Home & Design Links We Love This Week

A chair to hang your things on, all-natural wrapping ideas, a sandstone cottage, and more...

• Brooklyn design—a balance of shabby townhouse patinas and blingy modern efficiency—is a distinctive look that's cropping up far beyond the reaches of the borough itself, and the New York Times has billed this development team as being at its helm. (New York Times)

• I love (love!) the very well-crafted magnetic bottle opener that we sell in our Shop, which is all the more reason to enjoy this DIY version—even if only to understand better how it's constructed. (A Beautiful Mess)

• By removing the plastic corner pieces, upholstering the sides of a box spring, and adding metal legs Jenny Komenda proves that the answer is not always a fluffy eyelet bed skirt—bookmark it on your New Years to-do list. (Little Green Notebook)

• A roundup of 8 rustic wrapping ideas has us wanting to run through a park collecting twigs and leaves to tie to packages. (My Scandinavian Home)

• Designed to hold the clothes you feel the need to toss aside (and thereby saving the actually chair used for sitting that's taken up this purpose), the Sacrificial Chair is storage that will make you smile. (Swiss Miss)

• A renovation to a 1850s Australian cottage hardly alters the outside, but on the inside reveals its original sandstone structure through an open floor plan, sky lights, and sliding doors. (Arch Daily)