• I have been buying Miette fleur de sel chocolate caramels by the bagful and, no, I do not share them with Jon. They are so good.
• It took me a few weeks, but I finally finished reading the excellent piece on John Hughes in the March issue of Vanity Fair.
• I was in Venice, CA, last week and now I want to learn as much about the history of the area as possible. I just ordered a copy of Cottage in the Sun: Bungalows of Venice, California
• The Jean Paul Gaultier collection at Target launched yesterday and some of the pieces sold out in the middle of the night. I may have to stay up late this weekend when the Liberty of London line comes out.
• Speaking of London! I am planning a trip there this summer. Which I am really really really looking forward to.
• I love the rooms below, which are featured in the "An All-Star Makeover" article in the current issue of Elle Decor. (Nate Berkus and Anne Coyle decorated the place for "Oprah" producer Ellen Rakieten.)

Posted at 09:09 AM | Link | Comments (1)
Filed in This & That

I had the pleasure of interviewing Nate Berkus a couple of years ago (too bad it was just over the phone!) and he comes across EXACTLY as you'd think: warm, friendly, knowledgeable without being condescending. I regularly check his online portfolio because it's constantly getting updated. And even if I've seen a lot of the photos before, I can still sit there for hours looking at them again and again.

Here are some recent additions (I think) that I especially like:

You can also see the apartment in Milan that he designed for boyfriend and accessories designer Brian Atwood here. His own Chicago abode here. And the place he created for an Oprah TV producer here. (All three homes were published in Elle Decor.)

Posted at 11:57 AM | Link | Comments (2)
Filed in Design

I am obsessed with these adorable boot holders sold in cupcakebomb's Etsy shop.

Despite having multiple closets, I have had trouble figuring out how to best organize my boots. I keep some in boxes from the Container Store, and the ones I wear more regularly (at least during the fall/winter) have just been lying around. Now, with my growing collection of these boot holders, I can stand them up in the closet — all in a nice, neat row. No more slouching boots!

Posted at 07:18 AM | Link | Comments (4)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!

Wow. I love this chair, available at Anthropologie.

It's designed by Tord Boonje and designed for outdoor use. Too bad it comes with a $3,000 price tag.

Posted at 05:21 PM | Link | Comments (5)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!, Design

The forecast calls for more rain this week in the Bay Area. Which I am actually looking forward to now that I've got my new Dace raincoat:

I have been searching for the perfect raincoat for quite some time, and I think this is it. I love the look of a trench — I've got a few in my closet — but they usually don't have a hood. And I need a hood because I don't like to carry an umbrella.

So this? This may be the Holy Grail of raincoats for me.

Posted at 05:15 PM | Link | Comments (4)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!, Wearables

Since stepping foot into the bathroom designed by Benjamin Dhong for the 2008 San Francisco Decorator Showcase, I've been coveting this mirror:

I think it would be a great replacement for the mirror currently hanging in our entry:

That wall seems to lend itself better to a vertical, rather than round, mirror. Now I just need to convince Jon!

P.S. I bought the Madeline Weinrib rug on sale at ABC Carpet & Home, which now has an online shop.

Posted at 02:11 PM | Link | Comments (5)
Filed in Casa de Jon-Minh, Design

Are you familiar with Fyndes? It's an online marketplace for dealers, artists and designers. I browse the site regularly, but have yet to make a purchase. I wish I had a place for this chrome lattice headboard:

It looks like the same one in interior designer Jay Jeffers' San Francisco home:

Posted at 01:03 PM | Link | Comments (7)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!, Design

I just pre-ordered this collection of 100 postcards featuring Penguin book covers. It's not scheduled for release until October, but now it's one less thing for me to remember to do!

I think I'm going to frame a group of them somewhere in our house. I've got nine months to figure out exactly where ...

Posted at 10:33 AM | Link | Comments (5)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!

I was so tempted to buy one of these limited-edition laser-cut pieces by Rob Ryan ...

But, although they were just released for pre-order, they are already sold out! (I may have to pick up a roll of the charm bracelet tape, available in his Etsy shop.)

Posted at 07:49 AM | Link | Comments (2)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!

On Saturday, we made good on our holiday gift coupon for my nieces. First, Jon and I took them to "Behind the Emerald Curtain," a behind-the-scenes look at "Wicked." The girls saw the show in London last year — lucky them! — and the older of the two is getting involved in drama department things in school. So we thought it would be the perfect outing. But we weren't really sure what to expect. Would there be 10 people? Or 100? Well, the usher said they were expecting 140 that morning. (Who knew it was so popular?) Here are a couple of the costumes that we got to see up close:

When you find out that some of the costumes weigh 20 pounds, it makes it that much more impressive that the performers can sing and dance and run around the way they do!

