Inspired by BLTD tonight ~ and while every site, magazine, etc is busy doing a roundup of either gift ideas or what happened this year… RUGenius and i took our reflection and went even further back than the end of 2005. Where did our design/aesthetic tastes come from…

Well one of our sources of inspiration - or what molded us at an early age, was Montessori schooling ~ especially the really fun woody “educational” toys we grew up with… from the sandpaper letters to learn to write, those heinous beads i loved/hated to learn about decimals, the multiplication board had those great little red beads, the satisfaction from tasks like pouring sand and pellets from one container to the other, the trinomial cube, the blue geometric solids (perspective drawing 101?), and that infamous pink tower… [to kris of BLTD - our tiniest pink cube was the most coveted too! we should make necklaces with that for other Montessori kids who grew up!] So now you know - we were Montessori kids, and i think the impact of Maria Montessori’s genius helped make us the obsessive design lovers we are today.