Home Again Again

 Our prayers go out for those suffering under Hurricane Irma.

 

It’s finally here!  This weekend “Home Again” opened all over the country and it might be just what America needs:  an hour and a half of a sweet romantic comedy.  We certainly need something to lift up our spirits.  Between all the hurricanes and a massive earthquake in Mexico – Mother Earth is testing our faith and making us all reach out for family and friends.

So, if you need something to take your mind off all this, maybe a few laughs will be the perfect tonic? 

Home Again Premier:  The child stars, Reese Witherspoon, Producer Nancy Meyers, and Writer/Director Hallie Meyers-Shyer

Hallie is gorgeous!!!

I’ve written twice before about the movie sets for “Home Again” and I swore I wouldn’t do it again!  But, come on!!  It’s Nancy Meyers!!!   I was thrilled to receive some brand new beautiful and exclusive set photographs from Period Media who represent Meridith Baer Home, the stager that provided all the furniture for the movie.  And - then there is my favorite web site – One King’s Lane that did a pictorial on “Home Again” and they have a fabulous “Get The Look” sale this week!   Yeah!!!

I was really surprised to read that Meridith Baer Home was involved with the movie, but actually it makes perfect sense.  She is THE home stager – the person who helped start the field of staging houses to make them both sell faster and for higher asking prices.

What a Home Stager does – Before & After:  Meridith Baer Home took this empty dated apartment – painted it white, removed the old curtains, and added trendy furniture. Suddenly an uninviting space becomes a dreamy destination for a young, chic family.

Meridith Baer has a fascinating background.  Her father was the warden at San Quentin Prison and she grew up on its grounds, attending a one room school.  She became a writer and even wrote a screenplay about her life at the prison, which was made into a B movie.  When she turned 50, Baer moved out of her home and rather than store her furniture – she put it all in a friend’s house, which was for sale.  After languishing on the market for over a year – the owner was stunned when his house sold within a week after Baer’s furniture was placed there.   Real estate agents took notice of his success and started calling Baer to stage their own properties.  An extremely successful business was born:  staging a house doesn’t come cheap and can cost up tod $50,000 a job.   Now, 20 years later, Meridith Baer Home has a huge business – doing over $1.7 million a month.

Meridith Baer Home likes to use neutral upholstery – she brings in color and pattern with pillows and rugs.   The neutral background is pleasing to prospective buyers – it lets them imagine their own aesthetic in a house.

Here in another house, Baer used animal prints to pop the neutral backdrop.  I  love what she did here.

It’s amazing what a statement the right sized pillow can make!!

With warehouses filled with furniture – it makes sense that a Set Designer would either rent or buy furniture from a stager such as Meridith Baer Home  - and that’s exactly what Home Again’s production team did.  Director Hallie approached Meridith Baer Home and asked them if they wanted to be part of the production – and the answer was YES!  Of course it was!  Who wouldn’t want to be involved with a Nancy Meyers production? 

As written in the past two stories, “Home Again” was filmed at the original Brentwood house where Cindy Crawford and Jennifer Garner & Ben Affleck once lived.  This iconic house had been decorated by such greats as Michael S. Smith and Peter Dunham – so it obviously had the chops to star in the movie.  

And starring in the movie is exactly what role the house played:   The director/writer Hallie Meyers-Shyer says the house is a character in the movie.  The plot involves Alice, played by Reese Witherspoon, who is a mother and recent divorcee, newly moved from New York City back to her childhood home in Los Angeles.  Then, a trio of young men move into her guest house on the property.  An interesting note:  Hallie says that people who question if the plot is too fanciful should know that she wrote her script based on a childhood friend whose mother lived the same life as Alice:  guest house and three young men included!  Now, the question is – who was this friend?

Hallie said the house had to have a magical feeling to it – it is the “place where everyone wants to be.”   Most of the filming takes place at the  Brentwood estate – so extra care was taken to find just the right house.  Additionally, they needed to find a property that had a guest house.  The Crawford-Garner-Affleck house proved to be the perfect fit!!

