Here's thinking outside the box!

One of our RSVPstyle experts, broker extraordinaire Kay Mukaigawa of Primary Properties, decided to hold a sunset broker’s open at one of her mega-listings on Kahala Avenue.


How to attract nearly 100 Realtors and brokers to this event? Have a fashion show! Even more creative thinking: Kay’s models were Realtors from a variety of companies. Six in all graced the runway—oops, I mean staircase and hallway!


Fun, flirtatious and funky fashions were provided by In My Closet in Kahala Mall. The jewelry was by Riches, the fabulous accessory kiosk in the same mall, and the shoes were provided by Stuart Weitzman in Ala Moana Center.

And to make it all come together, Kay needed an emcee with a big mouth and a passion for fashion, so of course she asked moi. It was a lot of fun. Everybody noshed on appetizers, enjoyed the fashion show and took in the beautiful Mediterranean-style home, with its handmade wrought iron railings, movie theater, luxurious master bedroom and guest suites and waterfall and swimming pool.

Here’s a sneak peek at this fabulous $6.5 million house: www.4902KahalaAve.com

I had a blast getting the girls to work that runway, and even I was outfitted and had the accessories to boot, so of course I couldn’t resist the opportunity to strut my stuff too! A beautiful setting, fun and fashion—what a great combination!

Attention, Hawaii: HGTV needs our help!

If you’d like to see some Hawaii homes on an upcoming episode of HGTV’s Bang for Your Buck, contact them right away! Cyndi, who’s in charge of tasking for the show, tracked me down through our website and asked me to help put the word out. She told me they’re on a very tight deadline. They’re coming to shoot in the third week of January, and they need three rooms that have been remodeled in the last year.

The show compares three similar-budget remodels of the same type of room to see which does the best job in increasing the property’s value. In other words, their professional designer determines whether the homeowners got a lot of bang for their buck!

Yeah, I know you think all your rooms are great, but they’re specifically looking for rooms that flow from kitchen to dining to family room—basically an open space that serves more than one purpose. The remodel budgets need to be within the $40,000 to $200,000 range.

I think they’re a little desperate here, folks, so we need to help them out. If Cyndi can’t find some rooms, they’re going to another state!

It’ll be fun to do and it’ll be great for putting Hawaii in front of millions of potential tourist eyes also. So if you’d like to be on TV and see your room on TV, you can get more information at www.hgtv.com/bang or contact Cyndi directly at (303) 712-3177 or cortiz@highnoontv.com.

Pregnant nun, cross-dressing gangsta: Who are these people??

Seen any great musicals lately? I did, this past weekend: the Gridiron by the Society of Professional Journalists. The theme was “Doing Less with Less”—we all know what that means! It was hilarious and I’m still laughing!

Of course I have a soft spot for KITV’s Mahealani Richardson, who is in her eighth month of pregnancy. She was singing and dancing her little but off (and boy, that butt is growing—just kidding, Mahea!). She spent a lot of time in a nun’s habit—pretty hilarious, a pregnant nun, she kept blessing herself and rubbing her tummy!

Here’s a backstage photo of her with Justin Cruz, who was also really good. I never knew he could sing and sashay so well!

One of the highlights was Dan Cooke’s impersonation of Linda Lingle, always a crowd favorite! My favorite bit was when Dan did a rap called “Lindalicious,” a takeoff on a song from Fergie, while dressed up in risqué black bondage outfit. It was the combination of his makeup, his outfit, his rap (I was amazed at the natural gangsta that came out of him!) that proved just how well he can combine being a female impersonator and a gangsta rapper all in one. He had everybody rolling in the aisles.

Here you’ll find him with some of his bootie-licious backup dancers including Esme Infante from momslikeme.com—she sure wasn’t acting like a mom that night! You go, girl!

And there was a tribute to Corky Trinidad, the legendary political cartoonist who passed away this year. They showed a lot of his work from the Star-Bulletin, put to song, and it was really touching. You realized how truly talented he was.

Sorry I couldn’t take any photos—I would have forgotten anyway, I was having too much fun! I have to thank Gordon Pang for these backstage photos.

Bravo, Spike!

Those of you who attended Macy’s Come+Together event at the Ala Moana store last night know what I’m talking about. It was a huge success, not only for Macy’s but also for the Hawaii Foodbank, beneficiary of the event.

Spike Mendelsohn, cheftestant of Bravo’s Top Chef Season 4, was the main attraction, and what an attraction! In addition to the RSVPstyle fans who turned out, we had a good number of Top Chef fans who were dying to see for themselves if Season 4’s bad boy was seriously that over the top in real life!

Well, Spike was picture-perfect. He was extremely nice, friendly and fun! After a meet-and-greet pupu hour, I opened the show with a quick lesson on how to put together four very different tablescapes worthy of Spike’s menu, all with items from Macy’s home department (you can see our Tablescape article series beginning next week at www.rsvpstyle.com). Mixing colors, styles and textures is not just for your rooms, it’s for your table as well (and even for fashion! Check out the $49 INC top I found at Macy’s just the day before).

Then I joined Spike in the kitchen, where I admittedly do not spend much time, and that’s when the fun began. The only way I know how to stir ingredients on a stovetop is with a spatula. But Spike told me to go ahead and try my hand at flipping his chutney in the pan. I warned the people in the front row that this could be dangerous! Sure enough, a quarter of Spike’s chutney flew out of the pan! Fortunately I didn’t burn anyone.

