It’s an honor to win a Top Shelf Closet Design Award. This national award is given annually to honor exceptional designers for creative closet and home organizational designs. To win a second Top Shelf Award in the space of a few years is an accomplishment few in our industry can boast. Now, thanks to her second win last month, Shari Krandel joins that elite group of top designers. Judged by a panel of industry experts based on appearance, design creativity, functionality and quality, this industry award is a coveted recognition of all aspects of designer’s excellence.

One of the best things about living in the East Bay is the relative ease of traveling to Tahoe for skiing on the weekends. Yes, you have to put on chains, deal with traffic slowdowns, and find your own parking—but when you can access a full day of fresh powder within just a few hours, I honestly don’t know why you wouldn’t pack up your boots and head north.

East Bay residents are heading out in droves to Tahoe for skiing/boarding this time of year. Snow is still abundant, and ski gear lives perpetually strapped to the rooftops of cars all over the area. However, when the cold finally breaks at the end of yet another ski season, there's a better way to store your gear: custom garage cabinetry.

I’m just going to come right out and say it: I love Oakland. Whenever I visit SF’s unique (and somewhat cooler) older brother, it inspires me to use more color in my everyday life. To be more loud with what I’m passionate about. And, above all else, to make a statement where a statement is necessary (because around Oakland, it’s always necessary). Living in the suburbs, it can be really tough to give up the culture and vibrancy of the bigger city when you go back home—but there are still things you can do in your own place to make Lafayette feel a little less like a suburb.

Rainy season has officially come to the Bay Area. Powerful storms passing through the area have downed trees, caused power outages, whipped up strong winds, and pelted us with rain—and lots of it. Menlo Park alone has already received significant precipitation this year, which makes roads hazardous and can create nightmare-worthy driving.

Though you may have high hopes of getting yourself organized before the new year hits, it might be a good idea to hold off on any big projects that require the outdoors (unless you’re looking to fight our unpredictable weather). King tides are coming, and even though Menlo Park is protected by the Bay, we’re still in for quite a bit of flooding potential. Tackle your attic first, for instance, before you start moving your life’s collection of file folders and golf clubs out of the garage and into the path of the storm.

I probably don’t need to tell you that San Jose is a very popular place to live, but you might be surprised to learn it’s the largest city in the Bay Area by population. While it started out as a small farming community, it overtook San Francisco as the place to live in the Bay Area in the 1990s and is often called the Capital of Silicon Valley.

The more popular a place becomes, of course, the more people—and less space—there is. In response, people devise creative solutions for creating extra room—like converting a garage into a guest bedroom, TV room, or home office. But what happens when all you really want is an actual garage?

Renovating a home isn’t a vacation for most folks, but a client I worked with in the Willow Glen area of San Jose was more stressed than usual. She was going through a remodel of a gorgeous Colonial Revival built back in the mid-1900s. The house needed updates, of course, but she’d also purchased it with her second husband. Once the remodel was done, they would be moving in together with all of their kids—and sharing a closet for the first time.

If you’ve lived in the Bay Area as long as I have, you’ll notice certain patterns. Areas get tech-heavy, and then they get crowded. Talented workers start to move to other less expensive cities, and then commute to San Francisco and Silicon Valley.

But as more and more talented people move to these “auxiliary” cities, they grow to love them. They plant roots. Companies move to be near these workers, draw in more workers, and the city booms. That’s what is happening with Livermore right now, which has become a hotspot thanks to developments like the Livermore National Laboratory and the planned massive research/transit area.

There’s a cliche about being at the end of the line, but when it comes to the BART station in Fremont, that’s literally true. It’s where the lines that can bring you down from Richmond or across the Bay come to an end. Of course, this means it’s also a beginning, and new beginnings are all over the Fremont BART station. The new Warm Spring/South Fremont station is set to open in the fall of this year, and as someone who visits the area lot, I can tell you, it’s pretty beautiful. It might just revamp public transportation around here.

Los Altos got its start with farms and apricot orchards, and while the community’s changed a lot since then, plenty of people still like working in the dirt. When I’m in the area, I’m always blown away by the number of lush gardens. One of my clients tells me that the Garden Club of Los Altos is one of the oldest in the state (nearly 90). Not only does the club share ideas for tending their own gardens, they help beautify the city—and they do a pretty fine job of it.