Hallie told One King’s Lane that she searched for a Spanish styled house that was bright and light and then they made the decision to have it decorated with a bohemian feel.  The color pink was chosen for the decor scheme by Hallie herself – she felt it matched Reese Witherspoon’s personality and style.  The production designers chose a neutral background and then layered the color in with pillows and throws – exactly as Meridith Baer Home does when staging houses.   When choosing the furniture - the designers avoided a showroom look, which would be a too-perfect style for the house.  The furnishings all mix and match and the boho feel runs through each room.    To add layers, the designers used a lot of accessories on the sets – adding art work and blue & white porcelain throughout.   The house proved so perfect for the movie – they didn’t even have to repaint it!!

In the end – it’s what any fan of Nancy Meyers has been waiting for!!  A new fabulous movie house!!

And while you watch the movie - just think of Cindy Crawford giving birth to her two children, right in THIS house!!

 

Or you can imagine Jennifer Garner & Ben Affleck sitting in this Peter Dunham designed living room!  Love!!!

I’m thrilled to share these new behind-the-scenes set photographs sent to me from Period Media and shown on One King’s Lane – along with the “Get The Look” ideas. 

ENJOY!!!

Here is the courtyard – where several scenes were filmed.  I love this view – you can finally see the back of the family room, with its large paned window.  The swimming pool is in the background.  The set decorators added the furniture and the blue and white cushions on the hearth.

Succulents and votives were placed on the rustic console – used on the patio.

Faux succulents never die HERE.

And at the front lawn, additional lanterns were added to the original ones hanging in the trees.  At the end of the lawn is the charming guest house.  This guest house was essential to the property – and is probably one of the main reasons why this house was chosen to film at.

Cute lanterns for the outside or inside HERE

A view of the original lanterns placed in the trees by Cindy Crawford’s landscaper.   I love these – they add so much atmosphere to the property - such a great idea!! 

A new photo – of the dinner party, outside.

The entry, with an antique looking console, and ethnic baskets.  All the baskets give the entry the “boho” look that director Hallie wanted.

Note:  those baskets were hung a bit too close to each other and not high enough, in my esteemed opinion.  LOL

Whenever you are hanging a grouping on a wall – lay it out first using craft paper to be sure it will look right, without ruining your wall with lots of nail holes.

The living room – with the bright pink pops of color.  The pink rug is layered over seagrass.

Cheap-chic rug HERE.

OK.  This darling chair is NOT in “Home Again” – but it should be!!  HERE.

A professional photo of the living room.  Through the door is the family room.

I’ve never seen a round log carrier before – but so boho!  HERE

The rattan chaise from Anthropologie is THE hot item of the year.  Serena and Lilly has one.

Serena & Lilly HERE.

The Anthropologie version is a little less.  HERE.

But ALL the cheap-chic wicker daybeds are out of stock – this is a cute alternative! HERE.

Everyone is out of stock of all cheap-chic wicker/rattan bench/daybeds.  The entire country – I’ve searched everywhere!!

This is a smaller version, a bench.  But it’s sold out – you could get on the list?  HERE

Family Room:   Here’s a new view of the family room!  LOVE!!!   The production team kept the original curtains which were placed here by Jennifer Garner and Peter Dunham.  Blue and white stripes are influenced by Hallie and Nancy’s close relationship with decorator Mark Sikes.  Love the stripes!!!

This is another view of the family room.   Here are some lookalikes:

Serena and Lilly HERE

Target super cheap-chic HERE

Blue and white striped chair HERE

Here is a copy – not in brown leather, but it still looks great HERE

The office is off the family room  - it’s set up as Alice’s interior design office.  Alice’s work board reminds me so much of the ones that Mark Sikes uses!  Is this one of his?  Probably not – he doesn’t use a lot of pink…but…

Here is one of Mark Sikes boards for a client.

On his blog,  Mark says that he helped with the decor for “Home Again!!”  AND he says, if you look carefully, you can see his book was used in several rooms!   I LOVE IT!!!

And here is the professional photograph of the office set.  Love those chairs.  I found this cheaper chic versions:

Chairs HERE

The dining room by Michael S. Smith for Cindy Crawford has a fabulous light fixture and Bennison curtains.  Those two elements remain in the house to this day.

