When looking for a way to link PINTEREST onto the THE DAILY BASICS’ Facebook page, we stumbled across a very cool app called Pinvolve.  Wait until you see this.

-   It links your latest Pins from your Pinterest board to a page linked on your Facebook page,

-  Conversely you can pin your Facebook posts to your Pinterest boards.

There are a few more lovely Pinterest styled organizational pluses  – when you check out the graphic below, you will see.

Read  This Pinterest styled app for browsing Facebook from The Next Web.com to get a fuller idea about this new app.  Pinvolve is free and there are a couple of paid upgrade levels available, but free is just fine.

Look below to get an idea of how it works.   To try it out go to our Facebook page and click on the red P.  While you are over there, we would love to invite you to ‘like’ us!

Janet Block and Barbara Marcone of Classic Galleries in Huntington, NY designed this garden conservatory. A past show house at The North Fork Show House on Long Island

It is Show House Season!  If you live in a metropolitan area  and you like peeking at houses, you might have been to a few of these over the years.  If  you follow our Event Calendar, we will be letting you know every Sunday which Show Houses are active in your area.  Most of them are during the month of May with a few stragglers going through the summer.

What is a Designers’ Show House?

Usually presented to benefit the Arts or Charities, Designers’ Show Houses gather professional Interior Designers to volunteer their time, goods and services into creating one room or space in a large home- usually a mansion, in order to show their professional skills.  These show houses are open to the public for around a month or two depending on each venue.

It:

• Gives Interior Designers a place to show their talents
• Raises money for a charity
• Gives you and your friends a great day out, lunch, ideas and inspiration!
• One stop shopping to find an interior designer

Here is the list of Show Houses throughout the United States.  If you know of one that is not on the list, leave it in the comments and we will add it on the calendar!

Happy Show Housing!

 The Show House List- 2012

California

Pasadena Showcase House of Design, California

San Francisco Decorators’ Show House, California

Georgia

The Atlanta Symphony Decorators’ Show House & Gardens, Georgia

Indiana

St Margaret’ s Hospital Guild Decorators’ Show House- Indianapolis, Indiana

Maryland

36th Symphony Decorators’ Show House, Balitmore, Maryland

Michigan

The Junior League of Detroit Decorator’s Show House

Missouri

Kansas City Symphony Designers’ Show House, Missouri

New Jersey

Mansions in May, New Jersey

The Designer Show House of New Jersey

New York

Kips Bay Decorator Show House

Spring House Tour – The Junior League of the City of New York

House Tour- Southampton Historical Museum, New York

The Hampton Designer Showhouse, Bridgehampton, New York

Pennsylvania

Bucks County Designer House & Gardens, Pennsylvania

Princeton Junior League Designers’ Show House & Gardens, New Jersey

Home:   Victorian cottage in Rhode Island

Challenge:  Needed a facelift and exterior living space

Problem:   Long narrow lot predominantly paved

The Perfect American Victorian Home - Photography Courtesy of Better Homes & Gardens

This turn of the century Victorian cottage had been renovated into a 2 family house. The new owners reverted it back to a single family home

Nothing A White Picket Fence Couldn’t Cure

The long narrow plot was divided into three garden rooms

Newport. RI  landscape architect Kate Field of Katherine Field and Associates, undertook the challenge of renovating the gardens from demolition down to purchasing the furniture. The front of the house was a an empty canvas.  All overgrown shrubs had been torn out and by the time Kate was ready to start her magic, the home had been returned to it’s quaint Victorian self.  Kate ‘dressed’ this lady up with a row of  hydrangea’s in front of the porch, pops of floral color, green shrubs and the quintessential white picket fence.

Three ‘Rooms’

Hidden behind this all American exterior was a 60′ wide narrow plot. Street parking is limited in Newport and the backyard had been made into a parking lot. Kate took into account the family’s needs, their wish list and city restrictions.  She knew whatever she dreamed up had to be a long, skinny plan.  To prevent the ‘bowling lane’ effect, she divided it into three ‘rooms.’

Kate Field gave the back garden separation from the close neighbors as well as level to give a feeling of depth

1 – The first of the three outdoor living rooms is the space attached to the house,  a mahogany deck  extending  from the kitchen steps to the property line.

