Happy belated Valentine's Day!

Yikes! Yesterday was the big day, and I got so caught up celebrating with Darrell and Nicki, the two loves of my life, that I completely forgot the Valentine's poem I had found and saved specially to share with you!

I hope your special day was filled with love and spent happily with those nearest and dearest to you. And today, to all of you from all of us at RSVPstyle, Happy (belated) Valentine's Day!

A friend is like a Valentine,
Heartwarming, bringing pleasure,
Connected to good feelings,
With memories to treasure.

Seeing a special Valentine
Brings happiness to stay,
And that's what you do, friend,
You brighten every day!

-- Anonymous

Hot design + inspiration: Highlights from Winter LV Market

Woohoo! I'm back in Vegas, baby — this time for Winter Las Vegas Market. As you know, this is a veritable smorgasbord of the hottest new trends in interior design, furnishings and accents in the country. I'm here on a dual mission: to find fun, unique items to sell along with your gently used consignment items at our upcoming Cathy's Marketplace showroom, and to supplement the CM items we're using to furnish our Cathy's Marketplace concept house in Diamond Head.

These are both huge jobs, but fortunately I've got awesome help. Joining me on this whirlwind trip are Kara, Caty and Chelsey. Sound like fun? You bet your bootie it was! Here are some highlights from our three days at Winter Las Vegas Market.


Look who we ran into — our friend Travis Blackwood from South Carolina! Travis is our partner in the new Creations bedding line we're currently designing for the national market. He's always a lot of fun and we wished we could have had lunch together, but we were so busy we were literally always eating on the run. Next time, I promise!


Love the eclecticness of these accessories! At LV Market it was color, color everywhere. Bright yellows and oranges are still strong...


...and you also saw lots of turquoise and use of fabric, as in these Asian/Moroccan-inspired lighting fixtures.


Everywhere, it was all about global consciousness and design elements from around the world.


Chelsey's a natural in this organic reclaimed-wood armchair. Doesn't she look more than a bit queenly?


Always on the lookout for a touch of whimsy! Love this duck-footed mirror!

Groovy Stuff: That's the name of Chris Bruning's collection. I found lots of groovy things for our Cathy's Marketplace concept house, which belongs to a friend who loves reclaimed wood and anything unique and interesting. Chris is a fun-loving artist who's lived on Oahu's North Shore. He’s also about sharing and giving back and empowering people, like with the contest he sponsored for university students using reclaimed wood pieces. Is that groovy or what?!

I met designer Casey Fisher of Haute House three or four years ago at LV Market. Casey's signature is one-of-a-kind furniture pieces you would see right out of MTV. He loves bling, loves over the top, loves designing for the Beverly Hills and rock 'n roll crowd, totally my kind of designer!

More from Haute House.


Kara's metallic outfit is a perfect match for HH's metallic ottomans!


Always one of my favorite stops is the Phillips Collection. It's a great family business run by Mark and Julie Phillips and their son Jason, an award-winning designer. They do amazing things with not only reclaimed wood but also unexpected materials like their seatbelt chair. Their use of color is bold, sophisticated and nuanced, and their tongue-in-cheek designs always leave you with a smile and amazement at their creativity and sense of style.

Here's a quick clip of my interview with Jason Phillips, the creative director of Phillips Collection. Can you believe he's just 28 this year?!




Not all work, exactly: After working the market all day and night, in the wee hours Caty and Chelsey had to hit the slot machines. And boy, did they pay for it in the morning!

Phew, what a trip! And I haven't mentioned one of the best parts: To keep company expenses down, four of us girls squeezed into one hotel room with our eight pieces of luggage. Biggest challenge? Sharing bathroom and mirror time, of course! Amazingly, we did not kill each other. It was a great bonding trip and we got a lot accomplished. But I do have to say, there's no place like home!

I'll leave you with this, our last look at Las Vegas Market.

The gang’s all here and we’re so excited, we’re off to Vegas for the Winter Furniture Market at World Market Center! This is the biggest crew ever going from our companies. Kara’s joining me again, and this time so is Caty, our creative director, and Chelsey, our showroom manager. Lissa and Mari are holding down the fort back home, and I know they’ll be waiting for their lucky chocolate coins!


As you know, Las Vegas Market is an enormous showcase of hot new trends in interior design, furniture and accessories. For me this is the most exciting market ever, because we’re going with two purposes: first, to find the latest, greatest, hottest home accessories for our Cathy’s Marketplace showroom, and second, to find items for our Cathy’s Marketplace concept house.

What’s this about a concept house? Generally we don’t take on private projects, but some friends needed help outfitting their home, and with our showroom opening soon, we decided why not design a concept house and outfit it with items from CathysMarketplace.com as well as things we’ll also be selling in our new showroom?

Boy, do we have a huge task ahead of us. And we’re getting the keys to our showroom next week, so we have to make it a whirlwind trip. We’re flying out on tonight’s red-eye on Hawaiian Airlines, arriving at Las Vegas at 6:30 in the morning, dropping our luggage off and going straight to the market to work the show.

We’ll be scouting and shopping all day Monday and Tuesday and coming home on Wednesday. I think Kara, Caty, Chelsey are in for a great bonding experience—especially since we’re cramming into one hotel room. Hey, the budget’s going toward the new showroom. A company’s gotta do what a company’s gotta do!

Wish us luck, and we’ll keep you posted from Las Vegas. And now we’re off. Yeah baby, Vegas, here we come!

Happy New Year, everyone!

What better way to start a new year and a new decade than with a once-in-a-lifetime date like 1/1/11? Talk about new beginnings!

