February 2015 - Erika Dale Interior Design

Palm Springs – Modernism Week

Happy Friday! I was lucky enough to be invited to spend most of the past week in Palm Springs to help on a design installation for the 2015 Modernism Week Showcase House: The Christopher Kennedy Compound. Michael Berman (the designer I work for) designed the outdoor terrace and pool area for the showcase house. The installation went very well, and we were really pleased with the way it came out! Michael used the Luna Collection, an outdoor furniture collection he designed for Brown Jordan, in a super fun bright green to give the pool area a happy, colorful Palm Springs feel. Here are a few photos taken by Eric Lynch of our terrace:

The showcase house opened on Friday, February 13, with a red carpet gala and dinner party.

Team Berman!
© Dre Naylor Photography

Team Berman & Christopher Kennedy
© Dre Naylor Photography

We enjoyed celebrating all of our hard work, and then I snuck back to LA for the weekend to spend Valentine’s Day with my handsome hubby!

Valentine

After a wonderful weekend of relaxation, amazing food, and Best In Show (I have the best valentine ever!), I headed back to Palm Springs on Monday. We had some amazing projects in progress that we needed to work on, so we had a (very productive!) team design pow-wow in Palm Springs until Wednesday morning.

During both visits, I was lucky enough to stay at Michael’s AMAZINGLY STUNNING Palm Springs home. I am telling you, photos do not do it justice! Every inch of the place is beyond gorgeous, but in true Michael fashion, it is casual and comfortable enough to really enjoy! Nothing feels too precious, but everything is thoughtfully and wonderfully curated. I was super busy and only managed to snap a few of my own photos, but his house was just featured in CA Home & Design magazine, so I will share their lovely photos!

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Photo credit: Grey Crawford

Finally, a few of my photos of some of my favorite moments from the house:

PalmSprings_1 PalmSprings_2 PalmSprings_3
Between the gorgeous home and generous hospitality, it was hard not to feel like I was on vacation even though we worked hard!

As for this weekend, I am happy to be done travelling and ready to enjoy some relaxation/snuggling with my favorite boys! :) Have a great weekend!

Romantic Valentine’s Day Mantel

One of my very favorite things about our new place is the amazing white brick fireplace and mantel. Not that I didn’t love the faux-mantel shelf in our Burbank apartment, but it is beyond thrilling for me to have a few square feet of space I can decorate and redecorate to my heart’s content!

Once we took down the Christmas decorations, I wanted to create a mantel that was of a more romantic sentiment in honor of our anniversary in January, as well as Valentine’s Day this week. For those of you who follow me on Instagram, you already got a sneak peek of the final Valentine’s mantel, but here it is in all of its lovey-dovey glory! :)

Walker got me this amazing vintage marquee ampersand for Christmas!

Roses from our garden and a STUNNING vase we received as a wedding gift.

The first wedding photos we (finally!) printed!

The You & Me banner came from our wedding decor!

For our first non-Christmas mantel in the new place, I would say it’s not too shabby! I am going to be a maniac with this thing…! :)

Introducing our Pasadena Cottage!

Happy 2015 all! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season full of family, friends, and love. :)

Yippee! It’s cottage time! As I mentioned in the last post, discovering, visiting, applying, and getting the Pasadena Cottage all happened within 24 hours. I knew great places went quickly in this city, so I had to have faith that when it was meant to be, we would be the lucky recipients of a 24-hour whirlwind. And indeed that happened… we blinked and then suddenly had a new home!

Here is a bit about our lovely new cottage: The cottage is located in the gorgeous Mid Central neighborhood of Pasadena, making it very close (1-1.5 miles) to Old Town Pasadena and walk-able to public transportation to get us there (or anywhere!). As you can see (for those unfamiliar with the Los Angeles area), we simply moved directly east about 15 minutes from where we were before in lower Burbank.

pasadena-map

Mid Central Pasadena

It is a charming craftsman rear house that was built in 1922. It’s about 900 square feet (double the size of our Burbank apartment) and has 2 bedrooms, 1 bath (with a tub!), a fireplace, new laundry machines (eeee!), a dishwasher, central air/heat, a driveway with up to 4-5 parking spaces (plus a basketball hoop!), and best of all, a HUGE private fenced yard. We could probably fit about 6 of our old Burbank yard inside of our new one! To top it all off, the grass is brand new (they replaced it in October and is now getting very lush) and is taken care of by automatic sprinklers and a gardener that comes once a week! Woooo! No more dead yard! We are going to be so spoiled!

On top of it all, they had no issue with us putting in a dog door for the furry king of the house, so I used my DIY skills the weekend we moved in to install a SureFlap electronic pet door. It is so cool! We can set it to lock (i.e. pets can come in only) for the few-hour window the gardeners come, and then automatically unlock when they have left. We can program it to do all kinds of cool things that will give us flexibility with Bo when we are at work!

We were also lucky enough to be able to pick our paint colors and have the place painted before we arrived! We chose:

(Existing white trim and cabinets)
Behr Light Mint 480C-1: Kitchen, Bathroom
Behr Amazon Stone 790F-5: Master Bedroom
Behr Sterling 780E-3: Living Room, Hall, Guest Room, Office Nook

One last piece of business before pictures… a floor plan to give everything a bit of context (click on it to enlarge)!

So, the moment you have all been waiting for… here are a few “before” photos I took before the movers arrived with just our freshly-painted walls.

Welcome to the Pasadena Cottage!

View of the side yard from the front gate. Our driveway is behind that fence through the back gate.

View of the front yard.

View of the front gate (plus the front house) and sidewalk from the back gate.

Once in the front door, looking left into the living room.

Standing at the front door looking slightly left.

Right side of the living room.

Office nook on the right side of the living room.

Tiny office nook!

Bathroom off of the hall.

Entering the kitchen from the hall.

Opposite side of the kitchen!

The front wall of the kitchen and door to the hall.

At the back of the kitchen is the laundry area and back door.

Guest bedroom from the hall.

Guest bedroom facing hall entrance on left and kitchen entrance on right. Entrance to the master bedroom as well!

Guest bedroom facing entrance from hall.

Guest Bedroom from kitchen entrance facing window.

Master bedroom facing closet.

Master bedroom facing window.

The only downside so far (other than actually having to move) is the longer commute. While we are still trying to master the best route, we went from having a 30-45 minute commute to having about a 45-60 minute commute each way. However, those extra few minutes are worth it for such a fantastic upgrade in our home and yard. Plus, I have been killing the commute by listening to audio books… recommendations needed!

We will have photos of the furnished place in progress shortly, but in the meantime, check out our Pasadena Cottage pinterest board to see the latest ideas for our new place, and follow me on Instagram for some sneak peeks!