小平米居家美學 《紐約時報》暢銷書作家安娜·克魯茨 (Anna Kloots) 的華麗巴黎公寓探秘

Hi, I'm Anna. This is my apartment in Paris. Welcome to Chez Moi. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. By clicking the Join button below, you not only support the production of these videos, you also gain access to exclusive content just for members. Today, you'll get an inside look into Anna Klutz's office that not only overlooks the streets of Paris, but also doubles as her closet. Join today to see more of the homes you love. I'm Anna Klutz. I'm an author. And we're here in my home in Paris, France. And this is my dog, Gustave Delamier. My apartment here in Paris, I looked for for about four or five months. It is incredibly difficult to find an apartment here as an expat. And I knew the neighborhood I wanted to live in and certain things that I always dreamed of my apartment in Paris having. And I finally stumbled upon this place around three years ago. And it had a lot of work that needed to be done. And I basically begged the owners to let me live here. I said I would do all the work myself. And they said yes, gave me the keys. And I got started on the biggest DIY project of my life. My apartment is 78 meters squared in square feet. That is around 800, 900 square feet. It is a typical old Parisian building, but it's not Haussmannian style. I've kind of given it a lot of those details on my own to make it kind of like faux Haussmannian. But it's a typical Parisian apartment with a lot of the typical characteristics that you would find here. I found this apartment on my own. And I was coming from New York City. So I was used to tiny kitchens, tiny apartments. I had never lived in anything bigger than a studio. I had never even had a door on my bedroom door. I had always dreamed of having a bedroom door. But I had never even had a bedroom door in a studio. So I always dreamed of having an apartment here. And I had a very clear idea of what I wanted my apartment here to look like. I wanted herringbone floors. I wanted old marble chimneys. I wanted chandeliers. And when I found this place, it had a couple of those things. I knew it had the bones of something that could be great. But it was in pretty bad state. I was sort of blinded by my experience living in New York and what I was used to there. Then I looked around and I thought, OK, this is actually really charming. But there was a lot to be done. The kitchen didn't work at all. The kitchen cabinets were broken. There was no oven. There was no fridge. It is very typical in Paris that your apartment comes without a kitchen at all. And you as the renter are responsible for providing all the appliances. So I had to get the oven, get the fridge, get the washing machine, haul all of these things into the apartment. I had to do a full renovation on the kitchen actually because it was just in too bad of a state to keep. The cupboards were broken and they weren't working and everything was just like quite old and dirty. And then I kind of embarked on making, adding all the charm that I wanted that wasn't here. So I did all the wall molding myself with the least inefficient way you could ever do it. It was me and a hammer and nails and like just this project that went on for months of me adding all the, what they call here, mouillard, like all the old wall moldings. I bought a marble fireplace on the French version of Craigslist called Le Boncoin. And I reassembled the fireplace in my office because my apartment didn't have one and I wanted one. So it's not working but I wanted the charm, I wanted the style of it. So we did that. All the walls we repainted. It was a lot of work. It was like a many month, little by little project to really get everything to where it is today. This is the little entryway. When I moved in, I really wanted to wallpaper this to give it a little bit of a pop. But I couldn't find any wallpaper that I loved. And then one day, I was scanning in the Brocante, which are the flea markets here. And I fell in love with all these old postcards of Paris. And I thought, I wonder if I could just make my own sort of wallpaper out of vintage postcards. And that's exactly what I did. I sought out the ones that I really loved the messages and the ones that were specifically Paris. And I sort of rearranged them myself here. Just put them up with sticky tack. And there's all different areas of the city that I love. And then all the handwritten messages. I loved as an author to have my entryway be filled with other people's stories and other people's stories from visiting Paris. What they wanted to tell people when they got back home and the images they wanted to share. And then I've also mixed in a few new things. I have little love notes when my boyfriend leaves me. And this is a tradition of mine every year in Paris. I go into this vintage photo booth. And on the same day which is the anniversary of the day I moved here. I take a picture in the photo booth. One postcard my dad sent to me that is not from Paris at all. But this was actually a postcard addressed to my great grandmother Catherine Westphal. And what's really incredible is I have some of her dishes in the kitchen as well. And this was a little valentine that my great grandfather sent to her. And so that's the one little piece that isn't Paris but reminds me of my family. I have my yellow tulip here. It's significant when I moved into when I first got to Paris I moved into an Airbnb. And it was the first place that in Paris I truly felt like I lived. And there was a big vase of yellow tulips when I got there. And I'm Dutch. My roots are Dutch. And I just instantly fell in love with these poetic tulips. And I always love having yellow tulips in my house as a result. So it brings me back to that moment of when I first stepped into my new life in Paris and saw these bright, sunny, happy tulips. And I just honestly sat down on the table and cried. I was so happy. So I love to buy yellow tulips. And this is a picture of this is my grandmother when she was younger. And I framed this for my entryway. I love having pieces of my family here. Everyone I love is on another continent and very far away. So I love having pictures of family. But especially when they're old pictures. I love these two pictures of my grandmother. And I thought it went really well with the vintage vibe of my entryway. This is my go-to baseball hat right now. This is actually a brand I started myself here. Because C'est pas mal is something that French people say all the time. It means it's not bad. But it's the equivalent of amazing. And I always my French