If you are a fan of the Design Sponge blog, the new book by Grace Bonney, Design Sponge at Home, is a must read. Bonney profiles blog favourites, including her own New York apartment shared with her husband and two cats.

The book has captured the spirit of the blog with lots of lively and lived-in rooms put together by people who love design and love their homes. A lot of the homes are space-challenged New York apartments that provide many ideas for living large in small quarters.

Most exhibit vintage style influences; homeowners embrace vintage furnishings sourced from family, flea markets and EBay. Then, they make them their own with a little paint, carpentry, fabric and staple gun.

Bonney shows the peg-board rack in her kitchen painted a bright tomato-soup red and hung with stainless-steel pots. I love the map-covered boxes on p. 188.

Indeed, half of the book is devoted to DIY projects, basics and makeovers. There are instructions for stripping and painting furniture, rewiring a lamp, staple-gun upholstery, sewing basics – and much else.

Although information on these topics tends to be sketchy, her can-do approach is enough to inspire the reader to pick up tools and strive for greater domestic glory. And hey, that’s what the Library is all about. There are hundreds of books here to help you develop those skills and become the handy person you were meant to be.

Last blog I wrote about reworking the dining room in my apartment to create a multipurpose space. I use the room for eating and also reading, painting and sewing. Shelving units moved from my home office provide the storage space for books and dishes.

There are a lot of books and magazines about this topic. So let me dip in.

New Diningroom Design brings a modern esthetic to some fabulous rooms. In this book most of the dining rooms are integrated with other spaces, either kitchen or living areas. You have to spend time studying the rooms because there is no text for clues. Think “a picture is worth a thousand words” for this one.

In Small Spaces: Maximizing Limited Spaces for Living, Elizabeth Wilhide, supplies all the clues. The book begins with design strategies that examine flexible layouts, natural light, extending sight lines and finding hidden spaces and storage. She then embarks on a room-by-room house tour.

It’s interesting to note that Dining Rooms are not on the list. “Eating areas” are integrated into other spaces.

Small-space living is a popular topic with the shelter magazines. The July/August 2011 issue of House Beautiful shows a richly decorated New York studio (650 square feet) where the book-lined entry also doubles as a dining room. This issue is full of tips for making the most of modest places.

Have a look at their Small Space Decorating Workshop for more ideas on multipurpose rooms. The decorating style tends toward traditional or contemporary classic.

Apartment Therapy hosts an annual Small Cool contest where it welcomes submissions from homeowners in four categories ranging from Teeny tiny (1 - 400 square feet) to Small (801 – 1000 square feet).

Apartment Therapy's big book of small, cool spaces is based on the creative solutions to small-space problems by designers and homeowners.

When I was living at my previous house, I purchased black shelving for my home office. At the time, it was a new style at IKEA, it looked fresh and trendy and complemented the office furniture. But, what was I thinking?

The room it occupied had little sunlight and the black furniture sucked out all the light from the room. I compensated with vivid striped curtains and a good overhead light fixture.

In my new condo, the home office (aka guest room) is also the darkest in the apartment. Pretty striped curtains are out. Condo bylaws dictate that you can have any kind of drapery you like, as long as it is white. And the overhead fixture is located in a corner in front of the closet.

Time to play the furniture game. This is my optimistic label for a home sport that requires a serious amount of grunt labour.

I moved the secretary from the dining room into the master bedroom. The white shelving from the master bedroom went into the home office/guest room and the black shelves from that room are now relocated to the dining room. Here an enormous, east-facing window provides enough light to balance the dark volume of the shelving.

What I like best about the new arrangement is that it supports the other uses I make of the room. The shelves hold my cookbooks, bird and gardening books. I have added an easy chair to the corner by the window where I like to read the newspaper in the morning. In addition, the dining room table offers a nice long work surface for sewing and painting.

When you move to a new home, you need to live there awhile to determine how best to use the space. I'm still fine tuning. When you no longer have a basement or garage for messy projects, you find another spot or abandon messy projects. Seriously, who's going to do that?

Next blog: More from the collection on small space decorating and multipurpose rooms.

Last week, I attended A Taste of the CPO, the annual concert that dips into the musical offerings for the upcoming season. Throughout the program, Resident Conductor, Mélanie Léonard, told stories about the music and invited members of the orchestra to share their anecdotes as well. The stories were as much fun as the music.

We learned, for instance, that Aleksandr Borodin was a chemist who laboured for twenty years in his spare time to write the opera Prince Igor. The best known music from this opera, the Polovtsian Dance no. 6, became "Stranger in Paradise" in the musical Kismet.

