Good morning everyone! I hope that you had a delightful weekend. I must apologize for not giving you much notice last week but I left quickly on Thursday to travel to Hamburg, Germany for a consulting job at Brigitte magazine and was pretty busy or a few days. I spent a day in their offices beginning with a morning lecture followed by a Q&A about blogging and an afternoon "mini" version of the Blogging Your Way workshops that I typically teach online, only this one was tailored for a magazine staff. It was a lot of fun to take BYW offline and teach in a corporate setting... as most of you know, I come from a corporate background and spent years teaching workshops to employees so it felt a bit like deja vu. This time, I was able to teach about something that I truly have a passion for, it wasn't that way in the past when some of my workshops centered around sexual harassment, new employee orientation and immigration law! Blogging was a topic that was fun and energizing! I had a nice time (the weather was amazing) and yes, I even fit in a little shopping which I'll share more on tomorrow.

To get started today and with a new week of blogging, I thought I'd first welcome my friend, stylist and author Sania Pell in London, to the world of blogging! I know I've talked about her a million times on decor8 since she helped me so much to prepare things for the launch party for my book (details here), Decorate: 1,000 Inspirational Design Ideas For Every Room In Your Home, at Liberty last month... But did you know that before today Sania didn't have a blog? Oh yes, that's right. In fact, she just launched her new blog this very day and I'm so proud of her! That's why we have to give her a big round of applause for jumping in and getting started. She first found out that blogs even existed a year ago and has been plotting her "entrance" into blogging ever since and so today she rolls out her super shiny new blog called At Home that, thanks to her husband Mark and his amazing design skills over at his company MWA Design in London, it came out just beautifully. I do hope that you'll visit.

Speaking of Ms. Pell, she has prepared a few DIY projects for you taken directly from the table styling demonstration that we dreamed up for Liberty. She'll be back in a moment to visit us today with all of her gorgeous DIY photos and how-to instructions - you'll love it.

In addition to her posts coming up, I have lots of other great things to share and our monthly guest columnist, Anna-Malin Lindgren from Sweden is back with her monthly post too so stay tuned, Monday is going to be a great one.

(images: penny wincer, styled by Sania pell)