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" Cindy Crawford breezes right past the catering truck that&amp;#039;s parked in the drive of the Bel-Air mansion where she will be filming a commercial for the launch of her JCPenney home collection, Cindy Crawford Style \u2014 the latest (and biggest) project the fashion legend turned businesswoman is taking on. Yes, she is planning to eat. But today, Cindy is brown-bagging it. (Okay, she&amp;#039;s actually carrying her lunch \u2014 leftover lobster and corn from last night&amp;#039;s family barbecue \u2014 in a tote from her Meaningful Beauty skin-care line.) Looking effortlessly chic in white jeans, a black T-shirt, and a pair of strappy flat sandals, Cindy glides through the house, which has been furnished and dressed with items from her new collection. She examines beds covered in her signature linens, stacks of plush, colorful towels, and a dining table that showcases her designs for dishes and silverware. It all looks stylish yet accessible. And the same can be said for Cindy. An all-American success story, she spent teenage summers working in cornfields and a clothing store in DeKalb, IL, before rocketing to worldwide fame as a supermodel. The 1990s saw her hosting MTV&amp;#039;s House of Style, inspiring Prince to write a song about her, and marrying, then divorcing, actor Richard Gere. Now 43 and the mother of two kids with nightlife mogul husband Rande Gerber \u2014 son Presley, 10, and daughter Kaia, 8 \u2014 Cindy still has her traffic-stopping looks, yet she speaks with the candor of a woman you&amp;#039;d expect to be your next-door neighbor. &amp;quot;I have cellulite,&amp;quot; she says, laughing. &amp;quot;I admit it. But sometimes I just say, &amp;#039;Screw it, I am going to wear a bikini.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Cindy has parlayed her modeling fame into serious business success with lucrative deals as a spokeswoman and entrepreneur. But she values most the time she spends at home with her family. And after decorating her own homes over the years under the tutelage of renowned interior designer Michael S. Smith (he&amp;#039;s currently helping the Obamas with the White House), Cindy has developed an eye for what makes a house a home. With two successful retail furniture collections already under her belt, she is now partnering with JCPenney to create Cindy Crawford Style. Check out some of Cindy&amp;#039;s favorite pieces from her new home style collection! &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s my take on home fashion. The whole concept is to help women discover their own livable, comfortable style by offering versatile pieces that are updated classics,&amp;quot; Cindy says of the line that bears her name. &amp;quot;And it incorporates what Penney&amp;#039;s does so well, which is quality and value. I love the idea of home as your sanctuary, as the place that tells a story about you \u2014 and how individual that is for every person.&amp;quot; Let&amp;#039;s start with your story then. Did you grow up in a fancy house? My house always looked as great as my mom could make it, but it was never like, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s get a new living room.&amp;quot; She could never furnish a whole room at one time. So you&amp;#039;d sit on the couch until it was ready for the curb.  When did you first develop an interest in interior design? I remember when my older sister moved out and I had a room all to myself. I had this random rug that my great uncle had made from carpet scraps that I thought was very cool. I took one of my first paychecks from working at a store after school and bought wallpaper \u2014 peach with little flowers on it. Then I got a peach bedspread and pillows and peach curtains and mini blinds. Everything was bought with everything else in mind. So you had a knack for it? I thought so, but then when I moved into my first apartment in Chicago, I went to a store where you could pick the shape and the fabric of the sofa. I was so excited; it even had a pullout bed for guests. But when they delivered the couch, it didn&amp;#039;t fit around the corner in the entry, so I had to get an upholsterer to cut off one of the arms. It didn&amp;#039;t look totally weird, but it was good reminder that you have to measure everything. Still, I ended up moving that sofa to New York with me to two more apartments and had it recovered. It was a good couch. Take a look behind the scenes at Cindy Crawford&amp;#039;s REDBOOK cover shoot:  How did you develop the line with JCPenney? We had a lot of conversations that involved the word traditional. Coming from fashion, that&amp;#039;s like fingernails on the chalkboard. I kept saying, &amp;quot;In fashion, you can&amp;#039;t be too classic.&amp;quot; Black stilettos or a trench coat are classic, but traditional is like Margaret Thatcher. To me those words are not interchangeable. So we are trying to incorporate fashion concepts into the home. When I was in high school, my legs were so long that all my jeans were like floods. To me, having pants that have a break feels luxurious. That&amp;#039;s how I approach window coverings. I don&amp;#039;t like curtains that look like floods; I want a puddle of fabric on the floor. Another example I use is that the Indigo Dreams comforter is like blue jeans for the bed. It&amp;#039;s soft, it&amp;#039;s easy, and it goes so well with everything.  What makes a house a home? The most important thing is comfort. I want my home to look good, feel good, and smell good. I want it to be inclusive, to reflect the people who live there.  