Travels in Design: A New Orleans Mardi Gras

Celebrating Mardi Gras, an annual festival which serves as a last hurrah before Lent begins, is all in the family. My husband grew up in New Orleans, the epicenter of Mardi Gras festivities, and he was eager to pass along the tradition with our family.

When we can’t make it in person, we host Mardi Gras-themed dinners, but nothing can replace being at the parades with thousands of other people (many in costumes), collecting beaded necklaces and other treats thrown from the floats, and admiring the decorated houses along each parade route.

There are more than 70 parades during Mardi Gras, thrown by different social organizations or “krewes”, and we took our own crew to three this year: Hermes, Iris, and Tucks. Each krewe has its own fascinating history: the Krewe of Iris, for example, is the oldest and largest female Carnival organization and its members don white gloves and masks for their parade, while the Krewe of Hermes was founded during the Great Depression and became one of the first groups to revive their festivities after Hurricane Katrina.

The parades offer a tour of New Orleans architecture, winding their way through Italianate mansions, Greek-Revival style homes, Creole cottages, double gallery houses, and more.

The impressive iron balconies, stately columns, and unexpected color combinations never fail to remind me how different cultures and traditions can come together to create new, inspiring styles.

New Orleanians are serious about design, but they are very playful when it comes to their Mardi Gras decorations, offering opportunities for passersby to revel in bold colors (including the signature Mardi Gras purple, gold, and green), next level whimsical creatures, and oversized florals. 

For a city that has seen its fair share of challenges over the years, Mardi Gras provides an opportunity year after year to celebrate the unique history of New Orleans and its varied influences. That’s a sentiment we carry through our approach to the design process as well: we firmly believe that your home should tell the story of you and your family and celebrate your traditions and interests.

From incorporating family heirlooms into a collection to sprinkling treasures that you picked up during travels throughout your space to incorporating design details that make a big impact, we love helping make your home feel like a reflection of you, your values, and your path to the present.

Cover photo by Laura Steffan

Setting the Table for a Colonial Coastal Christmas

Decorating for Christmas doesn’t have to be limited to the typical “red and green” palette. Over the years, we’ve played with different color combos. This year, we’re doing a Colonial Coastal Christmas mashup, inspired by Sara’s recent trip to Bermuda’s historical district in Hamilton where she learned about the rich history between the island and the colonies.

Photography by Gordon Gregory

A brief lesson for history buffs: a ship headed to Jamestown was shipwrecked on Bermuda in 1609. After the surviving crew and passengers made it to Jamestown, members of The Virginia Company returned to Bermuda and set up the second permanent British colony.  

Bermuda today is known for its pink sand beaches and clear blue waters. Guided by these colors (and with addition of greens and oranges), we decided to take Christmas traditions on a vacation by infusing our tablescape with tropical influences. 

We love bringing nature inside, especially when it’s cold outside, so we incorporated palm fronds mixed with garland greenery. Calling upon colonial tradition, we wove oranges throughout: orange tower centerpieces cheekily resemble a Christmas tree, strands of dried orange slices bring an organic aesthetic around the room, and whole oranges are artfully placed on tabletop bud vases. 

Photography by Gordon Gregory

Pineapples, a beloved symbol of hospitality, punch up the space (both on the table and on plates).

Silver flatware and candleware bring to mind the icy cool winter weather while blue-trimmed accent plates evoke the warm beaches of Bermuda. Pink glasses, wide pink velvet ribbons, and pink placemats with decorative borders that call to mind strings of pearls give this tablescape a unified, yet slightly less formal and more playful feel. 

Even if your holidays are landlocked, take a page from our book and incorporate coastal elements such as an oversized shell, perfect for chilling wine and champagne or staging candles for ambiance.

Photography by Gordon Gregory

If decorating your whole house or room feels too overwhelming this time of year (we get you; all those holiday concerts and parties and late night shopping sessions for family presents can take a real toll!), consider creating a festive-feeling corner.

This light-filled sunroom features a table for two zhuzhed up with festive planters and accessories like a nature-inspired art nouveau lamp with a vibrant green shade.

Photography by Gordon Gregory

White sofas, armchairs, and an ottoman keep the sunroom feeling simultaneously bright and cozy, and this antique Swedish table with its rustic paint finish is the perfect space for a reading respite from the busyness of the holidays!

Whether you go whole hog with an entire house holiday theme or just pick a few festive decor details, we hope your holidays are happy and healthy!

Celebrating Fall and Thanksgiving in Color

One promise we made ourselves during this challenging year was to add sprinkles of joy whenever possible. So for our Thanksgiving table this year, we moved it outdoors! We wanted to change it up a bit this year, we’ve been having a wonderfully mild Autumn and wanted to take advantage of the nice weather before Winter. Moving outside also allowed us to gather and remain Covid-safe.

We leaned heavily into our love of natural elements, vintage details, and handcrafted pieces, and plenty of color, of course! Instead of creating a monochromatic or neutral color palette, we embraced a variety of warm colors to give us and our table guests some life and vibrancy.

We began with a fresh white cotton tablecloth that had been hand block printed with repeating blue patterns reminiscent of leaves and tree branches. A rattan charger grounds each place setting along with folded and draped gorgeous ikat napkins in dreamy purples and pinks. The green bamboo dinner plates from Blue Pheasant add gloss and texture, while flatware in gold and green tie into this color scheme while adding modern flair. Vintage Kaiser white bowls from Germany finish off the clean and composed look of the place settings.

For drinkware, we chose chic yet distinctive variations from typical clear glass. Blue, vintage inspired goblets and hand blown “tortoiseshell” glasses offer a faint whisper of the exotic and prove that unconventional matches can work beautifully together.

A vintage brass bowl overflowing with globe amaranth and coleus leaves and surrounded by mini pumpkins, apples, and figs makes the table feel especially romantic. By drawing from colors found throughout nature and pairing surprising textures and tones, we created a table that celebrates the simplest and most pleasurable of joys these days: sharing an intimate meal with loved ones.