Lifestyle
Small spaces surprise and shine at the 2026 Pasadena Showcase House of Design
Designers Jeanine Hattas Wilson and Julie Kennedy’s magical transformation of a 4-foot-by-4-foot storage closet at this year’s Pasadena Showcase House of Design almost feels like a metaphor for design showcases themselves: not quite real, but pure fantasy.
“It was inspired by our dad, who used to read to us in Woodstock, Ill.,” Wilson says of their immersive storybook escape, which features a delightful hand-painted mural on the walls and tiny lanterns that, when touched, offer a narrated fairy tale. “We wanted to create a special, intimate space for kids.”
61st Pasadena Showcase House of Design
Where: Baldwin Oaks Estate, Arcadia
When: Through May 17
Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday-Sunday; 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $38-$75
Parking and shuttle location: Santa Anita Park, Huntington Gate 3, Lot C
Information, including shops and special events: pasadenashowcase.org
Showhouses are always extravagant, and this year’s event takes place inside the 8,000-square-foot former home of Clara Baldwin Stocker, daughter of land investor and racehorse breeder Elias J. “Lucky” Baldwin. Like her father, Stocker was known for her colorful personality and love of lavish things, including parties that lasted for days. (Baldwin Stocker’s 1929 obituary noted that out of her $10-million estate, about $1.5 million was jewelry, “the collection and wearing of which was her hobby.”)
Many of the 30 revamped interior and exterior spaces in the 1907 shingle-style home include details Baldwin Stocker would have loved. The Midnight Garden Dining Room by the House of Pontovi, for example, has an Italian Murano glass chandelier, feminine Art Deco-style swivel chairs with flapper-style fringe and a gold-leaf ceiling that has replaced Calico Corners fabric. The Entertainment Room by Studio Joshua features statement lighting by Los Angeles designer Jason Koharik, an 11 Ravens custom billiards table and a Champagne cooler built into the marble bar.
And the Bloom Lounge by the Art of Room Design is so large that it can accommodate several different seating areas, a game table and a hidden liquor cabinet — another nod to Baldwin Stocker, who was also known as “the Diamond Princess.”
It’s hard to decide what stands out more at the Baldwin Oaks Estate in Arcadia: the layered interiors that look ready for a shelter magazine, or the smaller spaces, like the closets, mudroom and hidden powder rooms that have been transformed into something special.
Here are a few examples of what to expect at the event, which supports youth music programs throughout Los Angeles County.
The Enchanted Room by Hattas Studios
Identical twins Hattas Wilson and Kennedy of Hattas Studios transformed a small 4-by-4-foot storage closet into a magical forest with their hand-painted mural depicting characters from stories like “Cinderella,” “The Little Mermaid” and “The Frog Prince.” A young Clara Baldwin appears with her dog, Lucky. You can touch the tiny lanterns to hear a story in each scene or simply curl up in the soft green fuzzy chair, close the velvet curtains and let your imagination wander.
Laundry and Craft Room by Arterberry Cooke Architecture
Architect Barrett Cooke turned laundry into a pleasure in this beautiful room, which doubles as a craft room outfitted with new rose-colored cabinets, playful circular Fireclay Tile, quartzite countertops and stunning views of the San Gabriel Mountains. “I straddled making it utilitarian with how beautiful it can be,” Cooke said of the local artists represented, including ceramics by Jen King, stained glass by Molly Miller, oil paintings by Lareina Holsopple and a print by local artist and Jungalow designer Justina Blakeney. “The art ties it all together.”
The vault in the Family Parlor Room by Jamie Loren Home
The family room is the only space with a television, but with a mah-jongg table, the TV hardly seems necessary. “We wanted to create a room where the family can congregate,” said designer Jamie Loren, describing the cozy parlor painted in the color Viridian Odyssey by Dunn-Edwards Paints. She also turned what used to be a gun closet into a “vault” filled with family heirlooms, including a typewriter, perfume, photos, jewelry and a flask. “This is an ode to Clara,” she said.
