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One of the living rooms at 225 Weybosset, with a large rug that goes almost all the way to the walls of the living space. When decorating small spaces , Andrew Bowen concentrates not just on whether the couch will fit, but on scale—the proportion between said couch and the room it occupies, the table beside it, the rug, everything. Are the parts in harmony or conflict? Too small for the room and the furnishings will look, well, small (our full-size sofa will never fit where that love seat is!); too large and they’ll look crammed into the space (this room won’t even hold a full-size sofa!). As the director of staging at rising-star design firm ASH NYC, Bowen is tasked with maximizing the potential of every home the team designs, as well as finding—and often custom-ordering—furnishings and decor to perfectly suit the size, shape, and feel of various rooms. One of the model kitchens at 225 Weybosset in Providence, Rhode Island, designed by ASH NYC and staged by Bowen’s team—the subdued ...

Alison Piepmeyer, the managing editor of Oh Happy Day, lives in a one- bedroom apartment with her husband, Zachary. They decorated their Lower Haight home with a tight budget and smart ideas — including a nursery in the closet! Here’s a peek inside… LIVING ROOM Sofa: West Elm. Pillows on sofa: Serena & Lily, West Elm, CB2 and Target. White side table : thrifted and painted white, similar. Wooden chair: Craigslist vintage, reupholstered with Britex Fabric, similar. Check pillow: Target, similar. Silver lamp: vintage, similar. Coffee table: thrifted, similar. Rug: Crate & Barrel. Artwork: Etsy. On budget shopping: When we moved in, we developed a budget for each room (so if we wanted a particular couch, it meant we could only spend this much on all the other things). We would be like, ‘Okay, by March we’ll probably have saved enough money to finish this room, by July we can finish this room…’ For the bigger pieces, I would first go to five vintage stores around the Mission — ...

Show Thumbnails Show Captions Last SlideNext Slide Buy Photo Predawn at Crosstown Concourse (Photo: Tom Bailey/The Commercial Appeal) Buy Photo We know, the Crosstown Concourse  grand opening is not until Saturday, but at least 23 of the 37 announced tenants are already moved in. We decided to spend a day there to see what it's like. Crosstown Concourse is not to be just another a mixed-use commercial building, and not just because it's so big at 1. 1 million square feet or such a physical improvement over the vacant, blighted hulk that the  Sears distribution center had been. More: Crosstown Concourse boosts Memphis 's office sector "Better together'' is the redevelopment's catch phrase. Crosstown Concourse aspires to create a kind of mojo among tenants and visitors.  The idea is to use art, performances, programming, and even the design of the building's public spaces to have tenants and visitors engaging each other, to be in relationship.  More: ...

On a Sunday morning in July—specifically the middle Sunday of Wimbledon, when the players rest and the trampled lawns recover— Serena Williams awoke from one of those vivid dreams that are a common feature in the hormonal rush of pregnancy. In it she was competing, except that she wasn’t at Wimbledon or even on a tennis court. Instead this was the Williams Invitational, the mock-seriously titled (but very real) dance tournament that Serena and Venus Williams have mounted each spring for the better part of a decade and that, Serena explains , has gone from fun to serious to Broadway to Vegas in short order. In the dream, Serena was suspended from the ceiling, twirling inside a hoop attached to a long ribbon. (True story: Williams has an aerial-dancing coach in Florida and another in California.) Sequins and wigs may also have been involved, though the details are fuzzy. “What do you think it means?” Williams asks as her fiancé, Alexis Ohanian, 34, works on coffee and soft-scrambled eg...

It's Springfield's 'other' downtown. Chesterfield Village, a shopping area mostly built in the 1990s, had been slow to take off. But, all these years later, it seems the neighborhood is being rediscovered. Shops, offices, and loft apartments are now filling up. "I just think it's different people know that there is room. So, they're opening these different restaurants and different businesses here that you can't find anywhere else in the town," said Seth Hurd of Black Sheep Burgers and Shakes. Black Sheep, which opened last year. is one of the newest neighbors to move in. Hurd said, "It is awesome. I like when I am at work and try to take a break and I will walk around." One of the latest upcoming changes entails the Premier Palace Theater closing , and Life 360 Church moving in. Some people have expressed concern about a potential loss of some traffic. Others have faith it will be alright. "Maybe having a bigger c...

The search began before dawn; the train had just crossed the border of Tajikistan into Uzbekistan. We were only three hours into the four- day train ride between Dushanbe, Tajikistan’s capital, and Moscow. An Uzbek border guard , clad in brown fatigues , boarded the train — a Soviet-replica, green, with a silver roof — and began yelling. He moved through the car, searching passenger after passenger, ripping apart belongings, interrogating everyone about terrorism and narcotics, and scanning flip phones and cheap Nokias for “sex photos” (pornography is banned in Uzbekistan). The passengers endured this, unfazed. Almost all of them were migrants traveling to Russia for work. They’d seen this routine before. It was March. Across Tajikistan, thousands of people — mostly young men — were departing for or preparing to leave for Russia. The long Russian winter was nearing its end; construction projects in cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg were slowly coming back to life. Tajikistan, t...