Room to Grow

When I was decorating my second daughter’s nursery, I fell in love with a fabric I saw in a magazine, a modern floral print with large

When I was decorating my second daughter’s nursery, I fell in love with a fabric I saw in a magazine, a modern floral print with large orange, green and blue flowers, very Marimekko. At $80 a yard, it seemed an unlikely choice for a glider in a baby’s room, where the chance of it coming into contact with drool and spit-up was a given. Yet I couldn’t get it out of my mind: From that single fabric, I was able to envision an orange-and-blue color scheme, find two corresponding wallpapers, a baby-blue crib, an antique-white dresser and bookshelf, even a funky gold-leaf ceiling fixture to play off the tiny gold detailing in the wallpaper. From that single fabric, the entire room fell into place.

I’m not alone in my taste for a sophisticated look for my baby’s boudoir. Parents are spending more money on nurseries (“They especially tend to go all out for the first baby’s room,” says Haddonfield interior designer Dana Falcione), and an increasing number of furniture companies and designers, including Design Within Reach and David Netto, are creating kids’ lines in colors, materials and styles more commonly associated with adults. Which makes sense—these rooms are as much for parents as for babies. The three nurseries featured here all started with a personal element—a designer crib, a chandelier, a wallpaper sample—that sparked the design process of a room carefully envisioned for bringing up baby.

Cool Cribs
Kristina Ferrari is hooked on modern design the way some people are hooked on reality TV. So when it came to decorating her second son Milan’s (“Lani’s”) nursery (pictured above), she was immediately drawn to the NettoCollection. She carries the clean-lined, red oak and white lacquer furniture at Genes, the urban baby boutique she opened in Wayne last fall. “It has a life beyond its functionality,” she says. “Modern designers understand that. When I’m finished with the changing table, I’m going to use it in my dining room as a bar. It looks that cool.”

Lani’s nursery is a showcase for other lines Ferrari carries at Genes, including a Nurseryworks rocker in mocha microsuede, the Jennifer Delonge Ava Chair and Ottoman in chocolate microsuede, the DWRjax Bunny Junior Table and Chairs, and Dwell Robin Motif bedding in sky blue and white, with a touch of olive and chocolate. “I love the rocker because it’s so wide,” she says. “I can get in it with both of my kids.”

It was important to Ferrari that the nursery function for everyone, not just the baby. “We’re a fashion family, and we didn’t want to put our kids in stuff that didn’t reflect our aesthetic,” she says. “I didn’t pick anything for Lani’s room that wouldn’t work well in, say, my living room.”

With Ferrari’s pared-down aesthetic, she had to be selective. “You have to be particular about what you put in the nursery because when you have kids, you get so many things,” she says. “If you put too much in there, then the items that are fabulous get lost in the sea of stuff.”

She also recommends changing the room as baby—and his needs—change. “The nursery doesn’t have to be a shrine, and I don’t think enough people realize this,” she says. “We did different things for different stages. When Lani was crawling, we put a series of mirrors low on the wall so he could see himself.”

Traces of the nursery can be seen throughout Genes, down to the robin’s-egg blue on the wall behind the counter—the same shade that covers Lani’s walls. “I wanted the store to look and feel like Lani’s nursery,” Ferrari says. “After all, it was the inspiration for Genes.”

Design on the Double
Jennifer Trachtenberg decorated her twin daughters’ nursery from her couch. On bed-rest for the last few months of her pregnancy, she enlisted the help of Bala Cynwyd designer Maria Lucoff to transform a dormer attic into a suite of French country-style rooms for Ava Lilly and Olivia Leigh, now 15 months. Main Line designer-builder Jim Easter, who owns a custom-building company of the same name, raised the roof on her Georgian colonial to create two spacious bedrooms (one of which is currently being used as a playroom while the twins share the other), a full bath and a laundry room.

The suite’s look grew from a 1920s Spanish chandelier that Trachtenberg’s husband, Mark, a real estate developer, salvaged from one of his projects. “When he brought it home two years ago, I didn’t know what to do with it, so I stored it in the garage,” says Trachtenberg, who also has an eight-year-old son, Jake, and a five-year-old daughter, Isabella. “When I found out I was pregnant, I pulled it out again and showed it to Maria.” Lucoff brought it to Rollin Wilber at the Antique Lighthouse in Manayunk, who rewired the fixture and revived it with beads and crystals to Lucoff’s specifications; it became the main attraction in the twins’ bedroom. “Everything is centered around that chandelier, and the room means more to me because of it,” says Trachtenberg.