Powder Room by Rebecca J. Hansen Design Studio
Details make all the difference in the small powder room by Rebecca J. Hansen, who explains that both the room and the nearby vestibule are focused on mixing patterns while keeping a consistent color palette. Hansen chose patterned terra-cotta tile from Foothill Tile & Stone Co. in Pasadena for the walls, and just outside, she used wallpaper from House of Hackney with mythical animals. Brass hardware from Corston Architectural Detail, chalk pastels and bold wood trim painted a marigold color brought everything together. “It feels like I’m in a castle in England,” she said.
The second floor landing by Blue Brick Design
Designer Lara Hovanessian has transformed the foyer walls of both the first and second floors into a striking display for local artists Blakeney, Susanna Speirs Ali and Lareina Holsopple. The spaces feature the newly released Huntington Collection wall covering by Morris & Co. in the iconic Strawberry Thief motif, pink ceilings and Alberto Giacometti-style lighting from Visual Comfort.
The Mudroom by Gex Designs
Inspired by the shingles of the 1907 home, Noelle Gex Djokovich, known for last year’s playful flower-cutting room, has reimagined this space with custom cabinets, patterned floors and charming details such as a dog bed, a Lewis & Wood fabric skirt and a rag rug from Nickey Kehoe. “Adding layers to a small room makes you feel good when you come home,” she said.
The Magnolia Room by Cordrey Collection
Designer Steven Cordrey says the Magnolia wallpaper reflects his Southern roots and the Phillip Jeffries grasscloth on the walls is practical (“It’s easy to clean,” Cordrey says). He also likes to bring the outdoors in, pointing to the views of the estate’s grand oaks and pool from the second-floor bedroom. There’s a hidden touch too: Rock Zehler’s stylish dressing room, inspired by Art Deco and the 1970s, has a secret closet tucked behind a pocket door.
Lifestyle
What a divorce coach wishes couples knew before ending a marriage
Karen McNenny is a certified divorce coach, certified co-parenting specialist and author of the book The Good Divorce: How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family.
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When Karen McNenny was facing divorce about 15 years ago, she was afraid of what it would mean for her future: despair, debt and a lifetime of resentment, she says.
At the same time, she was thinking of her two children, she says. She didn’t want their father to become her enemy.
So she and her former husband chose to approach divorce differently as a couple. “We’re going to renovate and transform this family. We’re not going to destroy it,” she says. “The marriage is ending, not your relationship.”
For McNenny, a mediator, certified divorce coach and certified co-parenting specialist, divorce is a tool, not a weapon. She expands on this concept in The Good Divorce: How to End Your Marriage Without Ending Your Family, which came out this spring. The book offers guidance on how to maintain compassionate and respectful ties with a former spouse while also healing and moving forward.
According to Pew Research Center, a third of Americans who have ever been married had a first marriage that ended in divorce. For that reason, McNenny hopes her book becomes a must-read for couples before they get married. “The best time to talk about divorce is before you need to talk about it,” she says.
She shared insights from her book in a conversation with Life Kit. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The book is called The Good Divorce. What does that mean?
[For those with kids,] the good divorce is about protecting the future of the family while we dissolve the marriage.
After the paperwork is done and the assets have been divided, can you and your co-parent sit on the same side of the bleachers during the basketball game? Can you still see yourselves as a partnership, with the ability to have thoughtful conversations about your kids?
For those who don’t have kids, [the good divorce is] about protecting your health — your mental health and your physical health. If we are doubling down with resentment and bitterness, all of that gets stored in the body and shows up in different ways. You deserve a pathway that’s less destructive.
Let me also be clear: There are times when an amicable, collaborative process is not possible and maybe even inappropriate. For instance, where there’s active addiction, abuse, domestic violence, coercion or unmanaged mental health issues.
How do you get to a place where you don’t feel triggered by your partner, so you both can work together toward a good divorce?
That, my dear, does not happen overnight. That is more like a dimmer switch going up and down and up and down, and the gift of time helps to get there.
