NOLA Fashion Week - 10/19 Blackout by Ashlie Ming

Blackout by Ashlie Ming was my first Runway Show of NOLA Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012.

I was delighted, excited and surprised. I truly enjoyed the venue and the professional setup, staff and sponsors.

But mostly that night, I loved Ming's color palette for this collection.

Here are some of my favorite looks:

Congratulations to Ashlie Ming on a great show!

*Photo cred: Cat Landrum

Study/Music Room/Yoga Studio

With the house originally having four bedrooms and turning on of those into a dressing room, we still had three rooms to work with. After deeming the master and guest bedrooms, we decided to make the third room into a study...which then also became a music room...and eventually my yoga studio as well - ha!

The face-lift of this room included moving the door frame to the other end of the wall to make the hallway a straight shot and to accommodate the bar we built. We also carved out the extra area above the closet and sheet-rocked it in and installed little doors (the original "doors" you see were dummy-doors and were sealed shut). Then we also painted and decided to do an accent color which is the burnt, red brick tone you'll see. OH, and we had to patch a big spot in the floor & try to match the wood, but luckily we found some old Heart Pine and then we had the whole floor sanded and finished (this room's floors were the worst of the original-wood bunch).

Before:

During:

After/Now:

The Beauty of Two Bathrooms

The beauty of two bathrooms is that you can keep one immaculately clean for guests and then not have to clean the master bath, that you use everyday, before you have company over. This leads to less stress in ones life and I highly recommend at least having one and a half baths.

When I realized I was going to have my own guest bath, besides being elated, I was eager to design it in a charming, soft manner that would be different from any other room in the house - it would be it's own little world. Both of the bathrooms in the house had preexisting claw-foot tubs that were made in 1914. So we had one refinished (traded the 2nd one for labor), got a new toilet, new marble tile floor, new paint & kept the preexisting pedestal sink with old-school brass fixtures. Check out the transformation:

Before:

(I know your shocked we didn't keep the wallpaper)

During:

After: