You must all know of the most wonderful blog, Mrs. Blandings by now. It is the creation of the beautiful and talented Patricia Shackelford. So, when I was having my breakfast of Shredded Wheat and Orange Juice, reading the Sacramento Bee on Saturday morning, I was instantly captured by the article by Paula Lloyd titled: "Cary Grant and Myrna Loy lived in the Fresno Home - sort of".

It seems that there are houses that have been modeled after the Mr. Blandings Dream House all over the country! Did you all know this, and I have just been out of the loop?! Apparently David O. Selznick and RKO Pictures P.R. Department cooked up a little publicity stunt. They produced copies of the original house plans created by set designer, Carroll Clark and sent them all over the country to contractors hoping to have Dream Houses built all over the place. 73 were actually built....one being in Fresno California (pictured above). The original owners allowed home tours for 25 cents back in the day. One of the funniest things was that the plans did not include closets or windows. Contractors were left to their own devices on these.

To read all about it, click here.

A fun way to start my sunny Saturday.

Successful designers have systems
What do you do when a call comes in? When you measure a room? When you hire a contractor? Do you have specific steps to follow for every part of your business? Or do you wing it? I used to! But I learned that "winging it" leads to chaos and confusion, and you certainly can't grow from there. Successful designers handle each part of their business the same way every time. They follow a system for everything. Systems lead to consistency, organization, and effectiveness.

Successful designers study marketing
Unfortunately, being a terrific designer doesn't necessarily make you successful. In order to succeed in business, we need to be super marketers. Successful designers are either great at marketing, or they hire people who are. The most lucrative design firms actually spend more time and energy on marketing than they do on studying design.

Successful designers are detail- oriented
This may seem obvious, but are you doing it? Successful designers take care with every detail of the business - from all aspects of office work to each element of design projects. This doesn't mean they do it all themselves (in fact, profitable design companies delegate a lot of the details.), but they always make sure that every part of their business - down to the smallest details - supports their exceptional image.

Posted by Lena

Volume Two of  "Lines & Shapes," a series of small books I co-curate with Maria Vettese, came out last week.

This book's theme is "block," and it's dedicated to projects created by our contributing artists. I find the projects so creative and absorbing, and hope that others will too.

But I'm especially fond of a section in the back of this book, where we show some of the artist's "favorite things." I thought I’d share images of these pages, which include favorite corners of the artist's homes and studios, and single objects which make them happy.

And here is one of my favorite things (not included in the book). It’s a framed bird print, purchased by my mom at Sears in the 1970s.

Attention all Marie Antoinette fans! (Oh yes, and you Francophiles, gardeners, and historians too!) There is an upcoming book release that you must not miss. Marie-Antoinette and the Last Garden at Versailles (Christian Duvernois author, François Halard photographer, Rizzoli New York, October 2008) is an enthralling look at the doomed Queen and her gardens at Petit Trianon, the royal retreat at Versailles. Now, I'm familiar with certain aspects of Marie Antoinette's life, but I knew little about her involvement in the creation of the glorious gardens at this chateau. Marie Antoinette had a keen interest in gardens and the pastoral life (albeit a luxurious one), and she was determined to create a landscape like no other.

According to the book, there was great debate in mid to late 18th century France about formal gardens versus more naturalistic ones. Louis XIV's Versailles was of course noted for its rigid gardens designed by André Le Nôtre. But by the time Louis XVI ascended to the throne, there was a growing group of aesthetes who championed gardens and landscapes that were more loose and natural. And Marie Antoinette fell into this camp. When she became chatelaine of Petit Trianon, she set out to create a Franco-Anglo-Chinese garden complete with man-made lakes, ridges, and vistas. To me, the most interesting parts of the gardens are the structures that were built, including the Dairy House, the Tower of Marlborough, the Hamlet, and the Rock- a folly meant to resemble the mountains of her Austrian homeland.

The text of the book, written by Christian Duvernois, provides us with an engrossing account of how these magnificent gardens came to be. I think the author does an excellent job in helping to correct the misconception that Marie Antoinette was simply a vacuous and supercilious woman. And for those who can't get enough of beautiful photographs, there are plenty of those too. François Halard's haunting images capture the awesome splendor of this thoroughly unique place.




A bust of Marie Antoinette by Louis-Simon Boizot (c. 1775)


A view of the French Pavilion at Petit Trianon. The pavilion, designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel for Louix XV, anchors the main axis of the French Garden.


The ornate interior of the Queen's Theater. The plain exterior of the Theater belies the sumptuousness of the interior.


A marble fountain inside of the Dairy House. The walls were painted in trompe l'oeil to resemble real marble.


Vibrant pink roses in the Queen's gardens.


A view of the Dairy House (right) and the Tower of Marlborough.

(Photo credits: François Halard from Marie Antoinette and the Last Garden at Versailles, Rizzoli New York, 2008.)

Oh, to be in New York right now attending the House Proud exhibit at Cooper-Hewitt. Hopefully I'll get the chance. But in the meantime, I did find some images on the web.

The exhibit celebrates the impressive collection of nineteenth century watercolor interiors assembled by Eugene V. and Clare E. Thaw- one of the largest of its kind in the States. The rendered interiors include rooms at Carlton House, Buckingham Palace, and Schloss Fischbach (the paintings put my small collection of anonymous watercolor interiors to shame!) On display through January 25, 2009, the show is sure to be of interest to you collectors or those interested in design history.

