Tassel Trunk

last friday evening i had a special event at Tassel Studio in Old Lyme Connecticut with my old friend erica of the E List who organized the event at the wildly fabby shop owned and operated by the marvelous Hannah Childs

Hannah is not only a warm and wonderful person..but she is a terrific decorina too!  i really shouldn't have..but i couldn't resist these 2 awesome gigandor ikat (Quadrille's "Kazak") pillows from her shop.  don't they make a perf gift for my daddy's bday?

(here they are sittin' pretty in my rent's lavender boudoir..ooo la la!)

my living room [needs help]

i don't mind admitting that i am no decorator, and for more years than i would like to admit my living room has been in trouble. it is an agony to be a designer and live with such sad furnishings. so last month i marched myself over to our local jonathan adler shoppe, and said to the kindly and comely Andrew, "Help me!". believe it or not, without hesitation, he marched over here just like that! amazingly, he pronounced the space fixable! hah! we are "blessed" with too many chairs in the room, he said..and deftly proceeded to remove our bummy barcelona chairs from the living room and put them cozily in our bedroom for extra seating. our tragic modern boxy chairs (covered in a heinous bordello crushed velvet) he pronounced un-save-able..and sent them to the trash. he produced a photo of this..the parker chair..and commanded us to order it..okay!
in this turquoise fabric.
he felt confident that grouped with my pair of '70's magical swivel chairs in this funky roberta roller rabbit dotty fabric..and my new hex rug on the floor..
along with a bunch of new turquoise/navy pillows tossed around..

that my brown couch and my paprika linen drapes, as well as a whole bunch of other mismatched shenanigans will all start to make design sense!
i can't wait!

props to vous lotus bleu

we just shipped some of our pretty pots across our great nation to a fabulously wonderful home store in san francisco called Lotus Bleu which is the brainchild of designer Jeannie Fraise. i have never been, but i was totally drooling over the amazing textiles and rugs that seem to run amok in the store's interior. i also gather from my conversations with jeannie,( and my seeing her home in design sponge's sneak peak )that she is an inspired interior designer, who is happy to share her expertise with clients. lucky ducks!
i can't get enough of these pillows that richly adorn every surface.
i'll take ten s'il vous plait.

i have to celebrate you baby..i have to praise you like i should

one of my favorite people on the planet is the super talented artist judith bigham, and tonight she is doing a reading from her book "Decorating, Death & Desire" in Portland Oregon where she lives with her 3 daughters, raina, lulu and idabelle. the book is her very personal journey during the year following her husband Jake's tragic and untimely death in 2008 when he drowned while windsurfing in a hurricane.
her work in the book and in her paintings is beautiful, funny, real, shocking, and always gut wrenching because it is so wildly exposed. somehow judith is not afraid to show everyone what this experience really feels like, and to hear her read from her book promises to be a major event.
if you happen to be in the portland area tonight..you might want to head over to cargo to hear her, and to see some of the pieces from the book.
the bus stop/shrine above was created by judith during the Hay festival this past summer.

decorating frenzy

when john vasquez showed me barb's beautiful chairs that he had upholstered in a thomas paul bird print i totally flipped out. now that i am on a decorating roll, i have got to cover 2 more chairs that sit pathetically in my living room dressed in a scary bordello-esque orange crushed velvet! i mean the things are nasty! so i am off to freddy farkels in watertown to go a huntin'..wish me luck.

decorating frenzy

The new house chris just bought is amazing, and of course we had to go over all the decorating details with him, particularly paint colors. he wants to make a powerful design statement in his foyer, with a new color he has never used before..but here is the rub! the whole place is covered in period glazed oak paneling. This creates a color nightmare..nothing goes with oak! after going through the "hermes " orange option and "veuve cliqot" tangerine, we tentatively decided that a shiny chocolate might be the best choice. if you have any thoughts or ideas on our design conundrum please let me know.

thank you james!

yesterday, i travelled to Portland, Me., one of my favorite towns. after noshing on some yummy homemade chili and some delectable if pricey treats from Aurora (as the locals say "why pay less?")..it was back to fabric obsessing with my bff chris b. who is planning a renovation and was happy to join me in OCD land. when our friend james arrived he shared fantastic news, that i thought i would pass along. Fabricuts ( http://www.fabricut.com)a wholesaler of fabrics has very well priced ($23 a yd!) knockoffs of some of my faves..including ms. wearstler herself. feel free to go nuts, but the catch is that many of these fabrics are P-O-L-Y-E-S-T-E-R! now i really do not know what to do. hmmm?

oh joel!

honestly..isn't it just the way things go that when you find something that you l'adore, you find out that you can't have it? just when i was getting all hot and bothered over these terrific joel dewberry fabrics, thinking they would be absolutement the perfect idea for my chair project, i was told by the experts that the fabric is NOT upholstery weight. double bummer.
well..thought i would share..after all i did do alot of drooling. these are shmectacular.