Alfredo Paredes featuring the Reo table

We’ve had two apartments in New York City that were pretty well documented, but we recently bought a place in Locust Valley, which is on the North Shore of Long Island, and moved there in September. It's 20 or so miles from Manhattan, but people act like it's another country. My kids have a great school and there's a lot of room.

Our Locust Valley house is a beautiful, big old pile of a house from 1929 designed by one of my favorite architects, Harrie T. Lindberg. We also have a place on Shelter Island and a little cottage in Provincetown on a fisherman's dock.

My husband Brad and our two kids, Carolina, who is 9, and Sebastian who is 5. We also have a Labrador named Lilly.

I am a first generation Cuban American. My parents were teens when they left Cuba, they met in Miami, and I grew up in area known as Coconut Grove. At the time, it was a mash-up of the new Cuban culture, free love hippie culture and the soulful afro-centric culture, all right on top of each other. As a young kid I soaked it all up. There's also the amazing Art Deco architecture from the 30s, so I grew up among relics, which for whatever reasons at the time, were being ignored. For me it was super inspiring because all these buildings had character and a faded glamour that caught my interest, even as a young boy.

I like architects that create things that withstand the test of time and seem totally authentic and timeless. I love [Mexican architect] Luis Barragan. His use of color, sunlight and shadow, never gets old and has inspired so many other architects and designers.

And then on the flip side, there is Axel Vervoordt. He's dramatic, dark, minimal and rustic. He always creates a sexy modern space and mix unexpected traditional things which always feels dramatic and inspiring.

My grandmother left Cuba in her 40s. The story goes that she hid tons of fine jewelry in a big bouffant, got on a plane with it, and sold it for pennies on the dollar when they got here.

And, strangely, there’s a very fine set of salmon pink colored linen and lace trousseau sheets that my aunt gave me when my daughter was born. Complete with a hand-embroidered monogram. Where have these been and why would she have put them in the suitcase?

And then I have a painting of my mother from 1966, that’s completely Edie Sedgewick. She must’ve been 25 at the time, with the black eyeliner, the frosted fall, the long pointed nails, the dramatic chandelier earrings. It is the whole nine yards. I think the artist was a relative who painted a lot of the women in the exiled cuban community in the same style.

I am 100% connected to Ireland. My mother's ancestry is Irish, but they were in Cuba for many generations. About ten years ago my uncle, who is 6 foot 7, was in Madrid and ran into someone who was his doppelgänger. He looked exactly like him. They started chatting, found out they shared the same last name, they ended up doing a genealogy study where they were able to trace my family to one ancestor in Ireland to about 1680. His name was Sebastian O'Kindelan, a nobleman who owned a large estate. The family later dropped the "O." When King George of England started persecuting Catholics, he immigrated to Spain and at some point his descendants moved to Cuba among other places in Europe and the USA.

About 10 years ago we all went to a family reunion In Dublin, almost 150 people that were all related to that one man. Lots of family and lots of people we didn’t know though we could see a family resemblance. What's really cool is the last day, the woman who now lives on the estate that was once owned by Sebastian O’Kindelan, hosted a big gathering for the family. We were able to see the house, the property, the small church, the cemetery, the whole thing. So yeah, I'm connected to Ireland.

I grew up a very creative, artistic child, I love to paint and draw. I have a green thumb, I love to garden, I spend a lot of time in the garden. On Shelter Island I have a tiny vegetable garden that I like to experiment with. One year you get a bumper crop of peas and the next year you've got a bumper crop of cucumber. But I can't figure out how to make it happen all at once.

I seem to remember trying to make wind chimes by hanging pieces of clay from a piece of driftwood that I would collect on the Florida beach, I also created tons of macrame as a kid.

I believe it gives it soul and imbues it with the personality of its creator. I also love when things get patinated like an old leather sofa or a well used dining room table that has naturally aged from 150 years of use.

“Good things take time, like… beautiful interiors.”

The most beautiful places I've ever been to are those that people have lived in for a long time. Life has happened, it's not a staged effect. When you see a big English country house where people lived for 150 years and there are rooms full of things that were collected, not staged all at once. I don't believe in rushing anything. Let things evolve.

I'm caught between wanting to spend more time outdoors in nature, doing things that feed the soul, while also loving work and doing what I do. Cancerians are ruled by the moon, so the tide brings you in and the tide brings you out. So I'm constantly in an ebb and flow.

I was immediately drawn to it; it feels very artisanal. I loved that the glass top was recycled and became something completely different and unrecognizable. You'd never know those were recycled crystal pieces. I love how sculptural and timeless it is. You can't nail it and go 'oh, that's a 1970s blah blah blah.' It has its own thing. It's a conversation piece and the palette felt ethereal and neutral, like it could go anywhere.

It is in my living room in Locust Valley, pulled up next to a chair and used as a drinks table.

The Corca table.

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“Diaphanous yet tough.” These are sensuous shapes but it's really a slab of marble and heavy glass, and it takes a lot of work to get them to look the way they do.

My Santana sofa , I use to spend a lot of nights at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles and I loved the whole Hollywood slightly-ugly-but-cool Sunset Boulevard vibe that takes place there, especially the proportions of the gigantic sofas in the lobby. Santana is the first sofa I designed, and though not as weird as those sofas, it has that spirit. And you know what? It's my best seller, and it feels like me when I sit in it, and its makes me happy. I added that jute fringe thinking that nobody would get it, and yet everyone has .