Countdown: three days to Christmas. It’s all cookie-baking, holiday card-sending, last-minute gift-buying (or making!), and more – enough activity to drive any regular person mad.  This week’s Best of the Web: Home picks will definitely make you pause, reflect, and admire with their keen aesthetics and appreciation for the unappreciated in life.  Slow down for a sec and check out these terrific Be@Home blogs:

All Toile and No Reward started out simply as a creative outlet for its writer, Flickettysplits, a certified sewaholic and pathological fabric addict. A creative spark trapped inside a corporate straitjacket, the blog provided the perfect way for her to decompress from her punishing day job as a high-flying corporateer.

Originally the blog was sewing-focused, but over time it’s grown to be a little bit craft, a little bit travel, and a little bit meaning of life. Now set free from corporate slavery, the blogger tracks her life, ideas and experience as she travels the globe as an international woman of mystery. Fabric lovers everywhere can follow her as she buys up big in fabric bazaars and souqs from across the Middle East to India and South East Asia, as well as sharing stories of love, work, and life in a variety of cultural contexts.

An artist worth your attention takes residence at the Painted Heart Studio.  This blogger artist is inspired by nature, simplicity and a clutter-free environment.  She tells us:

“I started my blog to connect with other artists, learn about their techniques and share some of my own. It began as a modern day ‘message in a bottle’. I put my sketches out there and wondered who I might meet along the way. Lo and behold, I’ve ‘met’ the nicest people, some of whom I have much in common with. Although the friendships are ‘virtual,’ the connections are real.

The blog primarily records her latest art experiments, but other aspects of life also find their way in: family events, sharing childhood memories, frugal shopping, and home decor are found interspersed.  Not mindless to business opportunities, the blog also serves as a marketing tool for her portrait business.

Hopefully you’ll find some inspiration for your art, learn new techniques, and be encouraged to continue your art – and life – journey with these fantastic bloggers!

-Kim