my boyfriend is Parisian. And he makes fun of me for saying things are incredible, amazing. Wow. Best thing I've ever had. Magnifique. And the French version of that is C'est pas mal which means it's not bad. So I loved that phrase and had to put it on a hat. So this is the living room. The French call this the salon. And probably my favorite thing in here is my mirror. People always ask me for a link for this mirror. And I say this is an antique. I knew I wanted a big old It just I love things that feel like bring me back to watching Beauty and the Beast as a little girl. And a big vintage mirror just brings me right back to watching Beauty and the Beast. And I loved that it's kind of cracked. It's kind of broken. And it just felt like a good centerpiece to the room. These I actually took from the Opera Garnier. I was invited to the Opera Garnier's opening ballet gala in January. And it's like this big fun party at the opera that lasts all night. And they decorate the opera different every year. And these dried flowers were used to decorate the whole grand staircase. It was so beautiful. And on the way out of the party people were invited to take them and take them home because otherwise it would go to waste. So I very eagerly got up a big handful of these. And then I love having this here because it reminds me of that night. And it feels like a little piece of the opera in my apartment. I was looking for a vintage dog bed once I got him. In the Cartier Ballet Museum here which is the museum of the history of Paris. They have a little vintage antique dog bed. And I just instantly was like if I ever get my dream dog I want that. But they're hard to find obviously and quite expensive. But I ordered myself this hat box of this luggage company that I love that makes these beautiful leather cases. And the hat box came and he jumped in. And I thought OK well I guess that's what's meant to be your bed now. So now this little hat box is his bed. And actually it's quite practical because it stores his toys his baguette and his croissant and his Eiffel Tower which is his favorite. And then if we ever are going on a trip it's easy and ready for very easily portable and ready to go. My little side tables I also found at the Brocante I wanted them to be mirrored and so I was looking for exactly this for a while. And I wanted it to be mirrored so that it would reflect the ceiling and the details on the ceiling and the chandelier. I love moving them around in different ways. So you know there are three little nesting tables and sometimes I just rearrange them differently. I have the like bones of this place set but then there's a lot of little details that I shift around. I'm constantly redoing the bookcase rearranging these tables changing what's on them. I like to sort of have the space be unfinished. Like to me it is never just set in stone and everything knows exactly where it's going to go. I like to play with it a lot and especially with each season when I do like a big spring clean I'll just change things around add a few new things. And I really like that how slowly everything came together. It was truly two years of work before it looked like it did right now. And for a while I just had a couch and then I went through different you know I had random chairs before I found the exact ones I wanted and I had to sort of make that choice of just waiting to find things that I really fell in love with instead of just buying something for the sake of having something here. So the title of this painting is Cersei and Her Garden. And when I moved here this was my sort of like bachelorette pad that I was setting up and it was me post-divorce making my place making my thing on my own. And Cersei is this creature in Greek mythology this woman in Greek mythology who would sort of lead men with her immense power and ways and sort of like lead them to their death essentially. And when I had learned that that was the name of this painting and that's who it was I thought this like yes this magical enchantress like powerfully standing in the middle of my living room that is exactly what I want to be here. So she's my favorite piece of art. My bar cart I made myself. It wasn't supposed to be a bar cart but I was looking for a gold bar cart and then I started to realize that everyone had them and it was there were so many replicas I'd wanted a vintage one but I couldn't find the one I liked and the more I looked at them the more I realized that they were kind of in everyone's home and I'm definitely a person who once I realized everyone has something I no longer want it. And this came one day when another piece of furniture I ordered was being delivered. This was in the back of the truck and the guy said I'll give you that side table for 20 bucks if you want. I didn't have almost I basically had no furniture in here at that point and so I was like 20 euros Yes, I'll take it. Brought it upstairs and for a while I was just using it as a little side table and then I realized that actually if I removed the drawer it perfectly fit a couple bottles and I made my little bar area on top and now it's my miniature little makeshift bar cart. And these glasses I took from my parents in Ohio. This is actually China. They were gifted on their wedding. So I love having little bits of my family with me and little meaningful things like that are sort of scattered throughout this apartment and I absolutely love champagne and I pop champagne bottles pretty much anytime there's anything to celebrate and so I keep these right here because I use them often. I'm definitely someone who believes in using the good China, using the silverware, celebrating every day like it's your last because why not? He literally loves it and it's like the cutest. Like Paris was my dream. This dog was my dream. So to see my dream dog playing with his Eiffel Tower toy, like it just, it brings me so much joy to be like, wow, you are exactly what I always dreamed of. It's just so cute the way he bites and plays and loves that thing. I feel like it shares, we share this love for the Eiffel Tower. I have an insane love for the Eiffel Tower and I'm glad my dog has it too. This was my mom's, which I love. I did, when I first moved, I absolutely had truly nothing. When I moved to Paris, I knew no one and I came with five suitcases that were only filled with clothing and books. So I really started collecting everything. At some point, I did go back to the US, back to my parents' home and that's where I picked up their China and a couple other things that I knew I wanted to be