Bone china, pottery, stoneware, porcelain – traditional, modern, antique.  Beautiful, themed tableware abounds for the holiday season, most particularly for Christmas, but the softness of the autumnal harvest palette beckons from the Thanksgiving table.

Mottahedeh‘s Sacred Bird & Butterfly, the original Chinese export sets the dining table of the famed Nathaniel Russell House in Charleston.

Audun Ferme by Villeroy & Boch, is a vintage inspired, modern toile taken from their original design of 200 years ago.

Light as the proverbial feather, Crate & Barrel’s Dorata Platter.  What turkey wouldn’t want to sit on this?

Dating back to 1828, the harvest and the hunt feature prominently in Spode’s classic Woodland pattern.

Vietri brings a smile to the table with their new Bellezza serveware and accessory pieces.

Wishing everyone a very happy and bountiful Thanksgiving!

Lolly Rush Lux, our Associate Director of Member Services and Project Manager extraordinaire, along with her husband, Tyler, are soon leaving for London.  A truly once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as Tyler has been transferred across the pond for a 2-year assignment.

She has been an extraordinary part of our team, one that we can all count on, seeing to the most minute of details for our clients and members alike.  She put a new definition on multi-tasking, handling everything with grace and aplomb.

How does one say goodbye to a co-worker, a friend, a trusted employee?  With tears, best wishes, and a very large martini!  You will be missed, dear Lolly!

Our very best wishes on this grand adventure.

In celebration of the Celtic festival of Samhain, a precursor to our modern-day Halloween, the border between our world and the netherworld becomes thin, and you never know what frights you might find as your abode gets in on the mischief-making, along with all of the other ghoulies and goblins.  Trick or treat?  Won’t you come in……

Setting the perfect tone in the entry, Graham & Brown’s “Skulls” wallpaper designed by Barbara Hulanicki, and available through 2modern.

You may want to watch your step on Flor’s Funny Bones area rug.

Perhaps “Ghastly Bats” by Alexander Henry for draperies, also available in 4 other colorways.

The accessories always make the room, don’t they? (cue the evil laughter…..)

Skull Vase 01 by Human-Dusty.

Pottery Barn gets in on the creepy fun with Mini-Skull Vase Filler.

Shine on with the Bronze Skull Lamp by Blackman Cruz.

And no table would be complete without the black widow spider plates by Custom Sepia.

Oh, and that table is by the brilliant French designer, John Nouanesing entitled “Paint or Die but Love Me”.

The fun and the frights have just begun!

A series to get your creative juices flowing for your interior design firm’s blog.  [Link to earlier posts: Introduction/first set, numbers 6-10, numbers 11-15, numbers 16-20, numbers 21-25, and numbers 26-30]

1. Promoting a post that you liked on another blog.  If a fellow design blogger posts a great post on her blog, show her some love.  You’ll get reciprocity and build goodwill.
2. Great finds from High Point or NeoCon. Talk about trends.  Show your favorite pieces.  Show what’s new.
3. Canopy beds.  Talk about the history of the canopy bed and how it translates into today’s interior.
   

   A dreamy canopy bed. Photo: Elle Decor

4. Green upholstery options.  Vendors that are now offering green upholstery.  What to consider and how to know if something is truly green.
5. Considering Living in Place when building your home.  Design of passageways, thresholds, roughing in an elevator, and more.

Plus two extra for the end…

• Historical uses of crown moldings.

Crown molding frames a pretty window seat. Photo: Traditional Home

• Splurges + steals- mirrors, cocktail tables, beds, etc.  This is your typical magazine article showing the Versace dress with its hefty price tag (that is absolutely to die for) and a BCBG dress that achieves the same “look” at a more affordable price.

We hope you enjoyed the series and found a few points of inspiration for your interior design firm’s blog.  If you found any of these suggestions particularly helpful, or if you’ve created any innovative posts for your blog,  please share your ideas with us! We’d love to see what you’ve come up with.

A series to get your creative juices flowing for your interior design firm’s blog.  [Link to earlier posts: Introduction/first set, numbers 6-10, numbers 11-15, numbers 16-20, and numbers 21-25]

1. A front door wreath for each season.
2. Using a stair runner. Using patterns or solids. Why you might want a runner.
3. Review of a recent hotel/resort you visited (from a design perspective).  What you liked and/or didn’t like. Interesting pieces or uses that your readers could translate into their lives.
   

   Tempo Miami. (Photo: Elle Decor)

4. A plug for your favorite charity and why you support it.  Show your readers what you care about.
5. Pictures of your holiday table.  Show them your personality and a glimpse into your life.

Check back next Monday for the remaining ideas in the series! (Are we saving best for last?)

