That’s Chic – Style galore is what lies behind the That’s Chic blog title. Rachel Nguyen is a model-icious young woman from California who lives and breathes style and aesthetics. Whether it’s the amazing clothes she wears to the pretty photographs she takes of moments in her life, Rachel invites us to explore her exquisite taste.

Each post is a well-written account of Rachel’s recent events, and includes large photos of Rachel, chic as ever. In addition to clothes, accessories and home design you will find food related posts with mouth-watering photos. That’s Chic is one of last week’s Weekly Blog winners, and here’s a photo that shows you why (click the image to read the full post).

Planning a wedding always seems like a daunting, stressful task, with so many things to think about and choose. Since wedding season is almost at its peak this month and will last through October, we’ve decided to make the special event’s mission totally possible and easier for you: Here’s our Top 10 list of the absolute best wedding resources out there online. This hot list will show you where to get the best gift registry, where to find gorgeous invitations, and how to make your wedding look like a million bucks without exceeding your budget.

1. Project Wedding – Think of this site as wedding day central. It’s a comprehensive source on all things wedding and the site is a perfect first stop in your big day’s planning path. Aside from the obvious bride and bridesmaid dress designs and vendors, Project Wedding shares photos and inspirations from real weddings. You will also find lots of decor, wedding cake and beauty ideas on this site in addition to practical tools such as check lists, wedding websites and more.

2. The Knot – Perhaps the most familiar of the bunch, The Knot offers solid help on every possible wedding aspect you can think of. The colossal variety of topics might confuse you at first, but after a deep breath you’ll see The Knot truly provides a wealth of information and ideas. To start off, check out the ‘planning basics’ menu on the left (offering ideas and tips on wedding destinations, vendors, vows, songs and invitations, etc.). Once you’re ready for more hardcore planning, make use of The Knot’s gift registry page to pick your store (an adventure in and of itself).

3. My Wedding – Although this website might seem as a bit less comprehensive than the two above, its forte -free wedding sites- outweighs any content downsides it may have. Wedding sites have become huge these past few years, and for a good reason. In many cases the bride and groom’s family is scattered across the country, and although phone calls might do for keeping everyone updated, there’s nothing like a designated Web space everyone can visit anywhere with ease.

My Wedding offers a huge variety of website options neatly categorized by color and theme (green, outdoors, traditional weddings and more). If you’re thinking about creating a wedding website for your special event, My Wedding is your spot. Here’s the gorgeous example of Samira and Maxwell’s wedding site, created by My Wedding.

4. Martha Stewart Weddings – For those of you seeking an all-American, traditional wedding style, Martha Stewart’s designated online spot for weddings is a perfect resource to start with. Get all the event’s basics down and stay on top with all your check and to-do lists with Marth. One cute post I loved reading here is Good Things for Spring Weddings – great inspirations!

5. Macy’s Gift Registry – Although there aren’t any right or wrong gift registry choices, I think Macy’s is the best one in terms of both variety of products and the system’s ease of use when registering and adding gifts. Signing up to Macy’s registry service is super easy and quick, and you can start adding gifts in no time. Wedding guests checking in to buy will also find a swift and no-brainer process leading straight to the couple’s list. In short, I can only say that on my wedding day Macy’s will be my gift registry provider of choice.

6. Style Me Pretty – There’s nothing like peeping over at other people’s weddings pictures to see what works, what doesn’t and find new ideas. Style Me Pretty’s Real Weddings section is packed with tested strategies, approaches and features worth checking out before planning The Day. Browse the section’s various wedding styles, including Budget Beautiful, Contemporary, Do-It-Yourself Inspired and Vintage Chic, among others.  You should also explore Style Me Pretty’s vendors’ guide, DIY projects and wedding inspirations.

7. Once Wed – Dedicated to the to-be-wed folks who seek a non-traditional wedding, Once Wed is a brilliant resource for planning unconventional weddings that are “artistically innovative or effortlessly beautiful.” Created by the gorgeous Emily Newman, OnceWed is one of the only places online where you can find beautiful pre-owned wedding dresses and get lots of inspiring and creative ideas for your big day. Speaking of dresses, here’s one that caught my eye.

8. Wedding Invite Love – This amazing website brings together soon to be wed couples with graphic designers and studios all over the country, to make successful and beautiful invitations that suit couples’ needs and desires. Search for your favorite invitations vendor via a number of parameters such as price, nearest city location or style and a world of fabulous design will open up to you. Here’s an example of a beautiful design that’s well within the budget of any wedding, by The Letter Office in NY:

9. Wedzu – A site for the budget brides and grooms, Wedzu offers a saner approach to wedding planning, and offers a wealth of cool products for the indie-at-heart audience. From affordable yet absolutely fabulous wedding dresses to reception decorations and cute cuff links, Wedzu is all about making your wedding Etsy style (handmade, that is) while maintaining the event’s haute-couture look and feel.

