If you follow me on Facebook, then you know I’ve been in Nashville for four days at the BlissDom Blogging Conference, rubbing elbows with 500 other women bloggers who drove and flew in from all over. We stayed at the ginormous Gaylord Opryland Hotel, which is like a city under glass. Rhoda and Kate both posted some fabulous photos of it if you want to see more.

Besides the great digs, the Harry Connick, Jr. concert was definitely a highlight. We got our photos taken with him backstage, but I haven’t been able to track them down. (If you see me with Harry somewhere on the Internet, please let me know!)

Here are some of the beautiful bloggers I had a chance to hang out with: Rhoda, Kimba, Kristen, Kate, and Jessica (above). Emily, Emily, Lindsay, and Kimba (below).

Here I am with Melissa and Nester, whose real name is Ermintrude–don’t tell! (*kidding*)

Outside the Fuse nightclub, waiting for Harry to serenade us–J.J., Emily, Amy, and Lindsay:

I took lots of photos, but my camera was apparently on the wrong setting and the rest of them turned out fuzzy. Can you believe that? Just my luck.

Here we are inside the nightclub–Sarah, me, Kaley, Beckie, and Rhoda:

I’ve been trying to decide how honest to be about the weekend and have rewritten this paragraph about 100 times. All the other posts I’ve seen about BlissDom have been upbeat, happy-happy, everything was wonderful, etc. But I’ll admit I had mixed emotions about my experience.

It was a lot of fun. But I also came home feeling kind of sad and frustrated. Sad because I was feeling “stung” by some things that happened and frustrated that I didn’t learn more in the sessions.

I think I’ll leave it at that. I want to focus on the positive! I’m glad I went because of the wonderful new friends I made, and if I go back again next year it’ll be to see them again. There are truly some amazing women in the blogosphere, and it was a privilege to meet them!

Here are a few more of them: (me), Sarah, AnNicole, Beckie, Melissa, Kimm, Kimba, Sandy, Rhoda, Layla, and Kate.

Were you at BlissDom? What was your experience like?

Valentino: The Last Emperor is a fascinating look inside the legendary fashion designer’s final year before retirement. I was excited to see the documentary for the clothes. What I didn’t expect was the glimpse into three of his six beautiful homes. The DVD provides a special feature that shows how it takes dozens of staff members to keep his various residences running smoothly–and up to his exacting standards.

Chateau de Wideville, Valentino’s Home Near Paris:

Valentino Garavani walks through the house with his staff before the party begins to be sure everything is perfect:

In the special features, we’re treated to outtakes like this one, where Martha Stewart decides to give herself a tour of the house. She visits the laundry room and kitchen below the main house and introduces herself to the chef, saying, “Hello, I’m Martha Stewart. I write cookbooks.” Cracked me up. (The French chef nods and says, “Yes, I know.”)

The groundskeepers painted brown patches in the grass green before the party. One says, “Don’t tell Mr. Valentino. He doesn’t know we’re doing this.”

The back of the house with a tent set up for a party:

Valentino’s Apartment in New York City:

Valentino’s majordomo (the “major” person on a household staff) is Michael Kelly, who follows him from house to house and makes sure that everything runs smoothly for him. He supervises 30-40 staff members at each of the homes. Here he arrives a few days ahead of Mr. Valentino to get the New York City apartment ready for his visit.

After Kelly has removed all of the dust cloths, including the ones protecting the drapes, the room is ready:

Valentino and Giancarlo Giammetti leave the apartment for a night out:

Chalet Gifferhorn, Valentino’s Home in Gstaad, Switzerland:

The table is meticulously set for Mr. Valentino’s lunch at the chalet:

Michael Kelly says the important thing is that the napkins should be handled as little as possible, so they keep the napkin folding simple:

Heather posted some gorgeous photos of Valentino’s ski chalet over at Habitually Chic that were taken for British Vogue.

Forget what Us Weekly says–famous people are not just like us. I can’t remember the last time I was served tea in my chalet in Gstaad.

