It's here!

Herman, the baby eating yard monster. We were very busy today--marking, carving, placing, staking--but 300 lbs of pumpkin later and voila! We started out carving the big one, then got all the little ones placed, took a break for dim sum (really the most important part) and then came back to do the claws.

coming soon...

Can you guess? I don't think so. Stay tuned.

More garage

The garage is totally tranforming into an indoor/outdoor room. It's going to be so fun. The bench looks great, but the floor...so fun! There's not going to be a door to the outside, just these giant sunbrella curtains.

more kitchen

So it's moving along. The cabinets are looking really nice. Overall you can tell that the space feels much more comfortable--opened up and airy. The soapstone is going in today and then we will start tile! It's all the fun stuff.

Kitchen progress

Cabinet installation started today at the spanish kitchen remodel; I posted some of the before pics again--the kitchen didn't actually look that bad to start but it didn't function well. The counters were too shallow, all the drawers stuck, it was dark--it just wasn't working. Well I opened up a nice big arch to the dining room and the cabinet layout has been fine-tuned to flow much better. The progress from now until the end will be pretty quick so I'll keep updating the photos. P.S. the cool 60's "Bewitched" stove is available. Any takers? Disclaimer: super-cute but not super-functional! Not for people who cook with large pots. Samantha just had to wriggle her nose, remember?

Cisco love

My clients saw some lights they liked, and it turns out they were from Cisco Home. I went to check out the store in Pasadena and I was very impressed. They have lovely things, plus a commitment to sustainability without compromising design. We are going to use two of the "jug" lights in a gorgeous blue and you can get them hung from this really thick sisal rope, which gives them a whole different look. I loved their lighting--which is saying a lot. Especially great were fixtures made out of vintage colanders--so fab! Plus Amanda who works in Pasadena has been so accomodating, the whole experience has been great.

Too long!

I sort of fell off the blog wagon--sorry! I don't really know what happened; the kids started school again and time seemed to warp in a very unusual way, and I've been very good about going to Pilates Plus at 6:30a, which turns out to be very bad for blogging. So there are my excuses, but I am going to make a re-commitment to post on a regular basis. That being said, let me introduce a little project called "Jessica's Garage". It's not any garage they can use since their 1920's Spanish has a driveway that would accomodate a model-T--not even their Prius can fit! So right now it's jsut a big empty space. So we are making a built-in bench, and tiling the top as well as the floor to make the whole thing a great indoor/outdoor room. Wait until you see the floor pattern!