A few weeks ago I shot a video at Micheal Levine’s fabric store in downtown Los Angeles. Micheal Levine’s has a terrific selection of faux-leathers to offer as an alternative to cow’s skin when you are upholstering furniture. Cow skin, aka leather, is not fabric and I wanted to debunk the idea we hold that […]
Flowers: Faux to Real and the Ugly in Between.
February 17, 2015I love flowers! I love how they brighten a room, or tell someone you love them wordlessly… but I was stuck reconciling my love for flowers and the damage I believed flower farming did to the planet. My first solution was to stick to artificial flowers which didn’t appear to be harmful to anyone and […]
Saving Plastic from Itself and the Oceans
February 9, 2015Its Sunday. And every Sunday I return from the Farmers Market in Hollywood with a half dozen Baggus (everyone should have a dozen of these) full of my favorite fruits and veggies which I freeze or store in plastic bags….
Change Your FLOR, Not Your Room
January 13, 2015In honor of the new year, I propose we start off on the right foot! What better way to embrace 2015 then by considering the foundation of our homes. The floors of our home can make or break how we experience a room. Clean, well-cared for floors provide the base for our furniture and our […]
Peaceful Dreams in a Compassionate Bedroom, Your Quilt!
December 13, 2014In my ongoing attempt to continue to make my bedroom as harm-free as possible, I recently said good bye to my feather duvet. I must admit I had a very sentimental attachment to my feather duvet because I bought it years ago when I lived in London — years before I considered that ducks would […]
Not Down with Duck? DIY Feather-Free Pillows
September 1, 2014I think few books made as much of an impression on 7 year-old me than Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey. Make Way for Ducklings, written in 1941 and Caldecott Medal winning a year later, tells the tale of a duck family and their relationship to the city of Boston. I was so captivated […]
Save a Couch, Buy A Tree (Cat)
July 10, 2014Cute, aren’t they? …these little furry four-pawed creatures with whom we share our homes. There’s nothing I love more than petting bellies, rubbing ears and hearing happy purrs of kitty contentment. There is nothing I hate more than saying goodbye to a favorite item of furniture because someone has decided they needed a good stretch […]
Peaceful Dreams in a Compassionate Bedroom
June 13, 2014Half of our life is spent in our bedrooms (and if you ask me, the better half!) so I’ve embarked on a journey to see how cruelty-free I could make my bedroom. What does that mean? The idea of cruelty-free means that no animals were used to make the products that we live with. The […]
Succulents: Waterless Drought-Resistant Joy!
June 10, 2014I love succulents. I love them because they are colorful and geometric and simple. I also love them because they are truly the only thing green that I don’t manage to kill. And I love them even more for that reason, not only because they can withstand my forgetful plant watering dementia but because they […]
Location Photography and the Start-Up:
The IKEA Kitchen Hack
April 2, 2014
Starting a home accessories business involves many moving pieces ranging from how you make your product to how you market your product. Today I’d like to discuss how you market your product. Good photographs are a must! And I’m very lucky because I have an incredible photographer, Mark Kerckaert, as part of the team. However […]
My 40-year-old Dollhouse and Adrian the Grandkid
March 26, 2014I’ll be the first to say that biology does not make family. Featured in this post is my incredibly clever and strikingly handsome grandson Adrian. Adrian, however, is not my biological grandson. His birth father is my former foster son, John. John no longer parents Adrian so its up to me and Adrian’s awesome mom, […]