After "Behind the Emerald Curtain," we headed to The Slanted Door for lunch. Yum.

Although this dessert was described on the menu as "chocolate angel food cake," um, it's clearly a giant Ho Ho, right? And by the way, that peanut swirl ice cream was ridiculously good.

Posted at 08:21 AM | Link | Comments (1)
Filed in Food & Drink, Friends & Family

You may have noticed that my Flickr feed over there on the right has been populating lately with photos of me. Well, photos of my outfits, to be exact. They're part of the Bloganistas Flickr pool, run by the lovely Erin of Design for Mankind.

We're only in Week 4 and I've already missed one week (#3)! So that gives me a grade of a C. I've been taking self-portraits and the lighting hasn't been the best, so that's something I'm hoping to improve on, too.

Posted at 08:05 AM | Link | Comments (4)
Filed in Wearables

A couple of months ago, I spotted a1960s Greek key mirror on the wonderful Paris Hotel Boutique and decided to buy it for our guest bathroom. I gave it a couple of coats of primer and then a few more coats of Benjamin Moore's "White Opulence" — the same white used in the pattern I painted on the room's accent wall.

It's a lot better than the plain-Jane oval placeholder mirror we had in there for a year and a half! Next up: Adding some much-needed color to the room, in the form of some artwork.

P.S. This is what the vanity area looked like when we moved in:

Since we're trying to avoid any actual renovations — just making cosmetic changes — we replaced the sconces and knobs right away.

Posted at 09:43 PM | Link | Comments (5)
Filed in Casa de Jon-Minh

Thanks to the recent round of Bay Area storms, we lost power at our house yesterday for about six hours. Without any Internet access or car access — unless I wanted to manually lift open the two-car garage door — I decided to organize my magazines.

It's a good thing Jon and I went to Ikea the other day and picked up a lot more of their inexpensive magazine holders!

Posted at 09:17 AM | Link | Comments (7)
Filed in Casa de Jon-Minh

When we were in Savannah last month — it's about an hour from where Jon's parents live — we visited the Circa Lighting showroom. I've been obsessed with this store for a while now and have been wanting to check it out for myself. It's not a large place, but boy is it packed with gorgeous lighting of all sorts.

I'm looking to replace the sconces in our master bathroom and the ceiling fixtures in our closet. For the latter, I'm leaning toward one of these:

Circa has so many options, it was hard to narrow it down to just these two!

Posted at 09:23 AM | Link | Comments (2)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!, Casa de Jon-Minh, Design

Yesterday, after a delicious lunch at Boulette's Larder, Grant introduced me to two neighboring Russian Hill spots: Loving Cup Cafe (which serves yummy rice pudding) and Homme (which, coincidentally, was written up in Daily Candy yesterday).

The latter was actually closed when we arrived, but as we were about to leave, owner Michelle Homme pulled up in a U-Haul. She had just come back from a buying trip in Southern California. Although the goods that were in the truck aren't on her 1st Dibs site yet, I already know I'm going to love them if her current inventory is any indication. Look at these arrow side tables!

Posted at 03:17 PM | Link | Comments (4)
Filed in Buy! Buy! Buy!, Design, Food & Drink

Hmmm ... The latest installment in the NYT's "On the Cheap" series features a 550-square-foot studio that is furnished for $10,000.

Is that really considered cheap? I know he's starting from scratch ... but still. It doesn't strike me as a small budget for a space of that size.

UPDATE: OK, I just finished reading the article. And he already owned the antique Biedermeier dining table and chairs, as well as the wood armchair. And he spent $500 on painters. If this was really done on the cheap, that would be a total DIY.

Also: This is the most contentious "On the Cheap" yet. Serious drama!

Posted at 09:07 AM | Link | Comments (8)
Filed in Design, Reading

This week, Habitually Chic featured not one but two posts on closet organization, a subject that I have a keen interest in.

In our previous house, we utilized every single closet to store our clothes. Shoes were in the office. Coats were in the hallway. The hampers occupied all of the floor space in the master bedroom closet. It was a horrible system.

Now we're lucky enough to have a master suite with a walk-through closet (it has a door on each end). When I first saw it, I decided that I was going to do two things: 1) hang my clothes by category and color, and 2) replace all of the hangers so that they match.

These two things make the closet — well, at least my side of it — look so organized. And it makes finding what to wear a snap.

Below is one of my favorite closets, which I don't think was included in HC's round-ups. It's from an old issue of Living, Etc.

Posted at 10:03 AM | Link | Comments (4)
Filed in Casa de Jon-Minh, Design