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Find Comfort in Cocooning at Nest in Millerton

When times are harsh, people find comfort at home.  And when you're home a lot, you want to fluff up your nest. This impulse for "cocooning," as trend forecaster Faith Popcorn labeled it back in the 1980s, is a constructive way of coping. 'We are

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The Upside of the Downturn

Of course, we're all scared silly, deer frozen in the headlights, and all that.  But the Millbrook-based architect James Crisp, a longtime observer of the ups and downs of the region's fortunes, asks us to consider a few facts: "Prices are cooling for both property

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New Year's Resolution #1: Get Organized

"Organizing," says Johanna Bard of Milan, "is not necessarily about throwing things out."  Bard, whose company, Your Hudson Valley Organizer, is dedicated to helping its clients reclaim their time, space, and energy, belongs to the National Association of Professional Organizers, which routinely holds conferences in far-flung

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A French Twist on American Country Style

French Chic: The Art of Decorating Houses (Rizzolli; $50) doesn't sound like a coffee-table book with a lot of relevance for people decorating Hudson Valley or New England houses.  But the author, Florence de Dampierre, just happens to live in an 18th century clapboard house with Federal-and-Colonial details

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HunterBee Brings A Flea Market Aesthetic to Millerton

For many years, Kent Hunter and Jonathan Bee spent weekends visiting flea markets and antiques fairs, buying furniture and funky decorative objects that they had no room for in their apartment in New York. They stored their finds in Bee's parents house in Great Barrington. "When the

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Food for Thought: The 6th Annual Northwest Connecticut Kitchen Tour

The last thing you're probably thinking about at the moment is renovating your kitchen. But now's a good time not only to day dream about new cabinets, countertops and appliances but also to put together that binder of ideas and inspiration so when the economy bounces

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A Cinderella House Makes Its Debut for Charity

Matthew Patrick Smyth, an A-list New York decorator with a weekend house in Sharon, is used to working for demanding clients who expect things done yesterday. So he was not surprised when Scott and Roxanne Bok approached him in June about decorating a restored 19th century farmhouse in Salisbury, CT,

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Giving Soul to A Spec House in Austerlitz

A brand new house is a blessing and a burden, a tabula rasa that  comes without the history, quirks and charm that are the hallmarks of memorable country houses.  Over the past seven years, James Oates and William Li have transformed a modest, spanking-new timber-peg, three-bedroom house on an unpaved

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Mr. Siskin Blogs His Dream House

For anyone now in the process of building a house from the ground up, or anyone who dreams of one day building such a house, or even anyone who thinks that anyone who builds a house is insane, you'll find justification for your position on Paul Siskin'

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The Heart & Soul of Rhinebeck's Paper Trail (Part 2: At Home)

The sentimental and private side of Paper Trail co-owner Maureen Missner is vividly on display at her 1830s house in Clinton Hollow, NY, which is filled with lake-house furniture from her childhood summers in Michigan and Wisconsin. Her dining table's top came from a beloved butcher's

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Nesting: The Second Home Takes Center Stage

Many people profess that a second home changes their life, but actress Annette Miller can make the case more emphatically and convincingly than most.  Nearly twenty years ago, she and husband, Michael, who were living in Newton, MA, started looking for a little weekend house in the Berkshires. The place

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Playing by the Rules: The Faulkner 14

Many interior designers, when pressed for useful advice, will say, "It's impossible to generalize--there are no hard and fast rules." Not Frank Faulkner. An artist who also practices interior design (he says) by default or (we say) by popular demand, Faulkner speaks of his sideline in

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