rain city

In the fall of 1995, I moved to Seattle to accept a spot in a Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Washington.  I had just completed my bachelor's degree at the University of a Maryland in College Park,  and had been living in (and loving) the neighborhoods in and around Washington D.C. for the 4 years prior.   I had honestly never given Seattle a second thought before I was offered the opportunity to go to UW and used to joke that I couldn't have found it on a map before I moved there.  I had absolutely no inkling that it was a city that would change my life.

Lots of people had random tidbits of knowledge to bestow on me when they found out I was moving to Seattle.  My favorite example is one of my Pennsylvania aunts trying to convince me that the city was teeming with serial killers.  All I really knew was that there was rain and there was music.  I definitely found those things (luckily no serial killers), but I also found a city with fantastic food, lots of interesting, creative people and beauty -- natural and otherwise -- pretty much everywhere I looked.

In the six years I lived in Seattle,  I became an artist and a member of a creative community like none I've experienced in any other city.  I became a much better cook and fell in love with gardening.  I also became a wife and the member of the giant clan of Seattlites that came with my husband.  With the husband and the clan came the gift of always being connected to this fabulous city.

You can imagine why I consider it my second hometown. 

Beauty.  Natural and otherwise.

It probably seems like a tourist move (it isn't, unless you go on a Saturday in, say, August), but I almost always start a trip with a visit to Pike Place Market.  My first apartment is Seattle was in Belltown in a time (before fancy condos had taken over) when the closest grocery store was either Larry's Market in Lower Queen Anne or the Safeway on Broadway.  Pike Place is where I did my shopping and it was, and remains, one of the most inspiring and places for me.

I never get tired of this place.

Sosio's, Don and Joe's and The Pike Place Market Creamery were my go-to spots.   I was additicted to the baguette and croissants and pretty much everything else at Le Panier.

The plan is always to eat as much seafood as possible while in Seattle.  It is not hard to find the good stuff.

Even with good places in abundance,  my sentimental favorite in the market is DeLaurenti.  When I landed on Seattle's shores I was a 21 year old Italian-American girl from the east coast.  I was terribly homesick for the Italian food culture that I grew up with, so DeLaurenti became the place I went to comfort myself on many a gloomy (and not-so-gloomy) Seattle day.

It was Super Bowl weekend when I was in town, and I've never seen Seattle so pumped up about sports.  It was Seahawks everything, on everyone, everywhere.

Rachel, all dressed up for game day.

There are lots of other things to see and do, but really Seattle visits are all about the food.  I made it a point to eat some oysters from the paradise that is Uwajimaya and lots and lots of Theo Chocolate, but the through line of this trip was sandwiches.

The Pork Medium (P Med) from Pecos Pit Barbeque - a thing of messy, eat with a spork beauty so good that I will sit outside in Seattle in January to eat it and the sweet and spicy beans that are it's perfect mate.  Pecos is the only BBQ joint with a sauce too spicy for me to order the hot version.  The medium is ass-kicker enough.

We are a family of bloggers and food nerds, so of course there was documentation of the construction process of Drew's fried chicken sandwich with spicy slaw --special request for my sister in law's birthday dinner.

Really good burgers from a drive-in count as sandwiches, right?

There is no trip to Seattle that doesn't include a stop at Dick's Drive-in.  Did I mention that it was Super Bowl Sunday?  Lots of very excited Seahawks fans were also having burgers for brunch.  By the time we got our Deluxes and cheeseburgers, fries and a chocolate shake, the all of the lines stretched well into the parking lot.  It was a sea of blue and green.

More sandwiches during the halftime show.

A team effort creating salmon BLTs for Super Bowl sustenance.

My husband is a Seattle native, and he grew up in one of the giant Victorian homes in the Capitol Hill neighborhood (you can see his childhood drawing of that house in this post).  In the past few years, much of the family and quite a few of our friends have moved to Ballard.  When I lived in Seattle, it was a sleepy neighborhood filled with retired fishermen from Scandanavia.  In the last decade or so it has transformed with lots of new condos, restaurants, breweries and shops along the water at Market Street and Ballard Avenue.  They also have a fantastic Sunday farmer's market.  It is a neighborhood where everybody walks and bikes, even in the rain. 

Many of our friends and family have bought cute little houses on the streets surrounding "downtown" Ballard.

A mild Pacific Northwest winter means that the daphne (and lots of other gorgeous flowering things) were ready for spring as early as January.

Quite a few of the little craftsman houses in Ballard are being remade into Northwest modern homes like this one.

There's a fabulous view of the diving lady, my Ballard beacon, from the living room window of my in-laws' condo.

Here's how she looks when the fog rolls in.

And I could never make a post about Seattle without talking about coffee.  I miss the coffee culture so much -- Los Angeles just can't hold a candle to it -- so I have to have "real" coffee when I'm in town.

The Ballard outpost of Bauhaus Books + Coffee.   The original store at the corner of Pine and Bellevue had amazing views of downtown and the Space Needle.  It was one of my haunts during graduate school.

A perfectly made mocha.  And that's a little bar of chocolate on the rim of the cup.

It was a fabulous Seatown weekend -- in so many ways a trip "home".  I am so grateful that I'll get to do it all again soon.

Central Grocery doesn't deliver

The muffaletta from Central Grocery in New Orleans is my favorite sandwich. And that is saying a lot when you consider that my runners up are the grilled pork sandwich from Paseo in Seattle, the cap and cheese from Primanti Brothers (the location in The Strip only) in Pittsburgh and The Godmother from Bay Cities Itailan Deli in Santa Monica.

Lots of delis and sandwich shops here in Los Angeles make their version of a muffaletta, but I haven't found any of them particularly satisfying.  And since Central Grocery doesn't deliver, sometimes I have to take matters into my own hands.

