LV Scarf - FW - Paris

   LV Scarf - FW - Paris
   Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Stylish Lens Serie - FW - Paris

   Stylish Lens Serie - FW - Paris
   Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Sneakity Peek: Client Apartment

We recently finished up with our clients' gorgeous condo & I have a couple of pics to share.   My client has amazing taste and has amassed lots of collections of beautiful objects over the years.  She was ready for a fresh start design-wise & has a very defined style.  We wanted light & textural and we used a soft pallette of whites, creams, grays, aquas & taupes.  

This (below) is the view down one of the hallways & we went with a horizontally striped rug, which visually widens the hallway:

The apartment has the most beautiful light and the views are incredible.  I'll save the rest of it for when we have it professionally shot but before I go, I do want to share a few of Maureen's collections with you:

{old pulleys}

{I can't remember what this thing is but it is soooo gorgeous!!!  She found it at a thrift store, like many of her treasures}

{Her collection of vintage trophies is incredible.  I love them just piled together like this.}

{One of my favorite collections she has is her collection of glass & crystal bottle stops that she keeps at the drink station...  so beautiful.}

...Anyway, I'll be sure to share the rest of the apartment when I can!!  Thank you so much to my clients for letting us be a part of your redesign!!



If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

IF you don't mind ...

A few days ago, "Easy Fashion Paris" had its 4 000 000 th visitor since creation of my blog. Incredible and a great satisfaction for me ! But let me tell you something has changed and not in a good way. Where Easy Fashion had 25 comments , now I get hardly 5 comments for a post. Why ?

I tell you why: Some visitors are taking Street Style Blogs for supermarkets of free Fashion pictures picking up pictures and never let a comment or a smile. They come here just to take pics and bring them back to Fashion Forums or Social networks like "The Fashion Spot" (which hosts hundreds of my pictures and denied me access) or "Pinterest"(With his big mouth full of deontology). Even when they link back, they bring no traffic at all ... And let me tell you about those who steal 100% of my blog (like Feedmefashion) or dirty people who duplicate it (changing one letter or more in the adress) to sell advertising. That's my situation today and I will not go on like that eternally if I have not your support.
Thank you !

Il y a quelques jours, "Easy Fashion Paris" a dépassé les 4 000 000 de visiteurs depuis sa création. C'est incroyable et une vraie satisfaction pour moi. Toutefois une chose me désespère. J'avais il y a peu 25 commentaires ou plus pour un post et j'en ai maintenant difficilement 5. Pourquoi ?

Je vais vous dire pourquoi: Certains visiteurs prennent prennent les blogs de Street Style pour des supermarchés de photos gratuites et les "délocalisent" sur des forums ou des réseaux sociaux sans jamais laisser un petit mot ou un sourire. Pour les citer, ce sont entre-autres "The Fashion Spot" qui héberge des centaines de mes photos (et qui me refuse l'accès au forum) ou même "Pinterest" (avec sa grande bouche pleine du mot "déontologie"). Tous ces sites n'apporte aucun traffic en retour vers Easy Fashion et "profitent" de mon travail. Et encore laissez-moi vous parler de ceux qui volent l'intégralité de mes photos (comme Feedmefashion) ou les gens éhontés qui dupliquent mon blog purement et simplement en changeant une ou plusieurs lettres dans l'adresse (certains gardent le nom "Easy Fashion Paris") pour entretenir la confusion et vendre de la publicité. Je ne pourrais pas continuer éternellement, si je n'ai pas votre soutien. Merci !

Fred

Elitza - Les Tuileries - Paris

   Elitza - Les Tuileries - Paris
   Photos by Easy Fashion Fred
    WW II Look 

Mr DeMarco, Would you consider a debt-equity swap?

From Bloomberg:

The U.S. government has spent $190 billion to shore up the companies since they were taken into federal conservatorship in 2008 after their investments in risky loans soured. DeMarco said adding to the firms’ costs would be a violation of his legal responsibility to restore them to financial health.

Using principal forbearance instead of forgiveness so far has been better for taxpayers, DeMarco said. Forbearance reduces monthly payments while requiring borrowers to pay back the full amount of the loan when they sell the house.

“If the borrower is successful on the modification, allows them to stay in their house and they stay in their house and start making mortgage payments, the taxpayer gets to share in the upside of that borrower’s success,” DeMarco said in the Bloomberg Television interview. “If we forgive the principal up front and the borrower is successful, that upside all goes to the borrower and is not shared with the taxpayer.”

