Still pinching myself over the House Beautiful article about the COCOCOZY Design House! Now time for more detail about kitchen and bathroom counters. Last year, I showed you my countertop selection.

As you might recall, Caesarstone, one of the COCOCOZY Design House partners, generously supplied all of the counter material for the kitchen and the bathrooms and I am so happy with my picks:  Statuario Maximus for kitchen and Pure White for the master and 2 other bathrooms!

More updates on COCOCOZY Design House kitchen. Today it is all about the kitchen sink.  The kitchen remodel has come together. It looks amazing.  Better than I had expected actually.  All the details down to the fantastic sink area worked out. Kohler generously supplied the farmhouse style kitchen sink and and kitchen faucet.  I wanted the kitchen sink area to combine function and good looks at the same time…I think it worked out!  Here’s how it came together…

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Monogram is one of our most amazing COCOCOZY Design House partners.  They gave us all of the fabulous kitchen and laundry room appliances for the Design House. We’ve come a long way since I first wrote about Monogram, GE’s high-end line of appliances that are all pro chef quality.

Time for a little update on the master bathroom at the COCOCOZY Design House. It feels like just yesterday the bathroom design started and we’re already finishing up. Now that we are almost complete with the baths, time for a little sneak peek!

Remember what the bathrooms used to look like? Every bathroom at the COCOCOZY Design House looks great now with all of the TOTO plumbing fixtures.  Bright and clean, these bathrooms are coming together great and are giving me serious bathroom envy. TOTO provided all of the amazing sinks, faucets, shower and bath hardware, tubs and toilets for the Design House.

I recently set a holiday lunch table out in my garden. Have you ever wondered how to style a holiday table when entertaining guests? I live in Southern California so it doesn’t exactly look like the holiday season for those in the East Coast or in colder places, but since it’s so nice outside, I had to take advantage of the weather outside during the holidays.

It was warm outside (around 53), but I still had heat lamps just in case. You never know how cool it can get in the evening. Here’s how I style a holiday table using a traditional plaid.

Just in time for Halloween, I bought a few pumpkins the other day in a plan to decorate for fall. But as I brought them home, I noticed they clashed with the other colors. The orange didn’t really match my house so I decided to just changed the color of the pumpkins!

I decided on a hunter green, mist green and a powdery blue for my little pumpkins. And it worked out. This little pumpkin makeover perfectly matched my decor.

Check out how I did it below! If you’re looking for a jack-o-lantern how to…I took a much simpler route to making these pumpkins my own!

I am extremely excited to introduce you to another fabulous partner for the COCOCOZY Design House, Monogram! This is GE’s elite line of professional kitchen appliances.

As a major anchor partner for our renovation of the 1860 square foot Spanish style home in View Park LA, Monogram has offered to provide EVERYTHING… EVERYTHING appliance related for the kitchen. This mean Refrigeration, Stove, Dishwasher, Microwave and even the Washer/Dryer. Woo!

I was at my day job one day and I was telling a colleague, who is a major home chef, about the COCOCOZY Design House concept and he suggested I reach out to Monogram, the best in the business. I immediately hopped on Google and learned about this amazing line of professional quality kitchen appliances. The minute I saw this great collection, I was in love! That weekend, I popped over to the local showroom where I spent a good amount of time oogling over all of the appliances on display!

Work on the COCOCOZY Design House continues.  

Next step — lighting! This has been THE single most difficult design decision for this house by far. Lucky for me, Lamps Plus came on board to help me solve the dilemma. As one of our fabulous anchor partners in the COCOCOZY Design House project, Lamps Plus offered to give me lighting for all areas. Wait, what? All rooms and outdoor! Again, what?! All lighting! Yes.  

Lamps Plus does have some brands they make themselves like Possini, Franklin Ironworks, 360 Lighting, John Timberland, and a few more… but in addition to those, they carry tens and tens of thousands of lights from other brands. I whittled down my selection after several visits to two different Lamps Plus stores here in Los Angeles. This was a real exercise in decision making!

