Country Decorating Trend Is All Abuzz About Bees

The buzz around the country decorating and gifts scene this season is that we all could be in for quite a sting.

After months of combing trade shows and checking out developing trends, the editors at Country Business magazine, a publication for retailers of country gifts and accessories, say that the market is about to be dive-bombed by a swarm of friendly bees.

They’ll be appearing on framed prints, jewelry, stationery, teacups and saucers. Beeskeps - woven straw, domed-shaped baskets that originated in Europe centuries ago and were used by immigrants to transport bees to the United States - are also beginning to show up.

Watch for them on lots of garden accessory gifts and as decorative embellishments to clocks.

Check your attitude

You are planning a costume theme party around your favorite movie. You and your mate will dress as a.) Anna and Count Vronsky, “Anna Karenina” b.) Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby, “The Great Gatsby” c.) Karen Blixen and Denys FinchHatton, “Out of Africa.”

That’s one of the 30 questions included in a quiz to determine your decorating attitude in the just-published seventh edition of “The New Decorating Book” from Better Homes and Gardens (408 pages, $34.95).

This book does not mess around. The text comes straight to the point - hundreds of them, in fact, all of them having to do with making a house a better place to call home.

Decorating tips are easy to understand and adaptable to most any setting. Some 500 photos make the job all the easier. Look for “The New Decorating Book” at local bookstores.

Design underfoot

This vinyl flooring is as close as you’re going to come to the wall-towall plush stuff without buying the real thing.

The Impressions Collection, from Mannington Resilient Floors, is a new line of residential, inlaid sheet vinyl flooring that comes in five all-over patterns - berber, botanical, interleaf, sandswept and softstone - and 22 colors.

The flooring incorporates a low-gloss finish and tone-on-tone colors for impressive depth that offers soft, warm carpet-like textures.

Suggested retail: $38-$42 per square yard. Available in 6-foot widths. For more information, call (800) 356-6787.

Design tip

Buying “good” art can get expensive real fast. For far less than you’d pay for a painting, you can pick up great looking black-and-white art photographs. Give them a simple frame job. Nothing is more elegant.