Alexandria's Little Corner of the World

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am mad for magazines. I don't care so much for the beauty and fashion magazines, but the glossy interior decorating magazines are my weakness, followed closely by cooking magazines. What I spend each month on such magazines could probably feed several families in third world countries each month.

Currently on my bedside table, March and some April issues:


I subscribe to about five or six magazines at present, and each month, I buy nearly as many at the newsstand. I am so obsessed with magazines I even know that on Tuesday mornings the newsstands will have the newest issues out, but even better, I know which newsstands in Toronto along my route to work have those very magazines out on Monday! (Yes, I admit that it's a sickness.)

I love reading about the latest trends in home decor and even more, I love seeing how other people decorate their homes and personalize their living spaces.

I read a mixture of Canadian and American magazines, and among my favourites are:
Canadian House & House
Style at Home
Martha Stewart Living
Blueprint (a Martha Stewart publication)
Domino (the interior decorating version of Lucky)
ELLE Decor
Wish
House Beautiful
Everyday With Rachael Ray

I also pick up the occasional House & Garden, though I find the homes profiled in this one are sometimes a bit stuffier than my own style.

Better Homes and Gardens also has a wonderful website. The actual rooms are a bit too countryish for my taste, but they have great small-scale ideas, such as centrepiece ideas or how to organize your laundry room or dress up your nightstand. They also have many great ideas for various holidays and occasions, whether it be Christmas and Easter or summer picnics.

Seasonally, In Style and O (Oprah Winfrey's magazine) have special issues focused on interior decorating, In Style at Home and O at Home respectively. In Style's monthly issues are also fun because they have spreads on celebrity homes, which, even if they are rather extravagant and sometimes even gaudy, are fun to look at.

I also really love British design magazines because their sense of style is quite distinct from North American style, and their notion of formal rooms is so much more formal than the typical North American definition of this. Some good British glossies that I love to flip through, and buy only occasionally because it's so expensive here ($8 to $12 compared to $5 to $7 for a North American publication) include:
Living etc.
House Beautiful (the British version)

A friend from work recently bought his first place -- which he moved into on Wednesday, actually -- and in the months before the move, he was quite active in scouring the internet for good design websites, all of which he passed onto me, of course! Among my favourite recommendations from him are the following:
Desire to Inspire ( a blog which complies pages from various design magazines and the web pages of various decorators and designers)
COLOURlovers also has great colour palates, many of which are not colour combinations one would normally come up with. (Behr, the paint company, also has an element on their website that allows you to choose a paint colour for a room and you can instantly see how it might look in a room similiar to yours, while also recommending complimentary colours, which you can adjust and alter as you prefer. Just go to the Colour Smart option on the homepage.)
Decorate With Furnish (a site that lets you plug in the structure of a room in your home and configure various furniture placements without lifting anything heavier than your mouse)

I am also a textile lover, and especially love retro-inspired prints. Lately, I've noticed that I've been filling up my scrapbook with stationary, pillows and other things adorned with bird imagery. print & pattern is a great blog that is full of whimsical designs and prints.

Labels: Home decor, Magazines