Candace Bushnell's Apartment

I didn't know until just now that my all-time favorite apartment was that of the author of Sex and the City, Candace Bushnell. I have treasured the Elle Decor magazine that featured her apartment for a long, long time.

I had always thought that my favorite, easy going and comfortably chic NYC apartment belonged to a shy looking investment banker and his beautiful socialite and perhaps professional dancer wife. It was actually the opposite, and ironically her husband IS a dancer.




I absolutely love how it is a mix of Euro, NYC, and Moroccan, with a twist of the 80s here and there (like the sliced up grand piano looking painting). (When I grow up) I want to live in a house that is Arabic-French with a dash of Japanese... which is probably why I idealize the mixture of this apartment so much.

Beautiful American Houses

Elle Decor is currently featuring high-style historic American houses.

Drayton Hall from 1738 is the oldest Georigan Palladian archetecture in existence and has never been restored. It's so mystically beautiful. Such an ideal room to live in...


Biltmore in North Carolina is probably the largest house in the U.S. A few of my Euro friends who visited were dazzled by its size and grandeur. I would like to go see this one day.


Swan House above is one that I've never seen or heard before, but the proportion of the house to the garden greens falling onto, and framing the house is utter perfection.

There are lots more here that you could check out, including the most famous Waterfall House and the iconically modern Glass House.

Photo credit: Elle Decor

Unpolluted fish

I haven't seen such unpolluted fish in a long time. Or maybe ever? Snygg mackerel from Sweden.

By the way, it's Ocean Day in Japan next Monday. I had always thought that it was a day to celebrate summer and go to the beach, like the ski holiday. But apparently it is "a day of gratitude for the blessings of the oceans and to hope for the economic prosperity of maritime Japan" (Wikipedia). Haha, it could have been anything, really. But overall it's a nice sounding day - Umi no Hi.

The Selby

Since I am on the topic of rooms, I wanted to post some of my favorite Selby rooms.

In case you haven't yet been introduced to this wonderful project, this shows the private rooms of the artist friends of a photographer/illustrator Todd Selby. It became so popular that he now does related installation shows and other works at colette and the likes. It sounds like the best job ever.

The recent posts have a lot of Louis Vuitton rooms, of which I liked those from Shanghai and Tokyo.


Some others that I liked:
Blue house as shown above. Very exotic yet clean.
A very nice contrast of a gaudy living room yet an incredibly simple bedroom.
The house of Design Director of W Magazine in perfect industry design.



Photo credit: The Selby

White Pristine Room

When I saw this room in Elle Decor, I thought how crisp and sophisticated! It's even more special that the owner is a ballerina living in NYC.

Here are some other rooms in white. I can see that it is important to have a dark flooring or a dark line in the room (like the curtain rail above or the table below), so that it doesn't get bloated.


This last room reminds me of my friend Masa's place in Hampstead, London. It was such a tasteful flat with a simple but exquisite livingroom where he held a lot of dinner parties and served big chunks of meat.

Photo credit: Elle Decor.

Girl with Pig Tails

I didn't do anything this whole weekend other than watch soccer. I could have gone to get a massage or read by the pool, but I didn't even do that!

By the end of Sunday, I couldn't bare the thought of having done nothing, so I drew this. It probably looks like me this weekend.