What Happened This Weekend

"I went and did my latest Closet Visit at costume designer and fashion stylist Alicia Lawhon's house," says photographer Jeana Sohn

"My challenge this weekend was to find a "pillow partner", whom would love to be my sales agent outside Denmark!" shares designer Dorte Agergaard.

"I  had an idea..." thanks Oliver from blog Foody Chef

"Here's what I made this weekend. I brought back some lovely little felt balls from a shop called Muskhane in Paris.
It took me 10 minutes to thread them as a bracelet for my daughter. She picked out the colours as I made it.
We were both very happy with the result!" says Jenny Voyce who reports on emerging trends in design and interiors on her blog Trends Voyce

 "It's been a great weekend," says Christina Achau from blog Random Panda

"I don't do wallpaper in my house. I have a feature wall that my friends doodle on. This is my latest addition I added on the weekend," says photographer Mark Peckmezian.

If you would like to take part in next weeks "What Happend This Weekend" please send your picture and quote here. Remember it has to relate to your time at home.

Home Traveller by Anne Lorenz

I have THE most ugliest, nasty, not loved dirty clothes hamper sitting out in open view in my bedroom. Every time I throw my loved outfits into the hamper I promise I can almost here them cry out to me "please don't leave us in this scary place". To be honest the reason why I haven't upgraded is I can't find a hamper I like. When I saw Anne Lorenz's Home Traveller bag it was like an eureka moment. I WANT, I WANT, I WANT. "Please buyers of much loved home department stores take this girl on so I can have a Home Traveller in my bedroom."

SnOOp Love

I KID YOU NOT: the large and small pedestal by Iacoli & McAllister is turned on a lathe by Emmett Smith, a Seattle based boat builder

1 | 2 | 3 | 4

@mruxndesign  tweeted yesterday "In Simplicity We Find Beauty". I couldn't agree more. The cool ceramic and enamel is warmed up and breathes character with the weathered and worn wood. My heart aches for all of the pieces. 

Portraits of Bloggers

ishaara is a blog by NYC photographer Manjari Sharma.  She blogs through her current and old photographic projects about being born and raised in Mumbai, India.

Rex Sorgatz is an internet media maven and owner of blog Fimoculous

New York blogger Noah Brier blogs about media, marketing and technology

Soraya Darabi is co-founder and Business Development Lead on one of my new favourite sites Foodspotting. The website and mobile apps make it easy to find and share your favorite foods: Instead of reviewing restaurants, you can recommend your favorite dishes using photos and see what others have recommended wherever you go.

Textile designer, photographer and painter Sheena Sood hasn't posted since June 2010. I'm thinking with all this new interest she should get back to her table and tap away

Rachel Hulin from A Photography Blog seeks to make her blog be a fun portal for photography industry-related information and nice pictures.

This good looking guy blogs for Gawker covering gossip from Manhattan to Los Angeles and anywhere else in the world that's worth talking about.

Nick McGlynn is founder of blog Random Night Out. True to its' name, Nick documents the best of New York City nightlife, tirelessly living it up with the VIPs, making sure that even if you stayed in, you never really miss the party!

OMG! As stylist Rachel Zoe would say "Bananas". How many of us can relate to photographer Gabriela Herman and her portraits of New York bloggers? I know I can. I'm actually sitting in a dark room now thinking I need to switch on a light. LOVE IT.

What Happened This Weekend

"This weekend I met up with fellow design bloggers and members of the dbcollective. Honourary member and interiors journalist Barbara Chandler took this photo of us all looking rather serious!" says Katie Treggiden from confessions of a design geek: winner of mydeco's "Best Interior Design Blog in Great Britain". 

"I finally had a chance to sit down and enjoy the new lamp I designed. I love having the lamp in my house because it is a constant reminder of the importance of maintaining a tradition in finely crafted design. I think it's majestic in my living room. It's the first piece I have designed in sixteen years that I have wanted in my own home," shares designer Niamh Barry. 

 "I stayed at home all weekend and didn't see any of my friends which made me sad," says Luu

"It has been simply freezing here in London town, my Kau's have been like radiators for the feet this weekend keeping me snug and warm whilst I finish the new Kau baby line which I'm due to launch," says Victoria Rezon, founder of hip shoe brand Kau London.