For the walls, Lucoff mixed a custom color, “Twin Pink,” which she describes as “a blush shade, just a hint of lavender.” She and Trachtenberg chose custom Jenny Lind-style cribs in antique white, a hand-painted armoire and dresser by Art for Kids from Karl’s Baby, Teen and Home Furnishings in Center City, and an overstuffed glider by Little Castle Furniture Company from Hey Little Diddle Child & Home in Narberth, which Lucoff started with her sister, Claudia Clobes. Lucoff upholstered the rocker in custom fabrics, a mix of Shabby Chic, Bella Notte Linens and some vintage fabric from her own collection that she’d had for 15 years. Lucoff chose a pink checked silk for the soft Roman shades, and Shabby Chic bedding from Hey Little Diddle Child & Home for the twin cribs. Accessories like the framed floral prints from Smith & Childs Fine Custom Framing in Broomall and the gilded mirror from the Antique Lighthouse complete the airy French cottage look. “I like it sweet, but I don’t like it too baby,” says Trachtenberg. “I love spending time up here with the girls.”

Where Frogs Are King
Michele Seidman had been leaning toward a shabby chic decorating scheme when she thought she was having a girl. “When I found out it was a boy, I changed my mind,” says the Main Line mom. But she still didn’t have a clear idea of how she wanted to decorate her son, Jared’s, nursery.

Enter interior designer Dana Falcione from Dana Falcione Interiors, whom Seidman hired through the Children’s Boutique on Walnut Street. “The first thing I did was show Michele a million different wallpapers,” says Falcione. “She fell in love with the Scalamandré frog print, and the room fell into place from there.”

But the room posed some challenges from the start. It didn’t have a lot of architectural detail, so Falcione added wainscoting, which Seidman painted a soft celadon green—to complement the periwinkle-blue background of the wallpaper—that reminded her of the spa at the Delano hotel in Miami. To warm up the small space even more, Falcione wallpapered the ceiling, too, creating an overarching sense of coziness. “When Jared’s lying in his crib, he has something interesting to look up at,” says Seidman. “It really completes the room.”

Bouncing Baby Boy
To disguise the long, skinny windows, Falcione added big cornices she designed with playful pom-poms in striped, plaid and checked fabrics that coordinate nicely with the wallpaper. And to top it off, Falcione installed one of her fun, signature drum lampshade fixtures made of matching fabric. “They add a lot of presence without costing a lot of money,” she says.

Seidman and Falcione finished the room with furniture and accessories: a hand-painted changing table and crib by Sweet Beginnings in Florida (“I sent them swatches of the fabrics we were using so they could see colors,” says Falcione); a rocker and ottoman upholstered in an off-white cotton piqué by Little Castle Furniture Company; custom waffle piqué and seersucker bedding from Oh, Baby! Maternity + Nursery in West Chester; floating shelves from West Elm; lamps from Pottery Barn Kids; a throw blanket by Simply Shabby Chic for Target.

“I love to blend custom and mainstream stuff,” says Falcione. Adds Seidman: “It’s the special touches, like the wooden Pinocchio I hung over the changing table to entertain Jared, or the three illustrations from Aesop’s Fables that I had framed and hung on the wall near his crib, that make his nursery feel lived in. It’s a room he’ll be able to grow with.”

Bottomless Mussels At The Drafting Room

Mussels are back at the Drafting Room. And on Monday nights bottomless bowls of mussels are just $9.95. Combine that with the Drafting Room’s Monday Mug Night, purchase a custom designed mug for $5 and fill it for just $3, and you’re talking one heck of a good deal.

The deals are available at both Drafting Room locations, Exton and Spring House.

Mug Night [Drafting Room]

Pieces of the Past

Modern brides are taking a step back in time when choosing their jewels.

Though the memories are clouded, I can remember rummaging through my grandmother’s jewelry chest, slipping a ring intricately crafted of diamonds and sapphires over my tiny knuckle, pinning an oval cameo brooch the color of peaches to my sweater, encircling my neck with countless strands of pearls that dangled nearly to my knees. These are the pieces that I now proudly wear, the pieces that my children will someday possess — jewelry that, unlike the bell-bottom jeans and sky-high platform shoes of decades past, will always be in style.

When choosing jewels for a day that will live on in yellowed photographs, modern brides are revisiting the past, choosing pieces for their Big Day that were actually crafted generations ago … or designed to look like they could be from your grandmother’s jewelry chest.