There is another way to allow taxpayers to get the upside of borrowers' success--replace the debt they owe with a shared equity arrangement.  The taxpayer may be better off with principal forbearance for houses that are 10 percent underwater, because through amortization people can get themselves right-side up in a relatively short time (particularly if they can get a refinance at a low rate of interest).

But for places like Las Vegas and the Central Valley of California, where many people are 40-70 percent underwater,  it is hard to see how default and large losses aren't inevitable.  A debt-equity swap would allow people to move freely, which aligning incentives between lenders and borrowers.

  

Regina - Les Tuileries - Paris

  Regina - Fashion Blogger - Les Tuileries - Paris
   Photos by Easy Fashion Fred

Tracy - Trocadero - Paris

Tracy - Fashion Buyer - Trocadero - Paris
Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Giovanna Battaglia - FW - Paris

   Stylish Phone for Giovanna Battaglia - FW - Paris
   Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Stylish Lens Serie - FW - Paris

   Stylish Lens Serie - FW - Paris
   Photos by Easy Fashion Fred

Purple

Everything seems to be blooming now...   (yay!!!!)   I took these photos in our yard last week & I can't believe how much greener everything's gotten between now & then.

{our wisteria}

A lot of what's blooming in the yard (and what I love in our yard- lavendar, wisteria, crocus, violets & even the weeds) seems to be purple.  And purple's not a color I really think of as liking very much for interiors...  But I did come across a few spaces where I think it's really beautiful & I think I seem to like it most when in small doses (vs all over, like on walls...  although I could probably be convinced ;) in a room.

{Elle Decor...  just a single shot of purple}

My violets (below) remind me of when I was a little girl walking around the neighborhood picking violets to press...

I loooove the purple pillows in this room:  (and the entire room to be honest)

The amethyst on the coffee table is beautiful. 

Here's another pic of our violets.  My favorite are these white & purple ones:

{I love getting violet bouquets from my boys}

And below, this room feels really good to me.  I think that when I typically think of purple, I think of it in connection with teenage girls' rooms  or cold-modern rooms and I imagine it in "flatter" spaces without much depth and that feel a little "plastic" to me, but after finding these few "purple rooms" I'm realizing that I really do love it when it's an accent in a room full of texture & interest. 

..And I think this applies to pretty much any color.  Of course I have favorites (no- not green!!! ;) ;)  but I also love the challenge of working with colors that aren't my favorites & making beautiful spaces out of them.  And I really appreciate seeing rooms where designers have done this & they make me love a color I wouldn't normally think of as even liking.   ( I wonder...  could this even be possible with burgundy for me???!!  probably.)

So, thanks Flowers, for opening me up a little & making me reconsider purple!

ps- We caught a bug in the house this week & it has seriously been one of the worst ever...  some sort of crazy chest pains along with all of the usual cold stuff.  (Even my assistant, Meghan, is out sick)  I'm definitely backed up on emails & will get to them as quickly as possible!!  It's looking like I might be on the up today!

*images via pinterest*

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Anastasia - Les Tuileries - Paris

  Anastasia - Fashion Interviewer - Les Tuileries - Paris
  Photos by Easy Fashion Fred

Salomé et Jacky - Rue Sévigné - Paris

  Salomé et Jacky - Rue Sévigné - Paris
  Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Andrew Zimbalist on Frank McCourt's sale of the Dodgers

From ESPN:

"It's problematic," Zimbalist said. "He was looking for some kind of ongoing income stream and he got it. Here's a guy who borrowed practically all the money to buy the team for $430 million and now he's selling it for $2.15 billion and he's coming out with a healthy capital gain -- it's repulsive. This is someone who doesn't deserve to walk away with a healthy profit after eight years of running the Dodgers in the most egregious, the most inefficient, the most self-interested, and the most vainglorious, idiotic way possible. It really is repulsive that he will still be making a profit in some way."

If ever there were a parable about how some people can thumb their nose at the rules and make out like bandits, the story of McCourt's ownership of the Dodgers is it. 

