Moroccan Gifts

Yesterday, my mom flew to Morocco.  Lucky duck.

Most of the time when my mom goes on these very cool trips, I try to politely hint and then aggressively beg to be brought with.  But, I know when she’ll cave and when she won’t.  This one wasn’t in the cards for me.  However, just because I can’t jaunt off to Morocco, doesn’t mean I can’t put in a special request for a home decor item.

As much as I’d love to jot down a huge list…um hello benni ourian rug, Moroccan lantern and Moroccan pottery, those are not exactly the easiest things to slip into a suitcase.  I could see Mom lugging a 200 pound rug through the bazaar with her hands full of other requests from me.  It wasn’t a nice thought.  Not to worry though, I did make a request.

Baby Girl wants a Moroccan pouf in her room authentically from Morocco and hand carried home by Grandma.

Request has been made and we shall see what she comes back with…

If you like this look, but you don’t feel like sending your mom to Morocco, there are plenty of choices on e-bay for the same thing.  Baby Girl just happens to be a stickler for special momentos.  And for those of you worried about mom’s suitcase, she’s going to bring it home unstuffed and they flatten out before packing.

Feeling Orange

Coming off of the Giant’s huge win and with Halloween right around the corner, I’m feeling orange.  I thought I’d show you where I use orange in my own home.

I know this is a bit blurry but it’s the best image that I’ve got.  This is our little eat in kitchen nook and I love the black Ikea vase with orange flowers for Halloween.

This is our sun room and where orange really comes into play.  It’s ended up being a really happy color and not something that I get sick of (I was afraid I would).  Do you have any orange in your home?

Nursery Update: Roman Shade Fabric

I finally bit the bullet and purchased the Shantung Silhouette for the nursery.  The fabric is in stock and I think I may get it backed and then my seamstress is going to whip up a shade for me.  So in about a month and a half I should have before and after window treatments to show you.

I decided to go for the color mineral, like these pillows…

Lets take a look at this fabulous fabric in all it’s glory.  I’ve seen it a lot in the smoke colorway which is beautiful but not as baby as the mineral.

I love it and I hope that you do as well.  I’ll be adding a pom pom trim to mine.  I still need to decide if I’ll go for white or pink for the trim.  Decisions, decisions…

Project List: New Hardware

Thanks to this blog for holding me accountable, I’m slowly ticking off projects around the house that I’ve been putting off.

The first item (and easiest to tackle) has officially been checked off.  Remember these pulls on our kitchen cabinets?

The new anthropologie pulls came when we were in Hawaii.  It’s a fun little change…

I enjoy having some bling to look at with my morning tea.

It wasn’t anything too dramatic but a little uplifting change.  When you know that you’ll be staying in a rental, I’m all for putting a little money into the place to make it feel personal and like your home.  This change cost less than a dinner for two out and we can take the knobs with us when we move and put back the old knobs.

What are your thoughts on investing in a rental?

Dreaming of a Four Post Bed

Remember my headboard that I purchased for our previous apartment.  I had it shipped out from Florida but I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for shipping so it took months for them to ship it out.  I loved the headboard and it served me really well in our previous apartment…

Our Old Apartment Bedroom

It was perfect there but it just doesn’t work in our current apartment.  We have really tall ceilings, like 14 ft. ceilings and I want something that speaks to the height.  The Faux Bamboo headboard is a low profile, which worked great for our previous apartment’s 8 ft. ceilings.  What to do?  Sell this one and purchase a canopy bed off of Craigslist, of course.  I already have my eye on one but I’ve promised Graham that I would sell this one first.  Any takers?  She’s a beaut.  Queen size.  E-mail me if interested and you live in the bay area…kate@katecollinsinteriors.com

Why canopy or 4 poster bed?  Well, because it will show off the fabulous height of the bedroom.  And because I’m feeling inspired but what others have done with a four poster bed…

Ideally, I would find a pencil post bed just like this on Craigslist –

I probably love this look so much because I grew up with two twin antique pencil post beds in my bedroom; they are identical to the bed shown above.  They are very special bed frames because my mom and her sister actually used them when they were kids as well.  I distinctly remember jumping on the beds as a kid with friends and one of the beds slats broke.  My mom was furious and she rarely got upset.  It was all fixed but now I so get it.  Sorry, mom. 🙂

I’m Back: Hawaii Recap

After leaving sunny Hawaii on Sunday afternoon, we arrived late into San Jose to a rainy, dark night.  I’ll admit it was a rude awakening back into reality and I have a bit of the vacation return blues.  But I have a lot of client meetings this week so that’ll help me to get back into the swing of things.

