Weekend Round Up

Listen kids, Your Mama has got to be short and sweet today because not only do we have some serious December sunshine to soak up we've got four dozen Christmas cookies to make for the damn neighbors who insist upon a cookie exchange and since we don't want to look like the scrooge we are we're whipping up some sugar cookies with neon colored royal icing. Yes. We. Are.

1.
The has been much brouhaha and ballyhoo the last year or so about Tinseltown widow Candy Spelling downsizing from The Manor, her absurdly named 55,000 square foot mega-mansion in the Holmby Hills area of Los Angeles, and into a 16,000-ish square foot doo-plex penthouse at The Century, a newly completed 140-unit tower designed by Robert A.M. Stern in Century City.

The first leaked news indicated that Miz Spelling had signed contracts for somewhere in the $47,000,000 range but according to more recent reports on Curbed LA she paid a significantly less but still mind number $35,000,000.

The lower price, according to some PR flack for the building, reflects a slightly smaller final build out size for the penthouse as well as a concession by the developer due to the dismal economy and still very soft real estate market.

2.
Mean ol' sour pussed Kiwi actor Russell Crowe and his blondie wife whatsername are reported to be on the hunt for new digs in Sydney because they want a backyard for their two boy tots. The sometimes temperamental Oscar winner and the wifey had a look-see at (and reportedly made an offer on) the former French consulate called Le Manoir but it was sold to Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch for a whip cracking $23,000,000.

The couple are now, allegedly, are on "the verge of closing a deal" to buy the hulking Headingly House, the family seat of former ambassador to France John Spender and his ex-ladee-mate, Italian born Australian fashion designer Carla Zampatti. The Crowes are said to have visited the property located in Wellington St. Woollahra in Sydney three times. No one has snitched the alleged asking price or what the Crowes might be willing to fork over but recent reports say that Mister Spender rejected an offer of $20,000,000 so presumably it would have to be more than that.

As far as we know Mister and Missus Crowe still own a $14,000,000 penthouse pad at Woolloomooloo's Finger Wharf in Sydney and an 800-ish acre rural spread in Nana Glen–about 350 miles north of Sydney–where the couple got hitched in a chapel he had built on the grounds.

3.
Bravo's New York City spin off of it's hit real estate program Million Dollar Listing has finally announced the cast members who include a bunch of young real estate guns like former porn star turned real estate agent Fredrik Eklund who moved from CORE Group to Elliman in order to be a part of the show.

4.
Facebook founder and billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg has done moved out of the Palo Alto, CA house he's rented the last few years and the 4 bedroom and 3 pooper pad was recently posted on Craigs List with a monthly asking price of $7,850. Prior to moving out and perhaps because he knew he'd soon be vacating the premises, young Mister Zuckerberg gave chat show queen Oprah Winfrey a tour of the modest for a billionaire house near Stanford University.

5.
The Real Housewives of Atlanta's Phaedra Parks really thinks she's something and she really is as is reflected in the rather preposterous day-core of her Atlanta area house that features, we regret to inform, a number of leopard print rugs in the kitchen and a powder pooper with hot pink wallpaper with flocked black chandelier silhouettes. Oh, hunny no. Pleeze. Just no.

7.
Toy manufacturing juggernaut Mattel recently revealed the Jonathan Adler designed Malibu Dream House a week or two ago and boy is it ever a damn doozy. The 3,500 square foot house, which is meant to be Barbie's beach house, has a closet filled with hot pink peep toed stilettos and glass urns filled with Good & Plenty candies, a chandelier wrapped in Barbie's nappy old hair extensions, a couple of campy hot pink standard poodle statues that flank a fireplace over which hangs a sunburst mirror made from 65 Barbie dolls, a pool deck covered in wall to wall rose pink carpeting–yes, babies, carpeting–and a "pick up" list on the fridge with such necessities as peroxide, glitter and pink marshmallows, and a pearlized hot pink convertible Volkswagen bug with white leather interior and a damn built in make up table custom fitted into the trunk. Oh lowerd have mercy we have seen it all now and, butter bean, it ain't pretty.