Dear Readers,

This is a super exciting day for all of us here at the office and beyond, where a bunch of us work from home. We're all sitting behind our computers madly typing away on the blog, IM, Facebook and Twitter as the traffic ramps up, and we deal with tech issues, fan mail and questions that come with the territory of such a big change on a Monday morning.

We've been working on this for at least two years, and I want to explain a little bit of the thinking behind what you see here.

We're looking for a great full-time web designer to join us in our NYC offices as we revamp everything from top to bottom this year.

In particular, we're looking for someone with strong graphic design and branding skills, who also has a very good working knowledge of HTML and CSS.

The first job will be to join in our redesign process with our art director, Thomas Porostocky, and work through a complete redesign for launch in September. With general look and feel being completed now, we'll be applying design to all of our pages and then working them into front end form. The more you can do with HTML and CSS, the better.

Kicking off our new series of How To Videos, here's a fully filmic version of one of most popular winter posts about how to turn the skin of a yummy clementine into a dinner party show stopper.

• See the video at Apartment Therapy

Dear Readers,

After eight days of vigorous voting*, this year's winner for Best Home Cooking Blog is:

Gina's Skinny Recipes!

Blogger: Gina Homolka
Location: Oceanside, New York
Blogging Since: 2008

Please check out Gina's great blog and thank you for taking part in helping us to discover and celebrate the best in the home blogosphere. Gina's Skinny Recipes will now join our pantheon of Best Blogs, and we'll see you next year in January.

Best, Maxwell

* Please note that to counter vote stuffers, we removed any instances where we saw an extreme amount of votes from one unique IP address. We did allow for instances like universities, where there could be many people on one IP, and we did examine IP locations. We applied the exact same criteria to each blog and vote entered in the contest.

We're in the final week of our 2010 Holiday Giveaway. From Monday to Friday of this week, all the remaining gifts will pop up for you to win. After that, it's all over until next year. Check out the freshest crop:

Just Opened 12/14/2010
• Handpainted Halo Sunburst Mirror
• Ivanhoe™ Sinclair Industrial Porcelain Pendant
• Hanging Pod Trio from Mudpuppy Ceramic Studio
• LifeCam Studio and Arc Touch Mouse from Microsoft
• Baby Carrier from Fawn & Forest
• ZWILLING ONE Knife Set

Opened Yesterday 12/13/2010
• Bouroullec Brothers Algue from BabyGeared
• Tao Bookshelf from Gingko Home Furnishings
• P5 Headphones from Bowers and Wilkins
• 4-Piece Crib Bedding Set from Olli and Lime
• Bamboo Chop Block and Utensils from TruBamboo
• Hand Blender from De'Longhi

WHAT: A book signing and presentation - "The 10 Things You Need to Know About Apartment Therapy" - with Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, author of Apartment Therapy's Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces and founder of Apartment Therapy.

WHEN: Monday, December 6 · 7pm-8pm

WHERE: McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, NYC, 10012 (between Lafayette & Mulberry)

My fave post: David & Im's Onespace from 2006

Currently: 4,604,288
Days to Go: 3
Estimate: Currently: 5,039,627

Dear Readers, remember when your first car rolled from 99,000 to 100,000 miles?

This week, I'm hoping that you'll help push us over the edge in reaching a HUGE milestone - 5,000,000 monthly readers. Right now we're estimating 5,028,212 by Sunday, but to get there it will take A LOT of new traffic to break the 5M mark. Help us.

WHAT: A talk on the "Short, Happy History of Apartment Therapy" and book signing with Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, author of Apartment Therapy's Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces and founder of Apartment Therapy.

WHEN: Thursday, October 28 · 5:00pm - 8:00pm

WHERE: Room & Board DC | 1840 14th Street NW Washington, DC 20009

RSVP: at the Room & Board DC page

Two weeks ago I flew out to Chicago to see the gargantuan Home & Housewares Show for the first time. I love Chicago and the show was really interesting in that it wasn't furniture or design centered, but service centered. Everything was closer to hardware store than to home furnishings shop, and everything was PRACTICAL. After two days of trolling (I barely cracked the show), here are my top finds.