One thing can be said for Michal Negrin – she is a woman with definitive style.
There is no doubting from the moment you walk into her home who owns it. It’s sort of fabulous in a way. The same way that I love this insane pink and purple house in my neighborhood owned by one of the local geriatric mafia (my nickname for the seniors in the neighborhood who flag you down when driving and order ask you to drive them to the center of town – they kind of ignore if you say no and get in anyway).
It’s not a small apartment if you consider the size of the rooms, but there is so much crammed into the space, you’d never know it.
Click here.
Picture above from Apartment Therapy *swoon*
On February 25th at 8pm EST in the USA interior designers worldwide are getting together to answer your questions on Twitter. How does this work if you’re not following the designers or you don’t know who they are? There are several ways you can participate – the hashtag for the event is #IDzinechat, which means if you do a search for that phrase you will see the list of people involved in the question and answer session.
The designers involved are:
@irwinfelddesign, @maybellinete, @BilletCollins, @Norbridge, @ SusanSerraCKD, @averydesign, @abcdesign, @tkpleslie, @WandaSHorton
I won’t be there because 8pm EST is 3am Israel time - I’ll be sleeping 
I’m just going to have my stream open that night and I’ll read the happenings the following morning. However, for all of you in the US or more sympathetic time zones – enjoy the chat!
The Inbal Hotel is located in Jerusalem in possibly the absolute best location in the city. It’s walking distance from the German Colony, the Old City and the market (ok, granted the market would be a bit of a schlep, but on a nice day – totally doable). Required self disclosure – my husband and I were invited by the Inbal for the weekend. I also tweeted about it the whole weekend, but that was my choice. The hotel impressed me and the people were unbelievably nice and helpful. What a fantastic combination.
This Jerusalem hotel is 5-star. It looks like a 5-star hotel, has the amenities of a 5-star hotel and has the location of a 5-star hotel. So I’m not going to focus on that, because that’s boring. If you’ve been to a 5-star hotel, this is like the others. What makes the Inbal stand out is the service. We went to the spa (which was amazing and idiot me didn’t take photos.) I looked at the gym (but lazy me didn’t go work out and yes, didn’t photos of that either – but it was a great gym. Totally my bad for not going.)
Click here.
I could have parked closer to the souk in Jaffa – but I saw this store and I had to stop. Wow. Wow. Wow. One bedroom is one of my favorite stores now. The owner has such good taste and combines everything in such a wonderful, fresh way. It’s a feast for the eyes and imagination.
It’s not just the items in the store that are wonderful, but the design of the store itself.
Click here.
I had heard so many wonderful things about Sue Fisher King from my friends in SF that I had very high expectations when I went to go check out the store. The store didn’t disappoint.
What an eye. So many wonderful accessories for the home in one place.
Click here.
In case you’re wondering what happened to the site – we’ve been hacked. We’re working to get things sorted. It’s been a long night and day with little sleep and a lot of stress (my husband is a CHAMP!) and it looks like everything will be back to 100% soon.
Thank you for your patience.
[This contest has now ended.]
Christmas is now over and the New Year is here. It’s time to reorganize and get things sorted. To celebrate the ending of the holidays and the ending of quite frankly a rather meh year for many, we here at Tchochkes thought it would be great to begin 2010 with a stunning Sterling Pear giveaway.
One of the owners of Sterling Pear, Janet Hayden, is someone I grew up with in Huntington Beach, CA. and she’s one of the nicest, most positive women you’ll ever meet. Seriously. So nice, that she’s willing to give readers of Tchochkes a discount of 15% off your entire order on www.SterlingPear.com by using the coupon code “TCHOCHKES10″ at checkout by January 31, 2010 in addition to this months raffle contest.
Click here.
I love transliteration, don’t you?
The festival of lights are upon us, and as so far no one else has written about the holiday (and we have how many Jewish writers on this site?) I guess I will (and I’m probably the most secular of the Jewish bunch…)
It’s Hannukka. On the first night (last Friday) we had friends over with their kids and I made sweet potato latkes (brilliant recipe that you really don’t need to be Jewish to enjoy – eat them with sour cream and apple sauce – however you will probably need more eggs if you use free range organic that aren’t the size of American Baseballs). The kids played, I cooked and right before we were ready to eat we lit the candles on the menorah. The lovely, home made menorah (or Hannukiah as it’s called here) that my son made in kindergarten, which melted that same night and is now unusable.
Which is why I’m now showing you alternatives to the homemade menorah.
Actually, that’s not true. I’m showing you menorah’s cause that’s what we have for Hannukka. I am not a “holiday tree” believer (it’s a Christmas Tree folks, you want to have one, fair enough – but please G-d call it what it is. And for those who argue that it came from the Pagans – the Christians have been using it long enough to call it their own. Leave them be.)
Click here.
Every year during Houses from Within people open their homes to complete strangers. And occasionally, their neighbors who weren’t approached to open their house want a bit of the action – and open their homes too. These are typically the the unforgotten unsung heroes of the proletariat. Older people alone looking for some recognition living in simple design with a smattering of kitsch.
Todays post is for them.
Click here.
The new issue of Lonny Mag is live and it is AMAZING!Lonny Mag is an online magazine created by a group of editors, writers, journalists, etc living in NYC. As the media is dying and our favorite magazines are going with them, the people of Lonny Mag sought to find a solution to the problem and launch an online magazine. Literally – turning pages and everything. Which is nice, but…
Before I start the swooning I would like to give one serious complaint. The issue I posted a link for is the second issue. No where on their site did I see a link to the first issue. This is extremely limiting. Part of the point of the internet is to have information available when you need it and you can store whatever you need. It’s so counterproductive and counterintuitive to take your content off. I wasn’t pleased to find it gone.
Click here.
