Check the halls

When the weather is cold, rooms need to be extra cozy. In my opinion, nothing warms a room quite like a good check.

This room is doubling up on the checkered pieces, but something feels slightly off with the scale. Is it the small rug? The size of the chairs compared to the size of the couches? Regardless of the size issues, it's the couches I'm eying for this particular post.

Ahh, here's one that needs no tweaking at all. It's from Ginger Barber's house, and was included in the Cote de Texas check round-up I link to below.

A large-scale check done right can be like a well-worn pair of flannel pajama pants for the living room, don't you agree? Here it is again, this time in curtains in a breakfast nook.

As pleasing as the large patterns are, so too are the smaller scale checks in smaller doses. It might be a bed skirt:

Or a pillow:

Right now, I'm more into the high-contrast checks. Black and white, brown and white, and even navy and white. I don't discriminate, though. To see many more photos of checks of all different colors, check out this post on Cote de Texas. It's a virtual checkered rainbow!

Yo, I'll tell you what I want - to go shopping in England!

Wow! Thanks to everyone who commented and left their thoughts on whether captions should be above or below photos. Who knew there were so many passionate opinions on this topic?

I picked up a copy of the Good Homes November 2009 issue before I left for my trip on Monday. It's printed in the UK, and I think it's fun to see what differences there are in decor.

A picture of a beautiful measuring cup led me to Sainsbury's website, and let me just say this: No fair! Why do the British get everything? Seriously, the kitchen gadgets on that website are amazingly different and appealing.

Look at this blender:

This kitchen scale take my breath away:

The bowl part must twist off, right? Otherwise it's useless. You know, I'd probably try to order this if it weren't for the fact that all those little numbers on the bottom are measuring units that are as meaningless to me as temperatures in celsius or references to Bella and Edward's relationship in Twilight, because sorry - I've opted out of that one.