FRENCH GARDEN HOUSE–BIG GIVEAWAY!!!

 

“Antiques and Shabby French Chic Decor to Romance your Home & Garden”

 

One of Cote de Texas sponsors, French Garden House, is offering a BIG giveaway today!  When choosing sponsors for the blog, I’ve tried to provide those that I think tie in with the blog and French Garden House certainly does.  They offer almost everything you could want in designing and furnishing a house and garden, especially if you are a lover of great French design.

 

 

They sell beautiful antique and reproduction French furniture and accessories.

 

They sell new and vintage jewelry, including these rhinestone beauties.

 

French Garden House has several lines of linen, new….

 

and old – like these pillows made of vintage fabrics.

 

They have goods for the kitchen – like this beautiful line of Frenchware.  Love this!

 

And, of course, there are all kinds of things for the garden and the terrace.  I love the table!

 

 

There are tons and tons of French antique accessories available, and….

 

They carry gorgeous reproductions of French antiques, such as Tara Shaw’s Maison line.

 

 

 

Now, you are probably wondering, what’s the giveaway?

 

The winner will receive a $250 GIFT CERTIFICATE from French Garden House.

With the certificate, you can pick out anything you like!!!  No more winning something you really don’t want.  This time you can win EXACTLY what you desire!!

 

HOW TO ENTER:

 

Simply go French Garden House’s web site HERE and pick out what you want to win with your $250 gift certificate.  Then, come back to the blog’s comment section and tell me what you want.

That’s it!  

Now, don’t give yourself a heart attack.   I won’t hold you to what you pick out.  If you win and decide you want something different than what you originally picked out, don’t worry – you can change your mind when you win!  No problem!!

AND if you want something that costs more than $250, you could always use the gift certificate for a price reduction.  Just something to think about….

 

The contest runs until Saturday night at 11:59 p.m.

 

NOW, GO TO THE WEB SITE HERE AND PICK OUT WHAT YOU WANT!!!!

 

And finally, a huge thank you to French Garden House for this wonderful giveaway!!

Paul Allen Adds NYC Penthouse Pad to Property Portfolio

Last September, on the heels of a $25,000,000 purchase of a modern Malibu beach house, Your Mama discussed at length the many private residences owned and maintained by quirky Microsoft co-founder and multi-billionaire Paul Allen.

Two days ago, world slipped and slid down the New York City real estate gossip grapevine that Mister Allen recently added a $25,000,0000 penthouse to his already palatial pied-a-terre atop the impossibly posh limestone dowager at 4 East 66th Street in New York City.

Since 1996 when he paid around $13,500,000 for it, Mister Allen has owned a sprawling 18-room full-floor spread in the plainly elegant and exceedingly exclusive Fifth Avenue-fronting dowager. We have no idea what sort of monthly maintenance charges Mister Allen pays for his 11th floor co-operative residence in the whitest of white glove buildings but we can tell you that in 2007 a 4 bedroom and 7 bathroom apartment that eventually sold for $29,000,000 carried tummy-twisting monthly charges of $15,416.

Anyhoo, Mister Allen's new penthouse was sold–off-market, natch–by Angela Thompson, the widow of New Zealand businessman Wade F.B. Thompson who, according to the New York Observer, is best known for having overhauled the Airstream trailer company and donated $35,000,000 to help finance a renovation and re-do of the Park Avenue Armory, a swank military facility and social club for the so-called Silk Stocking Regiment turned high-brow arts and cultural center.

Mister Allen's new penthouse pad, set back from the facade and smaller by comparison to the other full-floor residences in the building, is estimated by a real estate professional and "Upper East Side maven A. Laurence Kaiser" to have about seven rooms. A little peeping around on Google Maps and Bing sows the barbell-shaped penthouse has banks of over-sized windows and is almost fully girdled by a wrap around terrace with panoramic Central Park and city views.

Little else is known–or at least so far reported– about the penthouse that Mister Allen will, we presume, combine at significant additional expense with his already vast full-floor pied-a-terre below.

Although the residents of 4 East 66th Street prefer their neighbors keep a low profile when it comes to their real estate affairs, the plum building was much in the news in 2007 and 2008 when luxe-living publishing widow and socialite Veronica Hearst battled to keep her 6th floor residence from slipping into the gaping maw of foreclosure, an almost unheard of event in buildings of this stature.

Miz Hearst's spectacular (and spectacularly opulent) Renzo Mongiardino-designed digs we're finally sold in July 2008 for a knee-buckling $36,500,000 to a 30-something year old hedge hog named Charles "Chase" P. Coleman III and his lovely finance heiress spouse Stephanie who, until she hitched her wagon to Mister Coleman's in 2005, did a little PR work for Vera Wang.

