With help from Steve Gilbert of Willow Glen Home and Garden, the homeowners, Virginia and Brett Nicoletti, have created the kind of rooms you want to live in. They graciously opened their home to the 2011 Willow Glen Lifestyles home tour.

The front bedroom with the orange palette was one of my favorites. Don’t you just love the bedding?

And the youngest daughter also has a haven all in pink. I also love the vintage-style bedspread in this room.

The 1992 home began an update when the Nicolettis bought it in 2000. They extended hardwoods throughout the house and antiqued the kitchen cabinets.   The result is an elegant space, upstairs and down.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Hiding TVs has been a chronic conundrum for designers, architects and significant others who once tackled the problem in the olden days by tucking them into with furniture-like wardrobes. But 60 inches across aren’t easy to conceal. That’s why Bill Cardoza of San Jose started a business called “The Art of TV,” transforming your flat panel into a beautifully-framed mirror or a stunning piece of digital art formatted to fit your wide screen HDTV when not in use. Mona Lisa on the living room wall, anyone? You can choose from a library of digital images and rotate them as well. A family portrait can also takes its rightful place –integrated into the TV screen. The Art of TV will create a boot that consists of a custom frame and special two-way glass. The boot fits right over your existing flat panel and the two-way glass gives you the option to the display digital art or the mirror. Since each is custom, the turnaround time can take two to three weeks.
And it’s not cheap _ it costs about $3,200 for a 37-inch screen. The TV is included in the price. So, you might say it’s worth it!
And with wives now able to enjoy the look of their husbands’ electronic monstrosities, Cardoza says, “it’s better than marriage counseling.”
For more information, go to The Art of TV.

What started as a simple ranch house built in 1954 has been transformed over the past 20 years by the Kenny family into a French Chateuu in the country manor style. And Linda Floyd of Linda L. Floyd Interior Design has been with the  homeowners every step of the way.  The home decor is French inspired with trims and tassels and elegance.  Linda also decorated the living room for the holidays and the Summit League Homes for the Holidays tour.

The dining room was spectacular for the tour, as Sharon Watts of Peony created an astonishing table display.

David Stonesifer of David Stonesifer Interior Design and Decoration appointed the family room, including a couple of oil paintings he created himself.

Debi Campbell of Cover Story on Main Street in Los Altos added sparked to the kitchen and bath.

Upstairs, the daughter’s bedroom was decorated by Wahlberg Designs, The Duke & The Duchess of Morgan Hill. Saffron and Genevieve in Santa Cruz created the boy’s room with wonderful linen bed spreads and the master bedroom and bath received the special touch of Warmth Company from Aptos. Tiffany and Co. created a special display in the upper hallway.

Lulu Pom of Los Gatos appointed the study; La Jardiniere brought whiteness and light to the backyard and Color in the Garden from San Jose created an inviting front entrance.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Family Room Mantel

Well, as I announced on the Lookiloos Facebook page, because I needed a deadline—I am showing you you all what I have been busy with since packing up everything turkey!

Today I am sharing my family room mantel. I’ve been feeling very nostalgic lately and so I dug up some old childhood memories to display.  I keep fussing with it and I might be driving my kids nuts, since I have to stand back to look at it then cross in front of the television to adjust then cross back in to ponder my new modification.  This has been known to go on for 15 minutes at a time.  “Mom, do you know how hard it is to play Black Ops with the Christmas music blaring and now you keep crossing in front—it looks good enough” said by, well really you could insert any one of 4 names here.

Raggedy and Friends

I loved Raggedy Ann when I was little and my Grandmother gave me the books Christmas of 1973. This Cinderella clock woke me up for years. Charlie, my husband purchased the polar bear puzzle on a trip to Park City, Utah for our kids 10 years ago.  He is always a favorite.  We usually he see who can assemble him the fastest each year.  I have never won the title.

Kalimba

Charlie was 12 he and his mom split the cost of this Kalimba at a local music shop.

Poinsettias

So,  that’s my family room mantel.  Next up will be my living room and the tree.  I’d love to know—do you decorate every room in your house or just a few.  I currently have 4 areas decorated but debating on more.  My grandmother was always great at saying “WHEN.”  Me sometimes not so much!

Walk in the front door of this charming 1940 brick cottage and the front rooms are as traditional as you’d imagine: graceful dining room on the left, formal living on the right. But step through the front hallway and the back of the house opens to a modern, light-filled space.