10. Wedding MiniFaves page on All My Faves – This MiniFaves page dedicated to wedding planning and celebration is an abundant resource for all the big day’s different aspects. Find all the great websites listed above and many others in one place to make your wedding day the event you always wanted. Congratulations to all the newly weds and the soon-to-be married couples!

Cut Out + Keep – With over 11,000 Likes to date, this site probably does something right. The craft site offers a colossal collection of make-it tutorials, from hats and jewelry to tea strainers, furniture and accessories. Think of Cut Out + Keep as the Etsy how-to hub.

The vast number of categories and sub-categories seemed overwhelming at first, but once I found something interesting, I decided to share. Actually, I think I will be making this Cat Hammock next weekend.

Defringe – This minimalistic-looking site is actually bursting with rich creativity, and it offers a wealth of inspiring posts showing today’s innovation in a variety of fields, including advertising, illustration, music, product design, typography and many other fields. Defringe is an elegant, sophisticated design and talent hub that is packed with cool ideas and products. It wasn’t a Weekly Blog winner for nothing.
Here’s an interesting post I found in Defringe’s Product Design section: Miniot, innovative and organic solution to protecting the iPad.

You Grow Girl – To me, gardening always seemed to be a field too complex to understand, let alone implement at home. My mother is an avid gardener who actually knows by heart the Latin taxonomy of many East Coast plants and trees., which kind of puts me to shame, but now with Weekly Blog winner You Grow Girl, all that is about to change!

This wonderful gardening community, created by Gayla Trail back in 2000, is a “contemporary, laid-back approach to organic gardening” you should definitely explore, particularly if your green patch is spatially-challenged (i.e. the size of a closet). Find lots of gardening ideas you can implement at home, including produce you can grow and eat! Here is a good example:

SHFT – “Curating the Culture of Today’s Environment” is what SHFT creators, activist/actor Adrian Grenier and film producer Peter Glatzer strive to deliver. Explore SHFT’s huge video archive where each video tells a different unique story about the environment and the good souls trying to make it better. In addition to video, SHFT offers top-notch content on a variety of topics including art, design, energy, fashion, sports, travel and more.

SHFT not only looks great, it also delivers engaging content on important matters, whether cultural or environmental, or both. Another cool feature on SHFT is the shop section, although some products featured there can get quite pricey. Either way, SHFT is a shining eco star! Here’s a cool video I found here, Backyard Sun Boxes by musician Craig Colorusso, showing music created by the sun and the solar panels Craig put in his backyard. Each solar panel was set to play one guitar note on loop, with the all the notes collectively making a B-flat chord. Amazing, isn’t it?

Draw and Fold Over – When the Campaign for Drawing wanted to let people know of the Big Draw project celebrating the role of drawings in our life, they went for a special and innovative approach. The Draw and Fold Over page invites you to draw whatever you wish, and then share it with the community and receive feedback for it. So come in and draw for fun, for helping this organization, or for sharing the love.

BBC Earth: Life Is – The British Broadcast Company is famous for its nature documentary series and films, and we have all come to know Sir David Attenborough, the avid naturalist, acting as the engaging narrator of many of BBC’s nature productions. Now BBC Earth, with a huge repertoire of footage and content related to the natural environment and planet Earth, invites us all to explore our world like never before.

Explore nature in a totally new mesmerizing way, through images and videos of nature, filmed human stories, and see it all from the filmmakers’ point of view. To browse the vast world of content available on Life Is, click ‘search for more stuff’ which will bring you to this page (see below), where you can search by climate conditions, color, media type and more. Come and meet your planet right here on BBC Earth. You will be amazed!

Who doesn’t like pretty things? Design is a very broad term used to describe numerous different industries (there’s graphic design, industrial design, packaging design and many others). For the purpose of the Thursday post, though, my Top 10 website list focuses mainly on interior design sources that offer brilliant, creative and yes, aesthetic ideas we can all appreciate and be inspired by, and even implement at home.

1. Apartment Therapy – When it comes to interior decor, Apartment Therapy is one of the biggest fish in the design pond. Since its launch, this cool site has expanded to additional lifestyle realms including technology, children, green and cooking, although the main Apartment Therapy page is by far the best of the bunch. Find amazing home design inspirations via AT’s beautiful home decor photos and posts showing how small renovations make a huge difference. Here’s a cool design idea I found on Apartment Therapy: Hanging Furniture.

Roundup: Hanging Rattan Chairs

2. Contemporist – With an extensive readership of over 40k subscribed users, Contemporist is all about beautiful design both inside and outside the house, architecture, furniture and lighting, and more. Although the architecture section of the site offers innovative and luxurious buildings I’d die to live in, the furniture category is where I found lots of interior design ideas. Contemporist is the designer at heart’s must stop.

