Boise Idaho's Chair Affair 2013

Last year I was a guest speaker for the Boise Idaho's design community for the chair affair and this year they asked my best friend Jordan Cappella to be the guest! Jordan was on last seasons Design Star for HGTV. He spoke about how his experience was working on a reality television show and how he started his career and also showed some of his fabulous furniture Lucite designs.

You can view his amazing portfolio HERE.

Each year students and professionals make by hand chairs and tables to be submitted and judged by a selected few from Idaho's design association for the chance to win in certain categories at the Chair Affair Gala, held Saturday evening.

My dear friend Kirsten Grove of Simply Grove, who lives in Boise took me to some fabulous vintage stores and I even brought home some great vintage finds! Really loved Jillopy,  and we even hit up some antique malls where I found some brass birds and a brass mirror.

Idaho is really a great place to visit and if you get a chance please stay at The Modern Hotel, its really a jem of a place!

Above our images from our trip and dinners out with friends! Thank you Kirsten for always showing me a great time! And thank you Jordan for letting me pall around with you. And thank you Kristen Montgomery for taking care of us!

Thank you Kelly Edwards: The Design Cookbook

If you haven't purchased the new home decor book by Kelly Edwards called The Design Cookbook, make sure you do!

This massive book is full of all types of wonderful interiors and is sectioned off by different rooms so its easy to locate other great looking bedrooms or dining rooms.

I was so happy when Kelly asked me to be a part of her new book and above are images of some of my interiors in the book. Please pick it up HERE on Amazon.com. You will love adding this new book to your collection!

PATH: New Charity Design Project

Vanessa Kogevinas and I are decorating a new charity project this month and need your help! We are furnishing two apartments in Glendale for a local organization called PATH to help find people permanent housing in Los Angeles.

They came to us after seeing our work with the Good Shepherd Charity Design Project near downtown Los Angeles.

We had a meeting last week and knew we had to jump on this project. We are super excited about  creating a new home for these people, but need LOTS of furniture donations. Please look around your home, garage even ask your neighbors and see what you don't need any longer. Tax write offs are available and we need the items asap we install in 2 weeks. If you have large items we can make the PATH truck available for pick ups.

Below are the items we need: (Ikea and vintage pieces are just fine)

Queen and Full sheets

Queen and Full headboards

2 Coffee tables
3 rugs 
Chandeliers 
3 curtain rods any color - long length
2 credenzas 
4 long dressers (not high boys)
2 desks 
4 stools

Frames, mirrors, vases, silverware, pots & pans and dishes

Please email me a photo or a direct link and measurements of the items. We need to see images so we can properly place the items the in two different apartments. They are actually located in two different areas. Unused gift cards to Ross and TJMaxx would be great too! We need all the help we can get!

If you don't have anything to give and would like to help by decorating then please email me if you would like to help out.

We look forward to hearing from you and hope that you will help us make these two apartments amazing for these people who have struggled and are going to having their own place to call home!

(Above our images of the Mary Magdalene Project we decorated last year. )

Venice Beach Bungalow REDO: Post #1

In the last few months I have been super busy with my client projects, selling on One Kings Lane, plus gearing up for our new charity design project and not to mention a NEW Magazine Show House I will be installing this summer in Northern California. Clearly I have a lot on plate and have been trying to blog more too. But I have been itching to redecorate my home and lately whatever time I have left I have been tackling this little house.

So I sold almost everything and decided to start fresh with new design ideas for my beach bungalow. If you don't know this already I have lived in the same little beach bungalow for years and every couple of years I sell everything and redo EVERYTHING.

The color palette for my home is white and brass. Yep thats pretty much about it. White and brass.

There are hints of indigo blue and light grays and some red but almost everything will be bright white and shiny brass with a dab of chrome. I just picked out some fun geometic wallpaper for the kitchen that only comes in chrome.

Attached is my inspiration board (so far) for my living room. The space is actually almost done. I still need to add some more art and install the brass sconces featured above.

I am excited to show you all more and will post more sneak peeks of my home in a couple days. If you cant wait and want to view more, you can follow me on Instagram - HERE. Enjoy!