As small companies, our most limited resource is our time.  Therefore, it is not surprising that the question arises, “Why should my business be on Twitter?”

1.  It’s one of the least expensive ways to perform research and development. Once you have even a few hundred followers, you have a great sample size to extend business questions.  Wondering whether people would be interested in a certain new service?  Put it out to the Twitterverse.  The worst thing that can happen is that no one answers.  The best thing that can happen is that you receive several responses and have valuable information about how to proceed.  This could save you a tremendous amount of time and money.

2.  Someone may be talking about you. Whether it be positive or negative, someone on Twitter may be talking about your business.  How will you respond if you are not there to listen?  I recently tweeted that a restaurant I frequent in Charlottesville always has terrible service.  This received a huge response from my Charlottesville following (15+ tweets back and forth about the pros and cons of the restaurant).  Crickets from the restaurant (even though they are on Twitter- this actually makes the silence worse).  This could have been a perfect opportunity for the restaurant to make happy customers.  [See a video here about how P.F. Chang's is on the cutting edge of using Twitter to make customers happy].

3.  You are able to show your company’s true personality. By showing your true personality, you will attract more of  your ideal clients.

4.  You never know who you are going to meet. Just like you can’t expect your phone to ring if you never leave the house and network, Twitter is an opportunity to network and engage with people on an even broader scale.  I have not only met people across the world (we seem to click well with Toronto twitterers for some reason) but have also met some great people in our area who I may never have met otherwise.  This has translated to real life connections and business referrals.

5.  Become a better educated businessperson. Twitter is full of tweets with resources for business.  It is also a great place to pose a question like, “Are there less expensive alternatives to Photoshop?”  Then just wait for your following to chime in on its experiences and knowledge.

This would not be a complete blog post if I did not mention that I posed this question to my Twitter following and received the following responses.

Question:

Received these answers from some of my great followers:

If your business is already on Twitter, what are some of your success stories?  What have you found to be the greatest benefit of Twitter?

We recently launched the social media division of our company and since the launch have received tremendous interest and feedback.  As many of you readers know, I am very excited about utilizing social media tools as a part of a design firm’s greater marketing program.

It’s important to remember that social media and networking are tools.  Much like offline networking and media, you should not expect a magical result after setting up a Facebook page or tweeting for one day.  Would you expect to go to a Chamber of Commerce meeting one time and immediately have clients knocking down your door?  No.  Just like offline marketing, online networking follows a simple rule: You get out of it what you put into it.

Here are some key ways that you can get the most out of your time spent on social media utilization to drive return on investment:

-         Determine your goals. What do you hope to achieve with your greater marketing program, both online and off?  Do you wish for all of your marketing to drive people to your website where you have the call to action?  If so, make sure that you are also using your social networking tools to achieve the same goal.  Don’t just use Facebook or LinkedIn for the sake of using Facebook or LinkedIn.  This is a waste of your time.

-         Join the conversation. With a medium like Twitter, it’s important to not just tweet (post), but to also be an active conversationalist with your followers and those that you follow.  Answer questions, be a resource, and lend a hand.  Similarly, closely follow a few blogs in and out of your industry.  Post comments on those blogs to add value and to become an active participant in the blogging world.  When you join the conversation in these ways, you will have a more active surrounding community and, in the case of the blogs, you will get many more readers due to trackbacks and mentions on the blogs that you comment on.

-         Devote time. Social media tools—like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter—can easily become addictive.  Decide that, like your email, you will check them a couple of times a day and add to the conversation if you have anything valuable to share.

-         Use time-saving technologies. For Twitter, we recommend using TweetDeck to create groups, monitor replies, and manage conversation.  For a free blog interface, we recommend WordPress.  There are many other plug-ins that can save you time.  For example, you may use a plug-in that tweets and updates your Facebook page every time you post on your blog.

-         Be real and have a personality. If you are all business all the time, you will not realize the value of social networking.  People like to do business with people they like and the new market wants the companies that it does business with to have personalities.  While it is up to your discretion how transparent you are, you should not only post as if a robot in your company runs the social media show.  Big surprise that this does not endear people to your firm.  John Byrne, the editor of BusinessWeek, is on Twitter and while much of what he tweets are things that could be found in his magazine, he also adds a human element to it.  As a result, I am more likely to visit the BusinessWeek site and to buy BusinessWeek at the stands.

Utilizing social media can extend your dollar and you can see a significant return on the investment if you follow the key steps.  Do not, however, think that creating a presence on a number of social networking sites will have clients knocking down your door.  It is not pulling a rabbit out of a hat but instead is nurturing a rabbit and then letting it play with its other rabbit friends and help spread the word—and we all know how quickly rabbits multiply.