ProductDose.com: It might make my apartment look like an illustration-convention exploded but I'd definitely take these wall stickers from Domestic gracing my walls over the fleur-de-lis pattern I grew up with. These stickers are the decorations you'd expect the gaming generation to have. We're all a little addled by virtual-immersion so it makes sense our reality should look more like our media-created environments than the other way around.

Wall Stickers from Domestic [ProductDose.com]

The Age - House & Home: Kitchens are big business. Even as Melbourne turns into an international culinary city - our penchant for cool restaurants and cafes has never been as pervasive - it's also looking indoors to our other great passion: entertaining.

Interest has never been stronger in what has traditionally been the domain of "the housewife". Men are jockeying for bench space like never before; celebrity chefs are out-shining soapie stars with their get-up-and-cook messages; and buyers are agonising over everything from appliances to splashbacks.

The state-of-the art kitchen is equipped with all the appliances and gizmos to turn us into at-home Nigellas. We round up the emerging kitchen design trends.

Kitchens are being integrated into living areas. Rather than using one dominant surface, grey, black, dark timber or veneer is teamed with a contrasting shade or texture, including gloss or dark mirror glass, to simulate the feel of a living room.

Upmarket kitchens have a second pantry - effectively a mini kitchen - so that preparation is out of sight. The pantry houses the dishwasher, coffee machine, kettle, toaster, microwave and big sink, with a smaller sink in the main kitchen.

Outside in: rethinking kitchens [The Age]

CoolBuzz: Do you want to enjoy the ambiance of candle light that is flame-less, wax-less, and heat-less? If yes, read on. These flickering rechargeable candles are made of Silicon with the included adapter that plugs into the base. This is great lighting option available for lighting both indoors and outdoors. The natural flickering candle light is ideal to decorate windows, dinner tables, holiday centerpieces. Like the wax candle, these will never burn out, create smoke or create fire. The LED light bulbs with a built-in micro chip never need to be replaced! The full charged candles are great for mantles, walkways, bathrooms, centerpieces, night lights, dinner parties, mood lighting outdoor parties, restaurant tables, emergency lighting, holiday celebration and festival decorations.

Rechargeable Candles - Light with a touch of delight [CoolBuzz]

TrendHunter: Are you looking to buy a “different” kind of house? If you love outer space stuff and don’t mind gawkers, this flying saucer home can be yours for a mere $100,000.00. Set in Chattanooga’s Signal Mountain in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the house goes up for auction March 15th.

Built by the late Curtis W. King, the house boasts three bedrooms and two baths. Bonus feature - with the push of a button the entrance staircase lowers and retracts. Aliens welcome.

Flying Saucer House - Out of This World Homes [TrendHunter]

TrendBlog: Eco Age in London is not just a green home shop, it is a one-stop high-end sustainable store. It opened in February 2008 to offer everything from energy-generating systems for the home, limited edition interior designs, cutting-edge green gadgets, sustainable design coffee table books and a home decoration consultancy. The space is intended to be used as a networking and education space as well as a simple retail space.

Green Retail Spaces [TrendBlog]

Cool Hunting: Establishment (an interior design outpost in Manhattan) recently tipped us to Pineapple Paper Furniture, a new line of benches and chairs made from compressed pineapple fibers.

We like the Doonya Chair (pictured above right, $1,900) as well as the Nut Bench ($2,900). They hadn't been added to the website last time we checked, but you can email Establishment directly: info [at] establishmentnyc [dot] com for more information.

Or if you're in Manhattan, stop by the store on Gansevoort Street.

Pineapple Paper Furniture by Jacob Resneck [Cool Hunting]

Painting walls just got easier with Dulux. The pigment-pusher has just unwrapped the PaintPod , a device that pumps paint directly to a roller attachment. Hit a button and the PaintPod , loads its roller with the correct amount of paint.

What's more? It even cleans itself up when you've finished decorating, taking a mere ten minutes to rinse all the paint out of its system. All it requires is its own 5 litre paint packs for the right consistency to work with pumping system.