 "Since I can't be back home, I continued my family's holiday tradition of a giant cookie-baking party and even made Florida-shaped gingerbread cookies in honor of my home-state," says Mat Saunders from ApartmentTherapy.com aka @beencalledworse

"My girlfriend and I were goofing around in our apartment block. I'm a movie addict, coffee drinker and shopaholic so my photography is influenced by my great loves," says photographer Fei. 

 " This weekend I decided to relax my mind by making origami; it was too cold to do anything else," says photographer and filmmaker Ilenia Martini from blog It can be a Lover

If you would like to take part in next weeks "What Happend This Weekend" please send your picture and quote here. Remember it has to relate to your time at home. 

The Homies 2011 - Support SnOOp

I am thrilled and delighted to announce that Foodie Chef was kind enough to nominate SnOOp for an Apartment Therapy Homie Award! You know what that means? I’m officially in the running! If you want to join in and keep the momentum going, simply click here and leave a comment that looks like this…

SnOOp: My Fave Design Blog 
URL: http://www.heartanddesign.blogspot.com"

The Future Kitchen Is Urban Homesteading

Supermarkets have made farming big business and this has caused some serious concern about the journey our food goes on to get too our plate. With so many horror stories out there it’s very hard for us the consumer to trace the origins of our ingredients. This insecurity has created a surge in “urban homesteads” where people live a self-sufficient, low-impact life in the heart of the city.

Buying local produce has become hugely important for many. Vegetable box schemes are run on a local or regional basis, delivering food direct from the producer to the consumer. In 2007 this industry was worth in the UK an excess of £100 million per-annum. However, for many people this scheme is limiting because the contents are not ordered by the customer, but are selected by the box scheme provider on
the basis of seasonality and availability. Photo by Brian W Ferry

City Dwellers are opting away from pretty flower beds and choosing roof-top vegetable patches to window-box herb gardens. Lady watering her garden by Subaonet; This New York man demonstrates on Urban Organic Gardener how he has overcome his small living space by growing his vegetables on his fire escape. Fact is most people across the globe don't have large backyards and many of us use our balconies
for outdoor living. Photo from Mangalorean Recipes.

Sadly a supermarket tomato has declined in taste and the reason is commercialisation. The commercial grower has learned how to grow tomatoes which crop heavily and will travel well to the supermarket at the expense of taste. A homegrown tomato bursts with flavour and relatively easy to grow.  Photo by Gardeners Guide

Sustainability is important to the "Urban Homesteader" and are constantly looking for resourceful solutions for their family to have less impact to the environment. Photo by Michelle Anderson

Designers are becoming fascinated with urban farming and developing products including 'Cultivation Cabinets' - a cupboard in which young edible plants can be grown - such as the one by Bureau Marije van der Park and Maarten Kolk & Guss Kusters. By placing the process of growth into an interior product designers are encouraging us to bring vegetation back into our daily life.

Designers are looking at how we can preserve food without a refrigerator. Photo byAntipodese

Hot Japanese brand Billet inject beautiful basics into their range with canvas bags.

We are seeing popularity in the kitchen larder to store our food. Kitchen brand bulthaup included drawers in their b3 collection  to stock root vegetables that keep better in dark, cool spaces. "Observing the food and therefore changing the notion of food preservation, we could find the answer to current situations such as the overuse of energy and food wastage. My design is a tool to implement that knowledge in a tangible way and slowly it changes the bigger picture of society. I believe that once people are given a tool that triggers their minds and requires a mental effort to use it, new traditions and new rituals can be introduced into our culture," explains Jihyun Ryou who designed 

in 2009 products "Save Food From the Refrigerator".

Just like the popularity in people sharing photographs on the web of their home and fashion style people are snapping the vegetables they are growing and the food they are cooking. Popular food blogs are Sweet Paul, Oh Joy and my fiance's blog The Foodie. Photo by Molly Wizenberg.