Past Perfect

Like a well-worn strand of pearls or a simple pair of diamond studs, classic, antique-style jewelry never looks dated.

“First of all, old is new,” says Harvey Rovinsky, owner of Bernie Robbins Fine Jewelry, with nine locations throughout Pennsylvania and New Jersey. “The classic styles were elegant one hundred years ago and they’re elegant today.”

With so many jewelry designers gaining inspiration from the past, going back in time has become a modern trend, both on and off the aisle. “Brides love that delicate look of antique jewelry,” says Susan Marcus, manager of Jack Kellmer Co.’s Haverford location. “It’s very rare that I see a bride wearing a contemporary piece.”

This is due, in part, to the timelessness of antique and antique-style jewelry. “People want the classics — they stand the test of time,” says Peter Cooke, co-owner of Cooke & Berlinger, a fine jewelry store in Ardmore.

Old-fashioned pieces prove that the classics, like fine wine, only get better with age. “[Brides] look for something so that when they look at their pictures twenty years later, they don’t say, ‘Oh, what was I doing?’” says Marcus. “The antique look is always beautiful.”

To get that vintage look, modern jewelry designers are harkening back to the Art Deco and Art Nouveau design movements that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Characterized by free-flowing, nature-inspired, asymmetrical lines, Art Nouveau-style jewelry was popular from 1890 to 1915. Shortly after the beginning of World War I, women began shelving their curvilinear pieces for the more geometric, angular jewels of the Art Deco style, a period that evolved in the 1920s and reigned throughout the 1930s. For brides who want antique style without flowery elaborate ornamentation, this style offers timelessness with a slightly sleeker, modern edge.

Using such artistic movements as stepping stones, designers are successfully and stylishly bridging the gap between the classics of yesterday and today’s fresh looks. “There are designers now that are doing what we call ‘retro.’ It’s a re-creation of the engraved, filigree look,” says Rovinsky. “A lot of the work that is done today has a lot of handwork [and] hand-engravings on the mountings.” Designers such as Tacori offer an entire collection of vintage-looking bridal accessories, including tiaras made from sterling silver, white topaz and Swarovski crystals. “They’re very intricate, very lacy,” says Rovinsky. The cutwork and embellishment of the jewelry helps to contrast and complement the cleaner lines of many modern wedding gowns. “Brides today wear simpler, strapless gowns. The antique look in jewelry is busier, and it balances it out and gives you a total look,” says Marcus. “I think when a bride has too much simplicity, it can look stark.”

A Colorful Past

Think outside the box when donning jewels from an earlier era. To liven up an heirloom brooch, try clipping it in your hair or pinning it to the skirt of your gown for unexpected sparkle. “I’m seeing a lot of things worn in untraditional manners,” says Rovinsky. “I think it’s a wonderful look.” Sandra Alton, vice president of the Philadelphia market of Tiffany & Co., notes another growing trend that has its roots in the past — colorful stacking rings. “Many have diamond bands, or a sapphire band, as well as stacking rings around their engagement rings,” she says.

The use of semiprecious stones in jewelry dates back to the Art Nouveau movement, when the aesthetic appeal of the design was viewed as more important than the materials used. Opals, moonstones, amethysts and freshwater pearls were widely featured in pieces from this period. To revisit the past, look for pieces with a touch of color — a rich, merlot-hued garnet, a grass-green emerald, a moonstone with a subtle, milky translucence — and take a stylish departure from traditional diamond wedding-day sparklers.

A Diamond in the Rough

Finding an antique piece for your Big Day look takes time, innovation and a little bit of luck. “It takes a lot of time to find the right old things out there,” says Cooke. “Some of the old estate pieces are in good shape and some are in bad shape. You have to be careful.” When opting for time-worn jewels, you should look out for chipped stones and discoloration, and check to see if the piece has ever been soldered — the process of joining together metals with an alloy.

“A lot of platinum jewelry has been soldered with white gold, and it can contaminate and ruin the platinum,” says Cooke. “Also, a lot of people have worked on these old pieces and haven’t worked on them in the right way. Prongs — the pieces that hold the stones in — can be worn out.” When looking at pieces from the past, look closely, and from all angles. If you are lucky enough to inherit a family piece, be sure to take it to a reputable jeweler to have it repaired or cleaned.

