It’s only one week away, so make sure you get that special someone a gift they’ll love!

Gift ideas for Valentines Day: MyFoxBOSTON.com

We asked our friends on Twitter which soup recipes they were most excited about and @sahopson shared this with us:

Of course this peaked our interest, check it out — how delicious does this look?

Brazilian Fish, Shrimp and Mussel Stew from Food & Wine Magazine

After drooling over this soup on Pinterest (check it out here and follow the link for the recipe), we had soup on the brain. This next find had our tummies grumbling:

Spiced Butternut Squash and Apple Soup from Martha Stewart

This  Spiced Butternut Squash and Apple Soup looked too good not to share. So we pinned it on Pinterest and shared with our hungry Twitter crowd. Turns out it was perfect timing as our friend @DianaScimone was just about to make dinner. She saw our tweet and decided to make this recipe for dinner.  How cool is that?

She officially sealed the deal on our soup cravings with her tweets. Good thing we have a whole month to drool over recipes like this and test out new soups one in our own  kitchens.

What are your favorite soup recipes? We’d love to know! Share with  us in a comment below.

And if you are on Twitter, be sure to follow our friends @sahopson and @DianaScimone because they have delicious tweets!

We’d also love to connect with you on Pinterest and Twitter — let the recipe sharing begin!

Grommet team party, January 6, 2012

The Boston-based Grommet team happily kicked off the New Year at Joanne’s house.

By the way, this is not the first time the front of this solid brick house has been broadcast online…alas, it was on the cover of a dozen online papers when the freak Halloween snowstorm felled a massive ancient tree in Joanne’s front yard.

AP Photo by Michael Dwyer

The only accident at this party occurred when Joanne’s favorite child (her dog Sydney) helped himself to our cake.  His ghoulish blue mouth clued her in before the team arrived.  (We just ate around the gashes.  Making do–in true startup fashion)

Even at a party, we tend to be testing Grommets.  In this case, we had set up a tequila toast because JULIA GOT ENGAGED the very night before our party, to her sweetheart Damian.  The man has great timing.  Gadzooks….our first Grommet wedding!

Julia and Damian had their celebratory tequila shots in a very cool upcoming Grommet:  Himalayan Salt Cups made by Spice Labs.  You freeze them ahead of time for the best tequila shot ever.

We have a new software engineer who, in his first three days,  has experienced a tearful good bye party for our first employee Jen, a full-team birthday celebration, and a Tequila Shots/CakeWrecks party.  Hmmm, what will we spring on him next week?

In fact, we recently heard from one of our community members, Tara, who told us how she’s made Pinterest part of her classroom and is using it as a learning tool:

Tara, tell us a bit about yourself

My name is Tara McCrackin and I’ve been teaching at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI since 2000.  I’ve also been a practicing interior designer with a focus in commercial office design.  I’ve worked on projects for Steelcase, multiple showrooms across the country and their facilities in Grand Rapids — and I completed a LEED Gold project for RackSpace in San Antonio, TX.  You can see some of my work here. I’ve been doing a lot of consulting for Turnstone in the past couple of years on color and space planning tips.  You can see their profile of me at the bottom of the page here.

How were you introduced to Pinterest? Did you bring it into your classroom or was it the other way around?

A former student told me about Pinterest and I joined in early October.  Then I told my students about it and suggested some ways that they could use it for classes (it’s not uncommon for me to share technologies with my classes, and vice versa).  I also suggested that it would be a good organizational tool for inspirational images and for any furniture or accessory information that they collect for projects.

How are you incorporating Pinterest into your instruction?

So far I’ve used Pinterest as a suggested technology to support the class projects.  I haven’t required that my students use it.  My expectations are such that I intend to learn from the students as much as they learn from me  (I am a self identified “Digital Immigrant”).

What’s the most surprising or helpful thing about using Pinterest in your instruction?

What has had the biggest “wow” moment for me has been to see how effective it is for group projects.  That the team can work collaboratively and “like” or “dislike” pieces and then share the images which has been very effective.  They all have on demand access to it, so I don’t hear, “Well, Suzy has it on her hard drive and I don’t know where she got it”.  The student who is working on specific areas can post images, and classmates who are working on the drawings can go to the websites and get dimensions, etc.

Here’s a screen shot of what some of my students (Emily and Claire)  have been pinning for a recent project:

Tara: Thanks for sharing this with us and for giving us a peek inside your classroom. It looks like your students are using Pinterest in a really practical way, and I’ll bet the visual (and convenient) aspect of the platform is making it more exciting for them as well.

