KNOLL sale is here!

If there’s one sale you should know about this season, it’s this one.

Design Within Reach’s – the KNOLL Classics Sale from Feb. 25th – March 3rd.

Check it out here:

http://www.dwr.com/category/living/the-knoll-classics-sale.do

Buy in store or online.

I have my eye on that Womb chair!  And the Saarinen Oval Coffee Table! And the Barcelona Chair!  The Cowhide Wassily!!!!!

Cheers!

 

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BILD Awards

Happy Monday everyone!

I’ve finally readjusted to my new life back at work full-time and I’m so pleased to share some fun things that I’ve experience these past weeks.

One very exciting event that occurred about a week ago was the BILD(Building Industry and Land Development) awards; or the housing industry ACADEMY AWARDS, as we in the industry like to call it.  And if you’ve been around as long as I have, then you’ll remember them being called the SAM (Sales and Marketing) Awards.  But that’s when BILD was called the THBA or Toronto Home Builders Association.

I’ve been out of the game for a couple of years and so it was exciting to see old friends.

This year BILD received over 1000 submissions for the 46 categories.  The judges were industry professionals from all over the country.  I don’t envy that job because it’s a very difficult task choosing from so many amazing developments.

The Pinnacle Awards went to:

HOME BUILDER OF THE YEAR –  Mattamy Homes

GREEN BUILDER OF THE YEAR High Rise – TRIDEL

GREEN BUILDER OF THE YEAR Low Rise – Empire Communities

PROJECT OF THE YEAR Highrise – Five St. Joseph

PROJECT OF THE YEAR Lowrise – Mount Pleasant Village

To see the rest of the winners this year check out the BILD Awards, and see if you are living in an award-winning development!

Cheers!

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Happy Easter Monday!

Cheers!

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Will the Real Easter Bunny stand up….

Happy Passover to all of my non-Easter friends out there.

The tale of the Easter Bunny has always been a mysterious one for me, being a rebellious Catholic and all.  When my children started questioning the Resurrection stories (not from me) and how the Easter bunny came into the picture, I would inevitably tell them something like  “God had a pet Bunny…..”  They were too smart to believe me.

But now all of my questions have been answered, and it all makes sense.

Click here for the true story of how the Easter Bunny came to be.

Thanks Patty!

Happy Easter everyone!!!

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Cool Product – 4.2

Cool Product – 4.2.

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Come Up To My Room 2011- Report

For all who love design – CUTMR starts today at the Gladstone Hotel.

I was able to get a sneak peek last night and was pleasantly surprised by the eclectic mix of installations. Curated by Deborah Wang and Jeremy Vandermeij; they have once again assembled an exceptional group of artists/creators/designers of varying disciplines. With no restrictions of “theme” to encumber,  I was delighted at every turn of the exhibit.

Here’s your sneak peek:

Amanda McCavour uses a sewing machine and fabric that dissolves in water to create replicas of her previous living room. The amount of intricacy and detail in these pieces is mind boggling.

“Chaos Theory” is a collaboration between Becky Lane and Chrissy Poitras.  It is an exploration of the junction between happenstance and expectation through the quintessential symbol of order: the clock.  An incredible clock!  I want one.

“Shrine dedicated to the memory of demolished barns and fallen trees” by Scott Eunson and Lubo Brezina.  An amazing experiential installation showing the space between object and representation.

Do something extraordinary this weekend and treat yourself to this exhibit – CUTMR is on until Sunday only!

Check here for details.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend!

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A Place of Calm

There’s no limit to the amount of information about how stress affects our lives.  It creates disease and can make our lives a living hell if not brought under control.

Many would argue that our situations – a demanding job, a domineering partner, a self-centred narcissistic ex-husband, are the causes of our stress. But the truth is that it’s a state of mind and if we go to our “happy place” when we see the stressful exterior taking shape, we can ward off the “stress monster” and stay healthy in the long run.

Years ago, when I had just finished decorating a client’s new home, she decided that simple Feng Shui wasn’t good enough to solve her big life problems, so she hired a “Flying Star” expert.  This is a level of Feng Shui that deals with time, space and object to create an astrological chart to analyze positive auras and negative auras of a building. Remember those TV commercials for some product (I can’t remember), where the wife redecorated by putting the sofa in the garage, punched a hole in the wall etc.  Well, that’s Flying Star.  When I visited my client after her session, the furniture was all askew.  A little disconcerting at first.  But the most interesting part was that there had to be a mini-shrine or place of offering in the centre of her main floor living area.  Although that’s where her entertainment unit used to be, I found the idea of it rather calming.  She used that area to meditate and regroup. That was her “ashram”.

In India, an ashram is a place where a guru lives and teaches spirituality, but it can also be a place of quiet meditation. In fact, creating your own personal ashram in your home is a perfect way to deal with daily stress. Kristin from My Toronto Eh! created her personal ashram with funky colours and art.

Creating your own quiet space is really easy.  Pick a corner or room in your home, paint with calming colours like  “Morning Sky Blue” or warm yellows.  Try to stay away from vibrant colours.  Surround the room or area with floor pillows and create soft lighting with sconces or torchlights, always on dimmers.  A table with candles and incense is a must if you like the smells. And be sure to include soft gentle meditative music.   There is tons of New Age Music to choose from but I prefer my old stand-by – Watermark by Enya.  Display words of encouragement or have a journal to write down thoughts and remind yourself of your own personal mantra.  The goal is to create that feeling of being in a luxury spa – a world of calm and healing.

Here are some examples:

Have a calm and wonderful weekend!

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2010 in review

Happy Monday Everyone!