Spike made a seared tuna to go on top of his Korean pear chutney, with a simple palate cleanser of Big Island hearts of palm and cilantro—yum! We all got to sample it—along with amazing pupus and desserts prepared by the awesome student chefs who helped out.

Then we opened it up to Q&As, which gave the audience a chance to ask questions about cooking, Top Chef and Spike’s brand new handmade burger joint, Good Stuff Eatery, in Washington D.C. The night ended with a chance for people to get an autographed Top Chef cookbook and a photo with Spike.

It was a fun night. Spike was a great guy. Even though he was the cheftestant you loved to hate, in person you could only love Spike. It was his first trip to Hawaii, but we look forward to having him come back soon!

All about scale and proportion

I am not completely packed yet and we’re leaving in a few hours for our first trip to the Big Apple. I’m so excited!

Darrell, Nicki and I are headed to the New York City Wine & Food Festival. It’s going to be a short trip because Nicki’s going back to school on Monday. We’ve got tickets to the sold-out Burger Bash that Rachael Ray is hosting. I love Rachael Ray, I’m so excited! And we’re going to Godiva’s SWEET tasting, hosted by Duff Goldman.

We’ll see all of the sights—the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty—and we scored tickets to the show Wicked. And with all the things I’m doing with Macy’s, I’m looking forward to seeing their flagship store on 34^th Street with the original wooden escalators.

So I was deleting pictures to clear space on my memory card, and I came across some from Sacred Hearts Academy’s 100-year gala last month. It’s a great visual tip to share with you all. When they asked me to design the stage, I thought, are you kidding? I’ve never done a stage before! But it’s for my alma mater, and Lee Webber of the Honolulu Advertiser was the honorary chair—how could I say no?

Anyone who’s been to our workshops knows it’s about layering colors and textures and considering scale and proportion. For a 24 x 18 foot stage at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, I was going to need a lot of scale and proportion.

I designed these tall gold planters with cascading yellow popcorn orchids and asparagus and other ferns to give them height and width proportional to the size of the stage and ballroom. With a Batman-like light shining on the backdrop drapes, we could create any color backdrop.

When people first walked in, the backdrop was amber. Throughout the evening it changed: With Cathy Foy entertaining, you saw lavender, and with Jason Segundo it was royal blue.

Boy, the RSVPstyle fundamentals sure do come in handy! It was a great event for a great cause.

Anyway, I know you’ve probably forgotten about Top Design, but I hope you’ll forgive me for this delay. I have to say I agree with the judges—they picked the right winner, who as you know by now is Antonio.

Poor Dan! Overall, he is the better designer. He knocked the final challenge, designing an entire home for a family, out of the park. I thought his house was completely pulled together. What won the contest for Antonio was his hosting ability—after all, they were looking for the next Design Star, not designer. But Dan has a huge future, and Antonio’s going to be fun to watch.

Gotta get back to my packing. I’m looking forward to a great first trip to New York City, but I’ll check back with you real soon … promise!

A day of beyonds

The word that keeps coming to mind as the workshop is behind us and I’m writing this blog is beyond:

• Beyond expectations. The energy and feedback from the 470 guests who came to learn were incredible. We were trying out a brand new format, combining our workshop with a tradeshow, and I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but everyone loved it. During breaks, attendees had a chance to stretch their legs and meet people they wanted to meet with, and our sponsors got to meet face to face with people who had been checking them out online. So that was a huge highlight.
• Beyond grateful for the words from people who came up to me and said they had their Aha! moment. The perfect quote was from Susan, who said, ‘Cathy, I had the Aha! moment. Without even going home, I can see my living room and now I know what’s wrong and how to fix it.’ Susan and the others had no idea how much that meant to me, how their words made all that work worthwhile.

• Beyond cute: For the first time ever, we had our RSVPstyle logowear. Mel and Mel looked beyond cute in the hoodie and T-shirt that will soon be up on our online store!

• Beyond fabulous—did you see the $10,000 Grand Prize diamond necklace? When I drew her name, Joyce Cranmer literally jumped out of her seat! She was shaking so hard that jeweler Dale Cripps needed several minutes to get that clasp fastened around her neck. She turned to me and said, ‘I’ve never won anything except a tape measure from a hardware store!’

At the end of the day, when everybody had packed up and we left the ballroom, Lissa, Kara, Marie and I headed over to Roy’s to have a cocktail and some pupus. We were beyond exhausted! But just extremely satisfied at how the day went.

And now we’re all beyond tired and ready to go to bed for a very long time! We’ve got lots of highlights and photos coming up on our website, so stay tuned!

Ooh la la--$10,000 worth of fabulous!

No, no, no, I have not forgotten about you—I have just been so overwhelmed with preparations for our workshop on Saturday. I’m taking a break to post this quick blog because we just saw jeweler Dale Cripps yesterday. He’s donating the most amazing prize: Can you believe someone will walk away with a $10,000, five-carat white and natural yellow diamond necklace?

The girls in the office all threatened to quit when they found out they’re not eligible to enter the drawing for this prize. As a matter of fact, I thought about quitting myself!

It’s a modern-style piece that would look fabulous with jeans, or dressy and elegant with a black cocktail dress. Just imagine a woman telling her husband she’s going to this workshop, and then coming home with these diamonds draped around her neck! Well, that’s going to happen to someone, male or female, and it could be you if you already got your ticket to the workshop, because we’re sold out!

Lots more details to plan and we’re setting up the Kalakaua Ballroom at the Hawaii Convention Center tomorrow. Just had to share this fabulousness with you!