Other high-toned and ridiculously rich residents of the building include big pharma bigwig Howard Soloman, Deutsche Bank director Kevin Parker and his wife Ulla, and hedge fund honcho Daniel Nir and his wfe Jill Braufman who paid $29,000,000 for their 7,000-ish square foot full-floor unit in June 2007. Also in residence Ace Greenberg, former CEO of Bear Stearns, asset management mogul Lew Sanders, Iraqi-born financier and philanthropist Ezra Zilkha and his lady Cecile, and Texas-based oil tycoon Sid Bass and his socially prominent and powerful wife Mercedes.

photo: Scott Bintner for Property Shark

Ethan Suplee Lists Hippy Dippy Digs in Studio City

SELLER: Ethan Suplee
LOCATION: Studio City, CA
PRICE: $2,295,000
SIZE: 3,787 square feet, 7 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Due to a slew of circumstances that include an unexpectedly inordinate amount of time spent riding around to various places in Sister Woman's mini-van, we are, once again this morning, behind the celebrity real estate 8-ball this week. It seems that today's topic, a funky mini-estate in tucked into a quiet hollow in Studio City, CA owned by actor Ethan Suplee and listed yesterday on the open market with an asking price of $2,295,000, was yesterday already covered by the busy beavers over at Curbed.

Actress/activist/fitness freak Jane Fonda is said to have occupied the woodsy lodge-like residence in the early 1970s back when she was making headlines and enemies with her vehement and vocal opposition to the Vietnam War. Property records show the kooky Laurel Canyon crib was acquired in 1973 by game show director and producer Richard S. Kline (The Joker's Wild, Joker! Joker! Joker!, Win, Lose or Draw)–not to be confused with the actor Richard Kline of Three's Company fame–who paid just $77,500 for the tree-shaded property. That's right children, seventy-seven thousand clams. Can anyone remember those real estate days?

Mister Kline–who, according to The Movieland Directory, raised more than a dozen children in the house–owned the property until early 2006 when records show the game show maker sold the nearly one acre gated mini-estate estate for $2,000,000 to Mister Suplee and his wife Brandwynne "Brandy" Lewis, sister of actress/rocker babe Juliette Lewis.

Mister Suplee, a devoted Scientologist who once weighed more than 400 pounds and had a heavy duty drug problem, has managed to scratch out a solid if not superstar place for himself in Tinseltown with roles on both the big screen (Mall Rats, American History X, Cold Mountain) and the small screen (Boy Meets World, My Name Is Earl).

Listing information shows the Robert Byrd-esque house, the architectural equivalent of a beaded headband and fringed leather vest from the 1970s, was originally built in 1951, sits behind a thick row of trees above the street, and measures 3,787 square feet. There are a total of 7 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms plus something that listing information rather disturbingly refers to as an "outdoor bathroom," whatever exactly that is. Listen, kids, indoor/outdoor California living if fantastic and nobody loves an outdoor shower in the summertime more than Your Mama but there is most definitely a line in that sand. Lowerd have mercy, puppies, Your Mama won't even use a god damn port-a-potty unless its vitally necessary so we're not about to voluntarily cop a squat on an al fresco crapper in the back yard. Pleeze.

Anyhoo, the rambling barn-like residence offers at least three living/dining room spaces, each with wide-plank pine floors, partially to fully-paneled walls, a stone or brick-faced fireplace, voluminous vaulted ceilings with exposed beams, wide-expanses of multi-paned windows, and numerous sky lights that include a spine-like ridge-line number and a way too authentically hippy-dippy circular stained glass sky light that scares the bejeezus out of Your Mama's sometimes delicate decorative and architectural sensibilities.

The galley-style kitchen seems surprisingly small in listing photos but perhaps we're just not seeing the full scope of the space that includes rustic wood cabinetry stripped of paint and/or varnish, board and batten paneled walls, brick accents that include a wide archway over the range, a vaulted wood ceiling, and a flagstone floor.

There are just three bathrooms–plus that scatologically distressing "outdoor bathroom"– to service all the many seven bedrooms. One of the bedrooms depicted in listing photographs, which may or may not be the master bedroom, plays against the expected style of the house with pale grey-blue walls, too-puny crystal chandelier, a pair faux-French Provincial night stands and beige and rose-colored striped drapery that puddles on the wood floors.

One of the bathrooms shown in listing images, which may or may not be the master bathroom, has a tile floor composed of shards of broken Mexican pavers, barn-style wood doors, a sunken spa tub for two surrounded by a wide apron of high-varnish decking, floral wall covering, a couple of framed drawings of naked people and, finally, a pitched wood ceiling with stained glass skylight. The whole thing, that bathroom in particular, for some reason brings to mind Linda Ronstadt's seminal 1975 album Heart Like a Wheel.

The back of the house opens though French doors to a broad brick terrace laid in a swirling circular pattern that features a free-standing brick fireplace and built-in barbecue. Set up the hill a good distance from the house there's rectangular swimming pool with rounded corners and a wee gazebo tucked into the trees.

A fully detached, 8-sided pavilion contains what listing information calls a "whimsical" office space or guest residence. The yurt like-interior space has wood floors, a steeply pitched ceiling with exposed beams, and a carved wood spiral stair case that connects to a two-car garage space on the street level constructed of stacked river rock.

listing photos: Extraordinary Real Estate