Designer Love

My new fav interior designer is Susan Fredman.

I found her on the HGTV website in the design portfolio section. One of her urban living/dinner caught my eye and I had to look at more.... Check out some of her work below. Hopefully you'll love her design as much as I do.

Turning BBC Home...

BBC Home and Antiques is my new favorite Magazine. Just picked it up at Barnes and Noble and it was love at first sight. If you love antiques and interiors, BBC Homes & Antiques is the only magazine that can offer you the inspiration you're looking for. It's a celebration of craftsmanship, from beautifully styled real homes and the objects that decorate them, to the talented designer-makers creating the antiques of the future. Have your antiques valued and priced by Antiques Roadshow experts in our new and exclusive Q&A service. Win fantastic prizes, such as bespoke beds and top of the range cookers. Get to know your favorite BBC celebrities even better... There's so much in every issue.

Till Money Do Us Part?

I found this great article on Yahoo about marrying for money. I guess this kind of thing is happening everyday. Well to each his/her own...either way it makes for a great read.

Marrying for Love ... of Money
Friday December 14, 1:46 am ET
By Robert Frank

On a recent episode of "Dirty Sexy Money," ABC's soapy drama about the filthy rich, heiress Karen Darling gets married for the fourth time, to a golf pro. Minutes after the ceremony, she decides she wants a divorce, leaving the golfer to wonder about his $3 million guarantee in the pre-nuptial agreement.

I still get the check, right?" he asks.

"Of course," Ms. Darling sneers. "I made a vow."

Marrying for money isn't just grist for television plot lines. With the wealth boom creating unprecedented riches -- and greater opportunities for gold-digging by both genders -- price-tag partnerships and checkbook breakups are increasingly making headlines. Even more surprising, according to a new survey, are the going rates for today's mercenary unions.

Celebrities get the most attention, of course, whether it's Kevin Federline, the backup dancer-turned-millionaire ex of Britney Spears, or Heather Mills, Paul McCartney's estranged second wife, who is set to receive tens of millions of dollars when her divorce is final, according to the British press.

Yet even among the workaday (or wannabe) wealthy, marrying for money has become a popular pursuit. In an infamous personal ad posted on Craigslist this summer, a twentysomething New Yorker who described herself as "spectacularly beautiful" wrote that she was looking for a man who made at least $500,000 a year. She'd tried dating men earning $250,000, but that wasn't "getting me to Central Park West," she said. The ad inspired all manner of parodies and follow-ups, including one by an investment banker, who replied that since his money would grow over time but her beauty would fade, the offer didn't make good business sense. She was, he said, a "depreciating asset."

To many New Yorkers, jaded by multimillion-dollar condos and wall-to-wall wealth, the salary request probably seems reasonable, maybe even low. Yet nationally, the going rate is much lower.

According to a survey by Prince & Associates, a Connecticut-based wealth-research firm, the average "price" that men and women demand to marry for money these days is $1.5 million.

The survey polled 1,134 people nationwide with incomes ranging between $30,000 to $60,000 (squarely in the median range for nationwide incomes). The survey asked: "How willing are you to marry an average-looking person that you liked, if they had money?"

Fully two-thirds of women and half of the men said they were "very" or "extremely" willing to marry for money. The answers varied by age: Women in their 30s were the most likely to say they would marry for money (74%) while men in their 20s were the least likely (41%).

"I'm a little shocked at the numbers," says Pamela Smock, a sociologist at the University of Michigan who has studied marriage and money. "It's kind of against the notion of love and soul mates and the main motivations to marry in our culture."

Still, Ms. Smock has found in her own research that having money does encourage people to tie the knot. "It's more likely that a couple will marry if they have money, and if the man is economically stable," she says.

Women aren't the only ones with the gold-digging impulse. In the Prince & Associates study, 61% of men in their 40s said they would marry for money. Ms. Smock says that as men get older, they become more comfortable with women being the bread-winners.

The matrimonial price tag varies by gender and age. Asked how much a potential spouse would need to have to be money-marriage material, women in their 20s said $2.5 million. The going rate fell to $1.1 million for women in their 30s, and rose again to $2.2 million for women in their 40s. Ms. Smock and Russ Alan Prince, Prince & Associate's founder, both attribute the fluctuation to the assumption that thirty-something women feel more pressure to get married than women in their 20s, so they are willing to lower the price. By their 40s, women are more comfortable being independent, so they're willing to hold out for more cash.