The "urban farmer" does not only grow vegetables at home. It has become clear one of the large areas of cruelty is mass chicken farming which has affected the quality of the product. Photo of girl reading by (Ku)Nihito ; Egg photo by Abbey Powell

The local-food movement, in cities from Seattle to London have flocked to the idea of small-scale backyard chicken farming—mostly for eggs, not meat—as a way of taking part in home-grown agriculture. At Design Miami in 2008 German creative director Mike Meiré  designed the The Farm Project for luxury kitchen and bathroom brand Dornbracht, The Farm Project is based on a rustic farmhouse kitchen, in deliberate counterpoint to today’s ubiquitous minimalist look. Urban chickens are getting  sculptureally cool coops such as The Nogg by Matthew Hayward and Nadia Turan.

Designer Jihyun Ryou designed hanging storage for eggs which can be checked for freshness by simply placing an egg in the glass of water built into the system to see if it sinks to to the bottom. Rooftops have become popular places to keep chicken coops.

For years we have been told eggs are not great for our  health. But eggs are not bad for you, after all. They were thought to contribute to high cholesterol, but the main offender is saturated fat. If you want to use your chicken to eat then check with your local council first regarding laws.

After watching Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, the Big Fish Fight that championed a neglected cause: the sustainable use of fish from the seas and the misleading labeling supermarkets are providing on their packaging  it's not surprising to find people farming their own edible fish. Edible fish displayed in aquarium at the The Farm Project

Designers are looking at how we can humanely breed and keep edible fish. Fish photo by Mikkel Vang. Home Farming, as the name suggests, explores growing at least part of your daily food inside your house. "People are increasingly concerned about how their food has been manipulated and processed, genetic modification, global shortages, environmental degradation through monoculture, the distance food travels before reaching their plates and many other related issues," says Clive van Heerden, Senior Director of design-led innovation at Philips Design. “One way of addressing such legitimate concerns is to source the food yourself by having a biosphere in your living room.” The Food Probe by Philips Design is a biosphere home farm containing fish, crustaceans, algae, plants and other mini-ecosystems, all interdependent and in balance with each other. Making families all over the world at least partly self-sufficient in this way has obvious appeal. Farm in a Box is by Earth Solutions

Homeowners are giving up outside space to ponds to farm fish. Photo by Sean Yea

Electrical specialist Comet claims there is 57% year-on-year increase in sales of breadmakers as consumers look for ways to cut their weekly shopping bills. However as many of our kitchens are too small to store breadmakers many are baking bread from scratch. Making dough photo by Molly Wizenberg; Bread baked in Le Cruset pot photo by Mel Hunter.

Using simple, old-fashioned techniques like curing meats and canning and drying fruits and vegetables are being rediscovered by city folk to prevent food wastage in their home. Photo by Abby Powell

Consumers are becoming much more interested in the origins of their food and how it got to their table. A relatively new scheme is Adopt-a-Pig, where you can track your pig's life from start to finish ... from pasture to plate. Photo by Photo by Molly Wizenberg.

~ Choose pig - Name Pig - Visit Pig - Eat Pig. Photo by  Molly Wizenberg.

 Nowadays, food provenance is a big issue so it understandable why the modern kitchen has stepped away from gizmos and gadgets and concentrating on ideas that can produce healthy ingredients for our families to consume. After watching Jamie Oliver's American Food Revolution and how city school children couldn't identify a potato it's no wonder why this way of living is becoming so important to people. For many urbanites it's their real path to freedom. Photo by Molly Wizenberg. You can read more on this subject here and here.

tART Up Your Home With Art

Ty Williams is a tal­ented artist and surfer liv­ing in the North­east America. His quirky and orig­i­nal art is inspired by his surf­ing lifestyle and eclec­tic taste in music. Mak­ing peo­ple happy with his unique art­work is his mis­sion. Photo by Ty

FYI: I just found out that SnOOp has been recognised as one of the UK's top 10 interior design blogs. Thank you so much for your support.

Sacha Goldberger Updates Vintage

These awesome photos were made by French photographer Sacha Goldberger. His 91-year-old Hungarian grandmother Frederika was feeling lonely and depressed.

To cheer her up, Sacha suggested that they shoot a series of outrageous photographs in unusual costumes, poses, and locations.

So UPDATE, UPDATE... Perhaps not your gran but those items in your  life that are looking a little tired. Visit here for one simple idea you could take on this year to bring life back to an old loved item.