Bohemian Living Room

Thee living rooms were the most fun to put together.

New client, a recent transplant to the area, great taste and a house with great bones.  She is off to a good start with some solid pieces--in the living room, a casual-modern gray sectional, a bleached-wood media cabinet, a black and white abstract painting--and brought me in to help pull it together.

Based on the color palette in her existing kilim, I gave her three fun choices.

These were a joy to pull together: one of those designs that make me want to start over in my own home.  Occupational hazard.

What do you think: do you have a favorite?

Happy Monday!

out of respect for my clients, I do not share sources for designboards without their express permission.

Small Measures

Frame a collection!  This one from OKL featuring tassels is an amazing antique with gorgeous handwriting and that perfectly out of place blue skein, but you could make your own.  Or try buttons, like this.  Unique, personal art.

"Bed curtains" for the four year old

This year for Christmas, my 4-year-old daughter had a VERY specific list:

1. A Rapunzel doll with the plastic hair, the kind you get at Target (in the checkout aisle)
2. A remote control puppy
3. Sparkly shoes that light up (aka Twinkle Toes)
4. "Curtains for my bed."

Yup.  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

To make things cheap and easy (shocking, I know), I sent my husband to Ikea on his way home from work one night, to pick up a pair of $20 netting tents.  Yes, a pair.  My girls share a room, and I am simply not free-wheeling enough to tent just one in a pair of beds.  Crazy, I know, but I'm okay with it.

Flash forward to Christmas day and Eleri was SO delighted with her bed curtains that she insisted we get in the car THIS INSTANT and drive home (8 hours) from Springfield to install her prize.  When we still did not accommodate her THE INSTANT we did walk in the door some five days later, she about had a meltdown.

When they were up, the verdict was, well, meh.  They were different than she expected, she said, but she guessed they were okay.

Apparently she really wanted a full four poster with proper curtains that close all around the bed.

I wonder where she gets these ideas?  (Fancy Nancy, I'm looking at you.)

I'm a bit meh, too.  But the truth is, the girls will bore of them soon, and I have other plans for that room anyway, and really, NOT spending hours leading up to Christmas trying to make proper coronas is just fine by me.  I made some of these instead.  Show in the coming days.

Tell me: did you ever ask for home decor at a very young age?

New!

Happy New Year!

Every year, I make a photo book of our year as a gift for all of our parents and grandparents (and, of course, for my girls, too.)  I always love the process of sorting through a year's worth of photos and organizing them into some kind of story of our life.  This year, I noticed something that took my by surprise:  I had a pretty unhappy year.  While there was nothing major to bring me down (thank goodness!), I was aware looking through the documentation that I was very absent in 2012 (literally: hey, why wasn't I at that event?  but also in an absence of presence, as in, even when my body was present, my mind was somewhere else.)  When I was present, I was stressed.  I was also a little selfish, maybe.  Or self-centered.

Last year, I wrote here about the crazy path of our lives over the past many years, and toyed with the mantra to choose joy.  Sifting through a year's worth of memories, I realize that I didn't live my mantra.  Maybe not even once.  Not even a little bit.  Not at all.

So.  How about trying again?

After a week off (really off, little work, no blogging, no blog reading, no design anything, actually), I came home to a pile of magazines and catalogs and found myself inspired, with a million idea for my home, for my clients, and for the blog.

But--this is key!  I think I'll ease into it.  I think I'll also tone down my own expectations with a mantra that goes something like this:

Choose just a little happier.

Manageable, right?  I sure hope so.

One thing that is making me happy these days is the velvet leopard throw pillow my Mom was kind enough to give me for my birthday, from Arianna Belle.  Our guest room is at the top of the stairs, and every time I go up or down I poke my head in there and smile.  (If it's dark, I turn on the light.  I'm weird.  I know.)

Sometimes it's the little things, right?

How about you: feeling inspired for the new year?

The no-Christmas-tree Christmas tree

With my camera on the fritz and the dim light of overcast skies, photographing my Christmas decor makeovers is proving to be a challenge!

So I will share something else that's been on my mind.  We decided not to have a tree this year.

tree alternative from CB2.  How to here.

For years, I held an annual tree trimming party on or around my birthday, and after a hiatus during the baby and toddler years, we started the tradition up again when we returned to Minneapolis two years ago.  December is always a challenge in terms of scheduling events, and sometime in November, as I looked at the calendar filling up, I decided I didn't have it in me to throw a party.  I didn't have the energy, the time, the money.  And since we are going out of town for Christmas week, it didn't make sense to put up a live tree.

I felt all ba-humbug for about 5 minutes, and then I felt great about the decision.  I have a habit of taking on too much, and being over-extended already, I knew that the tree would be just one more chore to cross off my to-do list, and not the joy it has always been.  I find that I already struggle with the pressure to creat holiday magic, and letting go of the tree was a huge relief.

The girls took it well (I do have a mini pink tinsel tree that we put up in their room with their special ornaments--ones they have made or been given specially) and the decision left me just enough spark to do an advent calendar this year.  It has been a really wonderful trade.  More on that tomorrow.

Making my way through my pile of paperwork this morning, I came across this image I had pulled from the Restoration Hardware baby catalog.  I love the simplicity of this chalkboard tree, festooned with simple stars and a string of lights.   While I am feeling okay about no tree at all, this feels like a doable, magical, simple solution.

For more ideas for non-traditional trees, there are tons of round-ups out there.  Try these:

Apartment Therapy
Style at Home
The Crafted Sparrow
Babble
Inthralld
Radical Possibility

While there are a few ideas that appear on more than one list, there is less overlap than you might imagine! The best part?  There is still time to pull one of these off, if you are suddenly inspired to do so.

Christmas Crafts

Hi friends.

Are you ready for the holidays?  I'll be honest: I'm scrambling.  Both girls are home sick from school and it feels like there aren't enough hours in the day.

But!  I contributed ideas to an article on our local CBS website to re-purpose some old holiday decor and make it new.  You can read the article here (like it! tweet it!) and come on back in the next few days--I'm hoping to share some actual before and afters, though the camera is on the fritz and I am spray painting in the basement.    I'm a rule-breaker like that.  Ha.

Mix Your Prints!

Mixing prints is nothing new.  In fact, if I had to pick the biggest trend of recent years, /I think that would be it.  It feels like the bigger, the bolder, the more MIXED the mix, the better.  (want to get tips from the best? Check out my links, here.)

Nonetheless.

I find myself inspired by Lucky magazine lately, but mostly it's about translating their stories from fashion to interiors (like I did here.  And, with a lot less success, here.)  The current issue has a piece on--you guessed it--mixing prints, and I found myself playing around with some of their formulas.

1.  Stripes and Florals

Obviously these are not finished rooms, just a starting point of some fun combos of patterns and fabrics.  It's easiest to pull off if the two pattern have a common color, like the citron in the duvet and throw pillow at the bottom right.  Even better if the fabrics are similar weight, like the two broken in linen-cottons on the bottom left.

2. Global and global (and global and global!)

If you keep a contained color scheme, you can pile on the patterns--all part of the global look.

Other categories included "Polka dots and wide stripes" and "dots and stars."  In your home, dots and stars are not easy to pull off without a juvenile effect, and it's much more about one statement piece, like stars on the ceiling or off-the-cuff wall dots, than a mix of textiles.  Don't you agree?

Check out the latest issue of Lucky if you are actually in the mood for wardrobe inspiration.  Meanwhile, I'm getting all kinds of ideas for blog columns....