Luxury Housing Trends & Home Improvement Ideas

Now that temperatures and dropping and snow is falling all over the country, you’re probably thinking about winterizing your house. You want to make sure pipes don’t freeze over the winter, and this is especially true if you have a vacation home, and you’re not there all the time to keep the heat on. Any little bit could help, so maybe this faucet sock from Plow & Hearth might add a modicum of protection.

The waterproof DuPont Thermolite Plus sock wraps around your faucet and is supposed to save you the “the trouble and expense of frozen faucets and pipes.” Those of you from colder climates are welcome to chime in on whether something like this would actually be effective. I suppose at $8, it’s not a big investment either way.

Plow & Hearth

If you know somebody who’s always playing darts at the local bar (or maybe has a dart board in the basement), these dart coat hooks could be a fun present (read: guy gift). They’re a way to add some wall-based storage for your winter outerwear without succumbing to the prosaic coat rack.

The stainless steel darts are tipped with screws, so they can be wall-mounted and hold all the weight you’d expect (they also come with rawl plugs in case you need to screw them into plaster). $34 gets you a set of 3 from Elsewares.

Elsewares

If you’ve got more knick knacks (excuse me, objets d’ art) cluttering up your living space than you know what to do with, then you could wrangle some of them into submission within the confines of these driftwood baskets.

Made from twigs and branches culled from Oregon’s chilly beaches, the surf-smoothed wood is hand-crafted into your choice of oblong or round basket. If you like environmentally friendly items, these should hit the mark since driftwood is perhaps the ultimate in recycled materials–Mother Nature does all the work herself. Available at VivaTerra, the baskets run $49 (round) or $54 (oblong) and, according to the site, can be used to store anything from precious items to plants.

VivaTerra