For my "iPhone App of the Week" series I always try and focus on a free application because there are so many wonderful free apps to choose from.  However, I was so impressed by the Mark On Call app from M.O.C. Interior Designer, LLC, that I had to feature it in this series!  Mark On Call is just $2.99 on sale at the Apple Store, and let me assure you, this is three dollars that will be well spent!

This application allows you to plan out any room and make sure that every piece of furniture will fit, while also giving you a visual image of how the floor plan will look, and how your chosen furniture, fabrics, and color palette will look together.  You can import photos from your camera or the app's library to accessorize your room, while also inputting exact measurements to get a sense of how everything will fit before you start buying furniture.  This is like a digital inspiration board and floor plan combined!  Here is a video which explains more about this creative application. 

I know I can't wait to start using it!

I hope that you all enjoyed restful and enjoyable holiday weekends with your family.  We are back at home in NYC, but had a great holiday with our family in NJ and CT!

Our Thanksgiving weekend started on Thursday when my husband, his brother, and I embarked on what should have been a short drive to his cousin's home in New Jersey.  An hour later, and only 30 blocks down the FDR, we realized that we were in for a long trip to our Thanksgiving dinner...

But we didn't let the traffic dampen our holiday spirits.  I got creative and started looking for a free app to help us pass the time during our extended car ride.  The app we all settled on was:

VH1's I Love the 80s Trivia offers 50 free 80s trivia questions all from the writers of VH1's I Love the 80s!  It also includes 20 I Love the 90s Trivia questions.  And, if you want more than just 50 questions, you can upgrade this application for just 99 cents and get over 500 80s trivia questions!  We decided to splurge and upgraded for the full version.  It was definitely 99 cents that were well spent!

An hour and a half later when we finally made it to our meal we didn't even notice the time that had past!  Wow my husband and his brother definitely know their 80s trivia...I am going to have to brush up on my 80s TV and rock bands before I play this game with them again!

Do you have a favorite app to help pass the time on extended car rides?

I hope you all had wonderful long weekends and safe travels home!

As we gear up for Thanksgiving next week, the proximity of December shopping and gift giving is right around the corner.  Now I'm sure that many of you are completely organized when it comes to your holiday shopping, but if you are anything like me, than you may need a little extra help when it comes to tracking your gift list and budget!
 
I promise I have the best of intentions when it comes to shopping, but it's just so easy to forget who you have shopped for on your list, and before  you know it you have bought the same person two gifts and another person on your list is sadly left without even a stocking stuffer!

That is why I am so excited about the free Gift List  app new to the iPhone this fall. 

The Gift List application by Gennubi is a a free app that will help you:

- track gift lists by person
- track budgets and amount spent per person
- keep notes about each gift purchased
- check off gifts you have purchased
- keep a running tally of money spent

Do you ever feel like everyone has better luck than you do when it comes to picking up antiques and vintage pieces at tag and estate sales?  How does everyone hear about these sales so quickly? 

Tag and Estate sales can be a treasure trove of great antique and home accessories!  Like this amazing sale that Matters of Style recently wrote about...MOS Charlotte found so many great pieces at this sale that she just accidentally stumbled upon!

Because I feel like I'm always a day late when it comes to finding tag and estate sales, I am so excited about this free app that I just found: Yard Sale Mapper!

This app gathers listings for nearby yard sales, tag sales, and garage sales from Craiglist and transfers them to a Google map so that you can efficiently plan a whole day of yard sale shopping!

What a great way to plan a Saturday of thrifting...and as always, it's free!

For anyone who has ever spent hours trying to find just the right paint, you know what a painstaking process it can be trying to find just the right color to complement your room or home.

Well for those of us with an iPhone, Benjamin Moore has made this process a little easier with their "Color Capture" application.

This handy app allows you to take a picture of anything, and it will match your picture to a selection of Benjamin Moore paints that are most like your picture.  So if you are in a store and love the coral hue of a cashmere sweater, or if you in the Caribbean and want a paint that remind you of the turquoise waters you have spent the week swimming in, this is the app for you!  It also allows you to store a record of  favorite paints, and find local retailers that will carry your selected paint color.

Here is a short video by Benjamin Moore that will show you just how this fun app works!
 

Happy Painting!

How many times have you been standing in the beauty aisle at your local drugstore and you want to buy a new bottle of nail polish, but you just don't know which one to choose?

Sometimes polish can play tricks on the eye when it is in the jar!  Even if you like the way a polish looks on the shelf, it is hard to know what it will look like when it is out of the bottle, and on your pretty little fingernails!

That is why I love this clever and free iPhone app from one of my favorite polish lines, OPI.  The OPI iPhone app allows you to virtually try on OPI's entire collection of polishes, while also customizing the experience by allowing you to choose your specific skin tone.  Here are two of my favorite polishes...
 

Today I am starting a new weekend series at Living Luxe for Less...the free iPhone app of the week!  I love my iPhone, and I know many of you feel the same way.  From GPS to an assortment of amazing lifestyle and game apps to choose from, once you acquire one of these amazing devices, it truly is hard to imagine your life without one!
And even though the iPhone is a high priced piece of technology, once you acquire one of these phones you will quickly discover that there are thousands of free apps at your finger tips that make up for the phone's steep price tag.

So to start off this series, this week's free App of the week is:
Urban Daddy The Next Move!

The Next Move has a variety of major American cities to choose from, but of course I always have mine set to NYC!  This application has several levels of customization, and is an amazing tool to have at your fingertips whether you are planning a night out with friends on the fly, or if you just finished dinner and need to find a local spot for one more cocktail with friends.  You can customize your search results by city, neighborhood, time of day, event/meal, who you are with, and what you are looking for out of the event.  How cool is that?!

Do you use Urban Daddy's The Next Move?  If not I suggest you check it out! 

Do you have a favorite free iPhone app you think I should feature here?  If so please Contact Me!  I would love suggestions!

Happy Sunday Everyone!