Here’s a little recap on the trip…

While in Hawaii, we always go on excursions and they usually involve hiking.  This time round my pinched sciatic nerve pain in my left lower back that I’ve been experiencing since about month three of pregnancy, decided to spread to my left hip and knee.  I look and feel like an overweight, elderly arthritic person.  One day at the beach, I saw an elderly woman wading in the ocean with a cane.  I’ve never been so jealous of a cane before in my life; I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.  I wrote Dr. Google about my situation and he told me to rest and to take Tylenol.

With hiking off the agenda, we went for some road trips instead.  The first trip, we set out for Hawi a small town north of Kahala coast.  It’s a cute little spot with a few shops.  I found things to bring home, obviously.  This sweet striped elephant for baby girl…

and this bracelet for myself…

Graham came home empty handed but that could be because he was mostly relegated to the “husband bench”…

While in town we had the best food we have had to date on the big Island.  It’s a cafe called “Zest”; it’s bit of a hole in the wall with mismatched thrift store furniture and an unassuming facade.  However, looks can be deceiving.  We were absolutely blown away with the quality of the food.  All ingredients were fresh and local.  We devoured our homemade tagliatelle pasta with fresh marlin and the house mushroom ravioli.

Once we finished licking the plates of our entrees, we were offered dessert that we couldn’t resist.  A dark chocolate brownie mixed with orange zest and homemade mint ice cream.  We literally watched the chef cut the mint leaves for our ice cream…talk about fresh.  “Zest” is a spot you must go to in Hawi.

With a full belly for Graham and a very, very full belly for me, we drove to the end of the road to check out the view…

Not too shabby.  Hawaii is a breathtaking Island.

Our second excursion, we set out for our favorite banana bread in the world, located at a bakery in Kona. This type of bread takes dedication to get as it is a 45 minute drive away from where we were staying.  But we rarely come here without making the trek.  Yes, it’s that good.

This time round, we made an impromptu stop at Kona Joes.  It was fascinating to see where coffee grows and it was the prettiest spot for coffee.

Hyped up on caffeine, we continued our trek to the banana bread spot only to find the bakery has new owners and they are hippies.  No offense to hippies.  I’m one quarter hippy myself but they messed with mamma’s banana bread.  It wasn’t as (brace yourself for this word) moist as it should have been.   I’m afraid the hippies removed the butter, eggs or worst of all, the fat.  Nonetheless, the bread was still consumed.  Shocker.

On the way back from “Upcountry Bakery”, we stopped in an antique shop.  Nothing jumped out at me.  But here were the treasures I left behind for others.

Vintage apothecary bottles; I loved the vintage wallpaper lining the cabinet…

Butterflies with an agate rock frame

Moroccan style brass dish…

Besides those two excursions, most of our days were spent at the beach club.  For the first time in my life I did not lie in the sun until my skin turned to leather.  Feeling like a protective mom, I didn’t want to overbook baby and so I sat in the shade of the cabana while Graham got his leather skin on.  We mostly read, swam, snorkeled and napped on those days.

While on the trip, baby turned 23 weeks in my belly.  Baby center reported she’s now the size of a large mango.  It felt like the perfect fruit for the week and I insisted on a mango/belly shot.

Last week she was the size of a banana.  Hmmm.  Strange growing…

Since this was a babymoon, we did milk the trip.  Most nights we ate out at delicious restaurants.  Every day, we treated ourselves to at least two fruity cocktail/mocktails.  We watched the sunset on the beach with Kona Longboard/ St. Pauly’s girl beers and cheese and crackers and Graham got to feel baby girl kick.  Best of all, we got a sunset couples massage on the beach.