Wearing new pieces designed in the antique style has its benefits, too. “The new jewelry is nice because you can customize it; you don’t have to have the luck in finding it,” says Cooke. New jewelry may not be aged to perfection, but it also hasn’t been put through a century of everyday use. “You buy jewelry from the early 1900s and it’s been worn for one hundred years, and it wears,” Rovinsky says. “Today, much of the jewelry is heavier and more durable, so the condition is better in many cases, and it looks very similar. You get all of the benefits without any of the drawbacks.”

And you can choose a newer piece without sacrificing the character and timeless quality found in century-old jewels. Many up-and-coming designers are using the past as their inspiration, as are age-old jewelry institutions, such as Tiffany & Co. “We reach to our archives for inspiration for our new jewelry collections — they are really an inspiration library,” says Alton. “So many other jewelry designers get caught up in fads — something that is hot and edgy now. Our jewelry was appropriate then, and is appropriately relative to people’s lives now.”

Whether you root through your great-grandmother’s jewelry chest or peruse the glittering gems in a local boutique, remember that while memories last a lifetime, timeless jewelry lasts even longer.

“Clothes wear out,” says Alton. “Jewelry is forever.”

The Countdown: Whose Wedding Is It, Anyway?

In part one of an exclusive online series, bride-to-be Ashley Primis tries to figure out how her wedding plans went from Martha Stewart to muzak

THE COUNTER SAYS 39 days till my wedding.

THE COUNTER SAYS 39 days till my wedding.

That would be the evil "Countdown Till Your Wedding!!!" clock contraption that my evil cousin got me for my shower. (I, to torture my fiancé Quinn, put it next to his side of the bed.) Most of the real planning is done, so a lot of the time I was devoting to choosing vendors and setting timelines is now spent reflecting on how the actual day will play out and whether my choices were right. And when our online editor approached me to write about the last weeks of my single life, I selfishly thought Ahhhh … free therapy. But maybe my confessions will also help all the other B2Bs out there (lesson #1: never say B2B) get a grip on the days left on their clocks. Let’s start from the beginning.

***

The way I see it, the only real wedding decision a couple has to make (and usually the last one said couple makes together) is who their wedding is for. Not buffet or sit-down, not March or May, but is your wedding going to be for you, or for your guests?

Here is what I mean: I chose to have my wedding for my guests. Now, it doesn’t make me a saint and anyone who chooses the opposite coldhearted — because it sucks to plan either kind and the result is the same: You’re hitched. But when I decided to have the ceremony in Naples, Florida, asking guests to fly there and spend two nights in an expensive hotel — basically demanding that they spend $800 per couple in addition to a gift — I began with the guilt thing. Then this guilt thing led me to vow to make my guests the most important part of the event. And that had consequences: The expenses piled up and slowly depleted the budget for things that I wanted.

First, we told all the singles they could bring a guest, which took my 200-person invite list to almost 280 and forced the reception out of an elegant and intimate beach hotel and into a three-wedding-a-night beachside factory (which my mom sweetly calls "shabby-chic" and which I realistically call "decrepit"). More examples? See bills for babysitters and a rented room with children’s meals for all the kids. Transportation to and from the hotels and rehearsal dinner. Bamboo matting on the beach so our guests won’t have to deal with sand. Buying my bridesmaids their dresses and renting heaters in case it gets cold.

Once my guests were set to be happy and sand-free, though, I started to get bratty. Sure, I got the tent I really wanted, but decorating that 40′ x 100′ space (large enough to accommodate all my guests in comfort, of course) would have been another 10 grand. All of a sudden, my tent vision went from Martha Stewart to company picnic. Feeding 280 mouths took my dream menu of cucumber soup shots and sliders down to basic pasta and beef. My elaborate dessert bar idea shrank to chocolate-chip cookies and cliché cake. And my "strawberry daiquiris and steel-drum band shaded by the beach" cocktail hour is now muzak on a small patch of grass.

After it’s all said and done, I hope I remember that all of my friends were there, rather than that my favorite flower was not. I’ll always be jealous of their magazine-worthy weddings with perfect pin-tuck linens, in-season flowers, historical venues and tiny personal touches — but I’ll also always be annoyed that I had to drive home drunk because there was no money left in their budget to get me a cab. In the end, it is your day — whether you opt for totally accommodating or drop-dead gorgeous, it will be your dream wedding, which is the whole point.

E-mail Ashley to discuss, and look for part 2 next week!

Science: Al Gore Is a Greenhouse Gasbag

IT’s THE LAST day of November, which means winter begins in three weeks. Yet the temperature on the Penn campus is nearing 70 degrees, and it’s muggy. Walking to the offices of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science from a remote parking lot makes me sweaty. Global Warming.