(For additional reading, you may want to consider House Proud, the companion book to the show. I've got my copy on order. Thank you too to a few readers and Paul Pincus for alerting me to the exhibit.)


The Dressing Room of King Ludwig I at the Munich Residenz; Franz Xaver Nachtmann, Germany, 1836.


The Japanese Salon, Villa Hügel; Rudolf von Alt, Austria, 1855.


The Chinese Room in the Royal Palace, Berlin; Eduard Gaertner, Germany, 1850.


The Blue Room, Schloss Fischbach; Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Klose, Germany, 1846.

Image at top: The Circular Dining Room at Carlton House; Charles Wild, England, 1819.

Nichols & Stone, the only sizable furniture manufacturer still operating in the "chair city" of Gardner, is poised to quit making products from scratch.

Nichols & Stone is a premier manufacturer of furniture and the only sizable furniture manufacturer still operating in the "chair city" of Gardner, Massachusetts.

morning eye-candy: new plates from a series called “between us women” by lisa bengtsson. you may remember lisa’s wallpaper (here and here) but this new series was just launched at formex in stockholm. each image is representative of a woman in one’s family and each plate has a saying on the back associated with that member of the family. you can view more of lisa’s work right here.

Sigh, she loved eating - her waistline was visible proof.  And she poured over cooking blogs.....dreaming, dreaming.   One of her favorites was Winos and Foodies, by the lovely Australian blogger, Barbara.  So she asked, Please Barbara....would you, could you do a guest blog for me on some Moroccan dishes?

And look what arrived on her blog doorstep! Mmmmmmm......

All recipes on Barbara's delicious blog, right here.......

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If the blogging fairy came along and tapped you on the shoulder and said "you can choose to spend the day with any blogger in the world " - who would you choose?  I'd choose to spend the day with Maryam in Morocco. 

We'd sip mint tea and eat stuffed dates while she showed me all the pretty rugs and fabrics and glass jars she has collected on her travels.

Stuffed Dates

Remove seed from fresh dates and stuff with cheese and nuts of your choice. I like the salty feta cheese against the sweet date with the crunch of a pistachio nut. A soft brie with almonds also makes a tasty filling.

I'd ask Maryam to introduce me to her favourite couscous maker so I could I'd learn to make perfect couscous.

Plain Couscous

Add 400 ml of warm water to 350grams of couscous and 1/2 a teaspoon of salt. Rest for 10 minutes, then rub 2 tablespoons of olive oil into couscous to break up lumps and aerate the grains. Place in an ovenproof dish, dot with 20 grams butter, cover with foil and heat in 180C (350F) oven until the couscous is heated through, about 15 minutes. I often add brown flaked almonds. Pine nuts and dried fruits also go well with couscous.

Left over couscous is the perfect filling for stuffed vegetables. 

Stuffed Tomatoes

Remove insides of tomatoes and cook to reduce to a sauce with onions, spices and preserved lemon. Mix with couscous and fill tomato cases. Bake in a 180C (350) for about 25 minutes.

Naturally we'd spend the afternoon shopping. When we returned to Peacock Pavilions we would enjoy a refreshing glass of pomegranate juice..................

Pomegranate Drink

Put some ice in a glass, add a dessert spoon of pomegranate syrup and top with soda water. For a sweeter drink replace soda water with lemonade. I'm sure a shot of vodka would work in this drink.

.................and some local olives. 

Orange and Rosemary Olives

Crack olives with a meat mallet to split skins slightly. Marinade olives overnight in orange zest, rosemary spikes and olive oil.

In the evening we'd sit under the olive trees and eat platters of watermelon.

Citrus Watermelon

Remove skin and cube the watermelon. Sprinkle with freshly squeezed orange juice and scatter mint leaves over the platter.

Then just before midnight the blogging fairy would re-appear and it would be time to say goodbye to Maryam.  I think I'd need some help to get  all my shopping home.

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See full recipes right here.  And Shoukran, Barbara!

If you don’t know about The Poster List, now is the time!! Adam sent over this awesome new take on the “Keep Calm” poster. Sweet. I also included a few others I really like below:

All posters are printed with 100% vegetable ink on organic acid free paper. This week and next they are having a 2 for $20 sale: 2 posters for $20. Go poster crazy!

http://www.theposterlist.com

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In spite of their torturous heel placement and the fact that they run ridiculously narrow, I love Christian Louboutin’s shoes. The man owns homes in Egypt, Paris, Portugal and the French countryside, so like the shoes he designs, he is ridiculously extravagant, but the resultant beauty seems worth the high-maintenance issues. I’ve seen his Egyptian sailboat featured here, but I had not seen his 13th century French chateau until I finally cracked open the October issue of In Style. It’s dreamy, and he accomplished his mission of making the place look like it “belongs to a family that has been traveling and accumulating for decades.”

Louboutin has such a wise attitude concerning what makes a house a home, and the value of the signs of age and life. I recommend picking up the issue just to read what he has to say about decorating.

all photos shot by Francois Halard for In Style Magazine.

Posted by Bluelines

While the biggest music release of the season will be Coldplay's Viva La Vida, it's not exactly the kind of album that will prompt non-stop dancing and fun at your summer party.

For that, you will want something that moves and sways. Chuck Brown is a perfect good-time starter.

Known as the "Godfather of Go-Go" (a musical mix of funk, R&B, and hip-hop), Chuck is over 70 and still pumping out exuberant, swaggering songs.

You won't regret picking up a classic like "Do You Know What Time It Is" along with extra ice and bug candles.

What gets your party started?