to celebrating Boxing Day, and for those who do, enjoy your day with family and friends. (And a shout out to all who observe the Feast of St. Stephen, too!) Click on each photo for more art information and details. 

The Hughes Brothers (Boxing), 1975, Jean-Paul Goude (1st Dibs)

Ali with Mini Boxing Gloves, 1963, Steve Schapiro (1st Dibs)

Stags Head with Boxing Squirrels, Simon Brown (1st Dibs)

Oskar Werner and Henri Serre Mimic Waltz in Boxing Ring, 1961, Raymond Cauchetier (1st Dibs)

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.   

If Real Isn't an Option: Our 5 Favorite Artificial Christmas Trees

Irwin Weiner ASID - It's a blessing to support Christmas tree farmers this time of year. If you live in a part of the world outside big cities where there are local tree farms, please support them; they plant a sustainable crop and deserve to make a good living, as do we all - and there's nothing like the smell of a fresh-cut tree in the home, using the proper watering and safety precautions, of course. 

But for the many of us who live in large cities, it's increasingly dubious (I think) to support the habit of transporting cut trees into the city, and you're not buying something really fresh when you get around to making the purchase. (And they're very overpriced.)

For the past ten years, we've had a Martha Stewart Christmas Tree from K-mart, and although we feel guilty that it's a vision of plastic and petroleum-based products instead of a real farmed tree, it's held up very well and we've saved time and money over the longrun - and this tree will last for eons.

Today's featured Young House Love video shows the decorating of a Christmas tree that's exactly like ours (although ours is a bit taller). And the photos in this post show some of our favorite alternative (read: fake) Christmas trees, if that happens to be your thing. Click on each photo for more product information.

I'd love to know what your family does for a tree around the holidays; add a comment to this post and tell me how you stand in the Real vs. Fake Tree issue. Thanks, and I hope you're having a fun season!

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.  

San Diego Designer Rebecca Robeson's Christmas Video House Tour

Jay Johnson - Irwin officially "passed" on doing this particular post. It's not that he's bah-humbug about holiday decorating, but he's very critical of being too kitsch and decorating everything. I'm just the opposite. Maybe it's my Midwestern upbringing, but I love turning a home into a magical wonderland that tells either a Christmas, Chanukkah, or Winter story. Rebecca Robeson, an interior designer in San Diego, CA, mentions in today's featured video that being in her perpetually warm and sunny part of the world requires special decorating to make it feel like a festive time of year.

But even if there's a foot of snow on the ground outside, one still can use some merry decking of the halls to make special family memories. Enjoy Rebecca's video (she shops at HomeGoods - don't we all!), and definitely check out her other holiday how-to videos for more decorating advice. (I love the way this interior designer has taken to the communication-friendly video medium; she's way ahead of the industry curve on that one!)

And speaking of a California Christmas, here's a video from sunny CA to put you into right spirit, with a rousing Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree from the artists performing in A Christmas Together.

 Click here to subscribe to our daily design videos and features.