"I'm So Excited!"

....Those words come out of my mouth a lot.  Like multiple times a day when things are good.  (Whenever I'm looking for a reaction about something from my mom or Grandmother, they'll say, "Oh I'm happy, I just don't get as excited about things as you do.") Anyway, today I'm so excited!!

We're installing a couple of rooms in a client's condo in DC and it is such a fun project!!  My client is fearless in her approach to decorating. (Well, I'd say her only fear is that her home not be bold enough or colorful enough or too traditional.)

{Hot Pink is entering the Condo.}

I'll keep you posted in instagram :)

Also, today is the debut of Elizabeth Street's Washington DC section!! Elizabeth Street is a beautiful website that showcases stylish moms around the world who give great mom advice for visiting their cities!

I'm honored to have been included and if you get the chance, check out the new DC moms!!  They're introducing a few of us each day.  www.elizabethstreet.com

Have a good one!!




If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Client's Den Before & After Sneakity Peek

It has been absolute MAYHEM over here lately.  I guess it's kind of good mayhem because were getting lots done on our house, Christian is graduating from kindergarten and work has been great, but I'm definitely feeling a little crazed.

{The good kind of mayhem}

One of my favorite parts of all of the mayhem though- besides my boys-  is always project installations!!  Installations really bring on the pressure... Ours aren't typically as crazy as the ones on TV with the family driving home for the big reveal as the last accessory gets placed, but they can come close to that.  It's the day where so many little details need to fall into place so that your plans can be fully realized.  I want my clients to walk home to "home" and be in love with it.

Last week we installed a couple of rooms in our clients' home and today I wanted to share the husband's den with you.  Before I show you the pictures, I have to tell you what an awesome couple (and parents!) my clients are.  There's just so much love between them and they're just so cool.  Seeing them together is like seeing people you just know are meant to be together.  I don't often work closely with both a husband and a wife (it's usually the wife) so I've really enjoyed getting to know them as a couple.  Anyway, there's a small den off of the foyer that the husband has been dreaming of turning into one of those great old causal, masculine rooms where he can relax, read, have drinks with a friend, etc.  I loooove projects like these because it's different from what we often work on and in this case, we got to really have some fun with it.  Here's what the den looked like before:

We were keeping the sofa and the leather chair (which is a recliner)  but we got to change pretty much everything else:

{an mid-installation pics I snapped}

We wanted the room to be a warm, cozy & darker space that sort of cut you off from the rest of the house when you were in it.  I wanted the walls & ceiling to sort of cocoon you when you were in there.  We started the plan with a plaid wallpaper on the ceiling:

It's hard to see from the above pic but there are actually green lines running through the plaid alongside the light line so we did the walls in a rich green-gray. I love how the blue of the sofa looks against the warm green-gray paneling.  The room is fairly tiny so in lieu of end tables with lamps we did a pair of brass & white glass lamps on either side of the sofa to flank art we'd collected.  The first piece is up...

{An antique hunt print we found soon to be joined by other things my clients collect} ...and we've got a few more to go! My client is going to take his time collecting things for the room and I can't wait to see it when it's finished!!  When we go back and photograph it, I'll share the rest of the room with you, but hope you enjoyed the sneakity peek! :)  Have a great day & fingers crossed for us because today is the day we put a fifteen foot wide hole in our house to get ready for the massive window in our upstairs loft!!  It's going to be hot and  really messy for a while here.  I'm in the process of finding more things for our place so we can be DONE.  (As "done" as people like us let things be ;)  I'll keep you posted!!

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Local Furniture Warehouse Sale- DC, MD, VA

If you're local and love to shop, you might want to check out our friends at N Route Delivery's massive warehouse sale:

There will be TONS of stuff at amazing prices!!!  Along with designer returns & showroom samples, there are also a bunch of designers selling items too!!  Hope to see you there!



If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Clients' Traditional Living Room Before & After

Last week we installed a couple of rooms our clients' home so I thought I'd share a few afters (iphone/ instagram  pics) I snapped.  I met our clients years ago when I first started out decorating.  They'd given me a call to do a consultation in their home way back when.  We got along really well and I was so happy to get a call a few years later after they purchased their new home.  My clients are a young (incredibly sweet & happy) family who love a traditional-feeling home that feels fresh and a tad fun.  We usually throw in a little preppy streak too for good measure. Here is their living room when we first started out:

{They had JUST moved in at this point FYI}

They already had a beautiful rug that we all decided should stay, and the paintings over the mantle are actually of my clients' farmhouse on their wedding day.  If you look in the paintings, you can see my clients and their families & friends having a blast.  (There are even fireworks in one painting!!!  Wish I'd known them sooner!! ;) ;)  So, of course, those were staying!!  We also had a tan sofa to work with (not pictured) and we built the room around these things.  

Here it is now:

{We layered the sofa with some of my textiles:  Queen Anne's Bouquet & Pierced Porcelain in Blue}

My clients love green and blue so I used the shades of green & blue that were just barely there in the rug to make the color scheme more to their liking.  We added a seagrass rug to layer under the existing wool rug because it was too small for the room.  (We use this trick in at least half -if not more- of our projects because it allows you to use rugs that might not otherwise fit the space perfectly and it creates another natural layer of interest.)  

Here's the view from the foyer when we started:  

And here it is now:

{The foyer rug also has some green woven into it...  We did a massive family gallery wall going up the stairs.}

The curtains and natural woven roman shades really made this room for me.  They softened it and made it feel lived-in.  We used a little trick to save on the shades:  They're only about 3 feet long even though the windows would have required that they be 70-some inches because my clients don't plan on actually using them.  Instead, they just serve to add a little natural warmth to the room.  

The green & white striped swivel chairs really added the energy we needed to the room.  The slipcovers were fabricated out of a very soft, washed linen which feels more casual than what normally might have gone into a room like this.  We wanted the living room to feel more formal than other rooms in the house so they could host parties & get-togethers with friends, but we still wanted everyone to feel like they could snuggle up, put their feet up, and relax.

It was important to us all that the home feel like it was put together over time and we incorporated some vintage & antique elements, which is really my favorite way to decorate.  We recovered a pair of tall old cane backed chairs with blue seats and placed them in front of the windows on either side of the fireplace...

...which is just the type of age & layering we were after.  

My clients have collected some beautiful oil paintings over the years and I hung two of them on either side of the doorway to the sun room above a pair of mahogany dressers topped with concrete mossy urns.  Here's a photo of one of them: 

I was so excited when my client said she was up for a little animal print in the room (!!)  and so we brought in a leopard bench. (below)  The bench was supposed to be six feet wide but came in at only three feet wide (don't you love it when that happens?! ;) but I did take pics with it in the room because I loved how the fabric looked in there so much.  (A new one is being made now)

For this project, my clients opted for an accessories "package" as we call it, where they gave me an accessories budget and I went shopping with it.  It's so much fun and really yields the best results because I can get great things when I see them without having to get them approved (by the time you often get small things approved, they're already gone) and things look so much better when they're in their intended places so it makes sense once a client sees it.  I also bring more than I use and then get to leave only the things that look best,   (The urns, the antique plaques on the left wall, the fiddle leaf fig, the mantle arrangement and a few of other things are from the accessories package.  The dinosaur on the coffee table- the piece de la resistance in the room- however, was already there. ;) ;)  
I'm off for the day but will be sure to share some more before & afters this week!! Hope you enjoyed!!


If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.