Northern Home & Cottage February 2014 on Northern Michigan styles helps to inspire your late winter and early spring decor preparations. Editor Elizabeth Edwards shares on her favorites in this month’s issue:
I wait until the end of each magazine production cycle before sitting down to write my editor’s note. That way, cool ideas and themes have time to percolate through the hubbub of my brain. When I find myself telling my friends and family about particular things, I know they are keepers. I’ve been babbling a bunch lately, so … here are some highlights of Northern Home & Cottage. Children’s entryway lockers that look like old-fashioned closets—outfitted with chalkboards on the door that invite self-expression. A reading nook made out of a hollow tree in the Darntons’ house. The Darntons’ MSU-themed indoor basketball court. And well, who could forget Scottie Lansill’s great-great-grandfather (read “The Bucket List House,” page 20, to find out what I mean by that!)?
While the lockers might indeed make the difference between dysfunction and function in a family (and wouldn’t be too difficult to replicate), most of us will never have an indoor basketball court or an ancestor who turns out to be a fairy godfather. Our Northern Michigan Style spread hits a more practical note—though no less dreamy. Let’s just say everyone on the staff all but ate it up, literally in the case of the handmade raspberry truffles from Chocolate Exotica in Traverse City. The little red table with the French poem stenciled on it, courtesy of Acanthus Hardware in Traverse City, basked in the oohs and aahs it elicited during our photo shoot.
And then there was the hot little gold lamé wine purse from Cutler’s in Petoskey. It was sitting on my desk the day after the photo shoot, December 19th, which happens to be my daughter’s birthday. Which of course is in the middle of the crazy pre-holiday rush. Exhausted over trying to think of something special for her, I fell into my office chair, closed my eyes and reopened them with the wine purse in my sights. One call to Cutler’s and it was on my credit card. Needless to say, if you see a darling 20-something partying around Traverse City with the cutest little wine purse you ever saw, tell her you know where it came from. And not to worry, Cutler’s has more. Did I say this issue is a lifesaver?
Northern Home & Cottage is included in the February 2014 issue of Traverse, Northern Michigan’s Magazine. Get your copy here.