As far as exterior color goes, the house in this first picture is my inspiration for the color scheme on the exterior of the  COCOCOZY Design House! The inspiration house was designed by my COCOCOZY Design House partner, amazing real estate developer, Steve Jones of BetterShelter

I am in the process of picking all the exterior colors for the renovation of the stunning 1860-square-foot Spanish style home built in 1930 in the heart of View Park, LA. I have never had to make so many decisions in such a short amount of time other than right now. We started actual construction the first ever COCOCOZY Design House in the middle of April — and since then, I have been running around like crazy!!! Arghhhhh.

One of the decisions that was easiest for me was picking Benjamin Moore as the exclusive paint partner for the project. The Benjamin Moore team was nice enough to give me all of the paint for both interior and exterior of the home. I felt honored that this brand was open to the idea of working with me and my team on this inaugural COCOCOZY Design House.

Decisions, decisions! As you know, we have been hard at work on the COCOCOZY Design House. Today, it’s all about two main exterior hardscape surfaces — the front walkway and back balcony.

Curb appeal is everything when designing a house… especially one that is going on sale! Sometimes a book is judged by its cover. Lucky for me, the facade of this house is already so amazing — my main goal is not to mess it up!  The Cement Tile Shop has come on as a partner to help me in that effort.

The photo (above) is what I’m using as my main inspiration for this part of the project. Now, before I go any further, I just want to note that this house is a work in progress. Please read using your imagination for what the space will look like. And don’t worry, I will show you all the final result as soon as I can!

Time for some kitchen planning!

The cabinets have been ordered, appliances have been selected, and now I am thinking about counters. I am super duper lucky to have another wonderful company on board to provide product for the COCOCOZY Design House. Caesarstone has generously agreed to supply all of the countertop material for the kitchen and the baths.

I had Caesarstone counters in my first house — you all may remember that tiny little cottage in the Hollywood Hills. Now for my first COCOCOZY Design House, I went to Caesarstone as my first choice for counters!

The planning and renovation phase of the COCOCOZY Design House is in full swing!

As you know, I’m currently in the midst of transforming a beautiful 1860-square-foot Spanish style home in View Park LA (my first ever design house!) — and we’ve meticulously selected a few partners to work with us by providing product.

I was so thrilled when TOTO came on board to supply all bath and plumbing fixtures for the 4 new bathrooms we are creating in the Design House. You heard me… EVERYTHING! That means sinks, faucets, shower heads, toilets, gorgeous tubs, accessories, and all of the fittings and valves. WOW!!

As promised, here’s the first look video inside the first ever COCOCOZY Design House! I am so excited to share my first ever renovation journey with you!

Get a behind the scenes look at the very, very beginning phase of transforming this beautiful 1860 square foot Spanish style home in View Park LA with my partner in crime, Steve Jones of BetterShelter by watching this COCOCOZY Design House first team meeting video!

And for more information about the property, refer back to my post introducing the project by clicking here!

Major life update alert!

If you’ve been following me on Instagram, you already know that I’ve started my first big COCOCOZY design house project! And now that I’ve got my footing, I want to bring you all along on the journey with me in hopes we can learn a thing or two together!

Basically, I bought this house as an investment property a few months ago in an historic area here in Los Angeles called View Park. The Spanish Style home is 1860 square feet and was built in 1931. It sits on a large, magical lot surrounded by palm trees and birds of paradise. It was 3 bedrooms and 3 baths — but now we are morphing it into a 4 bedroom and 3.5 bath home!

The best made plans…often go awry.  When that happens, I use spider mums!  This lovely spring centerpiece I used for an Easter gathering actually came together by mistake.

It ended up being the perfect, bright and fresh addition to the table setting — and it’s so simple to make, you could throw this together for any occasion!

So here’s what happened… I had 12 members of my family over earlier this month. The *perfectly-planned* plan was for a lovely garden filled with blue hydrangea.  If you caught my girl boss luncheon post… kinda like that! And my menu included barbecue chicken, lightly dressed kale salad, fennel and tomato salad, corn bread and from my Caribbean background the family gathering staple, Haitian rice (red rice and beans).