I highly, highly recommend the concept of a baby moon.  Dare I say, I’d place it higher than a “baby ring?” Yes, I sound awfully spoiled.  But after struggling with infertility, I can help but feel a little beach time is well deserved. And in the near future when we are bleary eyed caring for an infant in the middle of the night, we can look at each other and say, “remember that trip to Hawaii?” as if it was a lifetime ago.

Cave Time

Graham and I are both incredibly blessed to grow up where we did and to live in San Francisco.  Our parents, siblings and nieces and nephews are all living within the bay area.  We live in such a great city that we have friends from high school, college, grad school, and work living here as well to play with.  We both have jobs that we absolutely love and we become completely ensconced with.  We are blessed!

But sometimes being surrounded with all this great activity leaves little time for just the two of us to hang….and I’m not meaning staring brain dead at “New Girl”.  I mean “cave time.”  What is cave time?  Well, that’s a little saying I made up when we were first married.  Cave time is a time when we turn off our cell phones, stop checking our e-mails, Instagram or sports updates; we don’t go to the bars with our friends or the outings with our families and we try our hardest to not talk about work.  We build a little cave where we can just cherish each other.  It sounds cheesy but we both look forward to cave time.

We try to reserve our Sundays for “cave time.”  However, starting tomorrow, we are going to relish in an entire week of it.  We’re off to Hawaii for our baby moon.  The plans include: wake up late, bike ride to the fresh squeezed smoothie shop, head to beach with book, layout, read and swim, come back home, make a cocktail/mocktail and bring that to our little beach to watch the sunset, go for an evening walk, come home and make a fish dinner go to bed early and repeat.  I can’t wait!!  And a huge thank you to Graham’s parents for lending us their place so that we can relish in this time before our cave gets a bit more crowded with the most precious gift of a little one.

Nesting

I’m thinking I’ve got some “nesting” hormones kicking in because I really want to finish up ALL projects around the house.  It’s not just the nursery anymore.

Everything takes time, money and energy and I can’t say I’m bursting at the seams in any of those categories.  So, I might as well make a list and take this one room at a time.  Plus, I’ll blog about it to hold myself accountable.

Perhaps, I should start small…as in really small.  I want to switch out the knobs in our kitchen from the Ikea ones (shown above) we currently have in the rental to these fun Anthro ones…

 

Bubbled Glass Knob – Anthropologie

I tested one out about six months ago and I loved it and the I felt maybe I would be better off spending money elsewhere.  Well, last night a friend of mine encouraged the purchase, I found a merchandise card in my wallet and I was off and purchasing.  Step one of finishing off projects is already 90% done.  That was easy!

Next up, this chair needs to be reupholstered.  I only bought this chair, with the intention of reupholstering right away, in Feb. 2011.  That is record breaking put-offness.  Had to make up a word for that one.

On Friday, I need to go check up on a project at my upholstery shop and so this chair is coming with me.  Progress!!

Fabric Plan

Yesterday, I had a great meeting with a client where we finalized the fabrics going in her living room.  I’ve touched on this project a bit with the pearl inlay coffee table and the spindle chairs.  Well, now we’ve got the fabric all set and ready to be ordered…

Office Organization

In this business, you get a lot of fabric samples.  And by a lot, I mean more than you could ever learn to deal with.  My little tiny office has exploded and it’s really frustrating; there are fabric samples all over the place.  I’m actually too embarrassed to show you before photos until I get some good afters going.

I’m inspired by the office of the Mother/Daughter duo from the blog, Good Bones, Great Pieces..

Doesn’t it all look so accessible and happily organized?  A place you could easily work in for hours.  Their office is at least double the size of mine but there are some tidbits that I think I could copy, such as the Ikea bookshelf full of fabric samples and the bin for each client’s fabrics.

Sadly, I’m thinking this settee that currently sits under the window in my office is going to have to go somewhere else….

As much as I absolutely love it, it is just another place for me to pile things.