Via Electricpig and T3

* * *

TrendInsights. A blog to inspire, stimulate creativity and trend spotting.

CoolBuzz: What can be more relaxing and refreshing than returning home after a tiring day and finding your room lit with beams of soothing rays. Industrial Designer Jonas Samson here comes to give our thoughts a reality. His recent product, the high-tech light-emitting wallpaper, assures us of a revitalizing recovery. Jonas Samson makes it possible to have light from a two-dimensional surface rather than a 3D object.

The light-emitting wallpaper breathes life into boring dull walls and is a good alternative to get rid of the bizarre wall color that goes stale after sometime. This adds an element of strange beauty to the old-fashioned notion of covering walls in rolls of thick, slime-covered linen. Its intricate displays of lights, patterns and silhouettes changes the ambiance of the room, which also makes it perfect for you to enjoy a close moment with your partner. The best part is, when switched off, there is no evidence of any light source.

Perk up your senses with the light emitting wallpaper! [CoolBuzz]

BornRich: Now, it’s time to take a look at the Big Green Egg ceramic grill, which is derived from an ancient clay cooker called “kamado” with some modern perfection. The Big Green Egg is a smoker, a grill and an oven and you can cook any food on it, from appetizers to entrees to desserts. Coming in five different sizes ranging from Mini to Extra Large, these grills tout Fast Lighting, which allows you to start cooking in 10 minutes with no need for lighter fluid. The ceramic walls preserve heat with accurate temperature control and no hot spots. The cookers can be used even in freezing temperatures and rain. Whatever the features are, the thing that tempts me the most is the sleek and sexy make of the Big Green Egg cookers. Pricing is not known but the beautiful piece will certainly ask for some good bucks.

Big Green Egg Cooker – It’s a smoker, a grill and an oven [BornRich]

Smart Stuff: A silicone version of the lemon squeezer, and it is made in just one piece. This lemon squeezer ball comes from American kitchen stuff shop Sur La Table where it is a reasonable USD 5.95.

It juices lemons and other small citrus; keeps hands juice-free and filters out seeds and pulp. Flexible design turns inside out for easy cleaning.

Non-sticky lemon squeezer [Smart Stuff]

Trendwatching.com: Finnish real estate site Igglo lets potential buyers 'pre-order' houses that aren't on the market. Igglo has photographed every building in Helsinki and several other Finnish cities, and combines these photographs with satellite images and maps. Every property is listed, not just those that are currently on the market. (Their tagline is: "Your house is already on Igglo.") Potential buyers can earmark a building, street or neighborhood they're interested in, and post offers online. This lets potential sellers find out how desirable their property is, even if they weren't actively considering selling. Buyers also receive an alert when a property in their earmarked building or area comes up for sale. If demand and supply meet, Igglo handles the transaction for a lower fee than is charged by regular real estate agents (less than 2%). Lower fees are made possible by the fact the Igglo agents don't get involved until buyers and sellers have found each other. Consumers like it: the site attracts more than 50,000 visitors a week, and the company is now working on European expansion.

TRANSPARENCY TYRANNY [Trendwatching.com]

MetropolisMag.com: Neil Poulton’s latest lighting design was the product of technical ingenuity, exhaustive trial and error—and self-interest. “I am the main client,” he says. “It was designed for me.” The Paris-based Scottish designer wanted an adjustable lamp that would cast a wash of light over his desk but could be easily moved out of the way when not in use. After experimenting with concepts over several months, he built a deceptively simple-looking system: a plastic-encased fluorescent tube that cantilevers on a thin chrome stem. Produced by Artemide and now available in the United States, the Talak series includes table, clamp, and wall-mounted versions, and the Italian lighting giant plans to introduce a floor-standing model as well as new colors—anthracite, matte silver, and fluorescent orange—at Euroluce this spring. Here the designer takes us through the intricacies of the Talak.

The logic behind the design was that anything horizontal is white and anything vertical is chrome. If you put a chrome tube in a room, it picks up the reflections of everything around it and in effect disappears; the head tahen appears to float.

