MY PLACE

The multi talented + super rad designer Justina Blakeney featured my home on her blog! I bookmarked her last year when I came across her Valentine's Day Fort, not realizing we have mutual friends until a while later. 

Right away, I related to her love of thrifting and upcycling (I LOVE projects!) and I've been super inspired by her 'Jungalow' concept of bringing more plants into your home.  I've since made an indoor garden (more on that later) and stepped my game up outside too, planting more herbs, lavender, and succulents.  I can't tell you how proud I was when a friend recently came onto my patio and said "It's jungle status out here Sach." 

click here for the rest

GOLDEN DOOR

 My friend Poodle's all-cream apartment was in need of a little TLC to warm things up, but her strict landlord won't let her change much. With her exotic past addresses including Morocco and Tunisia, (and belly dancing skills like you've never seen) I thought it would be fun to reference North African decor. She had a pile of unused gold frames and a beautiful heavy wooden Moroccan coffee table. I thought a gold door would look great with the frames and really light up the room with the amazing sunlight they get in the daytime.

Instead of just painting it I thought it would be interesting to cover it in gold leaf. The real stuff is way too expensive, so we got some imitation gold leaf, some glue, sealant, and a small bottle of gold metallic leaf paint from Blick. We needed five packs to cover one side of the door and the frame.  We first covered the door in a thin layer of glue, and waited about 40 minutes before beginning to apply the leaf.

 The gold leaf was challenging to work with.  We chose to start at the bottom because I knew that our first few might be a little experimental. It took a few curse words and some interesting collage-like patches to get the hang of it but we finally got the technique down.  Make sure all the windows are closed and the fans are off, because any drafts can cost you dearly. I patched up any scars or parts we missed with the gold paint, which I was a little nervous about at first but wound up giving it a really nice finish.

Voila! Less vanilla, more riad. The golden glow of the door adds a great feeling to the room. I'm really excited to have learned how to work with the gold leaf, I know this will not be the first time. Also, a new doorknob is soon to come. Sorry about the terrible quality of the photos. I took them on my iPad.
 

Sous Style Buratta Night

 

I prepared a Burrata Night, one of my favorite dinners, for the newly launched site Sous Style.  Everyone gets a burrata, and picks and chooses from lots of delicious side dishes: roasted bell peppers and zucchini, prosciutto, chanterelle mushrooms, caramelized onions, mache green salad, and heirloom and cherry tomatoes with basil. Balsamic reduction, crusty baguette and good wine as well.  We shot this in Paris back in July. Check out the rest here. Let me know if you want the recipes!

CLUB CHAIRS

Dogs and Chesterfields, better combination than cats and club chairs.

I've always had a soft spot for old club chairs and Chesterfield couches. Something about them just lures you in for hours, like a throne, and makes you want to throw on a pair of velvet slippers and perhaps a mustache just long enough to twirl while sipping rare scotch.  I have nowhere near enough room in my apartment for a grand, long Chesterfield, though I dream that one day it will be the centerpiece of my future living room. In the mean time I've acquired two fine club chairs.

This one used to be in the house I grew up in. When my dad moved out this summer, everything went to storage.  He happily let me go choose anything I needed, which clearly included this club chair.  I have no idea how old it is, but I can tell you that it aged a hell of a lot faster than it should have at our house. We had quite a few cats growing up: Cuddles (ran away), Tiger (eaten by coyote), Max (eaten by coyote), Minette (freaked out and disappeared), Butterscotch (died of diabetes), Rocky (badass got killed in a fight with a skunk. The skunk died too), and Spuzzy, Bunny, and Muffin, all still cool kitties.
We tried to distract them with fancy scratch towers and fountain water dispensers, but no, somehow the cats always ignored that and decided to rid their tensions on the ancient leather chairs and silk drapes. Here is the result. I still love how tattered it is:

The second chair I got at the Rose Bowl flea market. I lifted up the cushion and saw a Ralph Lauren Home tag and wasn't going to even bother asking the price, assuming I wouldn't have enough cash left for it anyway. When the dude told me it was $150 I just could not leave without it. I had no idea where to fit this huge ass chair (4 x 3.5 ft) in my tiny place. I needed three people to carry it from my truck to the apartment, and I just wish we had filmed us trying to get it through the door. I managed to make it work out after a little rearranging.

I also took a cue from my dad, who, on the other chair, covered what remained of the cushions with awesome vintage Suzanis. I got a few more Kilim rugs from storage (score!) and draped one over the faux suede cushions, giving it a lot more character in my opinion.  I recently looked up the average price of one of these chairs on Ralph Lauren Home and started laughing out loud when I saw the prices for similar chairs, ranging from $5,000-8,000 (double score!!)

 

 A few more to dream about...

One Man's Trash...

This may sound strange. Over the past year I've received quite a few gifts from anonymous strangers. I've never actually seen anyone do it, I usually just come home and something has been thrown over my wall or left by my front door.  I remember the first time it happened. I came home from a night out and there were two rusty lawn chairs sitting by my door with a scribbled note. "TO SASHA FROM A SECRET ADMIRER."
I later found out it was Bob, a nice older man who lives in the neighborhood and was also friends with the former tenant. The first time I met Bob on the beach he mistook me for my sister.  He was building a portal to the fourth dimension in the form of a large mound of sand on which he would sit in lotus position. Bob likes to feed the seagulls every day and wears aluminum foil under his cap "You know, for the aliens. Just in case." That was the only gift mystery ever solved.