Men have cheaper requirements. In the Prince survey, their asking price overall was $1.2 million, with men in their 20s asking $1 million and men in their 40s asking $1.4 million.

Douglas Freeman, a tax and estates attorney in California who works with wealthy families, says the men's numbers are lower because they would feel threatened by women worth several million dollars. "The men aren't going to say they want $10 million, because they wouldn't be comfortable with a woman who's worth so much more than they are," he says.

Whatever the case, the prices for both men and women seem surprisingly low, given the new landscape of wealth. While $1 million or $2 million may sound like a lot to people making $30,000, it's hardly enough to transform someone's life or make them "rich" by contemporary billionaire standards. No one in the survey quoted a price of more than $3 million.

Of course, when the mercenary marriage proves disappointing, there's always divorce. Among the women in their twenties who said they would marry for money, 71% said they expected to get divorced -- the highest of any demographic. Only 27% of men in their 40s expected to divorce.

Says Mr. Prince: "For these women, it's just another step on their journey to the good life. They want to be paid what they think they're worth and then move on."

Photo Mailer

I love this envelope project from Paper Source. It's a great way to mail and organize your photos or other items.



This easy to make book is a handmade and personalized way to organize all of your small odds and ends. Each envelope page can hold something different such as- "to do" lists, stamps, tickets, coupons, and business cards.

step one:
Choose your envelopes. You will need an odd number, anywhere from five to ten.We have used an A2 size here but, almost any size side-opening envelope will work.

step two:

Using a glue stick, adhere the envelopes together by placing adhesive on the inside of the flap of one envelope and using a bone folder, burnish it to the front of the next envelope.

step three:

Fold the pages accordion style, making the pointed flap of the first envelope the cover of your book.

step four:

Add a ribbon closure. Cut a small opening the width of the ribbon on both sides of the last envelope and run the ribbon through.

step five:

Using labels and colored gel pens indicate the contents of each envelope "page". Fill with all your odds and ends, fold up, and tie the ribbon closure to keep everything safely tucked inside.

Gingerbread People

Gingerbread cookies at Christmas time just seem to make the holiday even more perfect. Here is a recipe from the Queen of holidays herself, Martha Stewart.

Keep your gingerbread people looking their best: Make sure the disks of dough are well-chilled so they're easy to handle and roll out nice and thin. Roll from the center out, and aim for an even thickness, stopping just short of the edge of the dough. A quick dip in flour will keep the cookie cutter from sticking to the dough. Look for powdered egg whites in the baking aisle at your supermarket.

Prep: 55 minutes
Total: 1 hour, 15 minutes plus chilling

Ingredients

Makes 18

• 3 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for rolling
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup packed dark-brown sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3/4 cup unsulfured molasses
• 2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 4 teaspoons powdered egg whites (meringue powder)

Directions

1. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, baking soda, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Using an electric mixer, beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy; beat in egg and molasses. With mixer on low, gradually add flour mixture; mix just until combined. Divide dough in half; flatten into disks. Wrap each in plastic, and refrigerate until firm, at least 2 hours and up to 2 days, or freeze up to 3 months (thaw before baking).
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with racks set in upper and lower thirds. Working with one disk at a time, place dough on lightly floured parchment paper, and roll out to 1/8 inch thick, dusting lightly with flour as needed. Using paper, lift dough onto two baking sheets; freeze until firm, about 20 minutes.
3. Remove paper and dough from baking sheets. Using a long offset spatula, loosen dough from paper. Cut out shapes with cookie cutters, and brush off any excess flour. Transfer to baking sheets. (Gather scraps, briefly freeze, and re-roll.)
4. For softer cookies, bake 8 to 10 minutes; for crunchier cookies, bake 11 to 12 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
5. Make icing: In a large bowl, whisk together confectioners' sugar, powdered egg whites, and 1/4 cup water (if needed, adjust consistency with confectioners' sugar). Transfer icing to a pastry bag with a small tip, or place in a resealable plastic bag, and snip a small hole in one corner. Decorate cookies as desired, and store in a single layer in airtight containers.