Floral Displays

At Barbra Streisand's fund-raiser for the Cedars-Sinai Women's Heart Center in Malibu, colorful floral arrangements in wooden vases played off the outdoor setting.

Working under the direction of Sidney Frank Importing Company, which owns the American Harvest vodka brand, Event Creative designer Meredith Treinen brought an elegantly rustic look to the Ivy Room for the spirit's launch party. Decorative elements included fresh wheat in birch containers, blue hydrangeas in wood boxes, and votive-filled Mason jars.

Ever since Adam Rapoport took over this title, I have been mostly loving this magazine. While I miss Gourmet, something about Bon App's quick and easy style feels right for its time, and the editor's letter this month is a perfect example: grilled bread with avocado chunks, simply explained and ravishingly photographed. The recipe is a take on a dish served at Café Gitane, which I am headed to right away. But the added value of four other grilled-bread topping ideas, presented in compact caption format, are all just as simple yet imaginative.

Talk about food porn, this "double truck" (that's an old person's word for a magazine spread) intro into the ubiquitous "it's all about the burgers” story takes the vulgarity to the limit with the bloody, oops, ketchupy header. I'm sparing you the follow up page, which shows the same burger, just as grossly over-size, but this time in cross-section, as if we couldn't imagine it.

For the shock value, this feature story, which recreates traditionally savory meals out of sweet components, I found at first to be hysterical. Sure, the Tootsie Roll burger looks a little "poo-ey" and the idea of using shortbread cookie dough blasted with sugar to resemble fries hardened my arteries just by looking, but it's just a joke, right?

After reading the idiotic copy for the sweets-faked-for-savory story more closely, it seems the editors actually think someone might want to make this stuff. "Trick your family with a surprisingly sweet start to their day." Making this mock bacon and egg dish sounds like it would take hours: "For the bacon: Press together strips of red and yellow taffy ... roll flat with a rolling pin ..." And the directions seem dubious at best. For the white chocolate eggs and yellow marshmallow yolks, the text instructs "Microwave for 5 seconds. Cool before serving."

Border Grill owner Susan Feniger came off well on Top Chef Masters: friendly, funny, but no pushover. So I should have enjoyed this page. But after a single, non-revelatory tip ("Serve dishes that are delicious whether they’re hot, room temperature, or even cold") the promise of a service piece fades into one giant plug for her newer L.A. restaurant, Street, and its ancillary support marketing vehicle—I mean book—Street Food. The idea, of course, is food-cart-inspired, but as if the point weren't driven home enough, they smear the meat haphazardly across a cutting board to prove her street cred. Indeed.

It's been years since I picked up this magazine, which I vaguely remember had an Arizona-retiree vibe. Today Sunset seems cool to me, but I like both deserts and pools, which they seem to show a lot of. I might have wished for a few more pointers in this container gardening story, but I'll settle for the great photography by Thomas J. Story, whose name I will look for again.

Car crash. AstroTurf layered over sand? Unevenly tilting raw wood boards with ill-proportioned cushions (the red ones seem weird and the yellow are crooked)? But the elephant in the room is the acrylic wall hanging, which is trying way too hard to be The Bold and the Beautiful, but settles for just big and brassy. Better luck next time, garden designer Jamie Durie.

I assumed this magazine would be chockablock with the big mugs of Guy Fieri and what's-her-name, with a few personal reminiscences of Italian heritage from Hollywood brat Giada De Laurentiis. But instead it's a workmanlike, low-budget affair. This table of recipe-driven contents seemed inventive and was effective at guiding me to what I was interested in, which wasn't much.

If you're concerned that sausages may be unhealthy, then these oily, sweating links will not convert you. At first I thought this was a mistaken outtake (which, given the overall quality of the magazine, would not surprise) but I've chosen to fantasize that this is some underpaid vegan freelancer in the art department’s subversive reverse-psychology trick.

The second entrant in the lifestyle-network-revenue stream enhancement category, HGTV Magazine’s cover struck me as both attractive and inviting. The promise of “Color!” is fulfilled by the orange and pink type, the color blocked furniture, the retro enamel cane handled cerulean pitcher (I'll take two please) with the Murano-style blown glass—admittedly not my taste in so many colors. But the headliner is the arrangement of peonies, ranunculus, anemones, and a bunch of other stuff I can't identify. “Fun With Summer Flowers,” page 12, is the first thing I turn to.

What a bait and switch! Expecting to find some meaningful information about what I'm certain was a difficult arrangement—did they use an oasis or tie the stems to counter the vessel’s wide mouth, for example?—is info that a decorating magazine might want to convey. But instead it’s just the same shot with the flower IDs shoved into a corner of a "get the look for less" page. This does not respect the reader and is bad magazining. But what should I really expect from a magazine that parrots the ridiculous idea (from Jung Lee of Fete in New York) of putting frozen pizza on the grill?

Little things mean a lot, and if the little things are bugs, they can mean ruination of even the greatest party. I freak out and welt up with bugs, and up until now I'd only seen the ugly yellow citronella bracelets. And I've looked!

Traditional Home used to be the dowdy stepsister in the design category, but I noticed the covers improving so I bought a copy and threw it in this mix. Overall I found it handsome. This entertaining feature shows Rachel Hollis’s outdoor dining setup, and I just love the light touch. The table isn't too crowded, there's just a runner (not a cloth), and the blue and yellow colors, while vivid, are used with restraint. Normally I'm not a fan of patterned, clear glass outdoors, but this set looks folksy and casual, not fussy. Turns out it’s from Pier 1, so I like it even more.

Some overzealous stylist was unleashed on this otherwise stately dining room and came up with the brilliant idea of setting the table with the tablecloth thrown like a shawl. Will the stylist go to the home of the poor reader who tries this and help clean the mess when the glasses all tip over?

Martha Stewart Living photography is often superlative, this cherryade tray being a perfect example. And the recipe is super easy—sour cherries, simple syrup, and rosé.

Everyone's knocking Martha these days and I don't want to gang up, but having grown up on a farm, I can assure you the Marquis de Sade might enjoy plopping his guests down on hay bales, but if you try this idea at your event, the prickly stalks will pretty much guarantee nobody stays through dessert.

The “s'more upgrade” is really possible? Why does everyone relentlessly pretend that eating sticky marshmallow, smeary chocolate, and dry graham crackers outdoors, where the dirt and mosquitoes inevitably join the party is a good idea, no matter how artfully themed with star cutouts for the Fourth of July?