Category: Entertain
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Planning a Birthday in Costa Rica … Table Settings for Under $100
Once our theme was set, I spent a lot of time online looking through Style Me Pretty, Martha Stewart Weddings, and The Knot. I wanted something elegant and feminine which incorporated orchids. Also, because it was a birthday party and I did not want the room to look like it was set up for a…
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Planning a Birthday Party in Costa Rica … Choosing a Location and a Theme
To make Aunt Carmen’s 80th birthday party memorable, we needed to come up with a theme. Great parties need themes to make them flow and focus the event. We wanted this to be a celebration of her life, so we started by asking: what does she like? Aunt Carmen has owned shops, hotels, and restaurants,…
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Planning a Birthday Party in Costa Rica … How It All Began
I grew up in Costa Rica. My dad is one of eleven in his family and my mom is one of seven, so I grew up surrounded by lots of cousins, aunts, and our family’s friends. Aunt Carmen, the oldest of my dad’s siblings, has always been extremely capable and well-connected; she’s the Vito Corleone…
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Get the Look: Add Patina with Belgian Linens and French Dinnerware
In the September 2010 issue of House Beautiful, there is a story about interior designer Penelope Bianchi’s house in Santa Barbara, California that really resonated with me. As many of you know, at Gracious Style we really believe in buying timeless objects because we only want to own things that we’ll still love ten, twenty,…
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Pret-a-Porter: Easy Care Tablecloths
Believe it or not, for the first ten years at Gracious Style, we did not have a single collection of everyday table linens which had any kind of synthetic content. Everything we carried was either cotton, linen, or a cotton/linen blend. We would have certainly liked to have a non-iron alternative, but we just didn’t…