Home Staging services provided in San Francisco bay area, based in San Mateo County

Color Trends and Inspiration

Orange-Red and Pink I’ve been loving this color combo lately: isn’t it happy and a little wild? Seems impossible life could be boring spent in these two colors.

Staging Industry

My New Flor Carpet Tiles Such a genius idea – to sell carpet by the tile instead of a whole rug. This means you can create a rug of whatever size you want and arrange the patterns/colours however you wish – and have the ability to change it up over time when you become bored with it.

Style Tips and Tricks

Fabric Loving It’s always so exciting stumbling across a fabric I haven’t seen before.  It inspires me and gets me thinking about the possibilities of what I can do with it and what other fabrics I can mix with it.  Even though this chair has now sold I think I might need to have something else covered in this fabric…

Property of the Week

Holiday Home in the South West of France This is the holiday home of French interior designer Sarah Lavoine. This old farmhouse is located in the French Gers region (which is often called French Tuscany), in the South West of France. The dining area has beautiful steel windows and doors.

Local Faves (& Raves)

Newsom Clan Moving Out of SF and Temporarily Into Marin The Newsom family purchased their 4-bed, 3.5-bath, 2,300-square-foot home at 1581 Masonic Ave in June of 2009 for $2,980,000. Now that they’re expecting a second child, the four bedroom home they currently reside in just won’t do. The family plans to spend the summer living in Jennifer’s parents’ five-bedroom, five-bath home in the Marin County town of Ross, supposedly while they search for permanent housing for their growing family.

Color Trends and Inspiration

Sweet Dreams As much as I love the idea of bright colors in bedding, I have a hard time committing and tend to favor neutrals instead.

Staging Industry

Displaying Kids Art In August 2009 I posted a photo which showed a way of featuring kid’s drawings. I did not have any children back then but now I have a baby son I can’t wait until he is old enough to make me some beautiful drawings!

Style Tips and Tricks

7 Ways to Use Food that Don’t Involve Eating It seems like many of you were intrigued to learn how to clean the toilet with Kool Aid (Coca-Cola and Alka-Seltzer also work!). It sounds hare-brained — but it works!

Propertyof the Week

Hatchworks, Austin I spend so much time thinking about the inside of homes that I rarely take time to think about the outside. It could be the byproduct of living in an apartment and not having an outside to call my “own.”

Local Fave (and Raves)

I’m Not Above It Our good friend Vicki Moore of San Mateo Real Estate Blog made it into Sunday’s Real Estate section of the Examiner!!!

Hey folks, HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

This webisode kicks off our web series on home staging and home selling tips, hosted by Cindy Lin, our General Manager and EcoJoe, the original eco-friendly St Joseph Statue Home Selling Kit! It is the Year of Rabbit!

Here are some Chinese New Year Traditions:
-Traditionally, it was customary to take 15 days off to celebrate new years
-It is customary to celebrate ancestors and gods by presenting fresh fruits, meat, paper money through rituals during the new year. People also burn paper money for unfortunate spirits.
-On the second day of the new year, married women bring their families to see their parents
-Older generations give younger generations red envelopes with money in them
-Oranges are often displayed for good luck (Cindy actually got quoted in Wall Street Journal for this!)
-Red is the color to be worn for luck and good fortune.
-There are certain dishes served for New Year’s Eve dinner. One of them is always a fish dish and it is a tradition to not finish the fish dish. The word fish has the same pronunciation as the word “leftover.” So it is good luck to leave some fishes leftover to symbolize that we have prosperity and have food leftover on the table every year.
-It is also superstition not to flip the fish over during the dinner. This stemmed from families who are in the fishing industry. It is bad omen for family members who are still working on the boats.

Photo credits: Heidi & Matt,  takuya miyamoto*

Color Trends and Inspiration
I Spy:  Black and Blue I saw this amazing image of an art installation at the milan led light festival, via design boom, and it reminded me how much i love black and blue. that really dark, midnight blue, or soft shades of deep aqua, combined with black, and some natural wood furnishings can be really striking and dramatic, but kind of soothing, too. even a bit nautical looking – like the big blue sea. here’s some images that are all about black & blue.

Staging Industry
Stage with existing furniture using this quick fix! Spray paint has long been considered a quick and easy way to spruce up forlorn pieces of furniture, but if you are like me, you can spot — literally — a bad spray job from a mile away. Uneven lines and a spotty appearance are tell-tale signs of “I just want to get this done in an hour.” I personally find that spray painting is not always the easy way out in terms of application. If you are not careful, things can go downhill really fast. I hope these few tips today on Before & After Basics will make your next spray-painting job much smoother!

Style Tips and Tricks
Beside Bookshelf:  Repurposed Dresser Drawer
I love to read for an hour before bed, but have a terrible habit of simply dropping my book between the bed and the wall when I’m ready to sleep! In the spirit of fresh starts and being, you know, reasonable, I installed a found drawer next to my bed to hold all my nighttime reading material…

Property of the Week
It’s Back! And $30,000 Less 67 Richland in Bernal Heights was put on the market in late August of 2010 with an asking price of $769,000. In October it got a chop but no buyer. Then in December the owners decided to take it off the market. Now it’s back, and with a brand new asking price: $699,000. Like we said back in October, this home has decent bones and a great layout– but the faux finished walls need to go. And one giant fleur de lys is one too many (we count two in the house). Dear readers, will this 2-bed, 1-bath home finally catch a buyer?

Local Fave
Is San Francisco Vegetarian Friendly? Since early 2009, vegetables have moved to the top of the plate. Part of the reason is consumer demand, part is economics and political and some is technology.
As meat-based products get more expensive, restaurants are looking more to grains and produce to either round out the plate, or to compose the plate.
In the last couple years, the already health-conscious Northern California consumer has put even more emphasis on local and sustainable products. Many chefs are now even growing some of their own food.