The Light Stuff

Many of you may be familiar with Lumens Light and Living, a fantastic resource for lighting, as well as for modern furniture, accessories and area rugs. I have been lucky enough to have been working with them for many years as a resource for my design projects, and more recently they have become a design client of mine!

I have had a blast working with the team at Lumens to design and stage the sets for their ad campaigns for the last year, like the one above. The ads have been shown in Elle Decor, Dwell magazine, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as local media. I couldn't ask for a better client or a more creative team to work with.

I recently sat down with Susan Purdy, who writes the blog for Lumens which is aptly named The Light Stuff. I am privileged to be in their designer spotlight this month! 

I hope you have a chance to hop on over and take a peek at Susan's blog post on the Light Stuff HERE. You may just find you will want to catch up on all of The Light Stuff!

Coco Before Chanel

Vanity Fair, February 2009, Photo by Brigitte Lacombe

Something to look forward to! A new feature film directed by Anne Fontaine about the life of Coco Chanel is being shot, as we speak, in Paris and Normandy. Scheduled to come out in mid-2009...this year is starting to look up. Karl Lagerfeld is supervising costumes....and I can only imagine the beautiful sets if this photo is any indication. It pictures Audrey Tautou, who plays Coco, reclining in a Karl Lagerfeld created suit in a recreation of Coco's apartment in Paris. For more, click here.

Ohlala!

Mr. Blandings Dream House....In Fresno???

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.