It’s a complex emotional journey because we do feel relief in walking away from our spouse and the challenges. But with it, there is extraordinary grief that comes with divorce that I think is often underestimated and undersupported.
If my spouse had died, people would’ve been checking in with me regularly. I never would’ve spent a holiday alone in that first year. There probably would’ve been a meal train.
But he didn’t die. My marriage died, my family structure died, my identity as a wife and a partner died. There’s so much grief through these transformations that come with divorce that we don’t see.
So supporting friends in all those ways that you would as if there had been an actual death is doing a lot for your friends who are going through divorce.
How do you let your friends, family and community know that you’re getting a divorce and that you might need support?
Put a communication strategy together. It’s not just for how we tell the kids. It’s also a communication strategy for the grandparents; to the circle of support around the kids, like teachers, coaches and mentors; and our shared community.
It’s extraordinary when a couple can write that message together, not unlike a marriage announcement. [You might say:] We’ve made a really difficult decision. We wanted to let you know. We’re not going to court. Don’t expect a battle. Please don’t ask us why. Just ask us how we’re doing. We’re on the same side as the kids. You don’t need to pick sides.
In doing so, we’ve given everyone the same information at once. It’s a unified message that comes from the parent team, and it allows your community to know how best to support you. And it takes out all the gossip and wonder about what is going on.
If you have kids and they’re splitting time between two homes, what are some ways to make that change easier for them?
Our kids were 5 and 7 when we divorced, so it was three or four nights at a time in each home. By the time they got to be about 8 or 10, it made sense to go a week in each residence. After COVID, the kids came to us and said, “Can we just have two weeks in a house? We wanna be able to settle in more.” [So we said] OK.
A lot of parents are so rigid about the schedule. There’s no flexibility. That doesn’t serve anyone. So I recommend liberating yourselves from the calendar and letting it grow and bend with your kids appropriately.
Knowing what you know now about divorce, what questions do you think couples should ask themselves before they get married?
So often when people arrive at the threshold of divorce, couples are like, “We don’t know what we’re doing.” Get educated about the business part of it.
There is no harm in having a prenuptial agreement. Even if you decided not to file it, have the conversation about the implications. What does it mean if we buy this house together? What does it mean if one of us works more and one of us works less?
We also underestimate what it means to be roommates. What are your value systems around cooking and cleaning? How much alone time do you need? It’s easy to fall in love and not know if you’re compatible.
Do you think you’d get married again?
I absolutely hope that I get to say yes to a lifelong commitment with a partner, as I believe we often are given the opportunity to become a better version of ourself through partnership.
The story was edited by Meghan Keane. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We’d love to hear from you. Leave us a voicemail at 202-216-9823, or email us at LifeKit@npr.org.
Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter. Follow us on Instagram: @nprlifekit.
Lifestyle
‘Alice and Steve’ might be a mess — but it’s also too fun to stop watching
In Alice and Steve, Jemaine Clement and Nicola Walker play long-time friends who turn on each other after he gets involved with her 26-year-old daughter.
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I grew up watching episodic shows on network TV, nearly all of them formulaic but some indelibly great. Then, like everyone else, I moved into the days of what my colleague David Bianculli dubbed Platinum TV, where series like The Sopranos and The Wire and Fleabag aspired to something higher. What both these eras had in common was that their shows were carefully crafted — they had an internal logic, and a tone, that held them together.
In recent years, though, there’s been a proliferation of shows that, possibly obeying some algorithm, care less for coherence than sensation. They lurch among tones, from cuteness to sentimentality to meanness, stirring in random plot twists along the way. Bouncing all over the emotional map, these shows depend on compelling actors and a few memorable scenes to make us overlook their loose construction.
A great example is Alice and Steve, an entertaining but sometimes exasperating six-part British comedy on Hulu about two 50-something best friends who turn on each other after he gets involved with her 26-year-old daughter.


While the premise is juicy, it’s also a tad yucky, and I mainly tuned in because its title characters are played by performers Jemaine Clement from Flight of the Conchords and Nicola Walker, whom I’ve raved up on this show more than once.