The magic is that you don’t know what’s holding the head up and why it doesn’t slide down the tube. It’s just a simple cantilever, and the internal mechanism is a sheet-steel spring.

More than two heads can be stacked on the pole to create a central lighting support.

Self-Lumination [MetropolisMag.com]

TrendCentral: For those who love to read, and show off their personal library, Italian company nobody&co has a fabulous looking seat for you. Literally covered in five meters worth (around 16 feet) of shelving area, the Bibliochaise makes storage look incredibly cool, and cuts down on space taken up by a typical bookshelf. On their site, interested buyers can change the shelf and cushion colors, all with the click of the mouse, in order to create the perfect color combination. Being a bookworm never looked so cool...

Bibliochaise [TrendCentral]

DailyCandy: You’ll overcome your bathroom shyness with the Breeza, a deodorizing toilet seat. The four-stage process removes 95.8 percent of bathroom odors. (And with a number that specific, you know it’s scientifically tested.)

First the sensor tells the seat you’ve plopped down. Next a super-quiet fan sucks up the stink and sends it through a carbonated filter. Finally the clean air passes through a replaceable fragrance vent and comes back out smelling like roses (or at least not like caca).

The Breeza also comes in a warm version with three temperature settings, so you can warm your buns while you drop off the kids.

Holy Crap [DailyCandy]

Shiny Shiny: Do you spend hours worrying about the crust round the top of your toothpaste tube? Do you judge people by whether they squeeze the tube from the end or the middle? Do you think perhaps you should readjust your priorities in life? If the answer to the first two is yes, and no to the last, you should look into the X-paste dispenser.

It takes any toothpaste tube, and promises to deposit 'the perfect amount' of toothpaste morning and night. And so ends another of the great engineering conundrums.

X-paste toothpaste dispenser [Shiny Shiny]

Iconoculture: Plenty of would-be green thumbs could use a little help with their outdoors-in decor. Pocket Gardens come in ready-to-snip, freestanding packets of seeds and soil that send a message of life. And they only need water and light to grow. They're certainly not lifetime investments (about $5 each), so grieving over plants that have passed their prime can be minimal. From organic herbs for a chef's small-space kitchen to "Get Well" lavender-filled cards, Pocket Gardens take the strain out of getting gardens to grow and answer urbanites' needs for greener, ever-changing homescapes.

Your little patch of heaven: Pocket Gardens for interior homescapes [Iconoculture]

TrendCentral: Cleaning products had never exactly excited us until we discovered method. You may be tempted to cheat on your Swiffer with their new ergonomically correct omop that comes with a washable microfiber mop pad (so you no longer have to spend a fortune on those disposable mop-head contraptions). Your back, bank account and the environment will all thank you.

Method Omop [TrendCentral]

Ecommerce-Guide.com: Sexy still sells.

Just ask brothers and business partners Michael and Ronald Lipka, who launched SexyFurnishings.com in April 2001 - and kissed their decidedly un-sexy backgrounds in accounting and engineering goodbye.

The secret, they found, was being able to sell sexy at an affordable price.

It all started in 2000 when Michael Lipka happened upon a crowd gathered outside a Boston furniture store. "It was this great big chair shaped just like a high-heeled shoe, and it was sitting out in front of the store for people to look at and sit in," recalls Lipka. "It was a typical dark and dreary Boston day with not that many people walking around, but there were still dozens of people standing around this chair."

But Michael also noticed that all of the potential customers were making themselves scarce after reading the chair's price tag, which was over $1,000. "This clearly was a great piece of furniture, but the main problem people had with it was the price," he says.

SexyFurnishings.com [Ecommerce-Guide.com]

Springwise: For everyone who'd like to escape office politics and the daily commute, iscape manufactures and sells purpose-built garden offices. Both are multi-use outdoor living spaces, but the Miana was specifically designed to be used as an office.

