Nest Decorating & Designs by Tamar

Mother's Day Gifts

Mother's Day is only two weeks away! We will guarantee on time shipping for all purchases completed by May 1!

Here are some of the new designs available in the shop

New Lariat necklaces and Pearl Chandeliers

A Set of Two Crystal Ball Necklaces

 A set of three Colorful Bead Bracelets with vintage Brass Tube Beads

A Set of Two Long Cream Bead Charm Necklaces With A Pink Tassel

A Set Of  Three Turquoise and Coral Bracelets with vintage Golden Brass Tube Beads

and so much more! 

Happy Mother's Day!

xox

 

 

A surprise in a barn

Yesterday I received a phone call from my son Daniel who is a talented photographer, he was taking photos at an event that took place in a little barn behind a beautiful farmhouse out in the tiny village of Charlotte VT which is one village away from our home, he was excited by what he saw and made me promise to go and check it out, I was very intrigued, I knew about this shop in our village Chez Boheme that had amazing textiles and a wonderful story but they closed and I was sure they just moved on, they did! to the little barn in Charlotte! So went and met some really lovely and talented women and indeed the shop is amazing!!

visiting is by appointment only, checkout the website for more information and if you can't visit checkout the Etsy shop!

xox

 

 

 

 

 

My Travel Journal To Israel Part 1

Every year I travel to Israel to visit my family and friends, when we moved to Vermont with the kids 10 years ago we promised everyone we will be back on a yearly basis and throughout the years we kept our promise, most of the time we travel back with the kids but on occasion I go on my own and it's a whole different exprience, having time for myself I find I do a lot more exploring and venture to places I normally don't have time for when all 5 of us go as a family. I always stay at my sister's who is a wonderful artist and now lives with her family in the house we both grew up in which my dad who was an architect designed in the 60's.

Here are some highlights from my latest visit in Early March.

First of all is the house, a modern structure made of concrete and painted white, with 15' high glass panel sky lights and a series of room that surround a middle patio, the art in this photo is by my mother who was an amazing artist

looking down from the upper floor:

the upper living area:

this is the little room I stayed in

 beautiful fruit bowls in the kitchen:

I love the way my sister displays her jewelry, most of it is my own designs, it always seems to look so good on her.

 

 

The pretty bedroom

The garden:

Our neighborhood in Tel Aviv is also something I always miss, even though I now live surrounded by beauty here in Vermont where you grow up always has a special place in your heart:

 The Yarkon river and park at dusk:

the local flower shop

the hidden secret garden behind the house

my all time favorite local cafe down the street

xox

Next time:

Tel Aviv sightseeing, food, a beautiful studio and a recipe!

 

 

 

what's new around the house

We have been changing and updating tons of stuff around the house, this summer we  gave the whole house a fresh coat of white paint, we updated the kitchen and added a new farmhouse sink,  marble top counter sourced locally here in Vermont and and new range hood and back splash, in the living room I moved things around and changed the pillows and colors and the rugs were sent to cleaner for a good deep clean, we are planning on getting a new coffee table, I am imagining a big square table made with reclaim wood inserted into a black steel frame with steel legs...we might have to built it ourselves...

xox

Amsterdam a new found love

I just finished posting about our Paris trip this fall, here is the second part of our trip, Amsterdam! After spending a few glorious days in Paris we took the train to Amsterdam, we always dreamt about staying on a house boat on a canal and found this little studio with giant windows in the lovely Jordaan neighborhood. I didn't know what to expect, I was in Amsterdam twice, once as a teenager for 2 days with my grandparents, I only remember holding my little sister's hand while touring Anna Frank's house, I was absolutely obsessed with the book and story at that time, the second time was about 12 years ago, I was there for 2 days on a journalist tour of the Nike Headquarters outside Amsterdam, that time I only stayed in the city for a day and mainly walked the main shopping areas, spending a week there with my husband would mean getting to know the city a little better and I must say I fell in love! We are actually thinking of spending longer chunks of time there sometime in the future.

Amsterdam has the feel of a small town, we rented bicycles for the duration of our stay which made life very easy, I highly recommend this rental place!  it was wonderful getting around on bikes not to mention constant great exercise! the canals, the little shops, the cobblestone streets, the flowers, great food, wonderful vintage and second hand shops (my favorite thing) all made the trip an absolute pleasure! 

here I am in my night gown reading on the house boat

A swan coming to say good morning!

 

A classic Amsterdam scene

 

beautiful flower shops everywhere

 

the view of the canal from our bed!