Driving here this morning, I heard a report on WHYY from National Public Radio that the International Ski Federation was canceling races because there’s no snow in the Alps. Got to be Global Warming!

Yesterday, down the road in Washington, where the temperature was 16 degrees above normal, the Supreme Court heard arguments in a case in which 13 state governments are suing the Environmental Protection Agency to force the government to begin controlling carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the decades-old Clean Air Act. If that doesn’t happen, the states claim, the rising sea levels caused by greenhouse gases will rob them of coastline. GLOBAL WARMING!!

And this is just one ordinary day in the new normal. Even if daily weather has nothing to do with global warming, and even if the scientific debate about it is not quite done, its cultural moment has certainly begun. Insurance companies have stopped writing policies for coastline residents. A government report out of England warns that global warming may be so economically deleterious that it will make the upheaval of the Great Depression and World War II seem benign.

Michael Crichton has already dramatized the issue in a best-selling novel. Leonardo DiCaprio is working on a documentary on the subject. A recent Time magazine cover featured a polar bear in danger of drowning and the warning: “Be Worried. Be Very Worried.”

I’ve come to Penn to see the skeptic.

The Week In Review:

The week that was at Foobooz.

• The Daily Pennsylvanian gives us just a bit more on Amada chef Jose Garces’ plan for a big and chic University City restaurant.
• For the second time in as many weeks a Center City restaurant was held up at gun point.
• We had our first weekly craving, sausage and mussels from the Standard Tap.
• Rittenhouse Square’s Snackbar gets reviewed twice this week.
• The Foobooz Valentine’s Day Guide is out. Where can you go for unlimited champagne?
• Philadelphia is cementing its claims to the title of “Brussels, USA” as another Belgian bar is set to open this month.
• Are you ready to try a King Tut-tini? Experience that and more as several restaurants tie into the King Tut exhibit’s arrival.
• And although not as difficult as deciphering hieroglyphics can you figure out this week’s blind item?

Join Foobooz on MySpace and get the Week in Review and other occasional bulletins on cool food and drink news and events.

Taste: Tops of the Pops

New flavor combinations make the plainest of snacks ready for a star turn.

The movie theater staple is — forgive us — popping up all over the place, but its pop-culture co-star, butter, has been retired. At Dale and Thomas Popcorn in Liberty Place, popcorn is dressed sweetly in caramel and pecans; at the bar at Snackbar, it takes a savory turn, coated in zaatar and truffle oil. At home, forgo the old Orville Redenbacher for colorful Lancaster County kernels that pop into a mild, toothsome snack (available at Kauffman's in the Reading Terminal Market) or oversized White Cat Corn (available at Whole Foods Market), with its airy texture and hint of corn flavor. For toppings, anything goes, from olive oil and sea salt to grated parmesan and ground pepper to lemon and orange juices — these last two, ingredients that appeared in the first known popcorn recipe, published in an 1853 Philadelphia cookbook.

Comments on this story? Please send them to us.

Taste: Eat This Now: Popcorn

The movie theater staple is — forgive us — popping up all over the place, but its pop-culture co-star, butter, has been retired. At Dale and Thomas Popcorn in Liberty Place, popcorn is dressed sweetly in caramel and pecans; at the bar at Snackbar, it takes a savory turn, coated in zaatar and truffle oil. At home, forgo the old Orville Redenbacher for colorful Lancaster County kernels that pop into a mild, toothsome snack (available at Kauffman’s in the Reading Terminal Market) or oversized White Cat Corn (available at Whole Foods Market), with its airy texture and hint of corn flavor. For toppings, anything goes, from olive oil and sea salt to grated parmesan and ground pepper to lemon and orange juices — these last two, ingredients that appeared in the first known popcorn recipe, published in an 1853 Philadelphia cookbook.

Comments on this story? Please send them to us.

King Tut Related

King Tutankhamun has arrived in Philadelphia, the final stop on the current US tour. The treasures of the boy king will be on display through September 30th at the Franklin Institute and some Philadelphia bars and restaurants are ready with King Tut related specials. (more…)

Sazon

We here at the Foobooz World Headquarters were just discussing what next week’s craving should be, when we were struck by the pangs of a dish we won’t get again, Azafran’s empanadas. And just moments later we found this article on Uwishunu about the Venezuelan emapanadas at Sazon.

Now, we haven’t tried them first hand to see if they can compare, but the hot chocolate sounds like it will make the trip worthwhile.

Tear into an Empanada [Uwishunu]