Valentino’s pugs go everywhere with him and steal every scene they’re in. So cute. Here they’re wearing little black sweaters to go out in the snow:

Love the green shutters on the chalet:

Valentino has been with his partner Giancarlo Giammetti for 50 years. Giammetti took care of the business side of things so that Valentino would be free to create. It became one of the most successful long-term collaborations in fashion history.

They were young men when they met. Giancarlo was still a student who had no business experience at all, but he was determined to help Valentino–whose first business had gone bankrupt–anyway.

Have you seen the movie? Fashion and real estate aren’t the only reasons I enjoyed it. I thought it was really inspirational and touching. When Valentino retired in 2008, it was the end of an era.

P.S. I’m home from BlissDom ‘10 and will try to post some photos later this week. I had a great time meeting so many of my blog friends in real life!

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all of the onscreen houses I’ve featured, from Brideshead Revisited to Under the Tuscan Sun.

I’m still in Nashville at the BlissDom blogging conference, but here’s a round-up of “house news” I came across this week!

This Victorian home from San Francisco’s Postcard Row, featured in an episode of “Full House,” is on the market. (Thanks, Aniela!)

See pics of the St. Croix home actress Maureen O’Hara recently sold. (Thanks, June!)

Maya at Completely Coastal is “hooked on” Beachy Pillows (me, too!).

Ice House Detroit: Encasing an abandoned house in ice for a good cause.

Lookiloos features a Prairie-style house that got a modern makeover.

Sarah at A Beach Cottage shows us how to make a retro bus-destination sign.

Heather Bullard shows us how to make a Mason Jar Soap Dispenser.

The little yellow house from the Steve Martin-Goldie Hawn movie Housesitter is one of my favorites. I was just contacted by the architect who designed the original it was based on. See what she told me about it here: The Yellow House in Housesitter.

Remember when I took a poll a couple of weeks ago and asked you if you thought turquoise has gotten too trendy? Well, I kind of had a personal reason for wondering what you thought. I had gone shopping with my mom–ostensibly to help her find a couple of chairs for her living room–when I spotted this Bombay Chest at Arhaus. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I even snapped that picture of it before leaving the store.

My mother thought I should get it for my dining room.  When I said I didn’t think I could spend that much right now, she  said, “Well, your birthday is coming up. Let me buy it for you!” My birthday isn’t until the end of April. By that logic, everyone has a birthday coming up. Ha. I protested, but she insisted, earning herself the title of The Most Generous Mother in the World.

It recently came home to live in my dining room, and I love it! I have to admit I did a little “happy dance” when no one was looking.

I haven’t figured out how I want to decorate the chest yet, but I’ve been playing around with a few things like this white elephant that I’ve had for years–it goes all the way back to my dorm-room days.

I got this mirror in an antique store years ago and it’s been sitting in my basement, waiting for something to do. I dusted it off and hung it over the chest. I think it works!

I have already rearranged the top of the chest five times since I took these photos yesterday. It’s so much fun to have something new in the house to play with! Thanks, Mom. You’re off the hook for the next five birthdays, at least.

P.S. Are you going to Nashville for the BlissDom blogging conference? I’m all packed up and on my way. Hope to see you there!

Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry (shown here with Gabriel Aubry, her French-Canadian boyfriend and the father of her daughter Nahla) bought this Mediterranean-style home in Beverly Hills for $2.275 million back in 2001. It’s small by Hollywood standards–only 2 bedrooms and 2 baths–but I can definitely see why it appealed to her. The home sits on a lovely and secluded 1.3 acres and looks like a sweet little hideaway to me.

The house is currently on the market for $5 million. Rumor has it that Halle Berry’s mother has been living here recently.

According to the listing:

One-of-a-kind rustic & private Old-World Mediterranean graced by magnificent gardens, fountains, al fresco dining & seating areas, fire pit and sumptuous stone spa in a verdant canyon setting. The vibe is majestic, yet casual with vaulted heavy wood-beamed ceilings, wide-planked wood floors, detailed custom-made ironwork, stone-carved fireplaces, a dramatic staircase, banks of French doors/windows & a master suite tub carved out of stone. Cook’s kitchen.