I've just come home from a New Year's visit with my mother-in-law, followed by a movie with Nicki and Darrell. We're still recovering from the party we threw last night with my family and a few friends from Canada. It was a small but fun-filled evening ... the grown-ups with our champagne and our kids with their chilled apple cider in champagne flutes!

Now, reflecting at home in the quiet of New Year's Day and reflecting on the past year, I've made my New Year's resolution: I'm going to do a much better job of blogging! I promise!

I know I've been remiss, and as usual it's because things are going a mile a minute with RSVPstyle, CathysMarketplace.com and a new venture I'll tell you about very shortly.

In the meantime, I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support in 2010 and to wish everyone a very happy, healthy, successful 2011. May we all have a truly wonderful year!

Catching up: May to September

Phew, I have a lot to catch you up on! Where do I even begin? Let’s start with one of my passions, shopping for furniture! You know me, I love to attend the annual Las Vegas Market to keep up with what’s happening in new furniture designs. Mel, Sam and I were there in July. In three days we ogled our way through three buildings of about 10 storeys each, something like 150 million square feet! My feet hurt just thinking about it. As for designs this year? Movement is still clean and contemporary, with lots of texture and metallics. Just what I love!

Right on the heels of that whirlwind was another trip to South Carolina to finalize details for our bedding and furniture lines. We met up once again with Travis and his family. Boy, am I learning a lot! And it’s a blast. I’m designing totally new textiles that are to be manufactured in coming months. I can’t wait for you to see them and will definitely keep you posted.

In early September we had the privilege of giving something back to the men and woman who give so much for our country. Being asked to do a mini decorating workshop at the Navy Exchange over Labor Day weekend was a thrill for all of us at RSVPstyle. As I did at Macy’s home department last year, I put together live onstage mini-vignettes of rooms for NEX shoppers. Military families are challenged with personalizing temporary housing, so for them I created different looks for bedroom, bathroom and living room. I loved that my mom and dad, a retired major in the U.S. Army, were able to be there. Click here to read more about that story.

Our website and company are built around inspiring people, so it was a real treat when Chaminade University asked me to speak to business students in the Hogan Entrepreneurial Program. I shared my experiences, insights, successes and failures, and most importantly, what I’ve learned through all of it. The best part was the end, when the students stood in line to shake my hand. Seeing their fresh faces and enthusiasm for the future they’re about to embark on reminded me of myself many, many, many years ago!

And now? I’ve done final tweaks for the bedding line. When our manufacturing plant in China is ready, I’ll go have a look at the samples. And tonight I’m writing a short thank you speech. My alma mater, Sacred Hearts Academy, has named me as one of its distinguished alumnae, and they’re honoring six of us at a dinner tomorrow night at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. It’s a lot to condense so many emotions and thoughts into 90 seconds, but I’m finding it’s a tremendous opportunity to reflect on all that’s been happening.

That’s it for the catch-up. I’ll keep you posted later with more!

Aloha from South Carolina!

For months now, my blogs have few and far between. Yes, I’ve been lazy, number one, but I have also been extremely preoccupied with two huge things that I couldn’t share until they were closer to reality.

The first is Cathy’s Collection. It’s a tremendous undertaking—an online marketplace for upscale new and gently used furniture and things for the home. You may have seen our first ad in the paper letting people know it’s coming and if you have any items to sell, go ahead and sign up! Our whole office and especially Lissa has been nurturing this project for months now, and it’s finally right around the corner!

Now these last few days, Lissa has also been holding down the fort along with Celsie, Sam and Chelsey, while Kara and I have been in South Carolina, working on our brand new bedding line! I can’t announce the details just yet, but when it comes out late this summer, this bedding line is going to be unlike anything that’s on the market!

We’re working with Travis Blackwood and his company, Trinity Source International. I just love these people! Travis and I, we’re like two peas in a pod! He’s like the male version of me. It was so funny, I rolled up the sleeve of my jacket, and the lining matches his shirt! Great minds think alike!

Kara and I had our first taste of real Southern food on our first night in South Carolina with Travis and his lovely wife Christy. We went to the Blue Fin restaurant in Spartanburg, and Kara and I both had the shrimp and grits—mmm-mmm, yummy! But probably the best dish of the night was the golden fried shrimp that Christy had.

The second day, Travis had me booked on Your Carolina, a morning talk show with Jack Roper and Kimberly Kelly that has an audience of about 300,000 people. So click on here and go about halfway through and you’ll find my interview, which is about five minutes.

So that was a lot of fun! We brought Jack and Kimberly fresh leis to show our aloha spirit, and of course traditional macadamia nut candies and Kona coffee that we gave them prior to the show—that put a big smile on their faces!

Dinner was at City Range Steakhouse Grill, where I had the bourbon pecan chicken (it looks half-eaten because I had a few bites before I remembered the camera! I tried to put it back together again). Kara had the brie and apple gouda sausage stuffed chicken breast. One of Trinity’s designers, Angela Lancaster, joined us.

Friday was just as exciting—we got to see where all the action happens at Trinity. They recently moved into their brand new facility, a 25,000-square-foot warehouse. Fifteen thousand feet of it is 40 feet high, which means they can stack racks and double the usable space. Another 3,500 square feet houses a showroom and offices. This is where our bedding will be distributed all over the country!

We miss our girls terribly. We try to catch them in the morning as they get ready for the day and we try to say good night. Our husbands seem to be doing just fine, but the girls miss their moms and we miss them even more!

You know, it’s funny, Southern charm and hospitality so reminds me of home and Hawaii. I’m even starting to say y’all a lot! So see you soon, y’all!