It’s been a great year here at Flohaus.  I started off last year thinking that this was just going to be a small additive to my life in the design world; a place that I could share new and exciting things from the Toronto design scene and the international realm. I took you on my journey to cool new stores, we visited cool designers and their studios, I reported on exciting events in the city and enticed you to enter a contest.  We lost “Paint Talk” with Karen Thursby but gained “Flower Power” with Nicola Bishop. I introduced the popular “Blue Sky” fridays and searched out design creators who were focussed on the big picture – making our world a better place. And we did lots more!

Last week, I started a reassessment and told you what the best and worst rated posts were, but I didn’t get into very much detail. And then the helper monkeys at WordPress sent me a breakdown, showing the health of FLOHAUS that I want to share.

According to The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ FLOHAUS gets a Wow!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 5 fully loaded ships. Yahoo!!

In 2010, there were 284 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 331 posts.

The busiest day of the year was April 28th with 1,083 views. The most popular post that day was Ode to the Recliner.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, wordpress.com, twitter.com, mail.live.com, and mail.yahoo.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for flohaus, flohaus.com, colour forecast 2011, magnolia tree, and wall tattoo.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Ode to the Recliner April 2010
24 comments

2

Top Post this Month – The Ultimate Sectional June 2010
2 comments

3

Christmas Tree Decorating! November 2009

4

About October 2009
4 comments

5

Paint Talk – How to Faux Bois Your Walls February 2010
9 comments

Thank you helper monkeys! (I want a helper monkey)

I’m truly thrilled that we are doing so well and deeply appreciative of your visits, comments and suggestions. Your encouragement gives me the energy to strive to make this community a better, more fun experience.  This year, we bring you more of everything – cool products, places, people and more DIY’s too!  I’m so excited!

But I still need your great feedback, so don’t hesitate to let me know what you think of a post or if you want to see more of something.

This week, we will look at trends for 2011 and reveal exciting events coming soon!

Have a wonderful first week of the year!

Cheers!

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Worst Post in 2010

When I say “Worst”, I really mean least viewed.  Because the topic and content weren’t the worst thing you could’ve possibly read in 2010.  There are many other topics that just didn’t make the final cuts that were way more boring.

I believe this was the least read because I just introduced a new category “Blue Sky”, which isn’t strictly related to interior design or making your home more beautiful.  The idea came from wanting to seek out organizations that were using design to create extraordinary objects, dwellings,etc. that would improve how we live and more importantly improve the world in some way.  This was the time I decided to give back and volunteer at the Furniture Bank, so I was inspired. Maybe if I had tagged it “teabagging” I might have had more readers. 😉

 

Blue Sky – The Tea Bag solution

 

We here in North America and especially Canada are very lucky to have the largest amount of fresh water on the planet at our disposal. We take it for granted so much so that what seems to be occupying us is not whether our water is clean but whether it is laden with vitamins or energy boosting chemicals or will it make us “smart”.  But for more than a billion people, there is no easily accessible clean drinking water.

And in South Africa, the Stellenbosch University Water Institute’s Hope Project was established in 2010 to address this issue. Professor Eugene Cloete, microbiologist and dean of the Faculty of Science at the university with his brilliant staff have found a solution.  By developing a technology that includes carbon and anti-microbial nanofibres, the team created a teabag filter, which is placed in the lid of a specially designed water bottle. Once the water is filtered through this “tea bag” the water becomes potable.  The population simply has to replace this inexpensive “tea bag”.  Brilliant!

Cheers!

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Best Post in 2010

Happy  Monday Everyone!

This is the last week of 2010 and although many are relieved to see it end, I see this week as a time for reflection.  Reflection for me means to review the highs and lows, (especially the lows) and learn how to do things differently.  So this week, I’ve dedicated to reviewing the best and worst posts, starting with the best.

As a blogger, I never know the exact combination of information that will interest you, the reader.  As my readership grows, I can only hope that what I write is interesting and useful.  But the best post for example, I literally wrote in 10 minutes with very little research and just a yearning to say what needed to be said.  And I seem to have struck a “recliner” nerve.  With over 1000 hits within a few hours who would’ve known.  Here it is again:

Ode to the Recliner

The television show GLEE has become by far my most favourite show of all time.  Yes, aside from “Twin Peaks”, this is the show that I stop my world for every Tuesday night. Did anyone see last night’s episode where the theme revolved around creating home?  That show beautifully portrayed the feelings and family situations that are au courant.  And how they used the recliner (Finn’s father’s) to symbolize comfort, familiarity and foundation of a family.  Brilliant!

My father has, to this day, his recliner strategically positioned closest to the television.  I remember years ago visiting distant family members in West Virginia, where the highest honour was bestowed my husband when he was allowed to sit in the “Grand Recliner” and control the remote.  My father-in-law even bought a sectional with flanking recliners on each end!  My sons (of which there are 3 of) would fight over who would get to sit in them.  Who can forget one of the earlier Fraser episodes where Fraser tries to get rid of his father’s only familiar possession; his beat-up recliner.  And Joey and Chandler’s matching black leather recliners became the topic of many Friends episodes.  This fascinates me.

Although Wikipedia says that cousins Edward Knabusch and Edwin Shoemaker created the first recliner in 1928 as a novelty in Monroe Michigan and later patented it in 1931 (then they renamed their company “La–Z-boy”), there is information that it was invented years before.  In 1780 there is evidence of a recliner existing in the court of Louis XV!  And apparently Napoleon had a version.  I’m not surprised.

So, if you want to buy a recliner where do you go?  Well there is La-Z-boy of course. I find them most unattractive, but I guess they wouldn’t be recliners if they weren’t.

If you take your recliner shopping seriously, you must  check out this checklist How to Buy a Recliner.  They rate the difficulty of this process as EASY. Too funny!

Ok, ok. If I really had to pick I think I would go with the Riley!

Cheers!

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