A lovely house in the Jordaan neighborhood, I love the big windows everywhere! did you know that because the houses are so narrow hooks were affixed to the tops to hoist furniture and goods up and through the windows, this tradition is still employed today, it's a fascinating scene to watch! 

three of my favorite shops where these:

Sukha

 

 

Restored

and my all time favorite the heavenly Dille&Kamille!! 

we also explored the beautiful Rijks Museum and grounds, I highly recommend getting the museum guided tour app if you are there and exploring the website, it's fascinating and has a ton of free downloads!

the library at the museum

autumn in Amsterdam

a garden roof on a house boat

and finally here I am in the Central Train station on our way back home blending into a giant scale poster of the Night Watch by Rembrandt, did you know that the Night Watch scene is actually taking place during the day time? The dark background mistaken for night's sky was actually a varnish turned dark with age and dirt. During a restoration in the 1940s, the varnish was removed, but the name stuck.

I hope you enjoyed the tour!

xox

 

We built a shed and all about making space

We have been seriously suffering from a lack of space for some time now, with our boys all back home this summer, the two older ones just done with college and transitioning into their new lives and jobs, still not making enough money to rent and planing on traveling soon (our middle son) and one going back to grad school next fall (our older son) and our youngest in college still for the next three years, our home is like a train station/storage/dumping ground for all their stuff!!! ughhhh....I love it when the house is neat and clean and there are no messy parts anywhere...but alas that has not been the case for sometime now, it seems as though every time I get one room all cleaned up and sorted another room or space gets all messed up all over again, I know I should feel blessed, they love to live at home and and we all get along wonderfully and I do feel absolutely blessed! but the mess! Right now we are completely updating the downstairs bathroom, (blog post to follow when we are done) the laundry room is a disaster area and the garage....yikes...I won't even go into that! and then there are tons of guests in and out all year long too not to mention some serious photo crews that seem to love taking pictures of our home...the house just meeds to look less messy! 

So we built a shed and we love it!

We found it on the Costco website on sale! it was a weekend sale and marked down by a lot, so lucky!! at first we thought of renting a mini storage but when we did the math we realizes that getting a shed made a lot more sense.  Luckily I had an in house three generation family building crew here this summer, my husband's dad who is a contractor, my husband who is a fantastic DIY builder and fixer upper and our son Mikey who is studying Architecture at Pratt, a great way to get some hands on building experience for him this summer although he is not completely new to this and spent a few high school vacations volunteering and building with Habitat for Humanity.

The crew

Ronen on the left, Amnon (Ronen's dad in the center) and Mikey

We chose a shady back spot under a tree right by the veggie garden

building took about 2 weeks, it was no easy task (Ronen and his dad measuring out the platform)

 

the finished platform

 

 

The walls are up!

 

and roof

it then proceeded to rain for about 3 days and construction was halted

 

the doors installed and the shed is being painted, I chose white exterior paint with a red for the barn doors, black hardware and a dark slate grey ribbed steel roof.

 

Ronen installing the steel roof ordered from Lowe's 

 

the three generation "crew" putting in some last touches (I swear I didn't coordinate the color scheme here..)

 

next came the stairs made from an old piece of wood that was lying around the garden forever, we also chose heavy weight white vinyl lattice for the bottom, I would have loved to go with painted wood but the winters here are too harsh and the vinyl actually looks just fine.

look how cute! I am so excited!

last part was a little landscaping, I planted hydrangea and Salvia on the visible sunny side

and voila! all done, so much more space freed up at home!

xox

 

 

 

 

 

Some wonderful art

My beloved sister Miri is a fantastic artist, she has been creating art since she was a tiny, always a pencil or brush in hand, she went to the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston and has shown her work in countless shows and galleries over the years, she's also been teaching art for many years at the Design Dept. of  Shenkar College and Holon Institute in Israel were she lives.

A few years ago she started selling her beautiful prints on Etsy, the work is printed on super high quality Italian paper, the quality is so great it's hard to tell it's a print and the prices are amazingly affordable, these will make such wonderful gifts, I love displaying them on my art walls, they also look great in the kitchen and kids rooms!

Highly recommended!...and not just because she is my sister....

here is a sample of some of her work.

xox

Boston weekend

We had the best time in Boston this weekend! our good friend Jen just moved back to Boston after a few years here in Burlington, Jen has the most amazing taste and she is a real inspiration, her bohemian style is just the thing I love and her apartment is nice and roomy in an old victorian house in Watertown, a big one bedroom with amazing light! I love the wonderful mix of color, textiles, vintage and ethnic with country rustic, I couldn't stop taking photos...