2 -The second room is centered in the middle of the garden.  A slate terracee garden room furnished with chaise lounges and seating areas perfect for a cocktai party or an afternoon at home with the family.

3- The home’s third outside room is a gated, formal garden that goes to the end of the lot.

“When the architectural details and the garden style agree, a sense of peace occurs,” Field says. The structures and ornaments in the gardens support the Victorian theme. The balusters of the porch, for example, are repeated in the backyard on the balcony off the second-floor sitting room.

Photography courtesy of Better Homes & Gardens

Photographer: Jeff McNamara

Perugia, Italy

Would you like your office to look like this?

Well, Marta Cucchia, the great-granddaughter of the founder of this Handweaving Laboratory and Studio, already does. This is it.

Marta runs the Studio – Workshop/School founded by Giuditta Brozzetti which is located in the ancient church of San Francesco delle Donne in Perugia, Italy. The year was 1921 and the inspiration for the workshop was Medieval Perugian weaving. Passionate about the art of hand-weaving on antique wooden looms, Brozzetti reproduced decorative motifs taken from Etruscan pottery and paintings and ancient tombs and wove them into fine cloths. The materials used in these hand wovens are all high grade linens, cottons, silks, cashmeres and metallics and they are woven on 19th century Jacquard frames. For more information on technique and materials, please  click here.

The Brozzetti Tradition

Since its founding in 1921 by Giuditta Brozzetti, the techniques, arts and business has been passed to the daughter in the next generation. Marta Cucchia, the fourth generation Brozzetti, has continued the business staying true to the original purposes and expanding even further by keeping the business current with today’s trends and demands.

Textiles

Tapestries, draperies, tablecloths, bedspreads, pillows and general textiles are offered for purchase today. Since each artisan piece of hand-made material is made to order, you must contact Marta directly for information on timing and prices. email@brozzetti.com

What? You just can’t order online and have overnight guaranteed delivery.

NOPE.

You will never be able to buy a product like this in the store. If you want a piece of traditionally produced historical drop dead exquisite fabric, you’ll just have to wait for it and you will SO not regret it.

Weaving……….

Talk about a great Girl’s Trip, Ladies, this could very well be it. The Giuditta Brozzetti Weaving Studio offers a variety of courses ranging from a one day seminar to one, two or three week basic or advanced courses. The courses are offered at the Studio in the heart of the very important and culturally explosive city of Perugia.

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Lace making and Embroidery

Daily or weekly courses are offered for two students or more. Traditional Umbrian embroidery is taught as well as openwork embroidery. The courses are offered in a one day seminar or a full week course.

Please visit their site - www.brozzetti.com. There is so much more information that is worth investigating.

Should you be visiting Italy, give the Studio a call and stop in to see them.

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For further information: email@brozzetti.com

Giuditta Brozzetti

Via Tiberio Beradi 5/6

06123 Perugia

Telephone: +39 075 40 236

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A note of thanks to our friends over at The Italian Notebook

Their Post of June 30th, 2010 on Brozzetti Textiles was the inspiration for this post.

If you are interested in Italian Food, Wine, Art & Archeology, subscribe and enjoy!

by Liza de Guia from Food Curated

More great videos from Food Curated  and Liza de Guia!

Does the picture of sheets drying in the wind on a bright sunny day evoke warm and fuzzy feelings? Well in Europe people still air dry their laundry and it is not because they haven’t discovered the electric dryer.

Neat Freak has the best laundry care products - take a look!

It really isn’t all that much work and the benefits are pretty nice. First, the smell of fresh air permeates your laundry. Second, you are going to save money , extend the life of your clothes and sheets and third, well…. when sheets dry on the line, they just about press themselves and all you need to do is run the iron over them.

WHAT? Iron your sheets and pillowcases? Yes. If you’ve ever climbed into freshly pressed cotton sheets after a long, hard day you will know that this is luxury to which you can easily become addicted. And guess what? It costs absolutely nothing but a little extra time.