How do you achieve that? Each year I frame one of the kids&amp;#039; drawings or paintings. It&amp;#039;s amazing that when you put it in a frame \u2014 it doesn&amp;#039;t have to be expensive one \u2014 it becomes art. In the kids&amp;#039; playroom, I have all of those pieces, one for each year, together on one wall. When you put them all together, they tell a story. What stories are being told in your house? Our family room, where we live, is about togetherness and ease. Nothing in my house is too formal. There are no coasters on tables; the kids can eat Popsicles on the couch if they want to. I let them ride these little cycles we got for them when they were 3 that have rubber wheels and no pedals. They still ride them around the house. We do homework at the kitchen table. It&amp;#039;s very cozy. How do you entertain? We have friends over for dinner, but it&amp;#039;s very casual. I am usually in jeans and bare feet, and that sets the tone for everybody. My husband is the ambiance guy. He&amp;#039;s always in charge of music and the lighting \u2014 candles and incense. He always has every light on a dimmer, even without company \u2014 sometimes to the point where I can&amp;#039;t see anything!  We have a fire pit outside and have hors d&amp;#039;oeuvres there. Because we have kids and most of our friends do, we plan around them. We start a little early and we put the kids at one end of the table, because after eating they will evaporate and do their own thing. Then the grown-ups sit there and enjoy the company for another hour or two.  Do you cook? I am not a fine chef, but I can certainly get dinner on the table for 14 people. With that many, I try to keep it simple: salmon, mashed potatoes, saut\u00E9ed spinach, and salad. For sure, I do the desserts. I make a coconut cake, which is actually easy, and a carrot cake, which my husband loves so much we had it for our wedding cake. If I want to get on his good side, I make that cake. The hard part is that I use white chocolate in the frosting and you have to melt it and introduce the other two ingredients, sour cream and cream cheese. The timing is crucial; otherwise the white chocolate can start coagulating and you get chunky frosting \u2014 which, by the way, still tastes good.  Last night, Presley and I had a pie contest. He made strawberry rhubarb \u2014 I gave him my recipe, but I didn&amp;#039;t touch his pie \u2014 and I tried a new one: peach blueberry. And I said, &amp;quot;We won&amp;#039;t tell who made what, and we&amp;#039;ll have a vote.&amp;quot; And his pie won. I was outbaked by my 10-year-old! Check out some of Cindy&amp;#039;s favorite pieces from her new home style collection!  When it&amp;#039;s just you and the kids, what&amp;#039;s a typical evening like at your house? I like doing homework with the kids. Not because I like homework but because they don&amp;#039;t like it. So I feel that&amp;#039;s my responsibility. We eat dinner together nearly every night, and we do sit down at the dining room table. I am pretty convinced that kids would rather eat at home most of the time. You think it&amp;#039;s special to take them out to dinner, but after 20 minutes they are like, &amp;quot;Are you done yet? Can we go?&amp;quot; They might like the food, but they don&amp;#039;t like the experience. What do you do after dinner and homework? My kids are so great. They don&amp;#039;t need a big production. One night, we sat on the couch and my son had taken off his socks, and we ended up throwing the socks at each other like Hot Potato for 20 minutes. We also like Cranium games. They&amp;#039;re fun and about getting to know other people.  We also play games that you can play anywhere, like I Never. Everyone starts out with five points and then I would say something I&amp;#039;ve never done, but I think everyone else has done. So I would say, &amp;quot;I never went to preschool,&amp;quot; because I know my kids went to preschool and all their friends probably did, so all those kids would lose one point. And then they&amp;#039;d say to me, &amp;quot;Well, I&amp;#039;ve never been married.&amp;quot; And I would lose a point. There&amp;#039;s another one called Two Truths and a Lie. You say three things, two of them are true and one is a lie, and the other people have to decide which is which. I played these games when I was growing up, and they&amp;#039;re great because they don&amp;#039;t require boards or pieces \u2014 they&amp;#039;re about using your imagination and being observant.  Is there a place in your house that makes you especially happy? I finally have the closet of my dreams. It is just awesome. It has French doors and windows, so I can see the kids in the yard, and there is so much great natural light. I have a makeup area, a phone, a TV. A lot of times the kids will be in there, but sometimes I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Out!&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s very therapeutic for me to organize and get rid of things; it stresses me out to have too much. Everyone is jealous of my storage room, where I have everything organized in Tupperware boxes. What else gets you stressed? My goal is to be present. In whatever I do. If I am with the kids, I don&amp;#039;t want to be typing on my BlackBerry under the table, and if I am talking to someone, I am not feeling bad because I am not going to Chuck E. Cheese&amp;#039;s with my kids. I schedule my life in a way that I can do that. If I am overscheduled, I never really feel good wherever I am because I am thinking, I should be here doing this.  There&amp;#039;s another pressure, especially in L.A... I think I look good for my age. I am not 25; I am 43. That feels like a big pressure, especially when the National Enquirer is dying to get a picture. I am so aware that I don&amp;#039;t want to change the way I live because of that kind of attention. So you say, &amp;quot;Screw it. I am wearing this bikini, and I am not putting on a cover-up.