L.A. Recap

So, as I mentioned yesterday, L.A. was really fantastic. Joe and I both loved catching up with all our friends, especially those that we hadn’t seen in a while. Are you dying to know what surprises I had in store for him all weekend? It broke down a little something like this:

Friday: Sunny, breezy, 78 degrees. A Farmers Market lunch, followed by cocktails on Sunset with friends, followed by dinner at Church & State with more friends. Perfect.

Saturday: Brunch at Home and an afternoon at the Los Feliz par 3 course. 80 degrees, and sunny. Dinner at Yard House in Pasadena, where 8 of our friends were waiting for us, unbeknownst to Joe beforehand. Cocktails afterwards. It was the latest I’ve stayed up in months.

Sunday: I spent some time with my friend Susannah while Joe scampered off to watch football. Truthfully, I didn’t mind at all — brunch at La Brea Bakery followed by browsing the shops nearby is hardly a terrible way to spend a Sunday!

And of course, I came across some fantastic shops that I’m happy to recommend. Along with these, we also popped in to one particular antiques store that had wonderful items, but with prices that only a dumb millionaire could afford (I say dumb because a lot of the pieces in there were things I’ve spotted at flea markets and antiques stores here in the Bay Area for literally a fraction of the price).

Here are some places we stopped in at:

Little Paris Antiques

This is a wonderful place to browse, and browse only. Our first stop on the outing, shopping here made me worried that there would be nothing on La Brea that was relevant to the masses, simply because everything was exorbitantly priced. Case in point:

This chair was on sale, at 50% off. FOR EIGHT HUNDRED DOLLARS. I feel like I’ve seen things at the flea market exactly like this, ya know? Also, it would need to be re-upholstered, which tacks on a few hundred more bones. Eesh.

Same story with this map of Paris. Though large, and undeniably awesome, it cost $1600. Ouch.

This 1960s set of faux bamboo chairs (which also would desperately need to be re-upholstered) are selling for $3400. For realz.

I loved these French street signs, but I was informed they were $150 each. Also, after checking these out online, I realized the guy in store quoted me a price that’s $25 more than what they’re listed for. So not cool.

Again, great place to browse — not so sure any of us should spend our hard earned money there.

Happily, our next stop was Deco Home. If I lived in LA, this would absolutely be a go-to place for fabric and re-upholstery. Here’s a very small sampling of the thousands of fabrics they had:

The staff there were SO nice. They also let us know that during the month of March, if you purchase fabric for draperies, they will make them for you FREE. Um, sign me up. The prices there were also very reasonable, with lots of items on sale for around $15 or $20 per yard. And we’re talking high quality stuff here.

Next, we couldn’t resist stopping in at the LA Plantation store. It was just as good as the Hayes Valley location:

So what did I come home with?

A yard of this beauty:

You guys, I cannot even begin to tell you how in love I am with this fabric. First of all, it is SO soft, and though a very graphic damask ikat, I adore how subtle it is at the same time. I am hoping to find a small chair at the flea market next month and have it recovered with this.

We also stopped in at Maison Midi (which I unfortunately didn’t get any pics of), where I picked up these two cute tin signs:

The ‘Toilettes’ one is now nailed outside of our bathroom door; the ‘Bienvenue’ is hanging alongside a small gallery of framed photos right off our entryway. Yipee!

Whew. So there you have it — my weekend in a (very long) nutshell. What did you do this weekend?