The kitchen may be a little too narrow for people who cook a lot:

The master bedroom:

Master bath:

It looks like this balcony is off the master bedroom:

How many throws can you spot? I think at least 3 of them may be the same one moved strategically around the house for the photos. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We all appreciate an agent who makes an effort!)

If you buy this house, then actress Amy Adams might be your neighbor. She reportedly purchased a renovated ranch down the street.

How cute is this photo of Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry on the beach with their daughter Nahla? (Via Splash.)

You can see more photos and get more information about the house at The Real Estalker, Posh 24, and the real estate listing.

Visit my Celebrity Houses page for links to the others I’ve featured, from Christie Brinkley to Whoopi Goldberg. Or check out the Top 10 Celebrity Houses of ‘09.

Ayear ago, I told you why I thought the two-story family room was one of the worst house trends to come out of the 2000s (“The Two-Story Family Room: Thanks, But No Thanks”). My reasons? They’re noisy. A waste of space. Difficult to decorate. And energy inefficient.

But my main gripe is that builders seemed to think we all wanted them.  Just try to buy a newer home that doesn’t have a gymnasium-sized family room and you’ll see what I mean!

A year later, I still get heated comments on that post. Some people agree–they hate their two-story rooms. Others are emphatic in telling me how wrong I am. They love theirs and have had no problems decorating them or dealing with echoey acoustics.

(All photos found in the real estate listings.)

I agree that they can be beautiful. They can work when they’re decorated well and the scale is right (if the room’s too small, it creates a bottom-of-the-elevator-shaft effect). I’m not saying that no house should ever have them.

But I have to admit it makes me happy every time I read that the two-story trend is fading out. I’m ready to see something different in home design. Are you?

~

Check out the results of our other polls–and tell me which trend you want to vote on next!

Is Turquoise Too Trendy?
Is Stainless the New Standard?

Disney’s original Parent Trap movie premiered in 1961 with Hayley Mills playing both of the leading roles. If one Hayley Mills had been so good in Pollyanna, then two of her had to be even better, right? The Parent Trap had her playing twin sisters Susan and Sharon. Separated at birth, they rediscovered each other at a summer camp and then plotted to get their parents back together.

After I covered the 1998 remake with Lindsay Lohan, I got a lot of requests to post photos of the original. It was fun to watch it again and see how well it has held up over the years. Yes, some of the effects are cheesy (like when they “walk through a park” while fake-looking footage of the park rolls behind them on a screen), but the story and characters are still a pleasure to watch.

The Boston Townhouse

We don’t spend a lot of time in the Boston townhouse that Sharon lives in with her mother and grandparents. This is the most we see of the exterior–a brief glimpse of the street as Susan pulls up to it for the first time.

The luminous Maureen O’Hara plays their mother Maggie, who inexplicably gave up one of her twin daughters at birth to her ex-husband Mitch (Brian Keith in his first comedy).  It’s one of those “suspension of disbelief” things…

Hayley Mills says that at times she would be so confused about which girl she was playing from scene to scene that “I was only saved by the wig.” If she had the short wig on, she knew she was Susan, the “tomboy” twin from California. Her real hair was long like the “proper” twin Sharon’s, but, she points out in the movie commentary, in some scenes it looks as bad as a wig.

After Susan chops Sharon’s hair off at summer camp so they’ll “match,” they both have the short wig on for the rest of the movie. It became even harder for Mills to remember who she was playing from scene to scene.

In the remake, one of the twins lives in London instead of Boston. Natasha Richardson was perfect in Maureen O’Hara’s role.

They struggled to find the right title for the movie. It was originally supposed to be His and Hers, but that was already taken by another studio. They resorted to running a contest and thousands of titles came in. None of them worked, either.