The series starts poorly with Steve and Alice going on a cutesy bender after a friend’s funeral. Now, I always hate drunk scenes, which are an invitation to overact. As Clement and Walker bray their lines, we learn that Steve’s a divorced celebrity hair stylist who can’t find a girlfriend while Alice is a clothes designer with a doting younger husband, nicely played by Joel Fry, a sweetie-pie of a teenage son — that’s Tyrese Eaton-Dyce — and, of course, that 26-year-old daughter, Izzy, who has inherited her mother’s willfulness. Played by Yali Topol Margalith, Izzy kickstarts the plot by flirting with Steve. Predictably, he succumbs.

Almost immediately, they think they’re in love. While the weak-willed Steve wants to hide their romance — he knows it’s inappropriate — Izzy just blurts out the facts to her mom. Alice flips. And from hereon out in this series where the women are as alpha as the men are hangdog, Alice drives the action. Betrayed and violently angry, she’ll do whatever it takes to break them up — no matter who gets hurt. Her antics unleash Steve’s own malice. We’re in Beef territory.
At its core, Alice and Steve hinges on the way that platonic friendships are often richer and more powerful than romantic ones. It’s a fascinating subject, which may be why I found the script by Sophie Goodhart so frustrating. I wanted her to dig deeper. While the show’s got some very funny bits — Alice’s sharp-tongued mother is a blast — it’s often annoyingly lax.

If Steve really does the hair of Charli XCX, how come he’s a clueless older guy whose pop culture references are Willie Nelson and Woody Allen? If Izzy truly adores her mother as she claims, why does she keep rubbing her relationship with Steve in her mom’s face? Halfway through, one character nukes the other’s career, but this life-shattering event has no real weight: It’s barely even mentioned for the rest of the series.
That said, Alice and Steve is worth seeing for scenes like the one in which Steve spinelessly sells Izzy out or the lacerating discussion between Alice and her husband when he fully grasps that he adores a woman who views him as a reliable but dull concierge, not a man she likes hanging with. Most touching of all may be the lovely sequence when Alice, wise for once, smooths a romantic crisis between her son and his would-be girlfriend, a pair who are the show’s emblem of hope. For once, we understand why people love her.

While most viewers will find Steve more likable than Alice — the show takes pains not to make him appear predatory or creepy — the role doesn’t give Clement a whole lot to do except play variations on shambolic dread and discomfort. The show gets its galvanizing zing from Walker, a beloved star in England with amazing, luminous eyes. Her Alice is the kind of complicated, volcanic heroine that you don’t see in movies and rarely see on TV, one who shows her apocalyptic rage freely and in many different forms.
At least once in every episode, something would lead me to say, “Man, is this show a mess.” But that wasn’t a deal breaker. I kept watching. After all, life is messy, too.

Lifestyle
How to enter your Sporty Spice era : It’s Been a Minute
How to enter your Sporty Spice era.
Getty Images/quantic69/Olga Kurbatova/Anastasiia Zvonary/Photo Illustration by NPR
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Reality dating and professional sports are not as different as you’d think.
Brittany is in her Sporty Spice era – she watched the NBA playoffs, she’s following World Cup games, and she’s watching the New York Liberty play their WNBA season. These games are daily – and so is the reality dating show Love Island. And she noticed that the two formats are not very different at all. Defector.com staff writer and co-owner Kelsey McKinney came to the same conclusion – so the two of them discuss why these games of athleticism and love can bring us together… and why they get valued differently in our culture.
For more episodes on sports and reality TV, check out:
Get rich or die trying: how sports betting is changing our love of the game
Is this the end of reality TV?
The ugly truth of America’s expensive homes
Support Public Media. Join NPR Plus.
Follow Brittany on Instagram: @bmluse
This episode was produced by Liam McBain. It was edited by Neena Pathak. Our Supervising Producer is Cher Vincent. Our Executive Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.
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