What’s working for me now....

Sugar Pulling

Sun, 3 Jan 2010 14:04:24 -0800

Last week I took a really fun sugar pulling class. I learned how to blow balls from sugar, make ribbon and do all kinds of things to decorate cakes - super fun and creative.

Timavo Table from DWR

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:16:23 -0800

I don’t often post furniture pieces on this blog, but I saw this table this morning and had to share.

Timavo Table at DWR

I just love this table. It would work in many homes, paired with all different kinds of chairs.

I’m resistant to the decline of the dining room. Many people use great rooms now, and their primary dining table is in the same room as the kitchen and the television.

I think there is something really wonderful about sitting in a separate room around a table with friends and family, taking time to talk while eating, then sitting around after the meal, picking at cheese and sipping wine or tea.

We dine together during the holiday season. This year I resolve to dine more frequently with friends at our table.

U2 - Good people and Great Design

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:18:09 -0700

I just love it when design shows respect and care. U2 and Bono do so much in the world and the care that went into this show shows just how much they care about everything they do. Those who were in the audience paid quite a bit for their tickets, and boy did they got their money’s worth, not only musically, but the set was really a piece of art. If you have a change to go to the 360 tour, do it. If you can’t get to the show live, it has been posted on YouTube. Enjoy!

affordable design

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 10:41:23 -0700

This is the home of one of my favorite clients. We have very slowly been working our way around the house. We began working together over 3 years ago. She saves her money then lets me know how much she can spend and what she would like to do. So far, we have been able to stay within budge. We’ve done paint, wall covering, new LR furniture, new bamboo kitchen floor and we painted her kitchen cabinets and added a new backsplash rather than replace them. She is thrilled.

The next step is to replace a small desk in her office with something else to drop her keys on and pull together her media room.

Design doesn’t have to be too expensive - a little bit at a time over a longer time nets great results if you have patience and a plan!

Designers as Chefs

Fri, 2 Oct 2009 08:48:31 -0700

If you were going to cook a dish for a dinner party, you would not go to the store and fill your basket with only things you like and expect to cook a good meal using only those ingredients. Why do people think they can select only things they like for their homes and have better results?

When you cook a meal, you take into account what style of cuisine you will be making and buy ingredients appropriate for that cuisine, regardless of if they are your favorite foods or not. You put them together based on what tastes good together, with some personal variation which gives you your personal style as a chef. My lasagna may be different from yours. I use spicy chicken sausage as the base of my sauce, and I use fresh mozzarella and fresh basil as well as full fat ricotta. Sometimes I even add some alfredo sauce in the middle because my smallest step daughter loves alfredo sauce. I’m sure your lasagna is also delicious and if we wanted to add vegetables to our lasagna, we would use vegetables used in Italy, like zucchini and mushrooms and eggplant. We wouldn’t put english peas or ginger in lasagna, even though we might really love english peas or ginger. If we want to make a dish with english peas - we might scrap lasagna all together, and make a shepherds pie instead, and if we really needed to have ginger that day - we might make something Thai.

The same principals apply to interior design. What style are you working in and what pieces are necessary to execute that style. Once you determine the parameters of the what you need then, and only then you can go shopping looking for an items that fits the bill - but you don’t start out shopping! Most people wander the “isles” of furniture stores and end up with both the design equivalent of spaghetti and marshmallows in their cart. Now I do love both of those things - but seriously, not together!

Designers are like Chefs - we understand how a home should be composed and we no longer need to work with beginner’s recipes to know what we create will have good taste. We don’t select the parts based on our favorites, but rather by what will get us the finished look and feeling we are trying to achieve. The whole is far more than the sum of it’s parts - but each part matters.

As artists, designers and chefs have so much in common. We all love to eat food created by great chefs, we buy their books and try to replicate their recipes, but at the end of the day, nothing beats sitting in their restaurants and experiencing a perfect bite of food prepared by an accomplished chef. It costs more to go to the restaurant, but it can be so worth it.

Why not hire a designer to help you pull your home together? The cost can be more affordable than you think. Designers offer all kinds of entry level services, from color consultations to coaching services in addition to the full service design they have always offered. It’s a great time to give working with an interior designer a try.