Phil Health, who works at Nasa Ames Research Center, and Sam Miller, who owns a Mountain View laundromat, bought the house in June 2009, deciding they wanted to downsize after remodeling their big house on a big lot on the Peninsula.

They turned to San Jose architect Steve Hinderberger to update the dated and chopped up space and add a second story with a master suite. The couple wanted sleek, modern lines, but also were adamant about connecting with the rest of the traditional house. Hinderberger used wood detailing in rich stains, but gave modern details, including aluminum accents, on the stair railings and support columns.

The kitchen features green, orange and yellow tiles from San Jose’s Fireclay Tile. While the windows in the front of the house are divided light, the couple used no panes in the French doors overlooking the backyard.

Slate tile floors run from the kitchen through to the outdoor patio, connecting indoors and out. Upstairs, frosted sliding glass doors give privacy to the master suite, but let in light. The master bath was tiled in “boneyard” pieces of tile in different shapes and sheens to give added interest. A neighbor once likened the shower tile to a “bamboo forest.”

They have decorated the house with artwork collected along their travels as well as local “open studio” events. A prized pair of art deco console tables purchased at a San Francisco auction adorn the living room. The couple opened their home to the Rose Garden Homes Tour, benefitting St. Martin of Tours schools.

GreenDesign provided the floral pieces. The landscaping and hardscaping was done by Rodriquez Landscape.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Liz Page was pregnant with their first child in 2002 when she and her husband Mark first laid eyes on this charming New England-style home. Liz grew up in Massachusetts and the traditional home with the formal entry hall and central staircase just felt right.

She wrote a “tear-stained letter” to the owner saying “this is where we want to raise our family.”

The house became their home on Halloween, the night the neighborhood comes to life with hundreds of children trick or treating. While the house had great bones, it was in its original 1940 condition and needed updating. Construction began two days after her son, Douglas, was born.

They ripped up wall-to-wall carpeting to reveal mint-condition hardwood floors, and redid electrical and plumbing. To add a master suite, they built over the existing living room. The kitchen was remodeled and a mudroom added.

And just recently, they pushed out the back, adding a family room behind the living room, and an office on top, an extension of the master suite, for Mark, a marketing executive. In the end, they got exactly what they wanted: a charming family home that maintained the look and feel of the original.

Both their children, Douglas and Anna, attend St. Martin of Tours elementary school. Liz sought out Willow Glen Home and Garden to help choose comfortable family furniture paired with fun accessories as well as designing the back garden area with patios, trellises, stone walls, a fountain, umbrellas and patio furniture. The home was featured on the Rose Garden Homes Tour, benefitting St. Martin of Tours. It wouldn’t be complete without Jose Ibarra, who came in and worked magic with his floral designs throughout the house.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Well, Stephanie Peters did when she invited Linda Marx, an independent-minded bargain-hunting maven, to have at it.

“I wanted the challenge to do it as inexpensively as I could,” said Marx, who loves nothing better than finding a cast-off sofa here or discarded end table there. “They’re little orphans. I like giving them a home.”

Peters, a Sunnyvale marketing consultant, wanted a home makeover that “shows my personality,” emphasizes comfort and reflects her penchant for all things Asian.

She lives in an Eichler, the 1950s-era, one-story homes with open floor plans, atriums and courtyards. Mid-century modern furnishings are experiencing a resurgence of popularity these days, but Marx was reluctant to shop in that direction: “I lived through that” era of design, Marx said, “and I didn’t particularly like it then.”

And with popularity often comes a big price tag, and that simply is not Marx’s style. Marx promised she could completely swap the decor of the living, dining and family rooms for a grand total of $4,000, which included everything from furniture delivery to moving lighting fixtures. (That would buy mid-century purists one Eames lounge chair and ottoman, thank you very much.)

The last time the house had a makeover was in the early 1990s, a few years after Peters bought it. As was the style at the time, she decorated with a palette of black, white and chrome, including white marble flooring in the living and dining rooms. But over the years, the space had grown tired and cold. And Peters had little time to pay attention to it. She made brief attempts at repainting the interior, but when her artwork came down, including her collection of Asian masks, she never put it back up. In her entry hall, all she had was a plant.

“All right, enough,” Peters told herself. “I entertain a lot. I’m sick and tired of people coming over and I’m embarrassed.”

