Elise Alden's airy, cozy home in the mountains.

You know my friend Elise? The one who's an amazing party-planner and an amazing bananacake-maker, and owns the cutest kids' boutique in addition to managing glam | camp and designing and curating the most adorable little-kid clothing and accessories on the planet? (No but really: this necklace just got added to the site and I am DYING. Dyinnnnnng.)

Unsurprisingly, Elise's house is as warm and bright and sweet as she is. My favorite thing about it - besides its location in the Los Gatos mountains, which is basically paradise - she transformed it from a dark, dated space into a breezy home that's both comfortable and fun for kids, and beautifully chic for entertaining. And she did this not by spending zillions of dollars on decor, but rather by pulling together mismatched pieces from antique shops, thrift stores, and DIYing wherever she could - sidenote, the woman painted her two-story house exterior herself, which makes her an actual superhero - and ended up with a house that's completely her, from the hand-painted wall design in her girls' book nook to the ramshackle glam (sorry, had to) living room.

First things first: my children have now joined the ranks of People Who Have Been Traumatized by the Swamp Scene in The Neverending Story. 

The horse dies. Of sadness. (Artax noooooooo!)

On the positive side, they were traumatized while sitting in what might be the coolest kids' chairs ever created. Technically these things are called LÖMSKes, but we call them Space Eggs. We didn't intend to come home from our Sunday Ikea trip with Space Eggs, but come on: you would have bought them, too.