3 Steps to Perfect Laundry

1 – Pay attention to the types of detergents and settings on your machine. As a matter of fact, we’re going to send you over to, Coreyanne Ettiene  at Housewife Bliss where she is going to tell you how to do this just so. HousewifeBliss.com – How To Do Laundry Guide.

Urbanclothesline.com has everything you need for every sized family. This four slat 'clothes airer' is suspended from the ceiling and is lowered with pulleys. Pull it back up while your laundry dries and it is out the way. It comes in 4 or 6 slats.

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2 – Snap those sheets and hang them on your clothesline. In the winter, mount the pull rack perhaps in your basement (shown here) and in the summer look at the weather forecast to see when it would be best to schedule your laundry day.

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Choose the right iron - The Rowenta Iron and Steamer will cut your pressing time in half . Take a look at their short demonstration video here.

3 -Ironing. Sure, it sounds like a chore but if you fold your sheets properly right off the line they should look almost self pressed. For the finishing touch only iron the top 10″ – 12″ of the sheets – the part that will be showing and then fold the sheets neatly for storage. The folds will relax even further while they await their turn on the bed. Most importantly press your pillowcases and shams. Use a steam iron, light starch or spray some lavender water on to give a nice scent! Check out this Rowenta – your laundry will look properly pressed all the time!

Restoration Hardware's Laundry Carts are sturdy and awfully good looking!

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For more on laundry and bedding…

Wanna Go To Bed – Fine antique linens, Hungarian down pillows and the European Sleep System

Rough Linen – They’re Not Your Grandmother’s Linen, or are they? – Hand made linen sheets

The Laundry List Calculator - How much does your dryer cost you?

Retractable Five Line Mini Dryer extends 12.25 feet providing over 67 feet of available drying space.

Remember these? The Clotheslineshop has clothes pins and all kinds of laundry lines!

For small backyards, use the good ol' umbrella model!

Peace Valley Lavender Farm - Ironing Water

Gardens are being planted, perennials are blooming, and the weather is heating up. The big question is what to serve for lunch or a light supper? Cold Soups are a great option but many people don’t think beyond vichyssoise.

These three great chefs will plant some seeds … in your head, that is.

You might recall our friend, Victory Armory, a lovely chef who’s Spanish heritage never fails to bring new tastes and elements to the table – here with a twist on gazpacho.  Valerie Murray  from The Daily Meal offers us an English cold pea soup option and Viviane Bauquet Farre from Food and Style.com‘s elegant, but hearty recipe that answers the question – what do you do with your bumper crop of cucumbers?

Lettuce Gazpacho

Victoria Armory

Lettuce Gazpacho - click for recipe

With the overabundance of lettuces from my garden, I have made this cool and refreshing Lettuce Gazpacho, ideal for summer meals as it involves no cooking. It is perfect for those summer days when being in the kitchen is not a good plan but you still need to feed the group.

I use low-fat, plain yogurt as it yields a finer and thinner consistency and it fits with my “skinny delicious” plan. This bright green soup is so delicious it seems impossible it could be good for you, too. The flavor of crisp romaine lettuce is freshness itself and the creamy consistency of yogurt is the perfect base. I also make this soup using other greens like baby spinach, watercress or arugula. Strain it through a medium sieve to make as smooth as velvet. A sprinkling of fresh herbs as garnish enhances the green palette.      Click for recipe

You might want to serve this along with Victoria’s  Clams with Chorizo. With a loaf of crusty bread this can easily be the perfect light summer supper.

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Chilled Pea and Mint Soup

Valerie Murray

Cold Pea and Mint Soup from The Daily Meal

Peas are coming up and there are other things to do with them besides serving them as a side dish.

From The Daily Meal comes this classic English Pea and Mint soup.   Recommended accompaniments?   The DM Editor, Valerie Murray says:

a ploughman’s lunch of cold cuts, cheese, and pickles, or as a meal itself served with some Stilton cheese crostini.  

Click over to get the recipe and find six other cold soups recipes recommended by The Daily Meal!