Every garden office comes complete with integral electrics and includes sockets and lighting. The buildings are designed to fall within UK permitted development rights, so in most cases buyers don't need planning permission.

Design conscious lawn commuters might be more interested in the company's bespoke service, which creates garden offices to a customer's exact wishes, with all stages of the project undertaken and co-ordinated in-house.

Garden offices for lawn commuters [Springwise]

Gizmodo: The Light + Air door is designed to enhance cross ventilation without giving up any security or light. Slide a lever to the right, and the circular openings are exposed—not big enough for anyone to stick a hand in and open the door, but large enough to let the sunshine and fresh air pass through.

Who wants to live without air-conditioning if there is poor ventilation? The Light + Air Door design concept is an answer to that pressing and probably upcoming problem: how do you stay comfortable when it costs $2000 a month to keep your abode cool? Just don't install this door if you live in a submarine.

Light + Air Door [Gizmodo]

Uber-Review: It’s official, Sudoku has jumped the shark. Why read the newspaper during your washroom visit, when you can challenge your brain with Sudoku. As the site puts it, “if you make a mistake no-one need know, you can just flush it away.”

Sudoku Toilet Paper [Uber-Review]

Providence Business News: Stories about the trials of eating healthy at work led MEDport, a Providence product development and design firm that also markets, distributes, warehouses and manufactures consumer health care products, to try to find a solution.

“People told us they like to take salads to work,” said Larry Wesson, president of MEDport, which employs 15 people in the United States and six in China, where its products are manufactured. “We wanted to address healthy eating on the go.”

The company developed Fit & Fresh, a new line of food storage containers with freezer packs built into the lids. Since the products hit retail shelves in January, the number of stores selling them has grown to 12,000 nationwide, making Fit & Fresh the fastest-growing product line in MEDport’s history, said Brian Carey, vice president of sales and marketing.

Local firm has fresh ideas for food storage [Providence Business News]

CoolBuzz: You hang your clothes on a laundry pole after washingsun dries your car once you wash it...but what about your shoes and sandals? One cannot hang them anywhere.

However, if sandals are somewhat like these Hook sandals, I do not think there's gonna be any hassle drying them too. These come with a highly functional hook that helps them hang on the laundry pole after washing.

The Hook sandals are available in a number of funky colors to add variety to your laundry poleooops! to your footwear collection.

[CoolBuzz]

Chicago Sun-Times: Willie Jacobs, a 69-year-old retired machinist, was doodling on a napkin while rehabbing from a heart attack when he came up with the concept for a tilted soup bowl.

Seven years later, with a patent and mold in his possession and a manufacturer under contract, Jacobs and his wife, Linda, now find their product listed in one of the largest professional rehabilitation catalogs in the country and on the shelves at local Walgreens stores.

The bowl is designed for the disabled and seniors with unsteady hands who have difficulty spooning food from regular bowls. It's also marketed for young children, whose parents want to avoid spills.

The bowl is angled in the bottom, allowing the user to easily spoon from it without tilting it forward. To the naked eye, the colorful, microwaveable and dishwasher-safe product looks like an ordinary bowl.

"It's a useful product," for seniors and the disabled, said Willie Jacobs, who adds that his grandchildren love them.

The bowls are manufactured by Warren Specialty Molding in Chicago, and are marketed and distributed by Glori Beee's Kidz Corp., the couple's upstart company. Glori Beee's is on track to generate $250,000 in revenues from the bowls this year, said Linda Jacobs, adding that she hopes to hit $1 million next year.

Retired machinist digs deep for non-spill bowl [Chicago Sun-Times]

Treehugger: Here's a little something for burgeoning urban gardeners and those without green thumbs alike. We featured AeroGrow's aeroponics system back in the day, before it was available for sale; we're happy to say that it has finally arrived. With it comes your ability to grow vegetables, greens, herbs and the like in your kitchen (or just about anywhere indoors) by suspending plant roots in the air, rather than soil or water. The suspended plants derive their nutrients from the air; with the help of the "smart" lighting and nutrient-cycling that comes with the garden, the company claims accelerated growth and increased yields over hydroponics and traditional outdoor gardening. Skeptical? They even guarantee a harvest after 28 days. AeroGrow also offers seed kits to go with the garden, including things like chili peppers, gourmet herbs, cherry tomatoes and strawberries; the garden goes for $149.95 and the seed kits are $19.95, available through their website and selected retailers like Sur La Table.