Deep Blue Yellow - Les Tuileries - Paris

  Deep Blue Yellow - Les Tuileries - Paris
  Photo by Easy Fashion Fred

Caroline - Les Tuileries - Paris

  Caroline -  Student - Les Tuileries - Paris
  Photos by Easy Fashion Fred

Stylish Lens Serie - FW - Paris

  Hannelli Mustaparta - One of my favorites Bloggers
  Very talented and always elegant !
  Photos by Easy Fashion Paris

Smiling Casual - FW - Paris

  Smiling Casual - FW - Paris
  Photo by Easy Fashion Farid

A poignant moment from a poor country

The laundry here "ruined" a couple of my shirts--whoever ironed tore the collars a bit from the bodies of the shirts. Being an American, I threw them in my trash basket. 


The man who cleans my room, upon discovering them in the trash, asked if he could have them. I said, "of course." 


He then asked me to write a note, saying that I had explicitly told him he could have them, lest anyone think he might have stolen them. Of course I did that as well. He seemed extremely happy to have the shirts.

When liberals undermine liberalism

I consider myself a liberal.  On social issues, I am very liberal; on economic issues, while in general I like markets, I think governments can and should correct large market failures (such as failures in private insurance markets and negative externalities), that the one percent (maybe even the ten percent) should pay higher taxes than they do now, and that there should be a floor on living standards.

It therefore drives me crazy when liberals embrace waste and hypocrisy.  So the following paragraph in the LA Times caught my eye:

Instead, the rail authority has agreed to run fewer trains at slower speeds on tracks shared with commuter rail systems, Amtrak and freight trains. In the early years, passengers will probably have to transfer trains to get from one end of the system to the other. The concept, known as the blended approach, was pushed last year by Bay Area politicians, who fought the original plan to run high-speed trains through the region on 60-foot high viaducts over local neighborhoods. The idea has attracted support in Southern California as well.

So places that will rail against the automobile are doing everything possible to make sure "bullet train" service (whose potential for success I am skeptical about anyway) cannot possibly be a competitive transport mode. The "blended" system will also make freight rail relatively less competitive with trucks, and will waste a lot of money that could be better spent on places California really needs to spend money, such as K-12 education and state universities (and no, I do not work at one).

The whole thing reminds me of perhaps my all time favorite Onion headline.

Onward

In upcoming posts, I plan to pursue two main themes.  The first is a more comprehensive exploration of what determines eating behavior in humans, the neurobiology behind it, and the real world implications of this research.  The reward and palatability value of food are major factors, but there are others, and I've spent enough time focusing on them for the time being.  Also, the discussions revolving around food reward seem to be devolving into something that resembles team sports, and I've had my fill.

The second topic I'm going to touch on is human evolutionary history, including amazing recent insights from the field of human genetics.  These findings have implications for the nutrition and health of modern humans. 

I look forward to exploring these topics, and others, with all of you in the coming months.

Recent Media Appearances

Men's Health interviewed and quoted me in an article titled "Reprogram Your Metabolism", written by Lou Schuler.  Part of the article was related to the food reward concept.  I'm glad to see the idea gradually reaching the mainstream. 

Boing Boing recently covered an article by Dr. Hisham Ziauddeen and colleagues in Nature Reviews Neuroscience that questioned the idea that common obesity represents food addiction-- an idea that I often encounter in my reading.  Maggie Koerth-Baker asked me if I wanted to respond.  I sent her a response explaining that I agree with the authors' conclusions and I also doubt obesity is food addiction per se, as I have explained in the past, although a subset of obese people can be addicted to food.  I explained that the conclusions of the paper are consistent with the idea that food reward influences fat mass.  You can find my explanation here.

Our Nurseries from Babies Past...

Our future baby's nursery has been coming together...  For months we just piled all the baby stuff in here & I waited to attack the room.  Its plain white walls & cream carpeting were pretty much a blank slate.  I added a modern crib in a hazlenut finish by Muu Kids (amazing to work with btw) and am still working on the bedding.  (For now it's just our basic sheet set which I'll use in combination with some pretties.) 

I've done different things with all of my babies' nurseries.  In our old house, over 4 years ago, Christian's nursey was a bit coastal with tone-on-tone pale blue stripes in semigloss & matte paint...

{My cousin & I made the seashell mobile & I sewed the quilt} 

This old man thrift store painting (below) goes everywhere with us and is now in our living room...

In Justin's nursery, 2 years ago,  I wanted to go dark  & be bold.  I'd done the sweet thing before & was ready for a change.  I wanted a dark room for sleeeeeeeping.

My husband & I stencilled a dropcloth with an allover pattern and made a canopy over the crib. 

 I used the nursery walls as a gallery for artwork that we'd collected & inherited over the years.

...Most of the pieces are pretty moody and I used lots of foresty type things in there. 