3. IKEA Hackers – Interior design is full of innovation and creativity, but what good is it without sensible hands-on application? IKEA Hackers is the DIY design site that is both beautiful and practical, therefore a definite top design site to check out. Explore the numerous IKEA furniture upgrade projects this site has to offer, explaining in detail what Ikea products to buy and step-by-step explanations on how to turn them into a premium piece of furniture at home. You can also submit your own upgraded IKEA project and share it with others. Here’s a super cool example cat owners with small apartments will appreciate: Hol Cat Litter Box with Sliding Top. Click the images below to see the project from start to finish.

4. Swiss Miss – This design blog and studio by Tina Roth Eisenberg is a fabulous source of design inspiration to both industry professionals and esthetics-conscience individuals. Swiss Miss is full of design ideas (spanning across different fields) with a clean, white space theme -Tina’s Swiss homeland roots. She’s a renowned talent in the global design arena with famous clients such as NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Food Network, and she also teaches at the prestigious Parsons ,The New School of Design. With such credentials, I needn’t explain why visiting Swiss Miss is an absolute must.

5. HolyCool – Sometimes a well-designed home is the result of the little things in it. HolyCool is a design blog showcasing oh-so-cute, cool objects and home products with a twist you won’t find anywhere else, and these will add a chic tone to your home. Each post covers a certain product or set of products, and includes a brief description along with a link to the online store selling the item. Have you ever seen such a sweet egg cup before? Find this and hundreds of other cool products on HolyCool.

6. Design Mom – Gabrielle Blair, a talented designer and a mother of six has created this blog which presents the intersection points between design and motherhood. The result is nothing short of inspiring, well-written posts on the many facets of design (including fabulous cooking as well). As you will agree after visiting Design Mom, motherhood can be quite a colorful and creative adventure!

7. DECOmyplace – Check out real living places of people all over the world, submitted by users who decided to share their design whim with the online community. Browse styles, themes and living space categories for the site’s full nine yards wonder. DECOmyplace is a fun, gorgeous and inspiring source of home decor you should visit on a regular basis. In addition, you can submit your own pad’s design ideas. My personal favorite is the one below.

8. KNSTRCT – Simply entering this site will pull you right into the warm and fuzzy world of design. KNSTRCT explores the ingenuity of design in various fields including architecture, interior design, fashion, travel, transportation, art and product design. The entire site has a sophisticated, upscale look and feel, as do the individual posts KNSTRCT always garnishes with large high resolution photos. This one is certainly special and it is filled with brilliant design ideas.

9. Design*Sponge – This design site is one of my personal favorites. As you will discover, it combines all of the elements each of the above sites offers. Design*Sponge has a sophisticated taste of design and style, but without the posh attitude. It offers a large DIY section, offers great (and practical) interior design ideas and product reviews, among many other features. In short, it’s an A-list design site. Here’s a cool before-and-after example of Julie’s kitchen. Amazing, isn’t it? Total cost: $15,000 and this included all new appliances!

10. All My Faves’ Design MiniFaves – For all of the fabulous design sites listed above and many other top online design pics, visit our Design MiniFaves page dedicated to the pretty things in life. Aside from architecture and interior design you will find there grade A graphic and Web design sites as well as well-designed sites, such as Jim Carrey’s gorgeous official site.

IdeasWatch – For those of you who have experienced a moment of epiphany about a piece of technology, device or concept that is in need but not yet available, you will appreciate IdeasWatch. It’s the place for visionaries everywhere to pitch their startup idea, and where creative professionals can discuss these ideas with entrepreneurs and see if the idea can become a reality. Here’s a video explaining what IdeasWatch is about:

So what kind of innovative ideas will you find on IdeasWatch? Virtually everything, from every field. To start you can browse ideas (each can be voted for by Likes) or go straight to the most liked ideas. Here’s a popular one I found:

To submit your own idea, click on Share idea. I hope to see great things come out of this creative initiative by the community, for the community!

Macheesmo – What happens when you take tested recipes, add clearly presented how-to instructions made easy, and throw in high resolution yummy photos? You get this Weekly Blog winner, Macheesmo, written and cooked up by food savvy Nick, who is eager to share his kitchen adventures. One thing Macheesmo helped me master in the kitchen is preparing home-made lasagna, which always seemed like a daunting task. Thanks, Nick! This was a real treat! Click the image below to get to the full post, and browse the huge collection of other recipes available on Macheesmo.

WolframTones – For those of you unfamiliar with Wolfram|Alpha, it is Stephen Wolfram’s computational knowledge engine based on the British scientist’s New Kind of Science approach. WolframTones is an intriguing experiment based on the same scientific premise, and “works by taking simple programs from Wolfram’s computational universe, and using music theory and Mathematica algorithms to render them as music. Each program in effect defines a virtual world, with its own special story–and WolframTones captures it as a musical composition.” In other words, Wolfram Tones creates music from algorithms.”

The nice thing about WolframTones is you don’t have to be a computer science graduate to appreciate the beauty of composing melodies based on computational processes. The user interface is fun and easy, and the WolframTones magic really shines when you add more variations to your creation. Another great perk this experiment offers is a free download of your music creation which can be applied as a ringtone. To learn more about how to compose music on WolframTones, consult the FAQ page.