Yellow and Brown Color Scheme

Happy Tuesday everyone.  I hope y’all had a great Memorial Day weekend!  Ours was such a blast!  It was so great to have a mini reunion with friends from business school days.  Coming off of a weekend where fun was a huge priority over sleep, I’m exhausted this morning.  So I have little energy for posting.

Sadly, I didn’t get a chance to finish off painting our dining room chairs this weekend but I’m getting there.  I thought I’d share with you one of my favorite formal dining rooms by local designer, Palmer Weiss. 

I’m sure it’s obvious that I love the white chairs.  But what really sends me swooning is that amazing gold mirror, the aqua tear drop lamps and that gold light fixture.  Bananas!

What do you think of the room?  Are you into the warm brown and yellow colors?  I’m not usually into the combo because those were my highschool colors – not that I didn’t love highschool…but, it does remind me of a cheer our rivals used to sing, “yellow and brown, flush it down”…too far?  Anyway, Palmer pulled the color scheme off perfectly.  Aces.

Happy Friday

Happy Friday!!  It’s the long weekend.  Yippeee!!  What do you have planned for this memorial day?  

We have business school friends visiting from New York City.  I’m over the moon happy that they’re in town and we can show them around.  Today, I am taking the day off of work.  Lovely reader and good friend, Aimee,  put together an awesome itinerary for the day.  We’ll be hitting up only the best wineries in Sonoma and Healdsburg complete with a lunch at Domaine Chandon.  So sophisticated.

I was in charge of planning Saturday so we are headed over to my family ranch where we’ll be drinking cheap beer, the boys will be making sausages, bar-b-queing ribs and we’ll all take some long hikes.  So not sophisticated but still a good time.  

I’m off to go plan an outfit that will still look cute after I’ve had a few too many in wine country (does that even exist?).  I’d like to leave you this weekend with my all time favorite Sonoma home spread…

Home designed by Antonio Martins.  I love the rustic, casual vibe of this Sonoma home.  Martins found many of the items, with the help of his clients, at Bay Area flea markets, resale shops and salvage yards.  Such an inspiration for finding beauty in other’s leftovers.  I love the creativity!

Farewell Oprah

After my dad passed, I moved back to Chicago.  I found myself in an unknown city, with few close friends, no job and lots of alone time.  From the moment my husband left for school to the time he walked inside our door that evening, I parked myself in front of the television.  I spent hours upon hours without movement watching listless, pointless shows, numb to the world.  But, it was Oprah who would reach out to me, motivate me and help to lift me up.  As cheesy as it sounds, it is the honest truth.  Day after day she would say, “start embracing the life that is calling you and use that platform to serve the world” “you are worthy because you were born and because you are here” “you alone are enough”

I now have a personal policy to never turn on the TV during the day, even though I spend most my days alone (part of having a company of 1).  Daytime television brings back the haunting memory of deep, deep sadness.  But yesterday, I had a date.  A date with the woman who helped to get me off of that couch.  Who reached through the TV and might as well shook me, yelling – listen to your passion.  Create.  Live.  Love.  Unplug the television and plug back into life.

It was not her alone that got me from six hours of TV watching a day to a fulfilled life today.  And most thought it humorous I claimed she helped so much.  I had a lot of help from family and friends and I worked hard myself.  But she really struck a chord with me five days a week.  It was during those hours that I started to believe in myself.  I started to believe that life would come again.

So yes, I cried like a blubbering baby.  I let the ugly cry come out in all it’s beauty as she walked off that stage one last time at 5:00 yesterday.

How could she go?  What will I do with future crisis?

But as Oprah has expressed time and time again…I will find the strength from within.  And most importantly, I will let grace in.

Oprah, happy trails to you, until we meet again…

Feeling Sheepish?

Reed Krakoff

                                                                                                        Elle Decor

Peppermint Bliss

                                                                                                Via Jamie Meare’s Flicker

New York City Showhouse

Everyone loves  a sweet lamb or a couple of sheep.  How can you not?  My brother and I begged for sheep growing up but since we already had goats and pigs there was NO WAY my mom was going to say yes to more animals.  You’d think after such a rough sheep deprived childhood, I’d want a little lamby for a room of mine.  But I don’t.

I love an element of strange.  And the sheep provide that.  I loved it when I first spotted one in a room and it caught my interest right away.  But, it seems to be a bit of  a trend.  I’m probably not hopping on board this one because it looses it’s element of strange if everyone has one.  Plus, the real Lalanne sheep are a collectors item that run about $30,000 or up at auctions.

My mom has an Ostrich sculpture similar to the sheep.  It’s the weirdest.  And so not trendy.  Us kids made fun of her about it and it’s now hidden in her fishing lodge.  But perhaps mom was on to something.  Life size ostrich sculptures could be the next big thing…ya never know.  Sorry for making fun of you mom.  You probably were a visionary and 15 years later, we’ll see one on the cover of Elle Decor.

Elizabeth St.

While searching around ETSY for little pieces to put on a client’s bookshelf, I came across the cutest shop:  Elizabeth St.  She makes the most adorable pinwheels and paper balls using old maps.