Here is the dining room – in Home Again.  The pink and orange comes in through the art work.   This chair comes in every color.  I love it in green, below.

In green HERE

The dining room is off the breakfast room and kitchen. 

The kitchen was decorated with Mark Sikes inspired blue and white tiles and blue and white striped shades.  Hallie and Nancy Meyers meet with Reese aka Alice.

Here is the very first view of the breakfast room!!  So cute!!!

And another view of the breakfast room with its banquette and Bennison curtains from Cindy Crawford’s days.

cute chairs ONE KING’S LANE HERE

Great price on Tulip Table HERE

Large basket HERE

Table Cheap-Chic – cute! HERE

All the doors in the house are original – they add the Spanish detail.  Here is the door to the master bedroom.

Reese – he’s too young for you!!!

The pink headboard is darling!  I just can’t find one anywhere!!  But…

here’s a look-alike pink pillow:

Pink pillow HERE

Here is the professional photo of the bedroom.

 

It’s not the pink one – BUT, I love this seagrass textured headboard.  Cheap-Chic. HERE

Reasonable Rattan bed – so cute!! HERE

Accessories in the master bedroom on top of the antique chest:

Blue and white jar HERE

10” jar HERE

Darling dog bed.  Cover the pillow in your own fabric:  HERE

Be sure to go see Home Again this week if you need a light, pick me up moment!   I’m going to try to sneak in a matinee this week!!! 

And don’t forget to shop the One King’s Lane Get-The-Look of “HOME AGAIN” HERE:

HERE.

Houston: We Have Rain

Hurricane Carla:  1961

Having grown up in Houston, I’ve lived through numerous hurricanes, starting with Carla in 1961.  Before Carla hit, my parents filled up our bathtub with water, which is what we always did back then, and then we “hunkered down” in the dark for a week.   Today, people no longer fill up bathtubs with water - not when you can stock up on gallons of bottled water from the grocery store. 

The bottled water aisle is stripped bare in preparation for Hurricane Harvey

Since Houston is just 50 miles away from the coast we usually miss the brunt of the eye of the storm where the winds will effortlessly pick up a car or a boat and toss it
  down the road like a piece of paper.   Our enemy is more the rain than the wind.  Flooding from any storm, not just hurricanes, is always our issue in Houston.

Houston Astrodome welcomes Katrina Evacuees.  Many of these evacuees never returned to New Orleans, choosing instead to stay here in Houston.

Growing  up, hurricanes meant missed school and there was always a bit of festivity associated with being under a hurricane watch.  It wasn’t until missing school was no longer a goal, that hurricanes became scary adult stuff.   After Katrina destroyed one of America’s most beautiful cities, we all woke up to how destructive a hurricane truly can be.  Houstonians watched an entire city disappear under a wall of water – could that happen here?

Millions of Houstonians at a standstill, trying to evacuate during Hurricane Rita

Hurricane Rita hit Houston just a few weeks after Katrina.  Houstonians were so afraid after having just seen what could happened to a city that didn’t evacuate, that a majority did just that.  It proved to be a huge mistake to evacuate, miles of cars stood at a standstill for hours and hours.    In the end, over a hundred people died on the road trying to escape a hurricane that turned out to be relatively harmless.  We wouldn’t make that mistake of evacuating again.

 

A few years later, Hurricane Ike hit Galveston hard, but Houston was lucky, yet again.  Ike’s winds were strong enough to wipe out electricity and Ben and I spent five hot days in the  dark,  without television or computers.   While it’s not fun to be without electrical power, at least we were safe and dry.

 

The Addicks Reservoir in Houston – notice how close they built houses to this dam!!!!!

In Houston, a tropical rainstorm can wreck as much havoc as a hurricane –  it all depends on how fast and long the rain falls.  Our flat city sits at just 50’ above sea level and a series of natural bayous collects the rain water and then sends it back out to the Gulf of Mexico.  At least that is how it’s supposed to work.  In the 1940s, the Army Corp of Engineers built two huge reservoirs to help the bayous in case they ever overflowed. The problem is these two dams gave builders and homeowners a false sense of security and thousands of houses were built where the water would flow in case of a flood.  The dams were built to hold back a 100 year flood.  Our issue, though, is that Hurricane Harvey caused a 1000 year flood.