Some of the titles that almost made the cut:

• Susan and I
• We Belong Together
• For Now, For Always
• Petticoats and Blue Jeans

Hard to imagine the movie with any of those, isn’t it? It just wouldn’t have been the same. Writer-director David Swift recalls that one day, Walt Disney walked in and announced that they were going with The Parent Trap, and that was that. Discussion over.

The upstairs hallway (look at that red carpet!):

The movie especially struck a chord with children of divorce. Hayley Mills says that she still hears from fans who tell her that watching the girls work to get their parents back together was “empowering” for them because they felt so helpless in their own lives when their parents separated.

The Ranch:

Welcome to Golden Oak Ranch, where Mitch (Brian Keith) and his daughter Susan lived in the Carmel Valley.

This was actually some land owned by Disney south of Carmel on Placerita Canyon Road. They built a shell of a house on the property with nothing but exterior walls and a roof. The interiors were all created on a soundstage.

The Great Room:

Sharon–posing as Susan–explores the ranch for the first time. She’s understandably awestruck by it all.

There was a scene on the golf course in which her real-life father John Mills played Mitch’s caddy, but it ended up on the cutting-room floor.

The fireplace is huge:

One of the great things about the house is how it’s connected to outdoor living spaces. The doors always seem to be open to the courtyard and covered patio:

The Hallway Leading to the Courtyard:

The girls covered the doorway to the courtyard while they planned the private dinner and “show” for their parents. Who can forget the charmingly awful duet, “Let’s Get Together”? (Warning: Once you hear the song, it’ll be stuck in your head all day long!)

The Dining Room:

Susan’s Bedroom:

Master Bath:

June Parker Beck, who edits Maureen O’Hara’s official website, tells me: “I get so many letters from people who want to go to California and see the house where it was filmed. Maureen doesn’t remember much about the structure. Stars are just taken to the shoot for that day–do their thing and go home.”

I read a comment on a message board that questioned why everyone apparently had to share this bathroom. Didn’t a house this size have more than one?

The Kitchen:

I love this kitchen with all the big windows overlooking the courtyard.

How charming was Brian Keith in this role? Swift says Keith was nervous about it because he’d never done comedy before, but he was perfect as Mitch:

In the DVD commentary, director David Swift says he has always regretted that he didn’t have wardrobe give Maureen O’Hara something “sexier” to wear in this scene. He felt it made her look a little plain, and too much like a “housewife.”

I only wish I looked this “homely” while cooking dinner in my kitchen…

O’Hara was 41 when she shot this movie. Joanna Barnes, who played Mitch’s younger girlfriend Vicki, was only 27. But Vicki almost looked older because of the way they styled her hair and clothes:

Joanna Barnes went on to become an accomplished writer. She also appeared in the Parent Trap remake, playing Meredith’s mother Vicki (Meredith is the younger woman in the newer version).

The Courtyard:

The back of the house with the balcony (I would’ve killed to have a balcony like this off my bedroom when I was a girl–heck, I still would!):

The screenplay was written by David Swift, who also wrote Pollyanna. Disney had bought the rights to a short story published in Germany called “Lisa and Lottie” by Erich Kästner and asked Swift to adapt it for American audiences.

One of the challenges of making Parent Trap was finding an actress who looked enough like Hayley to play her twin in scenes where she’d only be seen from the back or side.

Susan Henning was cast and had to sign a contract promising to never tell anyone she was in the movie. Years later, Henning was interviewed for the Special Features on the Parent Trap DVD and was allowed to tell her story. She appeared in scenes like this (that’s the back of her head):

Susan had the same dress and shoe size as Hayley, but they gave her a rubber nose to wear. She says they also put a roll of tissue paper under her lip to make it stick out a little and padded her bra. After a few days of filming, however, they decided that the girls looked enough alike that the “extras” weren’t really needed.