Rope Mirror DIY

Back in January Jordan Cappella and I went to Las Vegas for Vegas Market. We had a blast visiting tons of showrooms and meeting lots of new vendors in the interior design industry. While looking around I spotted this rope mirror. And loved it. Then last weekend I have been trying to come up with a way to redo or revamp or add a mirror to my bathroom.
I am redecorating my home. I will post lost of pictures of the progress soon! And remembered a mirror I saw at Vegas Market and went out and bought 2 bunches of rope and dusted off my old glue gun and started gluing away.

I have never used a glue gun, not even sure why I had one in the first place and I must say the mirror turned out pretty good. Funny right before I decieded to buy the rope and try to make the mirror I ended up seeing it at a store (but it had some bag seashells on it and some fake sea glass).

The entire project cost me around $4.00 not bad for a new mirror.

If you have made one yourself or have one, please post it in the comments! Enjoy!

Thank you Casa Sugar / Lil Sugar!

Thank you Lisa at Pop Sugar for featuring my latest babys room project on Lil Sugar yesterday! I gave some great tips on how to start the decorating process of your own babys room and you can view the full article and more images of the post here. Enjoy!

If you want to view all the images from the room, click here.

Also thank you to Angela from Casa Sugar for the original introduction. Photo credit Irene Lovett.

Olio Board Charity Causes / Olio Hop

Im very excited to be a part of the Charity Causes Olio Hop with Olio Board this month! Olio Board has chosen a few designers who are working on various charity projects and we are previewing each of our mood boards on our blogs and social media. Please follow us all on twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook and search the tag names: #Oliohop, #CharityCauses to view our boards and information on each project.

My Olio Board is a bedroom for a young man. I chose browns and blacks and a hint of some color in the art work to give the room a masculine feel but a fun play on color with the artwork. I didn't want the room to be too fancy or too gender identified and was trying to create a room that would fit the needs of any man's age. I added darker furniture and lots of chrome and soft edges. The felt ottomans are always a great way to add more seating to a small room and the bunk beds with storage provide extra beds without taking up too much room. I also added a cool brown lounge chair that doesn't take up too much room and can easily be moved around. And last but not least I included a high impact rug that had a great modern pattern to it!

Please check out the list of designers and their boards here on Facebook. Click on the Charity Causes link for more information.

The charity project I am working on is called Freehab and at this stage our press release has not gone out but we are excited to share with you the people behind this amazing project.

Right now we are looking for deigners to come aboard and lots of bedroom and living room furniture. You can read more here on my blog post last week.

Enjoy the Oliohop and hope that you will donate to our cause!

New Press: Glo MSN

Thank you Elizabeth Jenkins for including me in your latest story on Glo MSN about "Shopping Secrets from Design Pros". In my quote I mentioned a lamp that I purchased from Big lots that I used to decorate the Good Shepherd Charity Project. I had it painted blue and it totally reminded me of one of Jonathan Alder's early style of lamps.

You can view it here.

Anyway in my original quote I said that my sister and I used to say that if we bought something from Pic 'N Save (the original name for Big Lots), we would call it Kip and Eva's - which was Pic 'N Save backwards. Just to keep it on down low... we didn't want to give away our secrets! So EVEN though Big Lots is Big Lots and Stol's Gib just really doesn't sound that cool, we still call it Kip and Eva's!

Anyway was hoping they would add my funny story to the quote but now I guess I get to tell me version of it!

Do you have a funny name for a store like Targe' for Target or Needless Markups for Nieman Marcus?

Would love to hear your own story!

New Charity Project - HELP!

Vanessa Kogevinas and I are excited to announce that we are about to embark on our biggest charity project to come! We are excited to be working with Lauri Burns from The Teen Project, I worked with Lauri last year on her project crash pad in Venice. A rec center for homeless teenagers and foster kids to feel safe in.

This project is a rehab center backed by some really wonderful celebrities and powerful people. At this time (since we have not publicly made our announcement) we cannot name any names. We already have some wonderful vendors and designers that have signed on to help but we still need more products and designers to help on our big project. We have more meetings coming up and will have more information in the coming weeks.