Indoor Gardening with AeroGarden Aeroponics [Treehugger]

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Goodbye tiki torches. There are some interesting new deck/patio/backyard lighting products out that could make your next party a knockout (after the food, comes the mood).

Gardenwinds.com is selling solar globe lights that come in brilliant colors. You can sit them along your paths or deck, or float them in a pool . $29.99 each. 6 1/2 inches in diameter.

Also from gardenwinds.com, solar light sticks, similar to the bright-colored globes, but in 18-inch-tall stick. $49.99

New products: Outdoor party lights [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

BizReport: Zillow, which provides free, anonymous home value estimates, has struck a deal with Microsoft Corp. to offer detailed pictures of homes using the software company's "bird's-eye" mapping technology.

The technology, which is the same offering found on Microsoft's Live Local mapping site, provides photographic search results that are, in some areas, close-up enough to make out individual cars or the state of a neighbor's hedge.

Such pictures could be useful for would-be home buyers eager to know if their prospective abode abuts, say, a lovely park, or a wrecking yard.

Zillow.com Offers Photos of Homes, Regions [BizReport]

DailyCandy: You like it hot. Hot and steamy. Spine-tingling, really. So much so that it takes you to a place far, far away.

Mind out of the gutter, please. Focus. We’re talking about a shower, here. Namely, a shower behind an Izola shower curtain.

Inspired by a passion for photography and art, the vinyl curtains were created to bring a little something extra to your time in la toilette. Step behind a romantic cityscape of Paris, Rome, or Venice. Or, if your tastes run a little more abstract, hang a limited-edition piece from the likes of Patrick McMullan, Faile, or Christopher Makos — whom Andy Warhol once crowned the most modern photographer in America.

The Great Escape [DailyCandy]

Topdeq: Maxi seat pleasure, maxi design fun: The Maxi Mambo gives your reception area, your lounge or your trade-fair booth the finishing touch. Just like our popular Mambo stool, this seat is made of resiliant transparent polypropylene. Choose blue, red or clear. Its large, round seat is attached to a silver-painted steel base.

Design: Archirivolto

Maxi Mambo [Topdeq]

BornRich: Want more furniture like the mood light furniture that changes colors as per your mood, then I bet you will be completely mesmerized with the Animi Causa’s “Feel Seating System” which can change its form according to the emotional state of the body! The Feel gathers all positions in one object. The shape of the stunning seating system is inspired by a molecular structure. The feel seating system is made of 120 soft balls covered with elastic fabric. The molecular structure allows the chair to create multiple positions that you can’t even think off!

Feel Seating System [BornRich]

USATODAY.com: Schauffler, creator of the high-end Devine Color brand of interior house paints, plans to expand her $10 million annual business by introducing a line of custom window coverings she calls corsets: valances that hug the top of window frames and transform into full-length draperies by zipping on skirts of different hues and textures.

Her approach to the product illustrates why Schauffler has transformed in a few years from stay-at-home suburban mom to a businesswoman whose products have national reach. To get a precise fit, she hired an apparel company to shape the window treatments — making the corset moniker more than just a marketing ploy.

"We decided to tailor the window with color," Schauffler says, predicting this corset will liberate women who tell her they have few good choices beyond lower-end, unlined window panels and fussy fabric-store treatments that don't convey the modern look they crave.

Colorful dreamer turns her passion into thriving paint biz [USATODAY.com]

latimes.com: Speculators, whose robust purchases made 2005 one of the best years for new-home sales, have reined in their buying and started selling amid signs of a housing slowdown. The influx of their almost-new homes is making it harder for builders to sell brand-new ones.

