Modern Vintage

For my final Chic Outdoors feature, we're looking at accessories that will help create a back to nature look - not so much rustic casual - Adirondack chairs kind of rustic, we are talking raw minimalist elegance.

It's all about raw wood...use West Elm's Wood Slices to display an assortment of pillar candles or put out a display of succulents (I especially love Martha's collection at 1-800-Flowers) on them. Serve up some flatbread, pita crisps, foccacia and some crudite in West Elm's Raw Wood Collection Bowls and offer a trio of dips in Pottery Barn's Mango Wood Salsa Bar.

Create the perfect ambiance with Green Glass Tealight holders and use river rocks as a bed for your bowls of snacks, fill up various glass hurricanes and bowls with them (you can use all white for say a rectangle vase, all black for a tall hurricane and perhaps a mixture of smaller pebbles in a short square vase - mix it up and have fun!). The chicest use of all for these rocks? - write on them. On larger flat rocks, write out names of snack items and dips being offered or even use them as place cards. Write out each guests name and place it atop each place setting.

Serve up some fish, chicken breast, and steaks cooked over raw-heat - or rather, hot burning coal, with PB's mini bucket - portable outdoor grill. If you're a big pizza fan, invest in William and Sonoma's amazing  terra-cotta Beehive Pizza Oven - you can roast poultry, fish, vegetables and cook just about anything you would in a wood burning oven - your grubs will be infused with a rustic smoky flavor. Just imagine, with this baby, you'll be throwing the chicest pizza soirees.