Happy holidays from our Home to yours!

Top row, from left: Carole Nicksin, senior decorating editor; Carolyn Weber, senior building editor; Angela Riechers, art director, Susan Weiman, assistant to the editor-in-chief; Donna Sapolin, vp/editor-in-chief; Marlene Sezni, deputy art director; Julie Taraska, articles editor. Bottom row, from left: Laura Dye Lang, executive editor; Joel Bernstein, features editor; Nicole Sforza, deputy articles editor; Kitt Harris, photo editor; Rachel Stinson, contributing photo assistant; Christine Cameron, assistant editor.

Indoor Saunas: The New Rec Rooms?

Do you like the idea of a home sauna? The stress-relieving dry heat! Which cleanses toxins from your body! Which helps you sweat away the pounds! But dread the thought of actually having to sit in that redwood box for hours, staring at nothing but the coals burning in the corner?

On-the-Go Gadgets

The latest multimedia electronics store your audio and video collections in one tiny, portable package. Here are my three recent favorites. —Nicole Sforza, Deputy Articles Editor

DogHouse Electronics RoverTv
Record TV content directly onto this handheld device then watch the shows anywhere at anytime. Less than 5 ounces in weight, the gizmo hooks up via A/V outlets to your television and DVD, DVR, VCR, and CD players; it has a programmable, built-in timer and a digital FM radio. Store up to four hours of video or 2,800 songs on its included 2-gig SD memory card. $299 (3.5" LCD screen) to $349 (4" LCD widescreen). rovertv.com.

Curbside Decor

See more of Donna's photos

Every weekday morning and evening, I traverse the avenues and streets connecting New York City’s Grand Central Terminal and my office by foot—a roughly 20-minute jaunt. No matter what the weather conditions, I’m out there chugging along, raptly documenting the dynamic, ever-changing sidewalk show with my camera. About a year ago, I started taking pictures of worn furnishings that had been set out for trash pickup. Manhattan is famous for the many extraordinary, sometimes priceless pieces that find their way to the curb and then into the apartments of people with the fortitude and resourcefulness to haul them home and give them new life.

FREE! HOLIDAY TILE STYLE

Here's a holiday card for your computer screen. To design it I drew on my love of Japanese watercolors with their simple renderings of organic shapes and almost monochromatic color schemes——and of classic popular greeting card motifs. You'll recognize the text, I think.— Marlene Sezni, deputy art director

Touch of Glass

To add shimmering interest to this South Carolina kitchen, designer Linda H. McClain, CKD, of Signature Kitchens in Charleston (signaturekitchens.net), specified a 1-inch-thick glass breakfast bar. The blue-green tones of the glass coordinate attractively with Blue King granite countertops and slate floor tiles elsewhere in the room. Photograph: J. Savage Gibson.

We've seen natural stone, synthetic stone, metal, wood, and even paper countertops. So what's the next big thing? According to many high-end architects and kitchen and bath designers, it's glass. “People are getting bored with the same old materials,” says designer Robert Schwartz of St. Charles of New York in New York City (stcharlesofnewyork.com). “For about the same price as better granite or marble, glass offers a crisp, soft contemporary alternative.”

Crystallized glass can be molded into any shape and comes in long sheets sized like granite, so you can get a big island without a lot of seaming. The polished, opaque surface is also heat and stain resistant. “You can put hot pots right on it, and it's impervious to oils, wine, lemons, and red wine,” says Schwartz.

The Big Picture

Artwork—the personal kind that makes your decor look inviting and complete—can be pricey and difficult to select . And family photos are usually too small to display as wall art. Fortunately, digital technology and some handy online resources are making it easier and more affordable than ever to supersize your cherished images, then frame and enjoy them as focal points in your rooms. The jump in scale has surprising impact, elevating the everyday into objets d'art.

To create the large-scale artwork shown left, I started with a snapshot of my mother taken when she was a teenager. I chose this particular image because it's very nicely composed, with a range of tones from crisp white to velvety black. The pattern in her dress mirrors the slightly out of focus background, and the old-fashioned deckle edge of the picture and the date stamp add vintage interest.