Wallpaper

After spending 20 years of decorating huge multimillion-dollar homes, interior designer Ann Fraser decided it was time to apply her design expertise to her own home. She tore down a 1950s single-level home in the Newport Heights area of Newport Beach and in its place built a two-story that looks like a centuries-old plantation-style estate. Features that give it an aged look are numerous. Iron railings enclose an expansive balcony where Mexican pavers were installed upside down to make them look older.

Few set designers begin production with the intention of creating a deliberately gaudy and tacky stage. However, Thomas Buderwitz, scenic designer for South Coast Repertory's "The Prince of Atlantis," sought to do just that — to "push the boundaries of good taste. " The just-opened play by Steven Drukman follows Joey Colletti (John Kapelos), one of Boston's biggest seafood importers, as he lands himself in a minimum-security prison after getting into trouble with his company.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright's personal life was so full of scandal, chaos and high drama that it's remarkable how peaceful his creations could be. The design team from Schumacher, the wallpaper and textile company, sought to capture the sense of serenity and love of nature evident at Wright's last home and architectural laboratory, Taliesin West in Scottsdale, Ariz., in the company's 1999 Frank Lloyd Wright Collection.

Is a long, blank wall staring you in the face? One that doesn't seem to lend itself to pictures or shelves? One design solution is faux panels. These seldom-used, somewhat formal, decorative notes are actually not so complicated that they can't be done by amateurs, with some help from do-it-yourself manuals. Anyone who can measure and miter-cut wood molding and put up quickie wallpaper or wall fabrics can transform dull-looking stretches of conventional flat paneling, dry wall or plaster.

Malibu Barbie never had it so good. A Paul Smith rug, curtains sewn from Missoni fabric, LED sconces strung with Swarovski crystals, even a Mies van der Rohe Barcelona daybed cluttered with Rodeo Drive shopping bags - all small enough to fit in your pocket. These are but a few of the over-the-top luxuries decorating 10 couture play pads created for the 2013 Designer Dollhouse Showcase. The Los Angeles firm Richard Manion Architecture has constructed scale-model dream houses - Italianate, brownstone, beach house contemporary and other styles - that will be auctioned April 17 to benefit the UCLA Children's Discovery and Innovation Institute , part of Mattel Children's Hospital UCLA.

"I used to win like crazy," my friend Juanita Mendonca would tell me. "Every slot machine turned to gold. I'd come home and my purse would be stuffed with money. " Juanita, a retired parochial school teacher with a magic touch at the slots, loved to regale me with tales of her exploits at Valley View Casino. I had never been there, so when my husband, Lou, suggested we take a quick trip to Las Vegas, I proposed an overnighter to check out Valley View's new hotel instead. So there we were, driving into the hills of Valley Center in north San Diego County's backcountry.

With a cockatiel perched on her shoulder and her brown hair flowing nearly to her waist, Patricia Morison looks elegant and at ease beneath a portrait of herself. The former Broadway star of "Kiss Me Kate" and "The King and I" stares out her ninth-floor window at the rest of Park La Brea. She is 97 now and, having lived in the same tower for more than 50 years, is one of the last representatives of the demographic that once dominated the apartment complex. "It was more homogenous, I have to say. Most of the population was actors, actresses, artistic folks and businesspeople on the top floor," says Morison, who negotiates her flat with the aid of a walker.

PRUNING trees and shrubs to form hedges is as old as gardening. In the great estates of the past, hedges framed views, defined borders and marked transitions to wilderness. In modern Los Angeles, an average lot is a sixth of an acre. A hedge allows homeowners to soften the transition to the street or blot out an eyesore, be it an alley, a McMansion, a crack house, a neighbor's kitchen window, a jalopy or junkyard dog. Increasingly, hedges no longer frame views. They are the view.