I am playing catch-up on all the things that I have shoved to the back burner for the last couple of weeks.  My desk, which is organized, though only in a way that I can see, is piled with, well, piles.

One stack has offered respite from the rush of practices and projects.  It’s spring book season and I’ve been the happy recipient of quite a selection.

A particularly lovely choice, one that offers an escape from the sometimes all to unpleasant real world, is The Welcoming House.

If you are delighted by pretty spaces you will find loads of inspiration here.  Beyond that, the book is chocked full of practical advice for houses that hold children and dogs.  You know, houses that are really lived in.

You can find The Welcoming House here and tour information here.

All images Laura Resen.

I had a stomach ache-faker on Wednesday and Kansas City received a foot of snow on Thursday so I have had boys home for five days.  Based on the contents of my pantry and refrigerator you might think we had a swarm of locust as well, except locust would surely wipe their feet when coming in from sledding.

The up-side of my work, which the boys refer to as “Find the Difference” as they catch me studying images on the computer so often, is that I can read a magazine or a design book and, waving them off, pronounce, “I’m working,” and it works.

Curled up with Veranda on Day Two I had a thought as clear and sharp as the icicles hanging from the eaves.  I love to read magazines. This is why:

“All houses have a soul.  They speak to you.  They say, Do this, do that.  It’s a sensibility I feel when I walk into a new space.  I hear with my eyes.  The day I moved into the lodge I had an enveloping, welcoming feeling.  It’s the sort of house that as you put something in, it says thank you.  Nothing seems to annoy it.  It’s a combination of taste and memory and a capsule of everything I’ve ever done: my parents’ house, things I’ve picked up on holiday.  It all flows together in my mind and becomes a blur.”

Designer Nicky Haslam has captured the very essence of it here for me.  So, I thank him and encourage you to not just look at the pictures, but read the articles.

Image, above, swiped from Mr. Halsam’s site.  His home in the March/April issue of Veranda is delightful, but I am much too lazy to scan.

I’m not sure why I did not pick up Jeffrey Bilhuber’s book when it was published last year.  Could’ve been timing, I suppose, distracted by some thing or other that is now long forgotten.  But I came back to him a couple of months ago and we’ve been happily co-habitating since.  He’s always near at hand and never fails to put a smile on my face.  As much as I admire clean and serene, I can’t resist color and in this Mr. Bilhuber never disappoints.  There’s one project in particular that is chocked with vintage needlepoint and every time I turn from page 61 to 63 I think, “Yes. More.  I do.  I want more.”  So I spend my day hoping Jeffrey will forgive me for my initial oversight and my evenings stitch, stitch, stitching.

If you days are either hectic and hurried or gray and gloomy, consider Jeffrey Bilhuber’s The Way Home as an easy antidote.  You can find it here.  Needlepoint was something I had all but given up in the hey day of blogging; it’s good to be back at it.

As much as I love having fresh flowers in the house, I find them difficult.  Difficult to plan in the planting; worse still when it comes to arranging.  In my hands, it’s something just short of mauling.  In fact, the blooms may need therapy once their trembling stems come to rest in the vase.  At the very least I’m sure they commiserate with one another over their brutish treatment.

Then, a week or so ago, Susan from Rainy Day Books called to say, “There’s a new book I think you might like.”  I know you’re thinking this call might have gone out to dozens, might not have been meant just for me.  But I think it was.

Carolyn Roehm and Sylvie Becquet’s photographs for Ms. Roehm’s new book, Flowers, are simply stunning and gloriously large.  I felt like I could crawl right in and hide inside a peony – a most delicious escape (and one which I’m sorely needing.)  But better still, the arrangements are largely one or two blooms, in containers of standard shapes if extraordinary form.  The extra-added bonus being that each flower featured can be grown right here in my own zone.  Heaven, within my reach.

Beautiful and practical (how often does that happen?) Flowers will not only help me structure my arrangements, but my garden as well.  I could not be more delighted.  Flowers, by Carolyne Roehm, here.

I received no compensation for this post, in fact, I bought the book myself.  And I’m glad I did.

I can go on, do gush, and fail to force myself to slow the heck down on some occasions.  I can be what I’d like to define as “passionate,” but others may see as undone.

I was, to say the least, excited to see Miles Redd’s new book, The Big Book of Chic.  It helped that it does not have a whiff of some wistful reverie of home, though that’s something I tend to fall into around here every now and again, and is a big, fat fit of fabulousness.

Indeed, both the title and the book announce their intent, which is to bring us something fantastic, as Miles tends to do.  When I read the opening letter, the only real text in the book, I could hear the designer’s voice, which is something I like. (“It sounds as if you just sat down and scratched it out in your notebook,” I said to Mr. Redd.  “I basically did,” was his response and I was happy to hear it.)  If the rest is a stream of consciousness monologue on creativity and inspiration, I’m ever so glad to be along for the ride.

The images are a compilation of the references that have stuck in the designer’s mind and the rooms they influenced.  Scattered about are quotes from Mitford, Waugh, Fitzgerald and other favorites.  “They are things that caught my mind,” he told me and I asked him if he wrote in his books, something I still cannot do because of some misguided sense of reverence.    He does not.  “I remembered them and then had to go back and try to find.”

As we chatted, we wandered the garden path of luxury and style and inspiration.  “We’re all influencing each other,” he said, “You can just tap something and up it pops.”  Still, “Luxury can walk hand-in-hand with the hard to get.  It’s terrific to have accessibility, but it makes you aware of how fun it is to walk into a shop and have someone say, ‘I have something great for you,’ as they are pulling it from the back room.”

Don’t mess around here.  You can buy the book now or be bidding the rent for it on ebay someday.

All images courtesy of Assouline.