Editor’s Miscellany: A Late Thanksgiving

By Kyle Hoepner

Like many very busy people, I frequently have tasks planned that either end up happening late or, sometimes, never get done at all. One recent example: actually thinking about things for which to be thankful on Thanksgiving. (Good food and the friends with whom I celebrated the day don’t count: those blessings are—lucky me—too obvious and constant to require special pondering.)

But when life finally quieted down for a few seconds this week, one gratitude-producing circumstance flashed into consciousness that’s particularly suitable for this blog. I’m grateful to live and work in New England, home to such beautiful and varied terrain and such evocative architecture and design.

Just how many Yankee visual treats are out there to be found? Well, as an experiment I spent a little while poking around online, limiting myself solely to the Online Design Center here on New England Home’s own Web site. It took exactly thirty-seven minutes to find the following baker’s dozen of random but representative bonbons.

A Weston, Mass., dining room by Eileen Patterson of The Patterson Group.

A pair of lyre-back chairs gets savage treatment from Connecticut’s Finished in Fabric.

How would you like to cavort in this outdoor pool and landscape by Vermont’s H. Keith Wagner Partnership? (By the way, you’ll be seeing more of this property—”inside and out—in New England Home in 2012.)

Painted floor, painted furniture, painted wall, painted—well, I wish I could say painting, but it’s probably a print. Design by Alan Reniere of Reniere Interior Design in Providence.

Ellsworth Ford Associates in Greenwich, Conn., delivers a front hall that mixes elegance with restraint. Those random-width floorboards really make it for me.

Not exactly your average screened porch, by architect David Sharff.

Blanche P. Field weighs in with this intricate custom lampshade.

Can this actually be New England? Garden design by ZEN Associates.

Ultimate Bath Showroom in Concord, N.H., can hook you up with this sleek sink.

The twentieth century is alive and well at Irwin Feld Design in Stamford, Conn.

Woodmeister Master Builders goes above and beyond in this Brookline, Mass., bath. We ran a feature on this amazing house, including architecture by Meyer & Meyer Architects and interiors by Eugene Lawrence, back in 2007.

Back Bay Shutter was obviously a key player in the execution of this serenely simple bath designed by Nancy Serafini.

Harmony in sand and plum by interior designer Eliza Tan.

I have to assume that a few more minutes of browsing around other New England-based printed and online resources will yield just as many nuggets of eye candy. Can you imagine how much gorgeous stuff that adds up to? What aesthetic addict (and I know you’re one, too, if you;re reading this) wouldn’t give thanks for something like that?