&amp;quot; You just brace yourself for a bad picture. It&amp;#039;s hard to believe there&amp;#039;s ever been a bad photo of Cindy Crawford. I always say even I don&amp;#039;t wake up looking like Cindy Crawford! What people see on magazine covers is one moment that was perfect \u2014 the wind, the light, the hair, the makeup. That&amp;#039;s a two-hour process. People get excited that they&amp;#039;re meeting the Cindy Crawford from the Playboy spread 13 years ago, and I am a mother of two now. I have to check in with myself. It&amp;#039;s good to have an awareness of that outside pressure; I can&amp;#039;t let it get to my core. I love my life. How do you relax? Working out is a great stress reliever. And so is having girlfriends you can talk to. I like to hike with friends; you&amp;#039;re exercising and also getting that girl time. Mostly we talk about kids and husbands. My friends are redefining themselves as their kids get older, and now that the kids need them less, they&amp;#039;re thinking about how they stay interested in things. I always like to read in a sitting room upstairs off our bedroom. When I&amp;#039;m on the main floor of the house, it&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;Okay, I am ready for anything.&amp;quot; If I am upstairs, then it&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t bother me unless you need something. [Laughs] Or if you&amp;#039;re bleeding.&amp;quot; Check out some of Cindy&amp;#039;s favorite pieces from her new home style collection!  Do you and Rande have date nights? We do have date nights. It sounds a little cheesy, but that&amp;#039;s what it is \u2014 time for the two of us. We recently went to see The Hangover. My husband just lost his father so he really needed that kind of movie. It was an escape. The kids go to bed at 9, and we also have that hour and a half at night before I go to bed, although in the summer the kids want to stay up later. I remember being a kid in summer and having the whole summer ahead of you. I want them to be able to stay in their pajamas all day if they want. That&amp;#039;s what summer is for. But we&amp;#039;re still figuring out bedtime, because I want that time alone with my husband.  How has being a mom contributed to your life? I always thought it was such a clich\u00E9 that you have this little baby and you fall in love and people say, &amp;quot;Wait, it gets better.&amp;quot; And you think, How can it get better than this? But it does. I like hanging out with my kids. When we went to Disneyland, they wanted to go on the same rides as I did. You get to re-experience all the fun things through their eyes. You realize how jaded we can become as adults. Just watching them when they get excited and their whole body is shaking and they can&amp;#039;t even contain it \u2014 as adults, how often do we get that excited?  What have your kids taught you? Kids come out with a lot of things that are just who they are. For instance, I was a valedictorian, always sitting in the front row of class with my hand raised. And my daughter has some of that in her, but my son doesn&amp;#039;t. He does fine, but he says, &amp;quot;Extra credit? I don&amp;#039;t have to do that.&amp;quot; I think, Why wouldn&amp;#039;t you want to? But I can&amp;#039;t make him or trick him into wanting to do it. You can&amp;#039;t say, &amp;quot;There is only one way to succeed.&amp;quot; I hope I&amp;#039;m learning to support them in being who they are.  And kids will call you on your BS. I said to my daughter once, &amp;quot;Quit being such a whine-steen,&amp;quot; and she says, &amp;quot;Quit being such a yell-steen&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;m like, Oh, touch\u00E9! And she was only 4!  What do you think are some of parents&amp;#039; biggest challenges today? I had kids before I had dogs, and when I got a dog, the trainer said, &amp;quot;You just need to establish yourself as the leader.&amp;quot; [Laughs] God, I wish I had known this before I had kids. Now, even though I want the kids to be part of the family and have a voice, we have the last say. We build them up so much that sometimes they think they have the last say.  My mother will say, &amp;quot;I feel so sorry for you.&amp;quot; Like she&amp;#039;ll hear me say, &amp;quot;Now, Presley, that is not an appropriate way to speak to your sister.&amp;quot; And I can tell my mother just wants me to say, &amp;quot;No. Don&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; Sometimes I lose it and do raise my voice, but I try to do my best, as most parents do. These days we are so worried about being PC perfect mothers. We are so overly involved. It&amp;#039;s trying to find that balance between helping your child be successful and also wanting them to be independent. Do they know what they want to be when they grow up? I hope they are kind and respectful and can function in this world and still be individuals, not necessarily leaders but not followers. I hope they can incorporate what they&amp;#039;re passionate about into whatever their job is. Presley has an adult friend who is a Navy SEAL, and right now he wants to be that. My daughter says she wants to be a singer and a dancer, but \u2014 and the way she said this was so cute \u2014 she might model first because you don&amp;#039;t have to have any special skills. And then she wants to end up being a teacher. That&amp;#039;s an interesting career path; we&amp;#039;ll see how that works out for her. What inspires you? I went to an ashram a while ago, and someone asked the question there, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s your passion in life?&amp;quot; Then we had a two-hour silent hike to actually think about it. And connecting all the dots, I decided I love communicating, because I do that in all different aspects of my work, in being a mother and a wife. So I think that is my passion: communicating with other people. My ideas, my sense of style, it&amp;#039;s all about that. Check out some of Cindy&amp;#039;s favorite pieces from her new home style collection! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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