She called Marx, who calls her fledgling redecorating business “Shoestring Design.” The women became friends through Marx’s son, who worked with Peters years ago. Peters had been to parties at Marx’s house and while there, couldn’t help but admire her home. She asked for help on hers.

“I said I wanted modern and Asian,” Peters said.

“I wanted the house to feel warm and nice,” Marx said.

“I wanted chrome bar stools,” Peters said.

“I didn’t bother with it,” Marx said.

“Never mind,” Peters conceded. “Do it.”

With that, Peters cleared out the entire living, dining and family rooms of furniture, handed Marx the key to the front door, and took off for three weeks.

“I had never done Asian before,” Marx confessed.

She began her thrift store circuit up and down the Peninsula, stopping in the Salvation Army on Winchester Boulevard in San Jose, where she found a dining room table and chairs for $149; to the Consignment Store in Westgate Mall in Saratoga, where she landed a living room sofa, and the Goodwill on Almaden Expressway in San Jose for the Asian bar for $89. She bought a bamboo wall hanging at Cost Plus World Market for $49, Asian coin wall hooks for $3 from Savers in Redwood City for the entryway, a coffee table from Not Too Shabby in San Jose for $49. A large Persian rug ($120) that covers the cold marble floor came from D.G.W. Auctioneers and Appraisers in Sunnyvale.

Marx mined Peters’ garage for lost treasures, pulling out her old trunk and a collection of masks. She hung Peters’ prints and some Chinese silk panels she had bought at auction and arranged everything just so. For finishing touches, she displayed martini glasses on the bar and filled a glass vase in the kitchen with fortune cookies.

Then she waited. “I was sweating bullets when she came home,” Marx said.

“I stood in awe in the entryway for 30 seconds,” Peters said. She barely recognized the place. “I walked back in three or four times. There was so much and it had changed so drastically.”

Peters loves her new decor and “everyone who comes to my house is flabbergasted. I’ve had wonderful feedback.”

Now on to the bedrooms! As soon as Peters leaves town, Marx will be ready.

If you like bargains and didn’t see the story Desiree and I wrote about the Asian fretwork chairs we bought for a bargain price at Not Too Shabby, read this:

Smackdown:Lookiloos-style

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Lately, I’ve become enamored with houses that are unassuming from the front,  but have a major ‘wow’ factor on the inside.

From the front of this white-washed Willow Glen cottage, you might expect a chopped-up floorplan.  The only feature on the facade that gives you a sense of what’s to come is the bright yellow front door. Walk inside and you’re flooded with openness and light. And you can see right through to the charming backyard.

Homeowner Stephanie Angeli, an  ”empty nester” who moved from San Francisco,  first saw the house with her sister. “We did an ‘Oh my God,’ when we went through it,” she said. “Every room was perfect.”

The house had been remodeled by the previous owner who added space and lots of windows on the back of the house, looking out to the courtyard. The sisters got in their car, did a U-turn, she said, and went to the realtor’s office to put down a deposit. The house was featured on the Willow Glen Home Tour earlier this month.

The kitchen is also a gem, with white Carrarra marble counter tops and a sink in the corner looking into the family room.

And the interior decor is lovely, from the the little vignette of green stemware in front of al painting on the kitchen counter, to a nicely-appointed front guest room and office. Carmen Grande of Willow Glen Home & Garden on Lincoln Avenue helped Stephanie with the furnishings and Steve Gilbert added charm to the courtyard.

Take a look at the slideshow and tell us what space you like the best.

Here’s the complete slideshow:

She was born in 1970 with a name that means “earth” in Czech on a commune in Palo Alto called “The Land.”
Zem Joaquin was a dark-haired pixie with patchwork pants who played with chickens, danced in the central longhouse and sang with Joan Baez in the squatters camp off Page Mill Road.
The darling of the draft resisters back then, she became the subject of their illustrated fairy tale about  “Zem, the little queen” who unites a strife-torn world. Even Baez, who founded the commune and lived there for a time, included “Zem Zem” in her 1975 song, “Children and All That Jazz.”
Perhaps it should come as no surprise, then, that she was destined to make a name for herself in the environmental movement. Unlike her parents’ generation that reveled in the counterculture fringe, though, she is helping create a modern movement in the mainstream.
And she’s doing so with her own sense of rebellion: She’s making green glamorous.
Founder of Ecofabulous, she created a Web site that gives readers eco-friendly lifestyle options, from modular furniture made from recycled paper to chic throws made of hemp and flax. Going green needs to be less about sacrifice, she realized, and more about motivation. (The site’s motto: “sexy.sustainable.style.”) After all, she muses, “People weren’t too interested when organic cotton looked like oatmeal and felt like a burlap sack.”
Step inside the 1960s-era home in Marin County that she remodeled for her family and you’ll see what she means.
At 39 years old and just 5 feet tall, she opens the front door with bare feet and a big smile. Behind her, vintage black-and-white curtains she found at the Alameda Point Antiques Faire frame a pair of chairs she recovered in remnant lime green silk. Sleek kitchen counters are made from newspaper wood pulp and fly ash. Her vintage Laszlo dining room chairs are refilled with natural rubber.
“Being fabulous is feeling like you’re getting what you really want,” she says. “At the same time, you’re not taking more than you need and you’re giving back.”
So how did this commune kid become such a design diva?
She may have been raised on granola, but she came of age living in London for two-and-a-half years in her early 20s with her godmother – a stylish critic for the Evening Standard who took her to theaters, boutiques and Paris for weekends and “taught me everything I know about design.” Joaquin (then Spire, her maiden name) finished her degree in organizational communications at Pepperdine, where she started a recycling program. And after a stint managing male models in Italy (she followed a boyfriend there), she returned to San Francisco in the late 1990s to help her best friend, Gina Pell, start Pell’s fledgling fashion and beauty Web site, Splendora.
“She was my VP of business development because she’s so good with people. She has a way of developing and nurturing connections,” Pell says. “I always told her that if she was a superhero, that would be her superpower – the ultimate connector.”
It was Pell, though, who connected Zem with her husband, tech entrepreneur James Joaquin.
They met at a cocktail party in 1999 in San Francisco, married and had two children. She was volunteering for homeless causes and political campaigns when her children were diagnosed with severe asthma. The family was living in an old Craftsman in San Francisco at the time, spending many a night in the emergency room when she decided she had to “save my children and create a healthy home.”
The Marin County house, tucked among blackberry bushes and towering trees, became her eco-incubator. Old painted beams were stripped with beeswax, wall-to-wall carpeting was replaced with recycled wine-cork flooring and solar panels were added to the roof.
But finding sustainable products, and stylish ones at that, wasn’t easy. “I realized there was this enormous gap,” she says. “There were no resources for eco-design and people interested in design.”
It was her husband who handed her a copy of “Cradle to Cradle,” the environmental manifesto of architect William McDonough, whom James Joaquin had heard speak at the 2004 TED conference for technology, entertainment and design in Monterey.
“This is what you’ve been talking about,” he said at the time to his wife, “what you’ve been spiraling in towards.”
She was so enthralled by the book, which professes ecologically intelligent design, that she invited McDonough to lunch with “some of my friends that I think can change the world.”
The guest list included her husband’s good friend, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar; Segway inventor Dean Kamen, whom she had met at a dinner party; and inventor, entrepreneur and Disney “imagineer” Danny Hillis.
This time, it was McDonough’s turn to be impressed. He invited her to attend his annual eco-summit in Iceland the following year with some 20 “thought leaders” and activists.
Unlike some in the environmental movement who preach doom and gloom, he says, Joaquin takes a positive approach.
“It’s a big dark world out there, and we need brightness,” he says in a phone interview from Abu Dhabi where he was talking to real estate developers about green design. “Zem is a sparkle.”
And she knows how to throw a party. Over the past several years, she has raised nearly $1 million dollars for Global Green, an L.A.-based nonprofit that activates its Hollywood base to bring attention to green issues, including the sustainable rebuilding of New Orleans and Haiti. At her first party she threw at the Clift Hotel in San Francisco several years ago, Leonardo DiCaprio showed up. Salma Hayek and Orlando Bloom came to the second.
“She actually seduces people into doing the right thing,” Ariana Huffington of the Huffington Post said when she presented Joaquin with Global Green’s Founder’s Award last year. “She always makes people feel that the right thing is the fun thing.”
Plus, she added, “she’s adorable.”
While Joaquin founded Ecofabulous in 2006 to chronicle her environmentally friendly remodeling resources, she has since expanded it to include organic beauty, fashion and lifestyle choices. She consults with such companies as eBay and Safeway and has been a frequent “green” guest on radio and TV shows. She raises chickens in her side yard, grows tomatoes and herbs, and even has her 6-year-old daughter weighing in with her opinion about kids’ green products. And over the past few years, she’s convinced every one of her closest friends to drive a hybrid.
So what’s next?
“I never thought in a million years I would want to have a commune,” she says.
But lately, she’s thinking about it, maybe bringing her closest friends together, living sustainably off the grid. She doesn’t have the details worked out yet, but one thing is certain: Unlike the A-frames and outhouses she grew up with, she says, “this commune would be stylized.”