I've also received a Moroccan tile side table, a kite in the shape of an octopus, a black folding wooden table, an unfinished painting of chairs, a tatami mat, a drawing of our house, and a rusty old file cabinet. Some I kept, some I threw out.

This cabinet I chose to keep. Initially it was a sad gray color, but I slapped on a few coats of blue paint I had left over from painting my table. After a few months I got bored and decided to turn it into a new project.  I thought back to an old trunk I had when I was little that was completely covered with old pieces of lace and drawings. The one element I always remembered was a card with a picture of a mermaid. Underneath her was written "La Sirena." After a little Googling I found out it was a Mexican loteria card, and found a few decks after scouring Olvera Street in downtown LA. I arranged and glued the cards using rubber cement, then I wanted to finish it with a heavy gloss to age the cards a bit and seal everything in. My sister, who is a painter and pro with polyurethane, and also my glossing mentor, told me that it would take about thirty layers to achieve the glossiness I wanted. Ughhh...
When I start a project, I get very impatient and want to get it finished as soon as possible. So I layered that stuff on, thick. It crackled in the sun and got lumpy because I kept adding more on to even it out. I learned my lesson after a layer or two and stopped playing around with it, and really let it dry for a few days between each coat. As careful as I tried to be, the occasional drip mark or smudge was just inevitable. I didn't wind up doing thirty coats.

OUTDOOR ROOM

Remember when I made that awning a while back? I totally forgot to show off the latest addition... A 'wall'! It really encloses the patio to make a real room. Suddenly my apartment's doubled in size!
It was a big job. Not technically so difficult, but it's the first time I've made something to this scale.  I actually burned out my machine. It just stopped working on the last seam. Always the last one... It took some calculations and a lot of measuring to figure out exactly how much fabric I needed, but with some help from the terrific Marlene at Lincoln Fabrics I figured it out and made a pattern. (Another BIG job. You need a lot of floorspace.)

See?

Just another day at the office. PS- This was December.

Quite a fashionable pattern courtesy of the Last Magazine. Is it bad that I was parading around the fabric store with this thing flashing boobs everywhere?

Ta-Da! The final product. I've actually added grommets to that diagonal bit and tied twelve linen bows that close it off, but didn't take any photos. But the good news is, no more creepy neighbors!

MORE SLIPCOVERS!!

This has become my new favorite way to breathe new life into unfortunate pieces of furniture. Here is a little ottoman from Target. I'm not even really sure how this came into my possession but it's a good size so I'll keep it, but it definitely can't stay looking like that.

I was debating whether to cover it in this snakeskin from New Mexico or this vintage kimono belt from a flea market in Sendai, Japan.

I figured two animal skin ottomans would be too much for one room.
"Have you met my pet ottomans Zebra and Snake? Don't worry they're very docile."
Uh. No thanks.

On second thought... an ottoman as a pet? Maybe I don't need to get a dog after all!

Just kidding! The kimono belt won.

I bought it seven years ago on a trip to Japan, but never figured out what to do with it. Finally this beautiful material can be showcased! I cut four strips to cover the top. Luckily it fit perfectly and there was enough of the embroidery to put together a nice design. I used the second half to cover the sides, but there wasn't enough to go all the way around. I had to rip the seams and split the two sides apart in order to get enough material. While taking it apart I discovered this beautiful Japanese linen, but there was only enough for one side. I realized the delicate old silk would not hold up on its own, so I cut strips of red denim (from the legs of some old jeans I turned into cutoffs, I just knew they'd be useful someday!) to reinforce it.

 

 

 

Now all that's left is to cover those awful aluminum feet!

HOME

This is a couch I found on craigslist. It's faux suede and pretty terrible looking, but it laid flat and was the perfect length to fit into a nook on the other side of my patio.  I went for it, figuring I would throw something pretty over it, but when the couch arrived it was just a few inches too wide. So, with the help of my friend Anthony, we ripped off one side of the armrests and MADE it fit.

Now, I've decided to move it to the other side and lay it flat as a daybed. Thing is, not many places make slipcovers for my newly customized shape, so I did it myself using a beautiful Ikat fabric.

When Tessa suggested we make Indian food last night, I knew exactly who to turn to... Manjula's Kitchen.  I discovered Manjula after I came back from India last year with spices and chickpea flour and was convinced I was going to make Indian food every day (which I didn't). Anyway, one trip to Whole Foods and a newly stocked spice cabinet later, we were cooking up Indian food like it was no big deal. She makes it so easy, all you really need are the right spices.  We made chana masala (chickpeas), baingan bharta (eggplant), raita, cauliflower, brown basmati rice, roti, and steak (which is very un-Indian but whatever I'm vegetarian), along with some naan, chutney, and some Indian beers... What a FEAST.

 

The way she prepares the eggplant here blows my mind. It becomes so soft and creamy and is cooked with zero oil.