here. I wanted bits of my family here, even if it was just a meaningful vase or a certain champagne coupe or a frame that was in my bed, a frame that was in my bedroom as a child. So I kind of gathered all those smaller items and I actually shipped things here. It took three months, but it was well worth it and so now I have a lot of little bits of my family scattered around here and that really means a lot to me. So this vase was something that my mom had in the kitchen for the longest time and so to have it here is really special to me. I change around this bookcase a lot. I like to mess with the different books and where things are. When I found this, I loved that it matched Cersei's head and it felt like it just totally worked. I have these old vintage frames, but then I have family photos in them. That's my mom and that's our old giant conversion van. There's seven of us in our family, so we had to get around in this giant bus that we called the gladiator. I love that that's me and my sisters and my mom. This is honestly super special to me. I write about this in my book too. This is a poem that my brother had made for me in Palm Springs. I was going through a really difficult period at this time. I write about in my book what a difficult time this was and just a real moment of self-doubt and not being able to see my own worth and really struggling with where I was in life. This poem was written in about five minutes on the street in Palm Springs by a man who calls himself the typewriter Troubadour. Only later did I realize that this was basically fortune telling. I loved having this. I kept this of course and then I framed it and I keep it here on my bookcase. My chandelier is absolutely everything I always dreamed of having here. I found this on Le Bon Coin which is basically the French version of Craigslist. I went to pick it up at this apartment in the 6th arrondissement. The most amazing apartment I've ever seen. And it was this old beautiful place. There were amazing antiques everywhere. This was hanging in like an alcove above this beautiful piano. And they were actually still taking it down when I went there to pick it up. They were modernizing the whole apartment which to me was just like a travesty. So they were taking down this chandelier and I was thinking you shouldn't be taking this chandelier down. But I do want this chandelier so I'm not going to say anything. I know I wasn't going to change their mind about the style direction they wanted to go in for their home. But I was very happy to get to see its former life. And I love music. I wish more than anything I could just sit down and like play the piano like Elton John style. But I don't have this gift. But I love knowing that my chandelier used to hang above this amazing beautiful piano in this little alcove in this wonderful little apartment by Saint-Germain-des-Prés. And now it's mine. This is where I go first thing in the morning. I wake up. Start making the coffee. And while the coffee brews I come in here. I turn on the radio. I set the radio to the exclusively ABBA station. I turn the volume up to the max. And I blast ABBA. And I dance while the coffee brews every morning for one song, two songs. Sometimes I get carried away and 30 minutes later the coffee's cold. But it is the way that I love to start my morning. It brings me so much joy and energy. And I truly wake up every day so grateful that I have created this place and that I get to live here. And it sort of is just my way to like instantly start the day on a high and to be grateful and happy. And now the little miette dances with me. So now I have a dancing partner. I'm not doing it alone. This picture my sister gave me. This is my late brother-in-law. He passed away from COVID in July of 2020. And we all lived in New York together for many years. He was an acclaimed Broadway actor and aspiring musician. And this picture to me is absolutely my favorite photo of him I've ever seen. His cousin actually took it. But this is the New York hustle. He's walking down the streets of New York. And this is so New York City where you just got you're carrying all your dreams, all your aspirations, all your hopes. And you're hustling trying to make your dreams come true. And that's what he did every day. That's what I did every day, what my sister did every day. And I love having this framed in my house. And he loved music. I believe he's up in heaven as like DJ of my life, of my sister's life. And so I love keeping him here by the radio. And this picture just reminds me to live every day to the max, to live your life and to never stop hustling, to carry your dreams with you and take them with you wherever you go. One of my favorite things to look for at the flea market is old frames. And I love then, of course, filling them with pictures of family. So I have my grandma and grandpa and my sister, my parents. This lamp, this is a lamp. And when I found this, I flipped out. I was in Florence last year. I went alone on a little solo trip. I love Audrey Hepburn. Sabrina is... I will say Sabrina Fairchild heavily influenced me on moving to Paris. She is sent to Paris by her father to learn how to cook and to become a woman. And she comes back two years later and she's unrecognizable to the people around her and she's chic and she has a little poodle and her life is completely transformed because of Paris. And so I love Sabrina. I love Roman Holiday. I love all of the Audrey Hepburn movies. And I found this lamp in Florence that features her and Humphrey Bogart, a scene from Sabrina, made out of a book. And I was just like, my mind was blown. It's this amazing small artist. Each one is completely made by hand. Each one is completely different. I happened to find this one. I bought it instantly and I just knew that it had to be in my apartment. This I brought over from the U.S. as well. I mean, magic is a big theme in my life. My book is called My Own Magic. I used to have a very different relationship and association with magic. My ex-husband was a magician. And a lot of my process of rediscovering my own joy and my own path and my own worth post-divorce was discovering what my own magic inside of me was and using that magic to fuel my dream life. And when I found this magic written out in French, magique, magique, magique, you are magique, I was like, well, that belongs on a wall. So that came from overseas. My sister actually brought it here for me when she came to visit. And, yeah, that's a pretty special piece of art to me. I call this style Old French Grandmother Meets Barbie's