Last Mediterranean photos: Shipboard fun!

Ever since my first cruise to the Caribbean on our honeymoon almost 15 years ago, I've been in love with this way of traveling, and my favorite cruise line is Crystal Cruise. For this Mediterranean food and wine tour, we were lucky enough to be aboard the Crystal Serenity. With Crystal, at-sea days are possibly even more fun than days touring on shore!

Uncle Joseph does a magic trick for the kids on a formal night at sea

Mom and Carolyn on the slots. Can you believe it? My mom hit a $1500 jackpot that night! (Won't tell you how much she gave back!)

Dads and daughters dancing. How cute is that?!

Breakfast with mom and dad. The ocean breeze makes you hungry!

Lobster, anyone? The Grand Buffet certainly lived up to its name!

There's so much food... where do I begin?!

Nicki and classmate Preston celebrate their birthdays together

'The Boys' bonding in the Connoisseurs Lounge over cigars and scotch. (It's a guy thing!)

Mayumi learns a few dance moves from one of the Ambassador Hosts, while Carolyn and Joseph dance in the background

Nicki and new gal pal Alexia make dancing plans of their own

Ahhh! Now this is living! Lounging on the balcony as we sail into a new port

Yes, this was a wonderful family vacation, and Nicki is already asking when our next cruise will be!

It's time to go home. I interviewed Gary Hunter, the Cruise Director, on our last night about the Crystal Cruise experience. (I'll post the video shortly.) Until next time, Crystal Cruise... yes, it is a wonderful world!

Last Mediterranean photos: People

Beautiful places and amazing food and drink are always fantastic perks of travel, but it's the people you meet who make the experience just that much more special. Here are some of the people I was lucky enough to become friends with.

I loved meeting Eleani and her adorable daughter Anna from Moscow. She's working on their home with an interior designer and bought our DVD to get more inspiration.

Vicki was traveling from Hong Kong with her husband and son. This was her first cruise. We met while dancing at Palm Court. Here, she's dancing with the ship's professional dancer... looks like she could be one herself!

Susan and her sister Shirley are from Scotland. Susan just downsized: She was living in a castle, now she's in a modern townhouse. She came to my workshop to learn how to transition her decorating styles. Wow, I never met anyone who lived in a castle before!

I ran into Jean and her husband David from New York at the photo gallery. David is the wine director for Tribeca Grill and was the favorite guest lecturer on the ship! Darrell and I hope to see Jean and David when we go to New York in October.

Rita and Les are from Arizona. They're in their 80s and are the most adorable couple you could ever meet--they're newlyweds! Four months of marital bliss, and they dance together like they've been married for 40 years!

We met Gina and Tony from Toronto through Nicki, who met their daughter Alexia while both were swimming in the pool. Nicki and Alexia became fast friends. They had a ball together and promised to stay in touch.

Finally, Gary Hunter is the Cruise Director and famous ventriloquist on board the Crystal Serenity. Gary was an absolute doll to work with! He recently built the home of his dreams with his wife in Florida. We had lots to talk about!

NEXT BLOG: Shipboard fun!

Ahoy! First workshop on the high seas

One of the highlights of the Mediterranean for me has to be the mini-workshop I gave aboard the Crystal Serenity. It’s the first time I spoke in front of a Crystal audience and my first at-sea workshop ever!

A few days earlier, the cruise director, Gary Hunter, interviewed me for Crystal Cruise TV, which airs the morning of the event to get people excited about wanting to come. Gary also happens to be a pretty famous ventriloquist himself, and the interview was a lot of fun. We’ll post part of it here soon.

Totally impressed with Gary’s setup up on the bridge deck. Can you believe it was a three-camera shoot?

I kept the workshop pretty short—I had to, since I only had an hour! I focused on colors, showing how to layer colors into a space and tie them into Mediterranean mementos people may have bought, such as a work of art or a rug from Turkey.

This was a food-and-wine cruise, and my workshop happened to be up against a red wine lecture and a demo by a mixologist! Poor Darrell, I even had to convince him to come, and a lot of the wives in our Hawaii group dragged their husbands to my show! Mahalo, guys!

Believe me, giving a workshop itself on the Mediterranean high seas was a thrill for this Hawaii girl! It doesn’t matter, you can meet people from the opposite end of the world, and they still have the same challenges: how to incorporate color, how to find their style. I have to say, I was thrilled to meet some fascinating people—I’ll tell you about them in my next blog.

Design Star: back on track

My favorite TV show, Design Star, redeemed itself from last week’s awful kitchen challenge. Phew! There really was nowhere to go but up, since the contestants embarrassed themselves and the show. Now my favorite designers are back in the lead, and can you believe that Torie, everybody’s weak link, is right up there with them!

This week’s challenge was my favorite: the white room, where each designer starts off with an identical white space. It’s a total blank slate, and a perfect opportunity for each designer to showcase their talent, imagination and ability to execute their design.

And—are you ready? All the design elements had to be purchased from a grocery store. Who dreams up these things? These producers are insane! They must be laughing their butts off, coming up with ideas to make things as difficult and high-stress as possible.

The top three rooms selected by the judges were my exact picks. My favorite was Dan, who raided the produce aisle and chose apples as his main design element. He created a very moody, sophisticated, rich-looking room in reds and browns. It was phenomenal. Vern Yip said it was the most thought-out room he’d ever seen on Design Star—total high praise, and well deserved.

Nathan painted his walls a matte black and dripped milk down them to create an interesting striped effect. Then he strung up his own fresh orange chandelier, which totally killed. Those strings of sliced oranges must have made the room smell divine!

But the shocker was Torie, who was voted onto the show by her fellow contestants because they thought she’d be easy to beat. Last week when the designers were choosing their kitchen teams, Torie was chosen dead last.

Well guess what? Torie totally stepped up and pulled off a hip, young space, with vibrant colors that went from magenta and yellow to black and white zebra stripes on the floor. She even scrunched up garbage bags and colorful napkins to make some bold wall art that everybody was asking about. A bit crazy, yet not chaotic, because there was uniformity in the stripes and balance in the colors.

The rest of the group was mediocre at best. But let’s face it. I know I’d be hard-pressed to come up with ideas for decorating with cereal boxes and fruit!

Again, I have to give it to the judges. They voted out Jen, the color specialist, who never proved her ability in what was supposed to be her strong suit. She tried to be eclectic and create this contemporary Japanese room, but the colors didn’t work, her idea fell flat, and her scale and proportion were off. Her room amounted to scatterings of little things, and there was really nothing to draw your eye in.

I can’t wait for the next episode. Unfortunately, that’s going to have to wait until I get back from my trip. I’m mixing business with pleasure—this is our family vacation, but I’ll also be teaching a home decorating workshop aboard the Crystal Serenity. I’ll be posting photos as we go along.

But first, AAARGHHH! I’ve got to get back to my packing!