We’d love to keep this conversation going — tell us, what are some of the interesting ways you’re using Pinterest? What’s the most exciting aspect of the tool for you?

Patrick like to hang around during the holidays.

Patrick is an “Elf on the Shelf,” and he belongs to Wendy (from our Discovery Team). Sometimes though, he stows away in her bag as she heads out the door to Daily Grommet HQ (he’s mischievous adventurous like that). And he seems to be popping up all over the place.

Patrick hanging out with Kate and Jen. He's giving them some ideas about new Grommets he'd like to see.

He likes to hang out with the Discovery team and hear about what cool, new Grommets we have coming up.

He also like to try new things, like working the camera (backwards?).

Patrick decides to help out on filming day.

Don’t get me wrong, no one’s complaining. It is holiday season after all — the more elves who want to hang around and help, the better!

Do you have an elf in your family? Where’s the oddest place he’s turned up?

In September 2011, they launched the 100×100 Project, featuring a video profile of one female entrepreneur every day for 100 days, sharing their start-up stories and advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs. According to SmartGirls Way founder, Jean Brittingham, “the 100 women in this project are just the tip of a significant women’s entrepreneurial movement.”

So we were honored when they selected Jules Pieri, our founder, as one of the 100 — and equally happy to see some of our own Grommets represented, like Gina Locklear (Zkano) and Sarah McIlroy (FashionPlaytes).

Here’s what Jules had to say:

by Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo

My name is Amy Beth Cupp, and nearly five years ago I married Mr. D. That makes me ABCD! I write a blog about making your house a home which is aptly named ABCDDesign. I am a trained chef, artist and floral designer. I have worked in event planning, floral, stationery and interior design. I am thrilled the Daily Grommet asked me here to talk about decorating for the holiday season.

Who is planning to entertain at home in the next few weeks? So much of the holidays are focused on sharing time at the table with close friends and family, so I am going to focus on tabletop decorations today. A huge percentage of pleasure at a meal is about the visual experience. Make it a feast for the eyes!

China, Stemware, and Flatware! My motto is simple: Life is short. Eat off the good china! Whether you are throwing an event for two or twenty, I think it is important to make life’s little moments into memorable milestones. Unless your wedding china was handed down from your great, great grandmother chances are that a broken dish is either still in production or can purchased at replacements.com. So don’t be afraid to USE the pretty stuff.

One of the biggest trends we see in tabletop is mix and match china. It’s all about layering, layering, layering. Notice all of the linens are natural color. This makes it easy to repurpose them at other times of the year. Napkins are either folded alongside the plate, placed in the top dish, or slipped between the top and bottom dish – there are no rules.

The mood we have in these images is nostalgic, it’s cozy, mis-matched. We have a combination of materials that help lend an antiqued feel to the space. Do different textures on your tabletop: wood, moss, bark, greenery, combining gold and silver finishes and pine cones add a fabulous foil to the cool, sparkling china and the glimmer of crystal. The use of linen, wood, twine, and mixed metallics compliment the combination of clear and mercury glass.

Speaking of which, mercury glass is everywhere this holiday season. It’s wonderful because it looks as fantastic at the 4th of July as it does at Halloween and Christmas. It doesn’t show fingerprints and it gives an instant feel of history to the table. Other trends we’re seeing a ton of in Holiday ornaments and decorations: crowns, woodland animals and mushrooms.

When decorating your table for the holidays, think about starting with a neutral palette on all the basics (tablecloths, and napkins especially) and then dress it up at the with pops of color that don’t necessarily have to be a predictable fall colors for Thanksgiving or the traditional Christmastime red and green color palette. By mixing in fresh greenery, Christmas bulbs and other wintery elements, we get a decidedly ‘holiday’ feel.

Lighting: Flicker LED candles are all the rage. They won’t blow out during an event and save on clean-up after a party. But personally, I love the soft glow that orange and peach color candles give a room, so I always add them in regardless of whether I am using LED lights or not.

Centerpieces: Be certain not to use highly scented flowers such as lilies. Keep your flower budget low by using only one or two varieties of flowers in your arrangements. Get creative and reach for old family pieces. Soup tureens, galvanized buckets, crystal bowls, water pitchers, coffee pots and tea cups all make interesting containers for floral decorations.