Dream House. And that's kind of a co of my brother and my boyfriend. They came up with those two terms. My boyfriend was telling me that because everything I was buying was from the flea markets and had this Old French style that it was everything he kept saying, you know, this is trogromer, c'est trogromer. And, but that's kind of what I was going for. I always dreamed of having an apartment here that was filled with all these antiques and unique things that I would find at the flea market. That was absolutely my dream. I didn't want to go to a new store and just say, sure, I like that, I'll take that, it goes with that and package everything up from one shop. I really wanted it to be this unique curation of things that really spoke to me and pieces that I knew had a history or I could at least imagine the history of, which I have done quite vividly for everything I purchased. I've created its whole past life and what it once was and who once owned it. But then the pink aspect is what makes it kind of Barbie Dreamhouse-y. I've always been super girly. This is the first apartment I've ever had on my own. This is the first lease I ever signed on my own and place that I ever got to make mine. I spent the last 10 years traveling non-stop. I was married for 6 years and living in someone else's space that was kind of already designed when I moved into it and because it was set in stone and we were planning on getting a home together, nothing about that apartment was changed ever. And it was very much a man's apartment and I was just dying for something to be pink, something to be girly, something to be frilly. And I couldn't do it. And so when I moved in here, I kind of let that flag fly and I was like, I'm having a pink kitchen. I'm having a pink bed that looks like it popped out of Marie Antoinette's room in Versailles. I am just going for it. And it has brought me so much joy that everybody who walks into my apartment that knows me says, Well, you definitely live here. This apartment just screams you. And that is absolutely what I was going for. I didn't have any particular style in mind. I wasn't on Pinterest pinning things. I wasn't looking at pictures and trying to say I want it to look super scandy or I want it to look, you know, Nordic farmhouse-y. Like I really just started looking for things that I loved and things that felt like me. And I just threw it together and it became Barbie's dream house if she was older and divorced and moved to Paris. My dining table, I went through four before I settled on this one. I thought I wanted wood. I thought I wanted glass. I had many different ideas. And I finally realized that I needed a travertine table. This is from the 70s. I found this at a vintage market and I just loved the shape of it. I knew that the shape was perfect and right for this space. Whenever we would go out to eat as a family of seven, my dad would always ask for a round table. He always wanted a round or an oval table. He hated being at a big long table. And I knew when I moved here that I wanted to have people over. I always wanted to have big dinners. I'm from a big family and I love being surrounded by big groups. So I wanted a big table that I could have people over. It fits,you know, six comfortably, but I've crammed 12 plus around here. It can be done with stools and sharing. So I love having dinner parties here. And even though I have an office, I spend a good part of my day working right from this little spot as well because I love being by the window. And I just like that it kind of feels like the center of the room. These chairs I actually found from a Belgian company. When I found them, I fell in love with that clam shape because it instantly reminded me of Botticelli's painting The Birth of Venus. And the whole meaning of this painting is the divine driving force of love. And I moved here really struggling with love for myself, with the loss of love, with my marriage failing. And I really wanted to create a place and a new life that was just centered around finding love within myself, amazing love in my life, my love for Paris, really just this new celebration and getting excited about the idea of falling in love again with a city, with me, with someone new that I would meet. And so I loved that these were shaped like that clam shell. When I first moved in, I didn't have any initial idea of what I wanted the interiors to look like. But then when I saw those chairs and they reminded me of Botticelli's Birth of Venus, then I thought, OK, how else can I bring those elements in? So I chose the couch because it is this wave, it's this blue splash. I'm also Aquarius, so it's a perfect representation of my sign. And then the little gold tidbits, it all kind of just felt like it brought the painting to life in a little bit. It was always my dream to live in Paris. I started taking French when I was 12, and my French teacher, the way she taught French, she really was teaching France. She taught culture, she taught food, she taught architecture, and it really just made me fall in love with this far distant country that I had never even heard of before and had no... I never grew up with dreams of visiting here as a small child, but then I started taking French and I just fell in love with everything about it. And I came for the first time at 18, and that trip sort of like set in stone that this was my dream to live here, and I promised myself I would live here one day. And it just... something about this city really captures me in all the right ways. You know, I've visited 83 countries around the world, and there's so many of them that I have absolutely loved and have really captured my heart, but Paris does something special to me. It inspires me in the biggest way. I am so overwhelmed by the beauty of it and the subtleties of it, like the little everyday things here from someone at the market just filling an entire little bag up with leeks and wandering off with them, and I'm left to wonder what in the world would one do with 20 leeks to, you know, the way that people just are always sitting on a terrace chatting with their wine to spotting adorable old Frenchmen in their berets with their tiny wiry dogs, like everything about Paris just totally captures my heart and just sets it on fire. And I knew when I got here that I had to be here because there's many places in the world that I've loved and I've really enjoyed being, but nowhere makes me feel like Paris does, and as a writer, to be that constantly inspired by everything in my day to day is critical to me, and just I wake up here