Here’s the complete slideshow:

Charmaine Warmenhoven was in high school in 1964 when news of the notorious murder of Kitty Genovese on the streets of New York spread across the country, a shocking story because even though many heard her screams, apparently no one did a thing to help.
Charmaine was fascinated, though, less about the bystanders who did nothing and more about the idea of those who “try to do something.”
With a strong foundation as a woman of faith and a psychology degree from Princeton, reaching out to others in need has become a guiding principle of her life as a philanthropist and educator of special needs children.
“It’s part of our value system,” she says. “You are meant to provide service to others. I’ve been doing so ever since I can remember.”
From the graceful Monte Sereno home surrounded by acres of gardens that she shares with her husband, Network Appliance board chairman Dan Warmenhoven, the couple open their doors to fundraisers benefiting causes ranging from cancer research to local arts groups to Catholic charities. In June, she is hosting the Silicon Valley Heart Gala for 250 to raise money for the American Heart Association. With Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz chairing the event, the nonprofit is expecting the guest list to include some of the valley’s tech luminaries. If all goes well, the charity hopes to raise more than half a million dollars (maybe a million, dare they hope) at this single event.
“Dan and I feel we’ve been given a lot, and we need to give and to share,” she says. “It’s more than a habit. It’s a lifestyle.”
And Keri  Janssen, CEO of the Silicon Valley American Heart Association, couldn’t be more grateful.
“They are very down to earth and very dedicated to making a difference in the community,” Janssen says. “Opening your home to an event is totally different than giving money. They are dedicated to the mission and the cause and have been for over 10 years.”
Hosting the fundraiser at a home rather than a hotel is much more intimate, she says. Besides, “who wouldn’t want to see the Warmenhoven home?”
A winding driveway leads you past oak trees and a sunken Japanese tea garden to the grand estate atop a hill. A 17th-century wishing well and a stone gazebo adorn the front garden that overlooks the lights of the valley below.
The back yard, with terraces surrounding a pool and cabana house, will be the setting for the June party. A saxophonist will play during cocktail hour from the balcony, and tables will be set up around the pool. Each guest will be given a candle to light, representing heart disease survivors, and float them in the pool.
“It will be the feel of a romantic, starry night,” Janssen says.
The causes Warmenhoven supports are close to her heart. As a child, her mother was a concert pianist, and she was a dancer. As an adult, she has served on the boards of Ballet San Jose and the Montalvo Arts Center.
With her father in the military, her family moved around a lot, she says, and going to Catholic church on Sundays wherever they happened to live “felt like family and it gave me a sense of stability and belonging.”
After teaching disabled children for a number of years, she went on to work for  the Catholic Diocese in Santa Clara County, helping people with disabilities feel included in church life. Just last year, the Warmenhovens hosted a garden party for the Knights of St. John, an organization ounded to take care of wounded soldiers but that now donates frequently to children’s hospitals.
Charmaine’s father died of cancer when she was 13, and the Warmenhovens have been supporters of the American Cancer Society’s Cattle Barons’ Ball each year.
“I do a variety of different things,” she says, “but they all make sense to me.”
She and her husband met sitting next to each other on a plane on their way back to Princeton from the West Coast when she was a junior and he was a senior.
“He asked me to dinner,” she says, “and we were married two years later.”
After moving around the East Coast with his jobs for IBM and HP and hers in teaching, they arrived in Santa Clara Valley in the early 1980s. In the mid-1990s, Dan Warmenhoven became president and CEO of Network Appliance, employing 45 people at the time. It has since grown to 8,000 employees worldwide.
The Warmenhovens moved from their house in Saratoga, which their son and daughter-in-law now own, to the Monte Sereno estate three years ago. Even though the house is grand, the rooms feel intimate. And she loves the indoor/outdoor flow of the house, which is perfect for entertaining.
She enjoys planning gatherings for her family and close friends, but she leaves the big parties to the pros. She has her list of favorite local party planners, florists and caterers.
“I just sit back and applaud,” she says, “and open the door.”

Here’s the complete slideshow: