How exactly DO you bring your Traditional decor into today? Two words: MIX STYLES

Mixing styles can be tricky, though.  Too much and you look like a crazy person., not enough and it’s boring. But it can also be AMAZING!  Interesting, unique, designer-y. It’s what takes a room from looking like a furniture store set to a well thought out mix of collected pieces.

Yes, it’s tricky. But, good news, I have a trick…a five part trick!

I typically abide by the 80/20 rule. Eighty percent of the room is traditional, then add twenty percent modern. It’s just my little rule, certainly not set in stone.  It works for me. Is it always exactly 80% and 20%? Of course not. But it’s something to keep in mind.

With that in mind, follow these 5 steps:

COLOR – Keep it consistent for cohesion. It keeps the room from looking mesh-moshy.

SCALE – Try to keep things in the same realm. An overstuffed chair shouldn’t sit next to a dainty antique table.

DISTRIBUTE EQUALLY – Keep it moving throughout the room. One side can’t be modern and the other traditional. Keep it balanced

PAIRS – Give each piece a similar companion. It’s a quick and easy way to achieve balance.

MOOD – Keep in mind how the room is to be used. If it’s a kick back and relax place, keep the pieces in line with that feel, no matter what their style is

80/20 – Remember the 80%, 20% rule. Keep the strong majority traditional and interject a few modern pieces and you’ll be golden!

Let’s take a look at a few rooms and see how they’ve approached it.

What do you think? Will you try it?

It’s that time of the year again. Give your porch a Fall makeover to celebrate the season. How? It’s easy! Let’s walk through it together!

Get a Plan

Do you like the all white, monochromatic look? A more traditional Fall color scheme? Look through some images on Pinterest and see what you’re drawn to.

Assess & Buy

Do you already have a few things on hand? No reason to buy everything all new. See what you have and make yourself a quick shopping list. I personally like to overbuy and return what I don’t use. It makes life much easier.

Mix

The key to a great vignette is the mix. Don’t use too much of one thing. Mix it up! Color, texture, materials, everything.

Stagger

Keep tall things tall and short things short. Again, the mix is what you’re aiming for. See the photos below for a few examples.

Enjoy!

Here are a few of my favorite Fall porches, including my own!

I’m so excited to bring this series to life. Over the next 12 months, we will be following the progress of building our personal home.  Before we get in to the particulars of this new project, let’s set the stage. We recently sold our home (you can see all the images here) and are rebuilding in the same neighborhood. We have a heavily wooded piece of property that will soon hold our dream home! We are excited and have one year to complete the project. No pressure.

Where do you start?

So, where do you start when you’re a builder and designer and decide to build your own dream home? For us, inspiration! A clear vision that will help us turn this idea into reality is a must. Before we dive into the particulars of floorplans, kitchens, baths and materials, we need an overriding theme, a vision. I have one! I like to call what I have in mind for this home “If Ralph Lauren moved to the Hamptons…but he was poor…” That’s a pretty clear vision, isn’t it?

What does that look like?

To me, it looks like this.

Pinterest to Organize

Anytime I start a new project, I like to pull inspirational images from various sites and view them all together. Pinterest works great for that. (You can follow any or all of these boards on Pinterest here).

So, there you have it. The initial inspiration for our dream home. What do you think?

Over the next year we will be documenting the progress of this home from conception to completion. I hope you’ll stick with us!

Your Master Bath…cool, calm, serene…an oasis, a spa within your home…right? Right? Well, it can be and it  doesn’t have to break the bank!

We’ve gathered up seven of our favorite Master Baths, including some we’ve created. 🙂  We’ve broken them down and found the pieces you can add to your bath to create the look you love.  Take a tour of each of the baths, below, and then click on the links underneath to see where to get the key pieces for less.

1 Fretwork Traditional

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fretwork fabric | tile | orchid

2 Clean Masculine

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hydrangea | etagere | prints

3 Traditional Classic

Evans Construction & Design

garden stool | orchids | ginger jars | tub faucet

4 Classic Inset

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roman shade | tile | glass jars

5 Zhush

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wallpaper | quill mirror  | monogram towels | garden stool | rug

6 Mirrors for Days

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mirror | console | faucet

7 Bohemian Mix

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Rug | artwork | stool | etagere

So, which is your favorite? We can’t decide. 🙂

How exactly DO you pick the perfect paint color, particularly when it’s an IMPACT color? I have a 5 step plan! It’s tried and true and works every single time. I promise.

Before we dive right into the process, let’s walk through it with a real life example.  The room we are planning to add green to is a client’s former Sunroom. We’ll revamp it completely and give them a place to relax, read or just hang out. Here is the inspiration and plan.

So, as you can see, GREEN is a main design element here and we plan to paint all of the walls in it. This is what I call an “Impact Color”. In this case, you’re definitely NOT looking for a whole house interior color to tie everything in. We’re looking for impact! Drama! A statement!

So, how exactly DO you select the perfect impact paint color? Follow these 5 steps

1. Start With SOMETHING

You need inspiration. A pillow, a plate, hell…a shoe will work. Something you love, something you see as an inspiration for the room. Some place to jump off from. This Kate Spade plate is our inspiration piece for the room. Super cute, isn’t it?

2. Gather and Narrow

Next, we’re heading to the paint store. This is the dangerous part! Paint stores can just suck you in with all their fancy dancy displays and trick you with their lighting. Bring your inspiration item with you and use it to pull some paint chips. Hold them together, see what “goes”. Look at the lighter areas, the darker areas, the middle, and so on. You can see this above in the top photo. Bring home ALL of your chips. Pay no attention to the cashier giving you the dirty look as you walk out with a bag full of paint chips, they’re free after all! Once you’re home, spread them all out and look at them in YOUR house with YOUR lighting. You will likely change your initial thoughts and that’s OK.  Now we NARROW! We are going to eliminate the ones that don’t work and narrow it down to 2 or 3…no more than 5. Really. Now we have a short list of 3 or so paint colors we like. Progress!

3. Research, But Not Too Much

Now, we head to the computer. Pinterest is your friend here. Search the name of the colors you’re considering and see what you think of them on a big wall. Of course, computer screens look different than real life and you have the actual color sitting in front of you on the chip. I believe it’s still helpful. Don’t go too far down this rabbit hole, but get a good overall feel of what these colors look like in a room. It’s helpful to see a color used over and over again, by many designers. It’s a little confidence booster! Many designers (like me) create handy charts of our favorite colors, so lean on our expertise. Here are my favorite tried and true greens. Pin it before you forget it!

4. Put Up Samples

Another field trip! Head to the paint store and buy sample quarts of the short list of colors you’re considering. Put them up on the wall, live with them and see what you think. How does it look in the morning? At night? With the adjacent room? Again, keep an open mind and see what jumps out at you. Here is my favorite Bunker Hill Green up on the wall.

5. Marry It

Make a decision and stick with it.  You’ve done your due diligence and you should be confident in your decision. Paint the wall(s) and enjoy. It’s going to look great! Here is the color we selected up on all the walls. It looks amazing.

What are my favorite greens? Here you go!

When you love Football and Interior Design (like me!), this can be the best time of the year! What better way to spruce up your home than to give it a Football Facelift? The real question is, can you actually add a few touches to your home without it looking super tacky? I think so! The key is to keep it light, general and not too heavy on the actual team. For example, if you love the Florida Gators (like I do!) then adding orange and blue touches throughout, with a few key Gator pieces, is enough. Everything doesn’t have to be logo-ish. Know what I mean? Restraint is your friend. Let’s walk through it together! (Make sure your scroll all the way down, the best is saved for last!)

Add A Few Key Pieces

Set Your Table

Add A Few Pieces Of Art

source: b8sypaint.com

Take It Outside

Add A Few Pillows

Photo courtesy of Buffy McTureous

Use Your Team’s Color Scheme CAREFULLY Throughout

Update Your Guest Bedroom

Or Admit You’re Obsessed And Add To Your Home Permanently

Do you decorate at all of football season? Any other sport? Id love to hear about it! Please comment below 🙂

White sofas with kids…are you crazy? Nope!

In my experience, its really been the best decision, like ever. My toddler loves Nutella and everything messy. I cannot count the number of times he’s wiped his cute little face right on my white sofa.

This is him in action.

But, no problem! Throw them in the washer, add some bleach and fabric softener and I now have brand new (looking) sofas that smell great! With 5 kids (!!), I have three white slipcovered sofas and have never regretted the decision.

Here they are:

Family Room

Living Room

Here are a few of my favorite Family Rooms featuring my favorite item, a white slipcovered sofa.

Here are my favorites that are tried and true and work every single time. Click on the number below to take you to it! Scroll down for a handy version for Pinterest.

What do you think?

If you think white-painted rooms are boring, it might be YOU that is boring. Harsh, I know, but it has to be said.

If you think you need color on your walls to make the room “complete”, I’d like to show you another way. White! White walls can be chic, fresh, clean…even warm. Crazy, but true.

Color on your walls does not insure a beautiful room, I promise. White on your walls does not insure a boring room, I promise. You can paint the walls any color and still have a boring room. Like, put a bunch of matching furniture in that room, add some crappy art from Bed, Bath & Beyond and boom, you’ve got a boring room. Colorful walls, but still, a boring room.

Let me show you some AMAZING rooms, all with white walls to further convince you. Some are all white, some have lots of blue and white mixed in and some have bold, fun colors added. Each one chic and fresh. Each one NOT boring.

Before we start the tour, here are my favorite 8 white paint colors that look good every time.

Here we go!

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Here are my favorite 8 white paint colors that work every single time. Pin it for later! 🙂

We’re selling our house! With three of our five kids gone, the idea to sell and rebuild had been on the table for a few years. But…we love our neighborhood and didn’t really want to move. There were no new lots available here. But then, I caught a glimpse of a red FOR SALE BY OWNER sign one night on my run. A new buildable lot, a beautiful piece of property, on the other side of the neighborhood was available. What?!? I called and made an offer right then and there. He laughed and said the sign had been up for two hours. I discreetly took it down for him and went home and told my husband what I’d done. He was in full agreement. You’d do the same right?

Fast forward…our house went for sale in April and this week we received a contract. A lovely couple will take over this dream home I created in my mind and make their own memories here.

Before we let it go, I thought we’d take a last look at it. This was our family’s dream home and I created this floorpan over many sleepless nights. Thought was put into each and every square foot, literally. The selections were painstakingly made item by item. I channeled my sister-in-law, the best cook I know, to create the kitchen of our dreams. Nothing was left to chance. What started as a heavily wooded five acre lot soon became our family’s home.

A few reasons behind the details:

-My girls wanted to be together, so I created their little pod to have their beds face each other through pocketed doors.

-Groceries for seven were a hassle, so I created a walk through pantry right off the garage to minimize trips.

-The kids’ playroom had the sofa in sight of the glass doors from the family room, so we could easily see what was going on. Computer area was allocated to the wide back hall so we could walk by and see what was going on, too.

-The laundry room received custom “garbage pull outs” in the cabinets, which I replaced with laundry baskets for colors, darks and whites.

-My husband makes a mess with his coffee area, so we created a built in coffee area for all of his “stuff” thereby keeping the countertops clear.

-The kids wanted a trampoline, se we dug out a HUGE hole and recessed into a custom built home.

There are too many details to mention! Let’s dive right in and take a look!

The Exterior

Brick, copper roofing, siding and black shutters.

The Interior

Living Room, Entry and Dining Room

Warm paint, cream trim, extensive moldings and 12-14′ ceilings

Family Room, Kitchen and Breakfast Nook

Custom cream glazed and walnut cabinetry, black and delicious granite. Contrast ceiling color.

Master Bedroom and Bath

Travertine floors and walls, marble countertops and tile details. Polished nickel plumbing.

Four Kids Bedrooms Plus Playroom

Front and Rear Powder Baths and Laundry Room

Alligator wallpaper, reclaimed wood mirrors and polished nickel plumbing

Office, Kids Foyer and Kids Workstations

Pool, Outdoor Kitchen and Fire pit

Thanks to our realtor extraordinaire Jeff Tice of Berkshire Hathaway for making it all happen!