and I truly still, it's been four years, and I wake up here every day and I go, I can't believe I live here. I can't believe I get to live here. I don't know how I got here, but thank God I did, and I can't believe I get to spend another day here. This is my Barbie dream kitchen. When I was moving here, I knew I wanted my kitchen to be pink, and I was asking my brother if I should get a pink fridge or not, and my brother was like, do not get the pink fridge, and I was like, why? I think it'd be really fun, and he was like, get the pink fridge if you want to live in Barbie's dream kitchen, and I said, I do want to live in Barbie's dream kitchen, but when Barbie is a bit older and got divorced and has moved to Paris and created her new dream life, and so I didn't end up going with the pink kitchen, I didn't end up going with the pink fridge, but I did paint the walls pink and have added a lot of pink things in here, and I call it Barbie's dream kitchen in Paris. So my white fridge, but I brought my pink mixer from the US. It takes a special step-down converter to make this thing work here, but it was very important to me to bring this here, and I love to bake, so I do a lot of baking, chocolate chip cookies, mostly American recipes. I leave the French baking to the pastry chefs. I have framed little love notes that my boyfriend left me. When it comes to art, I really like it to be meaningful. If it doesn't have true meaning and significance to me that I don't want it on my wall or something in my home, so when I was thinking about the kitchen, everything in here is maybe a bit silly to someone who doesn't know the story, but to me, everything is super meaningful. So my boyfriend will always make the coffee on the weekend, and when he leaves for work during the week, he'll usually leave me a croissant and a little note, and it honestly just meant so much to me to have someone in my life who would do something like that for me that I saved every little note, every little scrap of paper he wrote on, and I framed some of them here. These little chairs, these two little bistro chairs were made out of champagne bottle toppers. Like I said, I open quite a few bottles of champagne. I pretty much never have food in my house. I don't go grocery shopping all that regularly, but I am always very stocked on champagne and wine, and I will pop a bottle any time a celebratory moment happens. These are just a few of my favorite cookbooks. These are... This is my favorite French bakery in New York, and my friend got me this when I was moving here. This is a very famous I know how to cook all these French recipes. I have attempted a few. My nephew drew this of me during lockdown. This was his portrait of his aunt. He's signed it there at the bottom, Oliver K. And one word to describe me, wine. I love my beret and my bottle of wine, and so he drew this one night having no idea that I was going to take it back to Paris, frame it, and I love having this in my kitchen. This picture was taken on May 19th, 2021, and I call it First Date because this was the day that the cafes reopened after confinement for the first time. Restaurants were shut down until May 19th, 2021. I met my boyfriend during confinement. We actually met outside the door of my apartment that I was living at before I moved here, an Airbnb that I was living in before I found this rental, and he lived upstairs, and I met him at the front door the night the second confinement started in October. So we started dating, but we could only have dates in the apartment, and he would come over basically every night. We would cook something fun together, drink wine, dance, talk, laugh, but it wasn't until May 19th that we finally were able to actually go on a date, and we went to Café du Flore, which is one of my favorite touristy but favorite spots here, and we were sitting there, and everybody this day was so happy. Just everybody was out on the terrace. It was sunny. It was gorgeous, and everyone who lives in Paris was sitting on the terrace drinking wine, and we went all out. We got cheese. We got wine. We got steak tartare. We just went for it, and we were sitting there just happy in this moment, and this man comes up to me, and he goes, I just took your picture. Would you like to see it? And kind of freaked me out for a second because my gut reaction to that was a bit like, You just took my picture? OK. And I said, Uh, sure. He showed me this picture. I got tears in my eyes, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, sir. Thank you so much. This is incredible. You don't even know how important this is to me that you got this picture of this moment. It turns out he emailed it to me. He is an immensely well-known and important photographer named Peter Turnley, who very often takes photos in and around Paris, very often around Cafe du Flore, and he sent me the print, invited me to print it out and put it in my home, which I did right away, and I couldn't love a picture more. My favorite detail about this is the waiter. You can see the one on the left is still wearing his mask, and two waiters embracing in Paris is pretty rare. That just shows how happy everybody was that day. I don't have a lot of cabinet space, storage space around here, so I decided to just keep sugar, flour, things in these little glass jars. This is my Eiffel Tower pasta, which is just too cute to eat, so while it was meant to be eaten, I don't think, it's just become a piece of art to me now. My oven I found in Italy. I really wanted these like brass details, and when you move to Paris, it is not uncommon at all to have to bring your own appliances into your rental, so I had to get an oven anyway, and I thought if I'm going to buy an oven, I want it to be beautiful. I had my heart set on like Le Corneau and these ovens that are just way outside of my budget, but I found this, and I obviously love Italian food. Who does not? So having a little piece of Italy here in my kitchen felt right, and this is just absolutely, it makes me want to cook actually. I am more inspired to cook because of how much I love the oven, and of course I have my Le Creuset. We made some amazing beef bourguignon in here this winter. I'm more inclined to cook in the winter when it's cold outside and you just want to stay in and make something warm and fatty and rich and just cozy up with wine while it cooks, and I really do love cooking in that. It's very fun. When I didn't have a lot of art in here, I feel like kitchen art is always very hard. I didn't want to just have pictures of framed food. I didn't know what