Nest Decorating & Designs by Tamar

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

November in Vermont and a recipe

I love November, the beautiful serene landscape is full of washed out browns and greens, I love crunchy leaves under my feet and cool and crisp air that still allows you to go on long walks without absolutely freezing. The lake is like a mirror, a pale blue green calm and serene without a boat in sight. Ronen and I take long walks almost everyday, we love hiking down the LaPlattte Nature Park that sits right smack in the middle of our village behind the post office, or, we go up the trail and down the lake in Bay Park and finally our favorite, the trails at Shelburne Farms, all about 5-10 min. from our home. 

Some news from home: we put final touches in or kitchen and dining room including a marble counter which we love

the living room couch is back in it's grey slipcover and the room feels nice and cozy with the wood stove burning

and finally, I gathered all the left over apples we've been picking and made a giant batch of apple sauce to give as gifts (left some for us of course, it was gone in a day...)

It's a super easy recipe, I've been making this since they boys were babies:

10 apples or more up to 15  (I use whatever variety I have at home )

1 tbs brown sugar (or more to taste)

1tsp Vanilla

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup of water

juice of 1 lemon

mix all ingredients together in a pot, cook until the apples are soft about 30 min., when the apples cool place in blender and blend until completely smooth.

Have a fantastic Thanksgiving holiday!

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

 

 

 

 

 

Fold over Pillow Case Tutorial

Hello my lovelies

I am re-posting this tutorial by special request, it's a little funny to see our old dining room in the photos and my studio before I moved to the new studio last year...but never the less here it is:

 

 

Once and a while I love to make a pillowcase or two, this time we needed to replace a very torn and well loved pillowcase we had for our big 23" square pillow, the size is a standard Euro Sham size except I can never find any Euro shams I like...I know i'm very picky and I'm pretty sure I could find one in a Flea Market anywhere in Europe...alas I have no plans for that any time soon...  

so I decided to make my own! A few months ago I found lovely fabrics at Cottonholic on Etsy, they took a little while to arrive but they are perfect! the fabrics are a cotton-linen blend, I washed them in the washing machine and dried them in the dryer for extra softens and just to make sure they won't shrink in the wash after I cut and sew them.

So here are the instructions on how to make a fold over pillowase

You will need:

A Sewing Machine

Fabric

Cutting Matt

Craft Ruler

Rotary Cutter

 

Scissors

Tape measure

 

Measure you pillow with a tape measure or on your cutting matt by holding it down firmly, mine was a 23" square.

Next, Lay your fabric on a table or large surface, place your pillow on the fabric and fold the fabric over and above the pillow creating a 7-8" over lap

Mark the fabric so you know how long you need to cut it, mine measured 56" long 

Leave a 2" margin on the top and bottom of the pillow's height ( my pillow was 23" so I needed the fabric to be 27" wide by 56" long)

cut the fabric with scissors or your rotary cutter on you cutting matt, I prefer to cut long pieces of fabric with scissors making sure I measure and pin the top and bottom and iron seam so I cut a straight line.

Fold over the short edge of the fabric (the part that measures 27" in my case) and iron it down

 

Then fold it over again and iron it down again creating a 1" bi fold on both edges of the fabric, this will be the first thing you will sew.

I like to sew two seams down the 1" bi fold, it gives it a nice professional look

 

Once both short sides of the fabric are sewn it's time to measure again, lay the back of your fabric down over the cutting matt or a table and fold the short sewn sides one over the other making sure that:

1. Once the fabric is folded one sewn seam over the other it should measure the length of your pillow from side to side, mine needed to measure 23"  (the length of my pillow).

2.  There should be at least 5"-7" between the two sewn seamed folds, you can see the bottom seam on top in the photo, the top seam is underneath,  when you finish sewing the pillow and  turn the fabric over you will see what I mean and you will get the hang of it...

 Pin down both sewn seams the one you can see and the one you can't but you will be able to feel it under the fabric, this will make sure the fabric does not move when you saw the top and bottom sides.

Now you are ready to sew the top and bottom of the pillow, after I finish sewing my seam I like to zigzag the ends for a clean look

Voila! remove the pins, cut off all loose threads and you are ready to turn you pillow right side out!

This was so much fun! and addictive! I immediately made another one! 

Just in case you were thinking of asking: Yes, I made almost all the pillows in our home some are Fold overs, some have zippers and all the decorative pillows in the bedroom, the fabrics for the orange and blue pillows are vintage, the two back pillow cases are Laura Ashley purchased at TJ Maxx last year, the bedspread is a few years old from Urban Outfitters.

xox

 

 

Little Things I love about Spring...

I can't tell you enough how much I love the the spring season here in Vermont, the air is still a little cool, the green is so vivid it almost hurts your eyes, the birds are singing in the trees, I love to get the house ready for summer, I can finally put away the heavy coats and make room from light jackets and straw hats in the entry way

We move into eating light lunches on the weekends when we are home

I frequent our local nurseries, I have a few I love, this is one of them

We try to not cut the grass to short so we can enjoy the flowers and imagine we have a meadow in the backyard...

we take long hikes and breath in the air, we are so easy to please here in Vermont...just give us a warm day and it's absolute happiness...

around the house I am getting ready for the boys to come back home for the summer, Daniel (22) just graduated and got his BFA, he will be living at home for now, Mikey (20) is home for the summer, he just finished his second year of Architecture at Pratt in NYC, and Jonathan (24) is working in town and between apartments he will be off to do some traveling and exploring schools for his Masters degree so he will be living at home this summer too...we are a big happy family again, I am enjoying every second knowing this will probably be the last summer the boys will be all living at home together...

Have a wonderful spring season everyone!

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

 

 

 

Our House- First published Nov.18th 2014

 

Up until A few weeks ago Ronen and I were busy planning a major renovation in our house, we had everything figured out, we would completely open up the main living spaces to create a big loft like space, we would move our beloved Ikea kitchen to a different bigger corner with a giant island, we would knock up our low ceiling and put sky light windows in, we would build a porch and get new giant windows with black frames, we have a Pinterest Board New House with tons of inspiring photos and ideas and this amazing house as a major inspiration, did I mention new sidings as well? yes, our new house was beautiful...until we got the cost estimation...oh boy...well that's not happening, not now anyway..so, to cheer myself up I walked around the house and took some new photos reminding myself how lucky I really am and the house looks just fine as is...we just might start with a little kitchen renovation for now...I will keep you posted.

xox

Home

After a week of grey skies we woke up yesterday to a beautiful sunny day, the house looked so peaceful and the light was lovely! I grabbed my camera and shot a few new photos.

The dining room that doubles as my studio

the bedroom with my little African bead artifact collection and my childhood Russian Doll.

Isabel getting ready to jump...her favorite way to exit...

I hope you had a great weekend! xox