I am pretty new to digital magazines. While I love my glossies, so many of them have disappeared lately that I am turning to the internet. Online magazines are only getting better and better lately – they have such a professional look, they feature people that we won’t see in the big magazines like Elle Decor and House Beautiful, at least not yet, they have much shorter load times than they used to and they have become really easy to “flip through”. To me they are the media that exists between blogs and print magazines. I’m digging them, and who can resist that orange, black and white cover? I LOVE IT!  I had not heard of Nesting Newbies until I saw a link to it in an email I received from one of our soon-to-be-featured guest bloggers. They are now on issue 2 (yup, that sounds about right for how long it takes me to hear about something new and exciting), and I LOVE their philosophy. I think they said it best themselves, so I am going to quote:

NestingNewbies.com is a cross platform experience featuring a quarterly digital shelter magazine, online cooking segments, and informational blogs aimed at showing those who are new to nesting how to cook, entertain, and decorate.

NestingNewbies.com combines a traditional magazine format with the new social media trend of original online videos and blogs to present a cross-platform experience for “nesting newbies,” the site’s target audience of those who are new to nesting and have no clue when it comes to cooking, entertaining, and decorating. Cooking and decorating enthusiasts will also enjoy the original ideas being presented.

It sounds like just what  a lot of us need these days! To peruse the winter issue, click here.

Cover via NestingNewbies.com, photographed by Michael Soo, showroom by Maloos Anvarian.

Chest of drawers, early 1920s

These remind me of those awesome new Claude modular dressers that Jonathan Adler just designed. I feel like he must have been inspired by Eileen when he sat down to sketch.

Bedroom from the Rue Bonaparte apartment. How sexy is this?

Transat chairs, circa 1925-1930

I love seeing original sketches like these! These are part of the collection at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

All images via Eileen Gray: Design and Architecture by Phillipe Garner and published by TASCHEN. I highly recommend adding it to your design library. It’s available used at Amazon for about $10!

The February issue absolutely rocked. After many years of suzani fever in the design world (I mean, my god, I think PB has some sort of faux Suzani thing going on right now, that completely defeats the purpose, esp. after you read what it means. It’s like calling the brand new piece of junk McMansion next door to me a “Craftsman”), I learned that “suzani” means “needle” in Persian. I learned about super cool places to travel to in Georgia (I mean, besides the ATL, where I live, we have beaches and mountains and old towns, YO!), I saw an article about Alabama Channin, a label that I love, and articles about interiors that I admired. Consider my opinion of Southern Living completely turned around!

The best thing I found out about was the Postcards on the Beach Inn, on St. Pete’s Beach in Florida. Before this, my knowledge of St. Pete’s consisted of the HILARIOUSLY decorated condo we rented for a wedding, and the HoJo’s Tiki Bar (which still rocks; we had many cheap frozen drinks, and we had a former American Idol contestant tell us all about how she got kicked off the show for smoking weed while we were there, then she rocked out a great song. Priceless.). Anyway, the Postcards on the Beach Inn seems like the coolest spot I’ve seen since The Surf Lodge, and it’s a LOT less expensive. I’m loving the current combination of surfboards, retro paneling, groovy Greg Brady beads with a wink towards Americana Route 66 motor lodges and a nod towards no-tell motels  beachy response to boutique hotels. Sorry for the bad sentence structure on that one. Anyway, the Inn’s website is really cool too, hence the taped-up, postcard-esque, crooked images below.

http://www.postcardinn.com/

Photo by: Saxon Holt/PhotoBotanic

I was flipping through the latest issue of Garden Design the other day and The Late Show Gardens jumped off the page at me. It’s a garden show in Sonoma that starts with sustainable design as a no-brainer base and creates art from it. For example, plants that cleanse contaminated water and soil help shape thoughtful spaces. Peruse the whole shebang over at gardendesign.com, if you are not convinced, here’s a little teaser!

Photo by Mitch Maher

all photos via gardendesign.com

So, I read all about Annie in the February 2010 issue of House Beautiful that arrived today. I am so excited to follow their new year-long series which will follow Annie as she renovates her new ranch. Her friend and architect, John Gilmer, will be helping her every step of the way.

While you’re going to have to buy the current issue of HB in order to follow Annie, it’s worth it. Here’s a peek at another one of her designs on the cover a year ago.

Already a House Beautiful fan? Don’t miss the ladies of The Skirted Roundtable chatting with Stephen Drucker, the Editor-in-Chief of HB.

House Beautiful cover photographed by John Kernick

photo via from Canadian House and Home (by the way, I LOVE that magazine! It’s helping me fill the void left by the loss of some of my favorite shelter mags of late), via The City Sage.

While I’m thankful that our forefathers got rid of those pesky British taxes that didn’t have representation and all, I am always a sucker for a Union Jack. I think my favorite use of it lately was the quilts featured on Man Shops World by Becky Oldfield. Here are a few more dreamy shots of the U.K.’s flag I’ve been collecting lately:

Check out Timothy Oulton’s sofa:

A dash of Vivienne Westwood (she’s been doing this a long time) via Living Etc.:

From Natural Curiosities:

From Made By Girl:

From Jonathan Adler:

From one of the designers of Libertine, as seen in Domino.

From the fabulous Bonnie Cashin:

From Naked Decor:

Quilt image by William Waldron via Elle Decor
Sofa image by Michael Falco for The New York Times
Living Etc. images by Jo Berryman for Living Etc.
via Natural Curiosities
Bonnie Cashin Foundation

image via Living etc.

P.S. The architect on this project was Steven Whiting

To pick up some Panton chairs of your own, click here. They are $260 each.

image via Living etc. Are there many magazine sites with better galleries than Living etc.? My only wish is that the images were larger, but that’s a very minor quibble. I love the quality of all of their picks, and the site architecture is great. Let’s hope the shelter mag blight does not reach them.