entertaining tips

Laurie Furber's pursuit of a stylishly sustainable lifestyle inspired her to launch Greenhouse Design Studio, a hybrid of an online shop, social networking site, and resource guide for green businesses. While curating a sustainable home takes time, Laurie believes in starting small. Her suggestion? Implement thoughtful details that make holiday entertaining easier and more eco-friendly — regardless of budget or aesthetic.

Laurie's entertaining style is decidedly casual and usually involves candlelight and a bountiful buffet, allowing guests to self serve and mingle freely. With the holidays approaching, she's sticking to simple guidelines and a few tricks to get her through the season.

Keep reading to get Laurie's tips on everything from incorporating vintage elements to stress-free decor!

Are you having a spooky and satisfying Halloween Monday? If nothing else, I thought these funny little black animal statues from Paul Lowe would bring a smile to your Monday.
Like me, I bet you attended your Halloween festivities over the weekend. What were you up to? Did you host a Halloween party? Attend a boo-tiful bash? Or, like me, were you chaperoning a kiddo around to his or her own costume party? Tell me about your Halloween details in the comments!

Hollywood A-listers gathered to honor nine leading ladies, including Jennifer Aniston and Barbra Streisand, at the Elle Women in Hollywood tribute Monday, but here on Casa, we think another woman deserves a spotlight: event designer extraordinaire Cara Kleinhaut. Cara and her award-winning design team at Caravents are not only responsible for the production at Elle's exclusive event, but soirees for top-notch Hollywood clients, including HBO, Target, and Condé Nast publications. Fresh from the intimate women-empowering award dinner, Cara talks to us about translating Hollywood event design into home decor, party tips, and throwing decor caution to the wind. Check out what Cara had to say:

CasaSugar: You recently designed the Elle Women in Hollywood event; what's it like to produce such a high-profile party?
Cara Kleinhaut: We do a complete room transformation at the Four Seasons in LA. We come in and build false walls, stage backdrops, room lighting . . . the room is completely built to reflect and represent the Elle brand, using Calvin Klein Collection as a big inspiration.

CS: How did you come up with the design palette?
CK: Calvin and Elle are minimalists and chic, and L'Oréal Paris is very colorful and feminine. So it was about marrying the different aesthetics that work for everyone. We used a color palette of white, slate charcoal, with pops of plum and a beautiful burgundy. And a texture palette of ultrasuede, hammered silver, plexiglass, and smoked plexiglass. Everything was a partnership with Elle, and the calla lilies were a group decision. They are extremely elegant, very structured, tailored looking, and extremely chic. It was my favorite detail of the night. Barbra Streisand loved our calla lilies!

Keep reading for Cara's tips on how to throw a fabulous Fall fete.

Enjoy this Halloween party post from designer guest writer Kyle Schuneman!

Halloween is the time of year where everyone gets to let loose. Juggling kids’ trick-or-treating time with adult parties is always tough. Here are some great ideas for throwing a budget chic party so everyone can stop by and celebrate.

• Photo booth fun. Using Tempaper, wallpaper a Gothic feature wall in your space to set the mood. It will be a great backdrop for a photo booth! Add a few Ikea candlestick sconces and some spider webs to complete the look; everyone can take a Polaroid memento away with them from the night!
• Scary soup buffet. For the table, think buffet style to save you money. Use a clear punch bowl and fill with a delicious butternut squash soup. On the outside of the bowl, use washable window markers to draw a Jack-O-Lantern face on the outside for an instant centerpiece! Use cheap bowls with handles from CB2 (that you can use year round) so it’s an easy soup to eat while standing up and mingling! For drinks, have classic orange soda bottles in a metal ice bucket with some dry ice for effect.
• Black carnations. Usually I wouldn’t recommend carnations, but since they are so cheap, they are a great alternative to more expensive flowers. With a coat of black floral spray paint, these ho-hum flowers can become quite the conversation piece. One can of spray will be able to cover dozens of flowers to fill the party.
• Treat tree. While the parents will enjoy their Polaroid Take-A-Way, a treat tree is a chic way to showcase candy treats for the kids. Using remnant pieces of fabric, make festive sacks to hang from a spray painted branch; it's a great alternative to that boring candy bowl!

For more design tips, be sure to follow Kyle on Twitter!

Photo Source: Woman's Day

Here's a post from designer guest writer David Stark.

New Yorkers for Children always kicks off the Fall gala season with their very chic evening each September, and we have had the honor of collaborating with them for many years now. It’s always been important for the evening to be glamorous, but in recent years, it has been critical to infuse beauty with meaning. How do we do that, you might ask?

We look for metaphor. When we sit down with the committee in the early spring for our first brainstorm on the gala, the goal is to find an overarching message. We literally banter around the table, tossing out words and phrases that inspire, try to peg our words to images, and search for a statement that feels like a call to arms, that is proactive, rather than something that is merely a statement. We look for a phrase that can both inspire and encapsulate the meaning of what the evening is about.

Case in point, the gang at New Yorkers brilliantly provides the resources and support necessary for foster kids to make the dream of a college education a reality (and so much more!), so our evening’s theme, “Launch a Star,” is both visually rich and conceptually strong. We looked to books like The Little Prince and Good Night Moon for visual inspiration as well as the romantic street scenes of the film Cinema Paradiso, and we turned Cipriani 42nd Street into a moonlit garden with a million twinkling stars, strings of vintage glowing bulbs festooned above, a grand entry moment with clouds, stars and a symbolic ladder to climb up, up, and up, and plush gardens of the most perfect blooms everywhere.

Our sincere congratulations to our friends at New Yorkers for Children for an amazing evening — we love our partnership with you and are honored to keep growing creatively each year together.

For more photographs, check out David Stark's blog.

Photos courtesy Susie Montagna

While some people believe that dinner parties can only be thrown on a Friday or Saturday night, I happen to think that any evening is a great time to host a dinner! Annie, of TrèsSugar, agrees because she hosted one last night, on a Monday! Before she left work, I offered some of my suggestions for a successful weeknight dinner. To find out what they are and to share your own, keep reading.