Music and stories are my favourite form of entertainment at home as well. I grew up listening to radio where the two are an integrated experience. Often, it is a story that hooks my attention and makes me listen more closely to the music. This is what attracts the audience to stations like CBC and CKUA.

If you are a fan of Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap on CBC, you will be happy to learn that we have a new collection of stories from the program. Bachman, a legendary Canadian rock musician has more than 120 gold and platinum awards for performing and producing. And he is a great story teller.

Late nights I tune into The Road Home hosted by Bob Chelmick on CKUA. Chelmick chats about his home in rural Alberta , sustainable living and his latest projects. He reads poetry and plays music around a theme.

“A poem is storytelling at its most refined and distilled,” says Chelmick. “It belongs on radio.”

You’ve got me reading Billy Collins, Bob. Good show.

A few years ago, I cancelled my subscription to cable TV and do not miss it at all. I cannot imagine living without the radio. Without radio, I would be bereft.

The last two blogs have looked at the growing interest in vintage style which integrates older furnishings into modern life. In an earlier blog I wrote about David Shah’s prediction of the growth of DIY design and a new frugality with consumers.

Certainly we are seeing this reflected in the new books arriving in the Arts department. The pendulum has swung in the direction toward the hand-crafted and authentic, away from the shiny new and slick.

Japan has a design aesthetic called wabi sabi that reveres the natural beauty of imperfection that comes with age and weathering. “It is an expression of the beauty that lies in the brief transition between the coming and going of life, both the joy and melancholy that make up our lot as humans”. (Wabi sabi: the Japanese art of impermanence, p.1)

Robyn Griggs Lawrence updates an earlier work with Simply Imperfect: revisiting the wabi-sabi house. For her the philosophy is about embracing a simpler and more authentic lifestyle and the eliminating the baggage and clutter that is part and parcel of consumerism.

The book is a quick read on the philosophy applied to home design. It is illustrated with sepia-toned photos of home vignettes; both text and pictures are surrounded by plenty of white space and peppered with pithy quotes.

Occasionally, she gets wabi-sabi silly with her lists (the wabi-sabi cleaning cupboard – give me a break). Still, her summary “uncluttering made easy” offers simple and thorough advice on the topic.

“In modern terms, achieving the sabi style of living entails eliminating everything that is not essential,” says author Boyé Lafayette De Mente in Elements of Japanese Style. (p. 32) This book offers greater depth on the philosophy underlying Japanese design. De Mente provides insight into the way that certain ideas, like the poverty principle, were handy devices for social control.

Check out the Wabi House in Dwell’s September issue. Japan Style and “Japan’s highly considered aesthetic” (p17 editor’s note) are the themes of the issue. Dwell is available in 5 branches where back issues can be borrowed.

Today's blog comes to you from Linda Bolstad, Central Library Staff:

Clean, sleek lines. Beautiful wood. Minimalist. Well-constructed. Some of the reasons I like mid-century modern furniture. In particular the Scandinavian designers such as Finn Juhl, Arne Jacobsen, Hans Wegner and Greta Jalk. Teak was a favorite wood used for this style of furniture, but walnut and rosewood were also popular. Some of the pieces are strikingly sculptural.

My husband and I have several items we bought when we were first furnishing our home back in the 70s and 80s, including a rosewood dining table and chairs, and they have withstood the test of time. Lately there is a resurgence of interest in this furniture and I have collected a few more items. It is getting more difficult to find, but I have had some luck finding pieces in thrift stores and on kijiji. Almost my entire living room is now furnished with mid-century teak. My husband is very understanding.

If you aren’t familiar with this type of furniture, here are a couple of books on the subject.

Danish Modern by Andrew Hollingsworth has lovely color illustrations of lounge chairs, sofas, tables, sideboards, etc with lots of information on the designers. A section on using the furniture in contemporary spaces is well worth paging through and makes me wish I could refurnish more of my home.

Mid-Century Modern by Bradley Quinn is another interesting book. It deals with more than just furniture. Many of the ceramics, glass and metalware from the 50’s and 60’s are to me lovely and graceful, and would fit beautifully into most homes. I think these will definitely be on my radar during my next forays into the world of second-hand shopping.

And one of the best things about locating and purchasing mid-century items is that you are recycling. Rather than buying something new, why not check out the variety of used items that are available.

Vintage style is a design idea that continues to evolve. A few years back, it was applied mostly to interiors with furniture and objects from the 1940s to 1970s used in a funky contemporary fashion. It required exuberant youthful application to pull it off; otherwise, a room simply appeared to be stuck in a time warp.

