Distressed Black + White

This hauntingly beautiful image of a time-worn building from floto+warner immediately reminded me of this elegant bedroom discovered via {this is glamorous}...

The simple intensity of the black on cold white, the torn walls and decaying building. They mirror each other perfectly, don't you think?

We Built This City (Out of Chandeliers)

I am so completely in awe of this design project...

As a part of Vienna Design Week's "Paths of Passion," ten designers or design teams created site-specific installations in Viennese shops.

Designer Maxim Velcovsky took gorgeously detailed and meticulously crafted chandelier pieces...


And created cityscapes placed into a large lightbox resembling a bookcase...

And made this:

New York, Moscow, London, and Medina. Fantastic, magical and amazing, don't you think? You can read the full story right here.

And speaking of cityscapes... check out yesterday's addition gift guide. It's a classic.

Blogger Babes on Tour!

How's THAT for a catchy post title? Ok, so maybe it sounds like a really lame mom band doing the local rounds... but it was really not that bad (ok, maybe we got a little nerdy talking about blogging over drinks after the tour, but still...).


Here we are! I had made the genius decision to go for a run before meeting up with this gorgeous group of girls and thus looked totally hot and bloated (hey, it was like 97 degrees), but the house was very cool and so were the girls! It was so great to finally meet the ladies behind LOVING/LIVING/SMALL, my little apartment, ATLA, At Home At Home, (me over heated), and Simply Magic.

But enough about us, let's talk about this house!






The living room. Amazing. Very simple, and yet we all had the same feeling upon entering ~ that we wanted to just move right in! The open, light space was so well designed. Our sweet tour guides pointed out all the little details, and gave us the scoop behind the house. I'd share them all with you, but you should really go visit yourself! For $10 you get a great little history lesson, and learn a lot about the psychology of architecture.


This was the real reason I loved the living room so much - the adjacent patio with small reflecting pool. Adorable! This is where California modern got its style!


Here's a little view from the patio outside the kitchen - it looks onto the courtyard where the huge trees provide lots of shade.

And then there's the 'penthouse'...


The perfect spot for relaxing and entertaining, the penthouse is surrounded with windows (making it extra hot on this day) and lined with padded backrests that tempted us to all take a seat and enjoy the view...


Apparently at the time the house was built, if you sat and checked out this view, the roof line would line up with the water from the reservoir. Since then, however, the reflecting pool on the roof has had to be drained (it was causing water damage) and the reservoir has been moved back to it's current location ~ a bit further from the house.

After the tour, we headed to Malo in Silverlake where we did a little blogging gossip and enjoyed some seriously yummy Mojitos!


Of course, I loved the flocked wallpaper and dark walls. In typical blogger style, we all had our cameras out! I look forward to the next LA meetup, and hope that more of you will join us in the future! In the meantime, please consider visiting the Neutra home yourself. The space is in need of serious maintenence and the Cal Poly Pamona Foundation is in danger of losing the space as an educational resource without our help! You can read more about it right here.

Dream Doors

I've always had a thing for beautiful ornate doors. So, when I stumbled on this photo from Maryam at My Marrakesh via her Flickr stream... well, I just about died.



Gorgeous detailing with beautiful rich woods in contrast with that bright bluish white? And the railing to top it off? Please, please, please let me move in! I was inspired, to say the least. So last weekend, when I found myself with a bit of extra time on my hands, I wandered through my old Venice neighborhood to see capture some other inspiring doorways...


These are the walkstreets I grew up in! So lovely. And here's door #1.


So worn in with that green patina. Loved the broken glass window above the door, too. Just adds to the authenticity, right?


The door wasn't as interesting as the Mondrian-esque plexiglass surrounding it. The colors glowed in the sunlight, and the style fit in perfectly with the very simple Asian garden.


A. MAZ. ING. This door was even more ridiculous in person. It was probably the best part of the house! So there you go... a little door browsing from La La Land. Hope you enjoyed!