I would love to put these as a mobile for a nursery, if we were going for the “well traveled look.”  I’ve been wanting to do a nursery like this where you collect fabulous items from around the world – such as bright striped rugs from Peru and Ottomi fabric from Mexico for some of the bedding, a JuJu hat from South Africa – you get where I’m going with this.  And then these map balls of far off lands to tie in the look. Hopefully, one day I’ll find a client who is on board with the idea.  Here’s a room that has a similar feel to what I’m thinking…

Designed by Erin of Design Crisis.

Elizabeth St. also makes the cutest map pinwheels.  I would love to use them at a party and then gather them all in a mason jar and use them as a permanent bouquet as shown below…

How sweet!  See more at Elizabeth St., here.

Carnival by Christopher Farr

unfortunately, I did not finish off spray painting my chairs white for the dining room table.  I was hoping to share the big reveal today.  🙂  But, I’ve got more work to go on them.  So, I thought I would share a fabric I’m considering for the seats.  It’s called Carnival by Christopher Farr….

You may have spotted this fabric on the cover of Vogue Living…

Designed by Jeffery Alan Marks

It’s a fabulous, fun print.  I love the large scale and the colors which would compliment the blues in the painting we have up in that room.  But it’s a pricey fabric and I have to do some number crunching before taking the leap.  Right now, I’m still in the inspiration stages.

Happy Friday

Happy Friday!!  I’ve got my favorite kind of weekend up ahead…one filled with parties, parties, parties!!  Friday night we’re going to a birthday party, Saturday night we’ll be going to two birthday parties and Sunday my best friend is in town from Seattle we’ll be shopping (par – tay) and Sunday night we have a celebratory dinner for a friend.

The invitation for one of the parties we’ll be attending asked that we dress in our favorite color.  My favorite?  Coral.

What I would wear to the party if I owned it…

                                                                                                 Available HereTop to bottom coral love.  I would probably pair a jean jacket with the look even though your supposed to only wear your favorite color.

And what my apartment would wear to the event…

And if the party were to dress in my favorite color, it would look like this…

Happy Friday!!  What will you be doing this weekend?

All images via Pinterest.

White Chairs Wood Tables

Well folks, we finally have chairs instead of benches for our dining room table.  I liked the benches but I had grown tired of the look and our dining room has never felt quite right to me.

 I’ll reveal the chairs once I’m done spray painting them.  Please don’t roll your eyes, but there is some faux bamboo involved.  I know.  Could I get over it already?  Apparently not.

I would have loved to tap into my inner Trina Turk obsession and painted them coral with a great brown seat cushion.  Like this adorable settee that came from her Palm Springs store and is available on LA Craigslist, here.

I would copy it to the T.  But the man around here has strong “no more pink” outbursts when I start talking paint.   And since I love him, I’ve got to refrain from pink.  I then considered the next best thing which was an orange…

Fabulous super charged color.  Graham took one look at the above photos and said, “too Halloweeny.”

For a brief second, I considered doing a turquoise.  But I felt I would tire of four turquoise chairs – although, I’d never tire of this office…

Design from Waterleaf Interiors (my friend is lucky enough to work there).  After all this hype of fun, bold, poppy colors, you may be a bit disappointed that I decided on white.  Keep in mind though spray painting is secretly the easiest thing on the planet to do so I can always change it.

There are plenty of white chairs/wood table eye candy shots out there.  Inspiration awaits…

So what do you think of the look?  Are you convinced on my white?  Or should I run back to the paint store?

Kate Spade Bedding

While I seem to be on the subject of my bed and bedding this week (which I’m finally getting around to fully sprucing up), I thought I’d share where I ordered my bed skirt from.  I’m going with a cheery yellow and white stripe from Kate Spade through her new Spring 2011 Bed Bath and Beyond line…

I really am smitten with the happy color and the classic stripe.  The line is available online through Bed Bath and Beyond; I believe Bloomingdales also carries it.  And nothing is over $200!

Here is another set that they carry – I’m in love with the trellis bed skirt and pillows

And for a classic black and white look…

Love it all!  Get your Kate Spade on over at Bed Bath and Beyond.

E-Bay Purchase

Over the weekend, I made my very first e-bay furniture purchase.  As you know, I’m obsessed with faux bamboo.  Sarasota, Florida seems to be the mecca for bamboo.  I find myself frequenting the land of e-bay dreaming of actually purchasing from the sunshine state.  I finally pulled the trigger…

I hope to spray paint it a high gloss white.  However, it will be delivered to our place in San Francisco where we don’t have room to spray paint so it may remain as is.  We shall see how it arrives.  The seller e-mailed me asking me if I would also be interested in this piece…

Ummm.  Hello?  Of course, I would be!!  Send it on down…the price is right.  I would cover my entire life in faux bamboo if I could.  However, I’ll resist temptation and say enough already with the bamboo.  You can purchase this beautiful highboy here and bring a little Florida into your life.  Have you ever purchased furniture off of E-Bay before?