Here’s a photo taken on set that shows the girls filming a scene together (Susan is on the left; Hayley on the right):

After filming each scene, they would switch places and do it again–this time with Hayley acting out the other twin’s role. Susan Henning as she looks today (via the Special Features on the DVD):

Henning says that she taught Mills how to talk with American slang, and Mills recalls how close the two of them became both on and off the set.

There is a wonderful commentary on the DVD with Hayley Mills and writer-director David Swift reminiscing about the making of The Parent Trap. Swift died a few years later, so we’re fortunate to have so many of his stories recorded.

Swift said that Disney spoiled him for working with other studios. They gave him free reign on both Pollyanna and The Parent Trap to do what he wanted.

The other thing that comes out in the interviews and commentary is what a lovely and gracious person Mills is.

She says she grew up hanging out on movie sets because her father is the famous British actor Sir John Mills. “Studios were my playground.” Her mother was a successful playwright. Mills says that “Walt Disney loved my mother. She made him laugh.”

Brian Keith, who died in 1997, once said:

“I’ve made I don’t know how many pictures. Forty, I guess. I’ve seen only about a half dozen of them. We made Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) in Rome last spring. I really enjoyed working with Liz and Brando and that great director, John Huston.

“But the kind of picture I enjoy seeing is something like The Parent Trap (1961). That was a charming thing with Hayley Mills playing my twin daughters. I saw that four times. I even took my wife’s parents to see it. I like it so much I forgot I was in it, as a matter of fact.”

The final shot of the movie has the girls as bridesmaids in their parents’ wedding, with the ranch in the background.

I hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed researching it! If you have any requests for other movies or TV shows, leave them here.

Visit my TV/Movie Houses page for links to all the others I’ve featured, from Pollyanna to the Parent Trap remake.

1. Antique Easel Chalkboard Desk: Solstice Home

2. French Gate Lantern: Heather Bullard

3. Collectible Vintage Leaf Dish: Century Finds

4. Vintage Glass Earrings: Beyond the Rockz

5. My Kids Art on Canvas

6. Konoha Pantry for Tight Spaces: Greentea Design

7. Keepsake Printed Books with Your Photos: Color Inc

8. Rattan Chairs: My Sparrow

9. Photo Laptop Skins: Sticviews

10. Victorian House Plan with Round Kitchen: The Plan Collection

I love my sponsors! See them listed over there in my upper right-hand sidebar? They have all kinds of beautiful and interesting things to offer. Thanks for visiting them!

On cold winter days like this, when it seems like the sun will never shine again and the snow will never melt, I could spend hours poring over the photos of beach houses in Coastal Living. This one on Tybee Island looks good to me today. I especially love the long screened porch that runs the length of the house, overlooking the sand and water.

Jane Coslick is the talented designer who transformed it from a dark and dated home to a light, bright, beachy retreat for the Wilson family. Here are some of the rooms before and after she worked her magic on them.

Dining Room Before:

After:

Kitchen Before:

After:

Bedroom Before:

After:

Master Bath Before:

After:

You can read more about this beach house transformation and see the rest of the photos at Coastal Living. The artwork in the house was done by Bellamy Murphy, and you can read more about it on Jane Coslick’s blog.

Love Beach Houses?

• A Beach Cottage Dining Room Makeover
• The Beach House in “Spanglish”
• Kelly Wearstler’s Malibu Beach House

P.S. If you like beach houses, you’ll love Sarah’s blog!

When it comes to Bad MLS photos, I thought I’d seen it all. Then a reader named Jan sent me these. She says that that it started life as a cookie-cutter condo in Des Moines, Iowa. Well, there’s nothing cookie-cutter about it now. There are few surfaces that haven’t been painted here–even the front door has been so camouflaged that it must be difficult for visitors to find the exit.

Apparently the homeowner really loves paint…and Jesus. The rest remains a mystery. (And maybe it’s better that way.)

How would you caption this listing?

P.S. When you find odd or interesting things in the MLS listings, send them to me!

If this hasn’t scared you too much, visit my Bad MLS Photos page to see more strange things spotted in the real estate listings.