Chilled Cucumber and Yellow Pepper Soup with goat milk yogurt and pan-roasted shishito peppers

Viviane Bauquet Farre

Chilled Cucumber and Yellow Pepper Soup with goat milk yogurt and pan-roasted shishito peppers - click for full recipe

Viviane Bauquet Farre, a fashion designer turned Chef, originally came from a French island in the South Pacific where she learned how to cook with her mother from the ripe old age of six.  You can imagine the combination of flavors she brings to her online food magazine,  FoodandStyle.com  which is fully stocked with great recipes, photographs and many videos.  Her site speaks to the lifestyle of food and drink.

For an elegant cold soup, this recipe will fit the bill.  Besides, have you ever wondered exactly what to do with that bumper crop of cucumbers you get  every year?  This is your answer.  The recipe.   This could be a wonderful summer lunch served with breads, a platter of cheeses on the side and perhaps a watercress salad.

Viviane’s recipes have been featured in forums as diverse as BonAppetit.com, Vegetarian Times, and Saveur.com (which also crowned Viviane’s site one of the “Best of the Web”). She holds an Advanced Certificate in Wines and Spirits from the Wine & Spirit Education Trust Limited.

For more on Cold Soups

Chef Robin White’s Cold Soup Week

Cold Soups- veggies from the garden to the table

I love love love being one of Wayfair.com ‘s twelve ‘homemakers’!  My post for them today has ten key tips to navigating the Antique and Flea Markets.  Hop on over and read it there and meet my fellow homemakers while you are at it!

by Lynn McBrides

The word souvenir in French has a broader meaning than its English equivalent: it can mean a keepsake but is also the French word for a memory. Even if you’ve never been to France and have no ‘souvenirs’, you may have a fantasy in your mind of the places you’re longing to visit.

If you have a little place for France or Italy in your heart, how about a place for them in your home?

We live in Burgundy and I love to collect small oil paintings at the French flea markets, but it’s increasingly hard to find good ones, especially at a reasonable price. Since I’ve started blogging I’ve made friends with some wonderful contemporary artists who have poured their hearts into capturing the beauty of Europe: the architecture, the landscapes, the little European moments of discovery. And you don’t have to get on a plane to find them, they’re on the web, and much of their work is surprisingly affordable.

Each of these artists has a connection to France or Italy and a story to tell, and I’m drawn to each of them. Which artist will bring back a ‘souvenir’ of Europe for you?

For more information on any of the artists, click on the links or on their paintings.

Afternoon at a Floriale - By Tom Vieth

From his house in the Dordogne countryside, Tom Vieth paints fun, fresh, and oh so French watercolors that will bring a smile to your face. He and his wife Susan blog at A Small village In France.  Thomas Vieth

Barbara Andolsek - Abundant Sunflowers

California artist Barbara Andolsek captures the heart of France with her sophisticated, evocative oils, and she’s even painted some of the photos from my blog at Southern Fried French, so you may find that some of her work looks familiar! Barbara Andolsek

Barbara Redmons - Tour Eiffel

It’s Paris all the way for Barbara Redmond, who writes the popular blog,  A Woman’s Paris.  Her fanciful Paris scenes will take you there. Check out her watercolors– and she even paints iphone covers, so you can carry your ‘souvenirs’ with you!   Barbara Redmond

Patricia Glee Smith - Blue Buoy

Patricia Glee Smith is a fine artist, one of our readers and lives in Umbria. She paints detailed oils with an old world feel that will absolutely amaze you.  Patricia Glee Smith

Spring Landscape by Vicki Ingham

I love the peaceful feel and rich colors of Vicki Ingham’s paintings. Vicki was a colleague at Meredith publishing and she lives in Iowa. She often goes to Italy as a retreat, where she creates lovely landscapes of the Tuscan countryside.  Vicki Ingham

Mediterranean View by Hunter George

Lin Wolff has a darling little English bookstore in Valbonne near Cannes.
Hunter George, her father, is a Texas artists who paints lovely Provencal scenes when he comes to visit.  Hunter George

SOUTHERN FRIED FRENCH

Lynn, a native Charlestonian now living in France writes her blog, Southern Fried French, where today she is talking – Let Them Eat (Salmon) Cake !

At the end of my life, I will have judged my success by how much I have been on my knees in the garden tending to my beliefs

Eddie Foisy

That is but one of the many framed sayings interspersed throughout the gardens and workshops of Eddie Foisy or as he is fondly known, Uncle Eddie.

