This is my warm and happy place: snuggled under a plaid throw blanket, a steaming cup of coffee in my hands, winter held at bay outside my cottage doors. In my house, it’s plaid season. Someone asked me once if I was ever going to get over my obsession with plaid. Nope. Plaid is the fabric of … [Read more...]
Inspiration for Thanksgiving and Fall Dinners
There’s the Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving. Beautiful, perfect. Then … there is the Garrity Thanksgiving. Not so beautiful, not so perfect. In fact, after the last friends and relatives wobble out our door after a raucous day of thanks, my home is more fit for a hazmat unit than a photo shoot. I guess … [Read more...]
A Grow-With-Them Room for Boys
I predict that when Tammy and Tyler’s boys are 27, they will still want to live at home with their folks, just so they don’t have to leave their amazing bedroom behind. This welcoming retreat is designed to delight its current inhabitants – 11-year-old Carter and 8-year-old Sawyer – … [Read more...]
Always the Season for Plaid
The nuns must have hated me. It was the ‘70s, and short skirts were in. But, at my Catholic high school, we were required to wear our plaid skirts long. Ever the rebel, I would roll my skirt up at the waist, giving it a shorter hemline … until the nuns caught me. I'm crazy about plaid. You … [Read more...]
Let’s Hear it for the Boys: Menswear Fabric Adds Class
It all started with a fashion intervention. When I was a little girl, for Easter mass, all the other little girls’ mothers dressed their princesses in frilly pink and blue frocks. My mom put me in a well-cut, no-nonsense khaki and cream dress. When I protested, wanting to look like the other girls, … [Read more...]
Plaid Fever Warms Up Winter
You would think a girl who went to a Catholic high school dressed in a plaid skirt every single day for four years would shudder every time she saw a tartan. But while things like algebra and American revolutionary battle dates have long since faded into the mist (sorry, Sisters!), one thing from … [Read more...]