felt right, but I had all these walls that I needed filled, and I was home, and I realized my mom has these old folders, like folders you would have as a student in school, full of her recipes, all written by hand on these aged pieces of paper that are now torn up and ripped up, and I gathered a few of my favorites, photocopied them for her so that she still has the recipes, and I brought them back here and I put them in these frames, and I loved the idea of having this little piece of my mom, this little piece of my childhood, and this little piece of America, you know, macaroni and cheese and stuffed green peppers here with me in Paris in my kitchen. It's my mom's handwriting, and I just, when I think about my mom, I remember her saying, you know, what should we have for dinner? Dinner was always the question. She had seven of us to feed, and so what are we having for dinner was always a big question. She would get out her notebook and scan through these pieces of paper. So I have my mom on, I have my mom's stuffed green peppers and macaroni and cheese, and then I realized I needed to represent the other women in my family, the other matriarchs, so this is my dad's mother, this is my great-grandma, this is my grandmother Klutz, this is her pie crust recipe, and then I have my mom's mom, my grandma Blatnik, her recipe for strudel. So she was Hungarian and she would always make us chicken paprikash and strudel, and I love having my grandma,my grandma and my mom here on the kitchen with me. There was nothing on this wall when I moved in. It was just this big empty wall, and I didn't want to put a big piece of furniture, like a large,you know, basalier,as beautiful as they are. I didn't want to put something there that was going to be like a solid piece of wood. So even though open shelving is,you know,potentially for some like an outdated idea, I thought it would work really well for my kitchen. It was going to be not a huge investment to do, and then would allow me to show off a mix, you know,a mix and match of a lot of different fun dishes. So I have things here that I got at the Brocante. This is a whole vintage tea set I found again at Vont, and some of them I've turned into planters. I have... This was my grandmother's. This is all just a fun mix of stuff that I've found either at flea markets or that I brought over from home. So these plates, my aunt gave me. My great grandmother, Katherine Westball, who is the postcard from the entryway. These were her plates, and now they're here in my apartment. I use them whenever I do goûter, which is to have a delicious treat in the middle of the afternoon. I found these at Anthropologie and just had to have them, obviously. Je t'aime. My professional journey is anything but ordinary. I thought I wanted to be in fashion. I always loved clothing and shopping when I was younger, and so I moved to New York City when I was 18, and I went to the Fashion Institute. And during that time, I sort of realized that actually I didn't want to work in fashion. I really liked everything about the industry, but working in it was not the right fit for me. And I did a semester in Paris, and it was during that time that I just realized what I really loved more than anything was being in another place, being somewhere that isn't where I'm from and sort of being a fish out of water. And it also gave me a taste of what life here was like, which I knew I loved. And so then my first job was actually in London. I got offered a job in London doing sales and interior design. So it was sort of like a step in the fashion realm, but more into the home section. And I honestly, when I got offered the job, I only took it because it was in London. And at that point, all I knew I wanted to do was live outside of the U.S. So I lived in London for a year, and during that time, I started writing and I started traveling. And I didn't have any friends in London when I moved there. I didn't know a soul. And so I would go on all these solo trips on the weekends because I thought I either go alone or not at all. And easy jet flights were 20 bucks to Italy, or,you know, I could pop in on the train for 40 euros. And so I would take all these little weekend trips by myself and then I would write about it. And I started a blog and was constantly, you know, sharing things. And Instagram had kind of just started around this time. And so I had my Instagram account and I was taking horrible pictures on my, whatever model iPhone I had and then over filtering them and posting them. And it kind of just made me fall in love with the experience of traveling and then sharing about those travels. And so, it was very evident to me that that was what I loved doing. And I knew at that point that I wanted to write a book about traveling and that that's what I wanted to do. But I just thought you can't just put your job and try to become a writer. I don't have a degree in this. It's not what I studied. So I kept at it as always my side hobby. It was just always something I devoted. I would stay up till two in the morning writing these blog posts that no one was reading beside my family. But it just, it brought me so much joy and passion that I loved doing it. And it was worthy of the time. And I was still working in sales until I met my ex-husband. And he was, travel was a critical part of my ex-husband's job. And at some point, it became sort of essential for me to leave my job and travel with him in order for us to have a functioning marriage. And I did that, you know, it wasn't a hard sell for me to say, OK, sure, let's travel nonstop. It was what I really loved doing. And during that time, I was devoting more and more time to taking photography. I was learning photography at that time as well so that I could take better pictures. And I was writing about those experiences nonstop. And so while I was married, I traveled all over the world sort of nonstop with my ex-husband, visited multiple continents per year. We were gone about 300 days a year. And I was working for him, kind of wearing many hats. But at the same time, I kept this side hustle of taking pictures, writing about it, sharing. And I made my Instagram account public at the time. And I thought, you know, anybody that I can reach and share these experiences of how amazing these places are, what it's like to spend time with locals, the types of, you know, the ways that travel can really change you and open your eyes. You know, I grew up in a tiny town in Ohio. And most of these places I never even heard of until the opportunity to go there arised. And, you