Tacked on one wall is a torn piece of paper that says ‘Question Reality’. A sign on his blacksmith shop states ‘J. Gargary‘, the blacksmith in one of his favorite books, Dicken’s, ‘Great Expectations’. And the sign over the outside entrance into to his workshop says, ‘Windlewisp’, Robin Hood’s refuge deep within Sherwood Forest.

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The Gardens

His road to creating these gardens and this life was not an easy one. An artist, creator and academic, Eddie Foisy was born with Tourette’s syndrome, a neurological disorder that causes involuntary twitching. His parents called it a nervous twitch and it was never an issue at home. However, he was teased in school and as a result, retreated into the world of literature.

Eddie Foisy building one of the castles. His work is in collectors gardens through0ut the United States

Books transported him from the mystical land of Narnia to the fantasies of Alice in Wonderland. Eddie began to explore the world by traveling through history and delving into subjects from medicine to cooking to agriculture. Tourette’s might have determined the course of Eddie’s life, but it was he who turned it into a positive and creative force.

Gardening has always been his passion and on few acres of land in the middle of Cape Cod he has created his own kingdom based on the world in which he was happiest as a boy. The land of Faeries, Camelot, Robin Hood, Dickens and Shakespeare have come alive within the guise of country gardens filled with towering colorful hollyhocks, six-foot tall foxglove, ladies mantle, mugwort, sage and varieties of mint. Old gnarled trees, now guarding serpentine paths, seem to have been waiting for him to define them and add his carefully constructed castles with turrets, small stone mounds where Faeries might live or a hovel for a visiting gnome amongst them. After all, he tells visiting children, there has to be someplace for Isabelle, the resident faerie to live as well as the Tooth Faerie, who spends most of the summer here.

The Plantings- An Apothecary Garden

When Eddie initially began clearing the overgrown 19th century farmland, visions from his readings of the Middle Ages when Kings, chivalry and the belief in magic existed, inspired him to create a Medieval Apothecary garden as the base of his garden philosophy. Also known as a Physic or Infirmary gardens, herbs and flowers are grown for medicinal use but are mixed in the same beds as non-useful flowers and vegetables. The Monks believed that an Apothecary garden should be beautiful and restorative. Even if non-edible, all flowers and things that grew were nourishment for the soul. As a matter of fact, a walk through the garden was prescribed as a cure for depression.

“I always leave something that is no longer alive in the garden,” Uncle Eddie says of a lifeless tree set amongst the vibrant colors of the plants. “It reminds me of the passage of time. Life is made of moments and every moment should be cherished.”

Question Reality

Friends, neighbors, school children or folks who have heard of Uncle Eddie find their way to his gardens. Hundreds have entered through the gates and are awed by the neatly laid out garden paths with castle turrets peaking out. Enchantment takes over as people begin to slow their steps to a meander when they realize they’ll miss details should they hurry. Tall Valerian, Russian Comfrey and Queen Anne’s lace blow in the wind like clouds over the faerie sized stone castles. Children and adults kneel down to look through the miniature doors and lead glass windows of faerie houses in hopes of spotting Isabelle the Faerie or perhaps they’ll find a chalice embedded in a mound of moss that could have once belonged to a knight or even King Arthur’s himself. Eddie smiles when they ask whose it is, for that is when he knows his intention has been accomplished. He has made people question reality, to think and rediscover the curiosity of the child they once were simply by walking through his gardens.

This book sits at the entrance to Eddie's gardens for visitors to bring and read in the gardens

Reality is for people who lack imagination…..

 Click here for a virtual tour of Uncle Eddie’s Gardens

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Eddie’s website has much more information. Please visit it at www.uncleeddiesworld.com.

Should you like to have a castle made for your garden or your gardens designed by Eddie Foisy, please call or email him.

Eddie Foisy opens his gardens to folks who wants to see them by request. Should you be in the Cape this summer, give him a jingle. Here’s his info.

1-508-432-2080

mustardseed@uncleeddiesworld.com

Photo credit goes to Joe Keller of Keller & Keller for the tool wall shot and the exterior shot of Windlewisp.