Every year around mid-September I find myself staring at the collection of empty toilet paper rolls I’ve been saving in the cupboard under the sink and thinking: right, now what. This year I actually did something with them. Eighteen things,…
There is a specific kind of Halloween decoration that looks like it belongs in a house where someone actually cares about October rather than just going through the motions. The hanging ghost is one of them. Not the plastic ones…
A tray is the easiest thing in decorating and somehow also the most underrated. You put things on a tray and they become a vignette. You put the same things on a surface without a tray and they look like…
Spiderwebs are one of those Halloween decorations that look like they require skill and then turn out to need almost none. The fold-and-cut version took Maria about eight minutes the first time she tried it, and she spent the next…
Halloween is the one time of year I give myself full permission to cover the house in things that would horrify me in February. Bats on the mantel! Skulls on the bookshelf! And paper garlands everywhere, because they cost almost…
October is the one month of the year where I genuinely enjoy decorating. Not because I love decorating. I do it, it looks nice, fine. But Halloween and fall have this particular craft energy that gets me to the kitchen…
Fall is finally here. The air is getting crisp, the evenings are getting darker, and it is the perfect time to pull out your yarn stash. If you love decorating for Halloween but hate spending a fortune on store bought…
Marina still does origami at the kitchen table. She has a stack of square paper in different colours that lives in a drawer and comes out regularly, usually at the point in the afternoon when she’s tired of everything else…
There is something about the way Americans celebrate July 4th that I find genuinely moving. I grew up in Greece. We have our own national celebrations, our own flags, our own particular relationship with the idea of independence and what…
There is something about American patriotic quilts that I find genuinely moving and I say this as someone who grew up in Greece and did not encounter them until well into adulthood. In Greece we don’t have this tradition. We…