It started with bread.  I've been on a bread baking kick lately thanks to an absurdly easy and crazy good recipe from Cucina Collora.  A perfect loaf, just out of the oven, begged to become sandwiches.

I made this beautiful thing. 

Crusty exterior, great crumb, slightly sour flavor.   Perfect for muffaletta.

While my bread was cooling, I made what I consider to be the most crucial component of the sandwich:  the olive salad.

I combined kalamata and picholine olives with our homemade giardiniera and pickled hot and sweet peppers and a little olive oil.  Add a bit of salt (not much) and some black pepper and you're all set.

You can use whatever good stuff you've got on hand to make your olive salad.  The longer you let it marinate before you use it, the better it tastes.

Drew stepped in, as he often does, to assemble our sandwiches.

Lettuce and tomato, then salami, mortadella and capicola.  And Drew's big bird slippers.

Provolone cheese, my fabulous spicy olive salad and condiments.  Just to gild the lily, we topped it all off with a kosher dill pickle slice, too.

Not bad for our first go at it.  And I barely had time to take the photos before we'd devoured them.

Got a favorite sandwich?  A favorite sandwich joint?  A secret spot for great muffaletta?  You know I'd love to hear all about it.

its all just a bunch of vibrations

 

It has been forever since my last post.  

The summer has been a blur, and since its now the last day of September, an end of summer wrap-up is an imperative. I've been working on two really cool homes these past months.  Plus, I'll throw in a little summer vacation design inspiration for good measure.

In Santa Monica, I've been remaking a living room, kitchen office and lounge for a family of six.  Since lots of people live here, and they are all musical or artistic, we needed to make these rooms beautiful and functional as well as making space for all of their stuff in some not so big spaces. 

Here is where we started:

A big room with all the wrong stuff in it.  You can't see the fireplace because its the same color as the walls.  The beams in the ceiling are sage green.  There's a GIANT sectional sofa blocking your path into the room. A favorite old chair is covered with a blanket because its stuffing is coming out. The sconces are a bedazzled mess that don't have anything to do with the (beautiful) iron chandelier.  

Now, this room is perfect.

There's a creamy new white on the walls and the fireplace and beams got lovely new colors, too.  And those hand-painted cement tiles are the star of the show. That's the old favorite chair, reupholstered.  The triptych on the wall is from the clients' collection.  The new sconces and floor lamps make much more sense with the chandelier.

Too beautiful.

A small sofa and the big lounge under the window replace the sectional sofa.  The draperies are natural linen.  Lots of space to play games and display the family's musical instruments, too.

 

My favorite thing about this room is the combination of colors and patterns.  And that beautiful red pie safe -- I found it hidden away in another room and it gave it a new home here.

The small sofa is cushy and cute.

The family needed an office and workspace.  There was a spot in the kitchen, so I designed a nice, big desk to mimic the style of the kitchen cabinetry. 

The new desk has lots of desktop space as well as storage for office and art supplies.  The magnetic board above it captures the chaos of a family of 6 in an ever-changing exhibit of photos, kids' art, schedules and notes.

I love designing chairs, and this niche in the dining room was dying for this pair.  My clients had some really fantastic art in storage, in the garage,  and elsewhere around the house.  THE CARESS OF YOUR GLANCE is my favorite piece from their collection, and has finally found its perfect home.

At the house in Las Vegas, some simple but dramatic changes have occurred in the living room and the office.

This is the living room built-in before.  Like, way, way before:

When we started working on this room, we nicknamed this built-in "the beast."  You can't really get the scale from the photo, but its about 11 feet high and 13 feet wide.  It was also not centered on the wall and made the room feel slightly off balance.  And the speakers.  And that giant, old TV.  Ugh.

This is the way, way after: 

Beautiful zebra wood is the perfect material for the clean lines of the new design.  Although its nearly the same size as the original built-in, it fits the space much better because it is centered.  The TV is smaller and will float in the niche in the center.  The speakers are now elegantly camoflauged in the ceiling.  The luxe furnishings and accessories help the fab new look of this room, too.

A couple of years ago when we started the design process for this home, I suggested diptych by the artist Janet Bothne, and my client became a fast fan of her work.  Her paintings are lush and colorful and the perfect scale for the office wall behind his heavy, carved desk.

The warm yellow is the perfect backdrop for this piece, called MEASURING LOSS AND GAIN.

The library, still in progress but fast becoming my favorite room in this house, is just across the entry hall from the office.  There's a fantastic view of the new art if you're sitting in here, too.

I took my first trip to King's Valley, Oregon this summer, and it was a magnificent reminder -- and a huge shock for an L.A. girl -- of the power of nature.  Nothing but trees and water and mountains and quiet.  The stars had more wattage than the city lights, too. 

Here are a few shots of the beautiful home of our fabulous hosts:

A reminder each time the switch is flipped.

A little red cottage with a purple front door.

I was also lucky enough to get back to my beloved Seattle, where I find it impossible not to be inspired by all of the flowers and food and art and architecture and music.  I found some of the coolest design details in the homes of my family and friends.

Little details like the built in planter are what give my sister in law's little craftsman bungalow so much charm.  Plus, I love this vintage sofa and I'm a sucker for the orange-red color combo.

 

Accent pillows with fantastic color and texture.

Fab shag.

This glorious, ever-evolving magnetic chalkboard wall was one of my favorite things in a BFFs new home.  Everyone who comes to the house leaves their mark.

So.  Now I'm back in Los Angeles and back at work.  There is lots more to do before the year winds down.  But, I have to add, so far so good.  I'm excited to see what the rest of 2013 has in store.