Right now we are looking for large vendors of office furniture, bedroom furniture, plus TONS of sheets. If you have items to give please send us images or links of what you have. Anything helps. Please do not tell us what you have, you must include images or links. If you have a connection with a large vendor or retail store please email us and can fill you in on more information and details to what we need. We have over 150 beds to to fill! And thats not counting the meeting rooms, offices, kitchen areas, lobby and more!

Anyway we look forward to working with you and hope you will join us in this project. Vanessa K and I love giving back this is our mission! And are excited to make this new facility our next project.

Sherman Oaks 6 - Baby's Room - New Project!

Im so happy to share with you a new babys room I just completed in Sherman Oaks. I loved my client who said I am not decorating this for the little guy but for me, the room needs to reflect who I am as a mommy just as much as who my baby is as well. This was music to my ears. Its so nice to create a room for the mom too.

The client loved green and blue and selected a perfect shade of lime green for the Ikat fabric we used for the valances and Serena and Lilly sheets, some touches of more green in the baskets and then bought all modern white furniture. The crib and changing table came from Beginnings on La Brea. Great customer service and our items come just in time for the babies arrival.

The rooms paint came from Valspar Thank you Valspar for the paint!! And the decals were from WhatisBlik-that I had actually won them at their 10th anniversary party in Marin Del Rey.

The toy box and cabinets are all from Ikea that perfectly fit in the corner of the room. We bought new feet that we cut down and spayed white. I personally don't care for those metal Ikea feet that they sell with this piece. And inset the feet in a little so that the unit would be flushed against the wall away from the floor molding. You actually cant see them because the crib is in the way, but they are inset just a little. And we had the bamboo shades custom made with black out attached to them.

Over all the room came out very sweet and my client likes to call it the club house because of the white panels on the wall. We are off to decorate the living room, dining room and entry and slowly but surely so I hope to get those pics added to my blog and website as well. Enjoy!

You can view all the pics HERE!

Sneak Peek - Echo Park Radio Studio

For the last few months I have been working on a redesign for a radio studio in Echo Park. The radio station InTraffik is broadcasting from Bedrock Studios a sound studio on the Eastside of town. My client wanted something fun and comfortable for the studio and wanted lots of space, storage and a proper desk to file and get interviews for her guests comfortably.

We first started with the design for the walls. The walls are carpeted from about 36" up from the floor so we chose some pretty wild colors purple red gray and white to balance the dark gray carpeting. I worked with my cousin Clark French, who is the most amazing painter and he was able to create the most perfect and straight lines for the wall design.

Above are some sneak peeks of the wall design and some furniture pieces we added to the space. Will be shooting the room in the next few weeks and super excited to share this fun project with you all.

Hope you enjoy the images!

Thank you Cottages and Bungalows Magazine

A few months ago I was approached by the editors at Cottages & Bungalows Magazine to be interviewed and they wanted to feature one my projects for the January 2013 issue. I was so happy and excited to see the issue came out early and I wanted to share with you the almost 10 page spread of my adorable clients home in Sherman Oaks!

I want to thank everyone at Cottages and Bungalows, the issue looks great! Please enjoy the images below...

Thank you Adore Magazine

I am so happy to share a project I designed and decorated in Venice is featured in the new Dec/Jan issue of Adore Magazine! Thank you Loni for featuring my clients home in Venice! To read more about this home and find similar resources from this project, click here - the feature starts on page 114. Thanks again Loni!

Thank You Real Simple Magazine

A few months ago I was contacted by the editors at Real Simple Magazine letting me know that they were looking for new content to add to the "Decorating" category on the website and if I could send them some images. Well I just found out that they used a bunch of my photos on the site! I am so honored to have so many images featured, WOW!

I was able to find three of the images under "Modern Bedroom"s. But you may want to take a look at the other categories, there are tons of great inspiration images and DIY and decorating ideas on the site.
you can click HERE to view the other categories.

Thank you everyone at Real Simple, you have certainly made my day!