You can see how we used the same pieces on both rooms but ended up with 2 really different looks...

Justin's nursery was featured on Design Sponge and I'll never forget that some of the commenters thought the room was creepy and one of them even said it looked like "Rosemary's Baby's Room."  It cracked us up at home and so we called it that sometimes :)  (I have to say, I do have a dark side & loooove scary books & movies ;)

And now...  we're onto the new baby's nursery.  And of course, I'm ready for more change :)  This time (which we are thinking of as our last, although I'll never say never until we're sure)  I decided that I just wanted to go with all of my favorite things.  I've always known that nurseries are for moms & dads (and mostly moms because dad's don't usually care very much) and so this time I'm doing a total "me" nursery.  Selfish?  Yeah, I know, but I'm okay with that ;) 

I'm starting with my Live Paisley in "mojito" for the curtains:

{I'm constantly experimenting with colorways in my fabrics and this is definitely one of my favorites, designed specifically for this room.}

And last night my husband painted the walls a paler shade of the same chartreusy-green...

{It's Sherwin Williams "Rice Paddy}

I'm working on the bedding now and a swivel glider in by Lee Industries should be arriving any week now...

{Sorry for the blurry pic...  picture it in a warm oatmeal linen}  I'm SO pumped for this glider.  We thought about getting one with every baby and finally decided to do it.  Our babies are not good sleepers and so I'm banking that we'll be gliding many a night on this new chair. 

The dresser/ changing table is in the closet so we have as much floor space as possible for playing.  I'll be sure to share pictures when we get it finished.  (Which should be in the next month a half!)

And finally, here are a couple of belly pics from yesterday...  The boys have taken to walking up to me and hugging me/ my belly saying "BIG BELLY!!!!"  or "SO BIG!!!!" in their deep little voices.  (It makes me feel so petite ;)

A month and half left... eeeeeeeeeeek!!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Mark Twain on Monetary Policy (h/t Patricia Harris)

First published in 1879 as "Mark Twain as a Presidential Candidate."

My financial views are of the most decided character, but they are not likely, perhaps, to increase my popularity with the advocates of inflation. I do not insist upon the special supremacy of rag money or hard money. The great fundamental principle of my life is to take any kind I can get.

Food Reward: Approaching a Scientific Consensus

Review papers provide a bird's-eye view of a field from the perspective of experts.  Recent review papers show that many obesity researchers are converging on a model for the development of obesity that includes excessive food reward*, in addition to other factors such as physical inactivity, behavioral traits, and alterations in the function of the hypothalamus (a key brain region for the regulation of body fatness).  Take for example the four new review papers I posted recently by obesity and reward researchers:
Read more »

Our Master Bath & Subway Tile

Sooooo.. remember when I wrote this post about my bathroom & vintage shaving mirror a little while back?  Well, my husband & I have both had the bathroom on our minds.  Here's a picture of our current linoleum & formica clad bathroom  complete with green fiberglass shower stall....

It's currently separated into two spaces- one for the shower & toilet and one for the vanity/ sink area.  We're looking to combine the spaces into one larger room, which is something we've been planning since we moved in.  I also want to move the toilet so it's not the first thing we see when we walk in.

I'm really excited about the possibility of fixing this baby up!!  We are planning on enlarging the shower so that it takes up the entire back wall of the bathroom (over where the toilet currently is now) and doing a walkaround glass shower enclosure.  (Meaning the glass will be fixed in place with no door, just a wide opening.)  I've been on the search for the perfect 2x6 creamy white subway tile for the shower walls & I think I've found it by Subway Ceramics.  It's really important to me that the subway tile is matte and as flat as possible for a more seamless vintage-modern look.  Subway Ceramics specializes in vintage reproduction tile that is almost perfectly flat and allows for pencil thin grout lines.  (And lots of other tiles too)

{image via sacramentostreet.com...  I'm not sure who makes this subway tile but just wanted to give you an idea of what I'm thinking...  We also have a small window that will be in our shower and I loooove the one above.}

I also want to use darker grout between the tiles... Similar to this kitchen below but with slightly thinner groutlines:

{image via littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com}

I Love the tile in this kitchen by Tom Scheerer:

...It looks as if it's not as dark as an actual black.  I think it's a bit softer & this is what I'm looking for..  We live in a 70s contemporary so I like the retro vibe of the 2x6 subways. 

Anyway, I'll keep you posted on it!   Fingers crossed!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.