Archive for the ‘travel’ Category

BINGO

Monday, February 28th, 2011

Last Monday I headed out with Sharon to meet up with Victoria and her gaggle of fine ladies at The Ace Hotel to check out Sissy Bingo with Linda Gerard “Fabulous”. Linda Fabulous is the singing hostess (pictured above) who you might have run into while eating at Kings Highway. She’s what The Ace deems to be a Palm Springs personality and can be both campy and a tad long winded.

Sometimes when you’re in competitive Bingo mode and are desperate to win a game that requires basically no skill, you just want that next Bingo number called and not drawn out into a rambling monologue, another song or the same joke repeated over and over and over and over (it’s not malignant its B-9!).

I had my fav things to sip/munch on while at Kings Highway, some fish tacos and a roadrunner cocktail – which consists of blackberry mulled Makers Mark and some ginger soda I believe? Whatever it is, its fucking delicious.

After hours of play, making up more than a quarter of the guests at Bingo and getting strategically competitive — we still lost hard core. LOOK AT THAT PILE OF LOSING CARDS – and still not one of us ladies went home with a Bingo. Total modernist conspiracy, it’s the only logical explanation.

Well, Sissy Bingo happens every Monday at 7pm in the Kings Highway restaurant. You might just win a tote bag, or a six pack of ginger beer if you get really really lucky.

Secrets From a Stylist

Friday, February 25th, 2011

You guys are all remembering to set your DVR’s and pop that popcorn for the premiere of Emily Henderson’s Secrets From a Stylist tomorrow? Right? RIGHT?

Feb 26th, 9pm on the HGTV.

Because Emily is incredible and I sold her some fine furniture that will hopefully pop up on the show here and there and because the afters are stylish and designy and vintagy and unlike anything you’ve seen on the HGTV. My new SFAS drinking game is called “Spot Morgan’s Furniture”. You won’t get very drunk and you’d probably have to watch a bunch of different episodes – so if you love to pound booze and get wasted it may not be a very good game. Now the “Spot Awesome Furniture” drinking game will send you straight to the ER with alcohol poisoning.

Come on though. We’ve all seen what Emily is bringing and we love it.

I’m headed out to LA to spend some quality time with Bianca and Laure and get my party on at Emily’s well deserved premiere. I’ll be tweeting my sausage fingers off and trying to not look like a complete slob. I even got my hair did – but may have had a bit of a dye job disaster. Whoops.

Psst. Laure has been documenting the “afters” from the show and has some behind the scenes images. Check them out!

Enough Already

Thursday, February 24th, 2011

A long while ago I mentioned that I was working with fancy set decorator and all around super star Laure Joliet on a TV makeover show. Well, it’s finally started airing on that new Oprah network and is called Enough Already with Peter Walsh. Laure already wrote a pretty awesome post explaining the whole shindig and the great folks involved like art director Mike, Heather, Barry and the whole crew. Laure also so kindly let me use her images below (did I mention she is also a killer photographer? I know, she is annoyingly good at everything) since with the madness of the schedule I never did get a decent shot.

When I say madness, I mean utter and complete madness.

Did I also mention that the show was about organizing and designing spaces for people with “extreme clutter” issues? Not quite hoarding, but teetering on the edge of the bell curve. Above is the “before” image of the dining room that Laure grabbed with her iPhone while they scouted the home.

How it worked was that in four days we had to remove everything, sort through it all, shop for essentials, install flooring and wall treatments and then makeover two to three rooms. During that time they are also filming things as well, so logistically it was nuts.

They were long – very very very long – and exhausting days but also incredibly exciting and fun. It seriously takes a huge bunch of folks to make these sort of transformations happen that quickly and everyone was surprisingly chipper and helpful and so well organized. It was a great team to be apart of.

Boom. Check out that blue grass cloth.

Look that’s a dining set! It was totally buried in that pile before, but now you can sit down and use it. Whenever possible we tried to reuse the owners original possessions and incorporate them in the new design. I liked that it wasn’t just about gutting everything and starting over, but that we truly did attempt to show how they could use their existing pieces to create a more cohesive and “designed” room.

See where that clock is and that little bit of credenza poking out under that big lamp? That’s this fireplace and this credenza (to the right) after we finished:

We also reused their existing chairs and added a rug and coffee table and lots of fancy pillows.

I’m proud of my fireplace vignetting – totally taking credit for that – but Laure found that really cool driftwood mirror!

With all the art we tried to take family pictures and enlarge them at Kinkos as well as reuse pieces they already had. Did you know that Kinkos can be kind of weird about that? Yeah. Seriously. I may have gotten into a bit of a tussle one late night with a Kinkos manager about enlarging a baby picture. Just be forewarned if you want to try to enlarge some family or personal photos, if the photo looks too “pro” they might freak out.

We got them this great sofa (which was a floor model from Blueprint) and a fancy new bubble lamp. Styling.

The other major room we tackled was their master bedroom. Don’t be fooled, Elmo is terrified.

Here’s the after.

So nice right? We installed hardwood floors and obviously had a major hook-up with a grass cloth company since there’s more nice grass cloth on the walls. I think it came out pretty well. Simple, relaxing and clutter free. Not like a scary pea green dungeon.

Thanks again to Laure for letting me use her images and for letting me join the crew. It was super awesome fun crazy exhausting, but ultimately warmed the cold little modernist cockles of my heart. It was incredible to see how utterly transformed these homes could be in just a few short days.

If you guys want to check it out on the TV – Enough Already airs on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Mondays at 8pm.