"This slowing of sales activity is particularly evident in markets which have experienced significant price increases and investor-driven demand in recent years, such as California and Florida," Standard Pacific said.

Until recently, builders could sell new homes as fast as they could develop them, opening up an increasing number of new-home communities at increasingly higher prices. The result pleased Wall Street and fattened the companies' bottom lines.

Now, supply is outpacing demand in many regions, giving potential buyers more choices, including recently built houses that in many cases have never been occupied. Even though builders have tried to limit investor purchases by prohibiting buyers from selling homes within a certain time, "clearly they slipped through," said John Burns, an Irvine-based building industry consultant.

Orange County resident John Cullum is one such investor. He's trying to sell a new home he bought last year.

Cullum recently listed a four-room house in the Riverside County community of Menifee that was completed in October by privately held builder Van Daele Homes. It has never been lived in and is listed at $460,000, a price that he believes is competitive with yet-to-be-built models nearby that are being peddled by other building companies.

Almost-New Homes Hurt Sales of Brand-New Ones [Los Angeles Times]

Chicago Tribune: Cotton for sheets is, like, so five minutes ago. Several new fabrics have been warming beds for some time now, and many of them are kind to the Earth too.

Try bamboo fiber. It's new and soft and harvested from farms, meaning no forests were decimated to create these sheets.

Mixing the sensual drape of silk with the warmth and softness of cotton, bamboo fiber sheet sets are available at Bed, Bath & Beyond in a variety of soft colors, from $39.99 to $99.99. Linens `n Things also sells a bamboo fiber duvet for about $150.

Hemp, too, is hot, or warm, really. Mixed with cotton to create sheets, it's soft and good for the Earth too. Hypoallergenic and long-lasting, the sheets get softer with each use. Check out hempbedlinen.com.au. Prices are $76.50 for a single twin sheet to $211.50 for a king set.

Or try modal sheets, also available at Bed Bath & Beyond. Made from beech-tree fiber, the sheets are also very soft and become even softer after washing. Light as silk and incredibly bright in color, they use trees harvested from farms. From $19.99 for a twin set to $59.99 for a king, or in modal sateen, from $49.99 to $99.99.

Rest easy, these sheets are Earth-friendly [Chicago Tribune]

infolink.com.au: The latest product to be rolled out in the Rifco product line is the Metro line of cabinets, using the unique design of a side opening in which the shelves slide from behind the attached, fixed mirror. The advantage of this is that the mirror reflection is retained while the user accesses anything from within the cabinet.

All parts are high moisture resistant, while the two fully adjustable wire basked shelves ensure maximum efficiency of space is achieved. The sides of the cabinet are available in gloss, while bevelled mirrors are a stylish option.

Rifco slides out new bathroom cabinet [infolink.com.au]

The Manila Times:
At the forthcoming Philippine International Furniture Show 2005 (organized by the Chamber of Furniture Industries of the Philippines on February 28 to March 3 at the World Trade Center and the Philippine Trade Training Center) of which Aranador is design director and show curator, and where more than a hundred furniture firms from all over the country are expected to join, will unveil what Aranador calls the “wellness furniture.”

Wellness furniture is a design concept that evolved from Aranador’s reading of the pulse of the times. “A great number of people will be turning 60 by 2030 and they will be very keen on wellness of mind and body,” he explains. “Even now people over 40 are becoming more and more conscious of staying fit and able and as free from stress as possible.

Aranador is looking at a balance between the elderly market and the younger market, which share the same needs, if not the same esthetics. Generally, he says, the wellness furniture will have a “nomadic” character—they are foldable, loadable, stackable, and easy to move around, whether from one room to another or from one apartment to another.

Expect to see at the PIFS 2005 the period, classic, neo-classic, contemporary modern and other styles that prodigious Filipino manufacturers have mastered. How they will interpret and execute the new concept of wellness furniture will be the dramatic highlight and excitement of this much-awaited international furniture show.

Wellness concept reaches out to furniture trends [The Manila Times]