 

Buffalo Bayou – Before Harvey.  Houston has developed this beautiful bayou to be used as parkland.

The same exact area – after Buffalo Bayou flooded during Harvey.  The bayous will keep rising until finally it overflows its banks, flooding the streets and everything else in its wake.  This is an amazing photo of the flood.

As usual with Harvey, it wasn’t the hurricane winds that hurt Houston, it was the rain.  After the eye came on land a few hundred miles away from Houston, the clouds moved over Houston and just stayed there, dumping over 50 inches of water in just a few days.  All that water has to go somewhere.  The engineers were scared the reservoir dams would burst so they started emptying them which caused even more flooding days after the Hurricane.  Over a week later, the engineers are still releasing the dam water – flooding will continue in these areas for at least 10 more days while the reservoirs are emptied.

Harvey came out of nowhere, developing so fast we were cavalier about it, convinced the meteorologists were wrong.  They weren’t.  They warned us that we would have unprecedented rain and that the hurricane would come here and wouldn’t leave.  It did. 

Here is what the storm looked like.

Here is how the storm would have looked if it was over Florida.  Huge.

Ben and I watched the news in horror.  Over 30,000 people were displaced.  At least forty people died.  The saddest story was a 3 year old who was found shivering, clinging to her dead mother.  Watching the elderly and the young try to escape the raging waters was gut wrenching.

This photo of elderly women trapped in the flood was one that caused the entire nation to take notice to how serious Harvey was. 

Here, the same group was shown after they were evacuated. 

We are used to certain areas of the city that always seem to flood:  Meyerland being the closest to us, always floods during bad storms.  But this storm was different.  During the rain, Ben and I kept checking our street looking at the water level.  There were a few days of extreme worry, but in the end, we were lucky, very very lucky.

Why?

For some reason our house is far enough away from any bayou or dam that it doesn’t flood.  But we hadn’t planned that.  Neither had my parents, or sister, or nephews.  Yet, we were all safe and dry.  Just lucky. 

In the end, you start to feel guilty about that.  Why us?   We had never made any great decision to move here, right here, where we would stay dry in a flood of biblical proportions.

Luck.

This is a four lane street with a large esplanade in the center.  Boats had to rescue people from their homes.

The people in this neighborhood all had to be rescued.

The freeway became a waterfall.

What you can’t see is how strong the current is in these waters.

Over a half a million cars were flooded during Harvey – new and used cars,  both.

An incredible photo of a flooded out neighborhood.  The boats look like tiny pieces of paper – and notice the truck flooded out.

Heroes

There have been so many heroes that have helped our city.  People who owned boats came from all over America to help rescue people stranded in their flooded houses.  Other people made sandwiches to hand out to hungry citizens.  The shelters were filled with clothes and toiletries donated by citizens from all over the world.  Without all these angels, the death rate would have been much higher.

Sorting clothes, towels and toiletries in a shelter.

The orchestra came and played for the evacuees.  Singers also entertained the families – even Harry Connick Jr. came!

Gallery Furniture

The owner of Gallery Furniture, “Mattress Mac” Jim McIngvale opened his stores and warehouses up to evacuees and first responders. 

Mac posted on his Facebook – “come on over!” – and people did.  He is an amazing man and I don’t think I’ve ever had more respect for anyone.  He sent out his huge furniture trucks to pick up evacuees.  He served food and even allowed pets to come along. 

Mac is a true hero.  No one asked him to do a thing – he just did it.

Other people became instant heroes.    Our mayor – Sylvester Turner was amazing.  He refused to call for a evacuation and faced criticism from national media and even our governor for that – but the Mayor was right.   You can’t evacuate millions of people in two days.  He continued to make tough decisions and stood by them.  He was strong and calming and proved to be the right man for the job.

