Dining Room spaceLIFT Before (too busy) and After (clean and sophisticated) Transitional light fixture coming soon!!

Before (too busy) and After (new light fixture coming soon!) The curtain fabric is really lovely...bit of a Moroccan pattern.

Little French door wall divider in my 2nd office - it's really meant to be hung as wall art, but I installed it as a divider to define this space. I love it!

Gorgous $300,000+ townhome in galleria. Narrow Backyard Challenge Solved! - Before and AFTER IMAGE 2) BACKYARD STAGED HOME

Staged Dining Room Before and After

Staged Living Room Before and After

Antique Henry II chairs I found when thrifting. A wonderful wood table I found (not thrifting) with lovely metal craftsmanship.

Staged Home in the Galleria - The ornate console is lovely, but it looks oddly blotchy in the photos! The metallic stool is pretty fab, too!

I was inspired by these two hand carved wall pieces from India as they were not only cool, but they set the tone for using geometric shapes.

I love the new flooring I installed 2 years ago, but I think I want to go back to my rugs again for a change. They were so pretty...

I bought this cool 4 ft decorative iron finial last year. Last night, I was reading a Taschen Paris design book and saw it in a fabulous home!

Love it! They had it in their kitchen. I've never seen it in any home in the states, so it was surreal to see it in an absolutely stunning Parisian home. We both saw the cool factor in it. :) Makes me miss Paris......

New Construction - Color Palette Selection - 9 interior wall paints - master, guest, kid's bedrooms- 3, bathrooms, living, dining/kitchen.

South Texas/Coastal Area - Commercial Kids Area I Designed

Commercial Space West Texas - Kids Area Design Selection of Art, Accessories, Furnishings and Color Palette

Image 1: Final

Image 2: In progress

Bellaire Home - 4 ft sculptural gem I found for a client's new home in Bellaire. Looks beautifully organic in her white marble foyer!

My set dressing/props/palette selection for play called THIS. Character: Jane, quirky poet and writing teacher with a messy life = messy apartment.

Prop Food - Fake meal and fake water with ice

Prop Food and Fake Water with Ice - The spaghetti lasted the run of the show. Also, I used the large bubble wrap to make the glass look like it had water and ice. Worked like a charm!

Fake and Bake - Day 13 Fake spaghetti is holding up! Plus fake carrots, fake salad and fake bread. Tasty!

To quote Elaine from Seinfeld, "Fake. Fake. Fake." 

Rob, our super stage manager thought it was real at arm's length, as did some other folks...including my cats. SUCCESS! I waited 2 weeks to see how it was holding up before letting you all know that my below instructions worked out. I would like to have lightened up the tomato sauce by one color level and made it a little more fluid, (plus change some other small details that bug me), but it will totally read as real food. The spaghetti could have been one shade lighter to look more cooked, but the character sits with a cold plate of food while waiting for her daughter to come eat, so it'll work. Overall, pleased with it! My sweetie liked it...and asked when I was really going to cook. My reply? I told him to enjoy the happy mood derived from this form of creative cooking...that it's better than a home cooked meal mood!" Lol!!! :) 

THEATER PROPS: Fake and Bake Time Again! Day 1 Fake spaghetti, salad, carrots and bread! Yum!

So, I'm creating fake food again for Main Street Theater - fab theater in Houston! The production is called THIS which opens on April 7th. Get your tickets at http://www.mainstreettheater.com

I have discovered that I thoroughly enjoy creating fake food to use as props! It's absolutely stimulating to try different techniques to make the most believable food that functions best for the actors, director and scene. It's crazy fun looking at conventional items and picturing it as something totally different---and in this case, something stage "edible"... in theory!! 

I'm working on making spaghetti...but using REAL COOKED spaghetti in this first test. I think everyone has used yarn, string, etc... but I wanted to see if slightly cooked spaghetti would work. 

Steps:

1) Cooked spaghetti (approx 5 minutes so it would expand/be flexible).

2) Once dry, I coated it in Mod Podge. (Mod Podge worked in the summer camp days of making masterpieces out of uncooked pasta... so why not try it with slightly cooked pasta?) 

3) Crumpled up brown lunch sacks to make small meatballs and stuck those in the pasta. 

4) Mixed in little chunks of wood to replicate cut tomatoes and also woodshavings for texture and adhesiveness. 

5) Once Mod Podge dried, I blobbed hot glue in pools to make it appear sauce-like, let it cool, and then painted it red. 

6) Added bits of peppercorns and sprinkled on wood shavings to look like parmesan cheese. 

Question - Will it mold? Will it shrink? Will it sTink? Will it be a siren call to ants, roaches and tiny nameless rodents? Lol! Looks great right now, but we shall see if it molds or lasts for 4 weeks! Fingers crossed! If this doesn't work, I'm going to try some ideas my fantastic prop friends, Jodi Bob and Megan suggested.

Btw, I made a fake salad, glued on a piece of foam "bread", and then created baby carrots out of orange modeling clay ---to go with a few real carrots the actor has to eat.  Pic is a work in progress. Still need to add salad and carrot touches and glaze the sauce...but here it is as of now. Hope the spaghetti doesn't shrink!!!

Bedroom Design Quick Change

Easy and inexpensive change in subtle ways - new throw with a different color palette, a pillow with a different pattern, a new vase and books of various colors.

My Photography - taken when I was in Provence and Paris, France and New York. Bottom left image taken here in Houston.

Ugly chandelier transformed!

Image 1 BEFORE - a strange sunset palette that was wierdly painted when I found this, but I knew it had potential! 

Image 2 PRIMED

Image 3 AFTER - high gloss white!

Love this quote! Play*Work*Regrets

At the age of 4 and again at age 10, I learned that regret is a feeling I do not like. I was lucky to learn that lesson so young. I have only a few regrets thus far. And playing? I always knew play was and is an important part of learning. Play is work and work is play when it comes to my creative process. I like it like that. Cheers to the below quote that spurred my thoughts:

"It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age." M. Mead