Lately I have been spending lots of quality time at the Library. My current fetish has been with home decorating books. I have checked out STACKS and STACKS of them to bring home and pour over. Spencer continues to tease me about my love for picture books. I do; I love lots of pictures.
The thing is, this has been my first opportunity in life to REALLY decorate, not counting our itty-bitty one bedroom apartment with cinderblock walls (which I don’t because we couldn't even hang pictures up for pete’s sake). So, I have been decorating with gusto since we got here.
I have discovered two main problems during this endeavor of creating our home.
1. I have the hardest time committing to a style! I like this and that and this and that. I tear pages out of magazines and bookmark ideas in my stacks of library books. I save inspiring pictures I find on the internet. But my tastes are kind of everywhere. Even settling on a color scheme is a huge task for me.
2. There is simply not much room in the budget for home decorating.
But, S L O W L Y very S L O W L Y we have worked on really making our little house our own. Our decor is pretty simple. We don’t own anything expensive. Most of our furniture was free and much of the décor was handmade by yours truly. It has taken us months and months for us to get things to look just the way we wanted. Sure there’s things we would change if money would allow, but we are totally in love with our little space.
Plus, I have this philosophy that no matter how simple your decor may be, a house can look fantastic as long as it is clean! I LOVE cleaning. I really do. Give me cleaning over cooking any day. And it has been so fun to take care of our little place. So even though it’s not the fanciest, at least it is usually pretty tidy. We also try to be careful what we allow into our home so that it is a place where we can always feel the spirit. And that is, of course, the most important part of a home anyways.
Well, now that I’ve blabbed on and on, I thought I would share some of my favorite library book finds. If I absolutely HAD to pick a style, it would probably be Shabby Chic… enter designer Rachel Ashwell. I really like her taste. Her homes are always really light and airy. Take a look at a couple of pictures from her book.
Holy beautiful. I love that white piano. And I must figure out how to obtain that ocean front view.
My picture of a picture just doesn’t do this room justice. Still, I love her “casual thrown-together yet everything matches perfectly” style. And, I love that she has fresh flowers all over her house.
The dishes! Be still my heart. SO LOVELY! I wish my dishwasher looked like that, I tell you what. But I was so inspired that I have started collecting pink china as well. I only have one or two pieces right now, but someday, many moons from now, I will have a whole dishwasher of happy mismatched vintage plates also. It has been really fun to hunt for pieces one at a time at thrift stores.
Someday soon I’ll have to share pictures of our cute little house.
1. I LOVE that dishwasher full of mismatched beautiful china. And I want to do a major copy cat and start collecting it too. Although I think I'll have to wait on that because I'm pretty sure Bryan would give me that look (you know the one) every time I came home with another pretty dish that didn't technically match anything else. He lacks the vision of junk I find at thrift stores. You know how it is.
ReplyDelete2. I am also a major lover of fresh flowers all over a house. Love, love, love it.
3. I have definitely checked out "The Shabby Chic Home" from the Provo lib before. Although I'm pretty certain I could never pull it off. I am even more certain that you can. And will. And that I will covet it big time.
4. I love white homes.
The end.