 

 

We also visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, It was my first visit there and I loved it! The little patio garden! 

In the evening we went down to the harbor to peek at the ocean

We had a few wonderful meals including a wonderful lunch at Sofra Bakery and Cafe and great dinner at Sarma a mix of turkish and Middle Eastern food. It was delicious!

Here are some beautiful business cards I collected this weekend, I do that when I travel, I get a business card form every restaurant and shop I like and keep them for future references.

 

xox

 

The Kitchen Renovation

 

Our kitchen has gone through quite a few changes in the last 10 years, when we moved in to this house the kitchen was pretty much hideous, so bad I have no photos .... darkish pink colored walls with a wallpaper surround fringe, a "European" formica kitchen and formica counter tops, dark blue tiles that were ok but very chipped and a black sink, in short a mish mash dated mess! ! over the years we replaced the cabinets with white Ikea cabinets (love them and they are still holding up like new) we replaced the formica counter tops with the Ikea butcher wood counter tops and removed the top cabinets and put in open shelving. This all happened in 2007 and you can see the post about it here.

The kitchen went through many more changes since that blog post 8 years ago now but I was still not mad about the dark tiles and black sink, they made the room look smaller and dark.

After rethinking the renovation for months and on a very small tight budget we finally got around to it. We saved a ton of money by doing all ourselves  and Ronen my sweet husband did all the work! everything! I just stood around and watched most of time and cleaned the mess and fed him. Our son Jonathan helped too when heavy lifting was needed.

So here is what we did:

1. Removed old dark chipped tiles, yeayy!

2. Speckled and Sanded the walls 5 times! until completely smooth with Easy Sand 

3. Painted the walls, shelves and window trims with Olympic Ultra White

4. The counter tops were stained and had water damage, we don't actually cut on them so we decided to seal them, we used Waterlox products, 4 coats of sealer and one coat of Satin Finish, the results are amazing! you will need to this in a well ventilated space (we used our garage) and wait for 24 hours between each coat! it takes forever but well worth it.

5. We removed the old sink and replaced it with the Ikea DOMSJÖ Double bowl Farmhouse sink, I love this sink!!! it's beautiful and huge and very comfortable to work with.

6. Replaced the leaky faucet with a new one we found on sale.

7. We replaced the old low hanging dated light fixture with spots.

8. Since we removed the tiles behind the stove and our old range hood was not really functioning at all (I only used it for the overhead lights) we bought a new range hood at Costco with a matching stainless steel backsplash, I love how it looks and it's super easy to clean, we opted for the cheapest one and it works great!

9. Decluttering... I went for a much cleaner look this time and removed lots of my little chockas that were accumulating dust and completely un factional, I left everything I use on a daily basis, gave away some stuff, and kept some stuff for the kids future kitchens.

 

 

The new Range Hood and backsplash

The new Farmhouse sink and faucet

 

some of our vintage plate collection

 

our open shelf pantry in the back of the kitchen

Happy Spring! xox

A room Renovation and transformation

 

When our kids left for college we decided to turn the downstairs room into a guest room. I love this room it has the best light from two large windows and it's perfect for house guest allowing them some privacy.

Here is the room in it's first phase  (notice the up side down map...it was a funny joke for a 14 yr old..he is now 24...)

This is what it looked like when our second son used it when he was in high school (he is now a senior in college) I made him a bright red headboard and he decorated his walls with his older brother's beautiful photographs.

The walls were in bad shape and the heating base boards were in very bad shape, Ronen took them apart, scrubbed them down with steel wool, cleaned them off and spray painted them outside with a first coat of anti rust spray and them with white spray paint to match the new white walls.

We chose True White in an egg shell finish by Olympic from Lowe's for the walls.

Here is the room after the renovation:

 We painted the long shelf white which immediately made the whole room seem bigger,  I reupholstered the red headboard and made a few new pillows with fabrics I got at Joanne's. The Granny Square blanket is very old, not sure where I got that probably a yard sale, the rose quilt and two side tables are from Homegoods. The two bedside lamps are from Etsy, they are both vintage. I haven't put up the art on the wall yet, it takes me a while to get up the courage to put nails in a freshly painted wall but I am starting to collect some pieces I like and think about how to hang them, you can see them lined up behind the bed.

Here is a before and after photo

 

 

xox