know, suddenly then, I was on a month-long road trip through Romania and visiting Dracula's Castle and sleeping in these little spooky villages and driving these amazing roads and just, it really opened my eyes to the world and taught me so much about who I was and what I was good at, what my strengths were, what my challenges were and really revealed to me how much I loved writing about places and how they impacted me. And I loved sharing even though it was not doing anything for me professionally because it just felt like it was a way to give these experiences to other people who maybe would have never dreamed that they, too, would enjoy Romania. And all it takes is a couple of photos and some articles to realize, wow, that's a trip I want to take. So I did that for a long time and my Instagram account at the time was growing and growing and growing but in my head it was always very much something that was just a hobby. It was sort of just for fun. And I truly didn't see the potential of what it could be. And I always kept in my head that this was a book I wanted to write one day. And all these stories I was writing down and all the photographs I was taking and all the notes I was taking in my head it was always going to be a book one day. I just didn't really know about what. And when my marriage very suddenly ended at the, in the middle of 2019, I was suddenly without a job, without somewhere to live, without a husband and without the future that we had planned together. And I really felt very lost and not sure what I was going to do and how I was going to pick up all these pieces and figure out a new life. And I was actually very detached from what I even wanted that new life to look like because I had spent so many years just doing something for someone else and imagining our life together versus my life alone. And when I kind of took control of OK, what do I want to do? I realized I love traveling and I love writing. And that was at the point that I said OK, I'm going to try to find a lit agent and try to write this book that I've been talking about writing for 10 years. And I got, I honestly say it was scarily fast how quickly everything came together once I started devoting my time to the right things rather than spending time on the wrong things as I had been giving so much of my time to the wrong people, to the wrong energy, to the wrong life, to the wrong future. And as soon as I started redirecting giving my time and energy and focus toward the right future for me, everything just fell into place. And I decided to move here. I met a lit agent. We started working on a book proposal. And I realized that all the notes I had taken and all the photos and everything else, all the journals I had handwritten, stacks of them that I still have, I had been writing a book the whole time. And I had to rework a lot of that and make it into what is the finished product. But it was truly a 10-plus year journey that all led me to exactly where I was supposed to be. My book is... The book that tells that whole story came out last May. It is a memoir about travel and divorce and self-discovery and self-love. It's called My Own Magic. And that book has been out since last May. I did a big fun book tour around the U.S. And now this year I'm trying to do some more events throughout Europe, which is very fun. And the other book I co-wrote with my sister, which was actually published first. And that book is called Live Your Life. And that is a story about family and loss and sisterhood and grief and finding the silver linings. Welcome to Versailles. Just kidding. So I would pull out Marie Antoinette-inspired with my Louis XV. This is called a corbeille, which means basket. Corbeille bed. I knew I wanted this. And I sacrificed size of bed because they don't make these in larger than 140 centimeters. There was no king at the time. There was no double king for sure. There was no king-sized bed at the time. There was no California king, that's for sure. So 140 centimeters is the biggest I could find in this corbeille style without having it custom made and being super, super expensive. I found this on Le Bon Coin. I drove out about an hour outside of Paris and picked it up from this charming older woman who had had it in her attic area. And I absolutely love it. I tried super hard to find the same silk to have. My dream is to have this same silk as the curtains and do a full-on very, very old-inspired thing here. I have to save up for that. That's in the budget. I have looked it up and I have found the sample. But to get it as the exact match is actually quite hard because this is older. I think this was made around the 40s. This is not from the period. But this was made in a period style around the 40s or 50s. So the color has actually faded quite a bit. So getting an exact match is sadly not possible. This is a painting of my when I was going through my parents' stuff in the basement when I was pulling out their wedding china and vases and all these other things that I wanted to bring back here with me. I stumbled upon this oil painting of my mom done as a kid in New Orleans. I brought it upstairs and I was like, Mom, what is this amazing painting? And she said, oh, you know, and told me they were at a family trip and she just had someone do this on the street. My aunt has one, too. And I said, can I take this back with me? And she, you know, tears filled her eyes. She was like, you want that? You want to hang it on your home? I brought it here, reframed it, and I thought it was the absolute perfect thing. Her blouse matches the bed and just all the colors and everything else flowed so well. And again, like I love having a lot of pictures of my family, but that it's not a photograph. It's like so evidently my family. So I have my grandmother as a young girl in the entryway and then my mom as a young girl in my bedroom. My little nightstands on each side, I didn't want them to be a perfect match. So one is floating and then the other is just little teeny tiny. I mean, those, you know, a lot of this bedroom to me is very Versailles and that is also Beauty and the Beast. So when I moved into the Airbnb that I found here before I found this apartment that I lived in for a while, they had a big wardrobe just like this. And I fell in love with it because it just reminded me of the wardrobe in Beauty and the Beast. And I felt like it was going to spring to life and dress me for dinner. And I absolutely knew that I didn't know what kind of furniture I was going to get when I got a place of my own, but I knew I needed this. And