Fill bowls, vessels and pitchers with seasonal fruits; persimmons, apples, oranges, cranberries and pears. I chose to do a mixture of clementines and tangerines. They’re fantastic this time of year, and will be happily snacked upon long after the dinner party is over. I like to carry the mood throughout the house. I put Christmas bulbs in big bowls in nearly every room.

Prizes! Party favors are not just for kids parties any more. We’ve been seeing more and more hostesses giving token gifts out to their party guests. I have designed these letterpress matchboxes that play double duty and act as place card holders at the table. All my guests can go home with a handsome parting gift at the end of the night. They last far longer than any bottle of wine or tin of cookies, they also make a terrific Hostess gift for any Winter party.

Speaking of hostess gifts: one of my favorite finds this year were MyDrap linens on a roll. They’re eco friendly, 100% cotton and linen. They are washable up to six times and come in a myriad of colors. They’re an amazing way to add quick, reasonably priced color to your table for a themed event, or make for a fabulous hostess gift.

Ideas for easy entertaining at the holidays: Highlight what you are good at. Hire out what you do not do or can not do yourself. Throw a Winter Solstice Cookie Party: I bake every cookie and holiday treat I have the recipe for and invite my friends in for dessert. I serve homemade eggnog, champagne, coffee and tea. It is such an easy, fun way to throw a celebration. All the work is done ahead of time and I can truly appreciate my guests without worrying that I am burning something in oven -OR- Consider throwing a New Years Day open house: prepare a pot of soup, serve rolls, a cheese and olive plate on a buffet. Let people come and go and help themselves throughout the afternoon.

Jingle-Jingle! And most of all, ENJOY. xo ABCD

……………………………………………………….

Would you like more holiday help? ABCD, and several other expert bloggers will be joining us for a fun and festive Twitter party. We’ll be sharing more ideas and tips for holiday food, decor, gifts, plus much more! More info here. We hope you’ll join us!

by Chris Nease

1. Think outside the box for your Thanksgiving decorating. Orange, gold and rust is a beautiful color combination — but why not try something more modern like brown and aqua blue? This color scheme is unexpected yet still earthy and inviting. Other interesting choices might be gold and silver, brown and green, or tan and red.

2. Get creative with your centerpiece. For years we’ve seen pumpkins and gourds used in a Thanksgiving centerpiece which is classic and lovely. However, I love to create an eclectic centerpiece by pulling items from around the house and creating “small vignettes” down the middle of the table. This works particularly well for a long narrow banquette table and you can incorporate things like books, vases of flowers, small statues, and even keys and buttons.

3. Place settings get a whimsical touch with the addition of a Lucky Wishbone on each plate. This way everyone gets to make a wish!

4. Remind guests to save room for dessert by placing individual mini pies at each place. Wrap them up with newspaper, wax paper, or scrapbook paper to add a decorative touch.

5. If you’re like us and eat your meal at dinner time you’ll need something to hold you over until then. We usually serve wine and appetizers while watching football games and socializing. Set up a pretty, coordinating bar and snack area in another room so it doesn’t interfere with traffic flow of the kitchen and dining area.

6. Finally, make sure to have some disposable containers on hand so guests can take home leftovers. Everyone loves those leftover turkey sandwiches!

Would you like more holiday help? Chris, and several other expert bloggers will be joining us for a fun and festive Twitter party. We’ll be sharing ideas and tips for holiday food, decor, gifts, plus much more! More info here. We hope you’ll join us!

Images from CelebrationsAtHomeBlog.com

Join expert entertaining, design, and food bloggers as we share tips and ideas to make this holiday season more fun, more creative, and of course, stress-free. We’ll be gathering on Twitter for a Twitter Party and giving away some great prizes.

When: Monday, November 21 at 7-8pm EST (4-5pm PST)

Hashtag: #HolidayHelp

Co-Hosts:

• @CelebrateAtHome – Entertaining expert Chris Nease is bringing creative holiday party ideas
• @CarissaRogers – Family blogger Carissa Rogers is sharing special holiday traditions
• @ABCDdesigns – Design blogger Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo is giving up her insider tips for holiday decorating
• Keep watching … even more experts will be joining us for the event
  

Prizes: We’ll be giving away four $25 Daily Grommet gift cards live at the party, plus announcing a HUGE giveaway as well – just in time to help out with your holiday shopping.

Hope to tweet ya’ there!