Today, vintage style embraces modern interiors where the charm and comfort of older furnishings are thoroughly integrated. I’m thinking that it’s this year’s label for eclectic decorating. Have a look at these two new books to see what I mean. To find other books on the topic in our catalogue, use a simple keyword search “vintage interior decoration”.

In The Vintage Modern Home, “vintage” embraces older furnishings from flea market finds to proper antiques. “Vintage/Modern way of life is all about thoughtfulness and patience,” says author Katherine Sorrell. She begins the book with lessons in assessing what you have and applying the basics of colour, pattern, texture and scale to make things work together.

The book includes sections on modern classics, retro furnishings and antiques. Rooms are chic, lively and liveable. A great source for getting it all together.

Modern Vintage Style by Emily Chalmers is another fun read. Her vintage style has a funkier, more Bohemian edge to it. In the section on collections and display, homeowners let their inner “hoarder run riot” with zany toys, kitsch and hip art.

If you enjoy this one, check out the other titles by Chalmers, like last year’s Cheap chic: affordable ideas for a relaxed home.

According to the free dictionary online, “vintage” means “characterized by excellence, maturity, and enduring appeal; classic”. And that is the apt description of mid-century modern furniture. Come back Monday to read a guest blog by an enthusiast.

What does interior design in Calgary have in common with design in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and India? A lot more than you might expect.

Tropical Home: Inspirational Design Ideas shows interiors adapted to the tropics, but still firmly linked to international design trends - and influencing them as well. British author Kim Inglis is a design writer and editor based in Singapore.

Despite the colourful cover, many rooms in the book feature a varied palette of browns with exotic accents. Chocolate brown is a favourite colour in Calgary. Frequently found in dark woods and leather on furniture, it brings cosy warmth to a room. In the tropical living room, the chocolate sofa is upholstered in tinalak, a linen-look fabric made from banana fibres. There it looks cool and inviting.

Woven banana leaf furniture can be found at IKEA and Pottery Barn. Now that it’s become mainstream, it’s easy to forget the source of the trend. Indeed, both “exotic style” and “Asian style” have been thoroughly popularized in the shelter magazines, blogs and books.

Tropical Home does not feel particularly exotic; just a book filled with good design ideas that are quite accessible locally.

A segment on contemporary ceramics highlights the long history of ceramic making in countries like India, China and South East Asia and shows their colourful contribution to contemporary decor. In Calgary, you can get the look, and feel righteous at the same time, by shopping at Ten Thousand Villages. Asian ceramics are ubiquitous in design shops.

The section on bathrooms will be inspirational for anyone trying to modernize a dowdy room. Modern fixtures mix with Asian antiques and accessories.

Architecture blurs the boundaries between inside and out and outside may be lush tropical landscape. Well OK, not Calgary, but check out the section on garden walkways on page 134 to find some hardscaping ideas that would be very effective in a local garden.

Perhaps my affection for the book is a last grasp (gasp?) at summer for this Labour Day weekend. But, I always love a book that surprises.

“For me, a wall is a beautiful blank canvas. A great big opportunity. I can’t wait to get ‘painting’…Cold minimalism has its place, but not at my place,” says Geraldine James.

In Creative Walls: How to Display and Enjoy Your Treasured Collections, she demonstrates that decorative objects are a boundless universe. And in the hands of a creative thinker, the most curious things can be used to create attractive displays.

On a wall with distressed patina of soft, earthy hues, a stuffed baby crocodile appears to scramble next to a gilt-framed portrait. Animal skulls and horns are arranged on nearby furniture. Bizarre, yet beautiful and decidedly not your ordinary wall decoration.

Not all is edgy. A subtle mural of oversized female figures is painted in white on taupe background for a restful, airy space.

Impressive collages are made from family photos, Vogue magazine covers and road-trip mementos. Art work mixes with PEZ candy dispenser and Andy Warhol cut-out. A posy of teddy bear glass eyes hangs from a hook in a wall composition that includes feathers, bead necklaces and a rusted whistle (among other things).

The goal is a happy marriage of interesting collections with artful arrangement and the very effective approach is the integration of everything on the wall, including the furniture.

Speaking of interesting collections, In Flagrante Collecto (caught in the act of collecting) is the witty title of a book about building collections from just about anything. “From Marilynn Gelfman Karp’s perspective, collecting is a calling, not a choice,” reads the book jacket. Karp says, “Collecting is not about what you collect as much as it is about who you are.”

It has me wondering what my collections say about me? How about artsy person with OCD?

(I am still coming to terms with you-are-what-you-eat.)

*(Hello,hello) Classic hurtin’ song written by Willie Nelson in 1961. Now that I've planted the earworm, find a version to strum in our Sheet Music Index.