 

Jeff Lindner, the Harris County Flood Control District meteorologist became a folk hero during the storm.

And then there was Jeff Lindner –  the meteorologist for the Harris County Flood Control District.  I told Ben he was going to be a “star” and I wasn’t alone who thought he was special.  Someone started a Go-Fund account to “Give Jeff Lindner a Vacation.”  It was worth almost $20,000 in just a few days.

Another hero was Michael Dell, from Houston, of Dell Computers, who donated over $34 million of his personal wealth to the victims. 

And our football star JJ Watts started a fund that reached over $20 million!!  Incredible!!

These are just a few heroes – there are so many heroes whose names we will never know.

These people, the heroes with boats were so awe inspiring.  They saved so many lives – they were true angels.

And what about the animals?

During Katrina, when the buses finally came to rescue the city, they would not allow anyone to bring their pets with them!  It was a heart wrenching to watch – all the animals had to be left alone and their owners were even more distraught having lost their homes and now their pets, especially after having saved them from the flood. 

Houston decided to let evacuees bring their pets with them and here, you can see two dogs chill-laxing at the shelter.  Adorable.

This was another time that our mayor Sylvester Turner was so right.  He could have said – “no pets allowed at the shelters” – but he did the right thing, AGAIN.

The sun comes out!!

Finally after days and days the sun came out and life started to pick up a bit.  We got our first mail delivery – on a Sunday!  

But, for most people – cleaning up after the flood was just starting.

 

The massive clean up starts. 

What now?

My old neighborhood, Meyerland, where my parents had built a house when I was in elementary school, was in the national news during Harvey.  Meyerland, the center of Houstonian Jewish life,  is located right off Braes Bayou and as the years went on, it would always flood during very bad storms.  But the flooding had escalated - Harvey marked the third time in three years where houses flooded in Meyerland.  The homes, many custom, were mostly built in the 60s and 70s – and their foundations are too low to survive a flood.  These houses need to be raised.

Those who can afford it are choosing to tear down their houses and new, elevated houses are built in their stead.  Others are choosing to elevate their existing house – raising it on piers to escape future floods.   But these people are the lucky ones.  Most can’t afford these options, nor can they afford to just walk away and take on the burden of two mortgages.

In Meyerland, this is one of the first homes that was elevated to escape future floods.  This house used have its foundation at ground level.  Now, it looks charming and safe. 

 

This Meyerland house is in the process of being raised on piers.  The owners didn’t want to be flooded again.  To see even more houses – before & after they were raised, go HERE.

This house in Meyerland was torn down and replaced with a new house on an elevated foundation.  It is now high enough that it won’t flood.  To the right,  the neighbor’s foundation is at ground level and it floods each time there is a bad rainstorm.

Even our temple, Beth Israel,  also located in Meyerland,  flooded and all the prayer books had to be moved up out of harm’s way.

Meyerland owners have been facing the floods for years, but other neighborhoods in Houston are new to flooding.  Thousands of houses that have never flooded before and now under water.  What will happen?   They will have to decide to either renovate their house or to elevate it to avoid future floods.

Right now – those people who flooded out are ripping out carpet and sheetrock in order to be able to move back home.

This owner was ingenious – to save all their furniture from the water, they used Legos to raise everything in their house!!    I hope the water didn’t get too high in the house.

And then there was this man.  Last year, in a bad flood, he used an Aqua Dam around his home and you can see it kept the flood water away.   Houston used Aqua Dams on our freeways, so they must really work as long as the water doesn’t get higher than the dam.  This is a great idea  - they aren’t cheap, but if you can stop the flood water from ruining your house, it’s worth it.  Aqua Dam HERE.

The future is worrisome.  Houston will have to get experts to make tough decisions about zoning and flood plains and how we can be safe during storms.

People are still in need of financial aid here.

If you would like to donate to help those less fortunate in Houston, I think the best place to donate is the Hurricane Harvey Red Cross Fund HERE where the funds go directly to Harvey victims.

And finally, I want to thank you all so much for your good wishes and prayers.  It meant so much to me to feel your love! 

And now, our prayers go out to Florida who is facing Hurricane Irma.