I also found this on Le Bon Coin. I have found so many amazing things there. I drove about an hour and a half outside of Paris and there was a home and this was in a little girl's bedroom. She's about 12 years old, I think. And my boyfriend and I were dissembling it in her room and she was telling me that she was going to use the money from this sale to get an IKEA PAX. And I was like, again, just like the chandelier, like I wanted to stop her. I wanted to be like, oh, no, you're going to regret this one day. You're really going to regret this one day. But she desperately wanted something modern and cool and fun. And she had her heart set on an IKEA PAX and I had my heart set on this. And so it was not at all a fair trade, but I'm really happy with the trade that I made. And this was the first thing that was in the bedroom. There was nothing else for a long time, but this was the first thing. Chandelier, I also found on Celency, so that's an antique. I wanted something a little smaller and more feminine in here. This lamp I found at the Emmaus, so sort of like the French version of Goodwill. I was at an Emmaus near to where my boyfriend's family lives outside Versailles, and I found this for $50. My boyfriend was not supportive of this purchase, but I was not about to leave it there for $50. Again, here I have a little love note that he wrote me that I framed and put on the wall. This is full of basically just, this isn't the jewelry I wear a lot, but it's all the fun jewelry. Most of this was my grandmother's or his family heirlooms, and I loved having it here on display in this cute little vitrine. So just special things that mean a lot to me personally, and I like having them out and wear them when it's a special occasion or something feels like a fun reason to dress up. These fellows I have a couple of. I sometimes swap out the words. I also have Jetem and Bévy. This is an amazing woman here who is from Africa and everything is made in Africa. And then she has a shop here in the Marais, but now has her fellows and she makes beautiful plates and tote bags and she's in several of the shops. I see her things everywhere now, but when I first saw her little shop in the Marais, I loved it, and this is all done by hand and just so beautiful with all the fun different prints and embroidery. And my rug, I just recently found. I was at Maison Objet, which happens twice a year in Paris. It's a big amazing design trade show, and if you're lucky, you can snag things that the people are actually selling on site. It's mostly for wholesale, but a few of the things you can actually buy there and take with you, and rugs is one of them. And I spotted this. I've been looking for a rug for this room for the longest time that was like bright, that matched the color, and I felt like it should be floral, but I wanted there to be a contrast, both in style and in like... I just wanted to have a different vibe. I almost got something that was very, you know, grand-mère, as my boyfriend would say, but I felt like that would be taking it too far in that direction, so I was looking for something that was a bit of a contrast, had that bold pop of color, but still felt floral and feminine, and I saw this truly from across the room because I noticed that like bright, bright pink color and went running. It turned out to be the perfect size, like it was made for this room, and they rolled it up, and I took it home from Maison L'Objet. And this little chair I also got on Le Bon Coin. I just wanted a little thing in here that I could use to... to be honest, throw my clothes on at the end of the day. And this is... this came from Le Bon Coin and was delivered right to my door. It is just... I absolutely loved it when she brought it. I looked at it and I said, this belongs in a museum. The problem is, it is truly from the period. There's like horse hair and giant springs on the bottom side of that, and so you can't sit on it. I've tried. I broke it. So it's just a decoration piece now. I stay in a lot of hotel rooms. For a long time, I spent majority of my nights in a hotel room. So I love having a little please do not disturb, please make up the room sign on my door. So this little... my little sheepskin rug, though you can find these everywhere, mine happens to be from Romania. I was on a two-week road trip through Romania with these local friends, and we were driving the Transfagarasan, which I probably just pronounced somewhat incorrectly, very, very difficult, but it was this amazing road and we were on this beautiful trip and we stopped and they had this little stall selling these amazing quality sheepskin rugs and they were so affordable and I said, I want one of those. I have to have one. I was married at the time and my husband was like, what are you going to do with that? And I said, I don't know, but I have to have it. And I put my foot down and I bought this souvenir. For the longest time, I would always want these souvenirs and have nowhere to put them. I put my foot down. I bought the souvenir and it is one of the only things from that period of my life and all those travels that made it into this apartment. But I knew, I had a vision for it that day and my little Romanian sheepskin rug is now here in Paris. And Miet loves it. Home to me truly just means where you feel at ease, like where you walk in the door and you feel this sigh of relief. And I truly never felt that in anywhere that I called home before I had this home. It's a true reflection of me and I think that's what allows me to walk in the door and feel at ease and at home and happy is that I look around and it's really something I built for myself and it feels like me and it looks like me and I feel at ease there. So what sold me most on this apartment which I knew needed so much work but when I walked in and opened these doors and stepped out onto this balcony which goes all the way around the apartment. It's called a balcon filant. I just spent the first five minutes of my viewing of the apartment walking up and down going oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And I still pretty much do that most days. But this is my favorite little corner of the balcony. I come out here any day that it's warm enough and sit. I have my coffee out here. I have lunch out here. I work out here in the summer. And this is probably the spot in the apartment most that I really feel like wow, I live in Paris. Thank you so much for coming over. I love showing you my apartment. And I hope I see you soon in Paris. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.