Hi,

My December turned out to be oh so exciting.  So, in my last post, I told you that my basement flooded.  Then, I broke my hand 4 days before we were expecting 70 people for a Christmas party.  Of course, I managed to break my hand in a way that only professional baseball players typically do.  Of course!! I love to be original. Hence the title of this post- I closed out the old year with a bang rather than a whimper!  Typing is a bit of a challenge, so I will be self-editing as my hand gets tired.

My basement flood has turned into a design opportunity.  At least that is how I am choosing to see the fact that my limestone floor was ruined, travertine fireplace hearth stained, walls, mouldings, furniture, all damaged or a total loss.  Even my wonderful clamshell that I had stored there temporarily for Christmas got stained – permanently.  Who knew that something that lived in water for so long could get water stained!   Any way, this is what my basement looks like now.  Sorry it’s so blurry – I took it with my phone on low res.  But you get the idea.

What a girl to do?  Create the ultimate man-cave, that’s what!  Starting from the entry, here is my plan.  I am placing this fabulous vintage sofa that I just had refinished at the base of the stairs.  John’s African prints will hang above it.  The flooring will be Champagne Peacock Pavers in a herringbone pattern.

In the main room, Champagne Peacock Pavers will be installed in a running bond pattern.  The walls will be painted a warm, deep grey-brown.  This is counterintuitive in a dark basement, I know, but since I cannot fake natural light and this IS a man-cave, I am going with it.

Our mantel will be replaced with this one, from American Masonry Supply.

I put together a mood board for the room so you can see what I am thinking.  Lots of Restoration Hardware pieces,  a Mitchell Gold sectional, Wisteria bookcase, a Timothy Oulton pillow or two – do you see a theme here?

These are all retail sources.  I am trying to get this room put together in a matter of weeks, rather than months, and so I am using what is readily available to me.  I really don’t feel I am making a compromise though – these are all great designs and in the colors that I want to use.  Plus, my teenage boys are not likely to appreciate, not to mention properly care for, custom upholstery!! I have a fabulous antique pool table, and I am accessorizing with some great vintage finds from Uncommon Market, one of my favorite stores in Dallas.  By the time that I am finished, I expect the room to have a unique feel, even though I am using lots of readily available pieces.  Here are a few of the one of a kind things I am considering to give the room a distinctive feel.

Vintage military flags.

I love the grey and honey tones of this one.

Apologies for the blur factor, but you get the idea….Would love to see the mannequin swathed in vintage rep ( striped )  ties – loads of them. I bet ebay would have a great selection.

I also am going to check out another favorite source, The White Elephant, to see what goodies they might have in store for me.  I am sorely tempted to use a London tube sign as it’s actually meaningful to the boys – witness the Union Jack and the pillow with the British stamp motif.  But it’s so trendy right now that I am not sure whether I will do it or not.

We are also remodeling the space a bit.  We are adding a powder bath and what I am calling a snack station.  Basically, I am specifying shelves and cubbies, with room for a built-in microwave and a mini-frig.  The snack station will not have a sink or ice maker, as I just don’t think they will get used often.  To save some money, I am going to use a remnant slab from my fabricator for the cabinetry and extend a section of about 18 inches to create an eating bar.  Add some industrial stools and vintage looking sconces and it should be really fun and functional, especially since it will wrap the pool table.

I have decided to divide the large space in front of the fireplace with a linen curtain which will hang from the ceiling behind the sectional.  Behind that curtain will be the ping pong table and the foosball table – if it can be repaired from the water damage.  I hate looking at the ping pong table and the room divider will make it less visible.  I am hoping to hang the linen curtain from industrial track lighting from Pottery Barn with small gauge chain.

I will be sure to update you as we make progress.  In the meantime, I have some finished projects to show you in the coming days.   Should be fun!

I wish all of you a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!!

Kristin

Hi,

I have such a backlog of wonderful projects to show you – some of mine, the work of other incredible designers at Tablescapes, and some great inspiration.  But, those are going to be longish posts, and I have time to do only a short one today.  I realized that I haven’t shown photos of our “family” powder room.  This is the one near our back door, pool area, and mudroom.  It is much more kid friendly than our Asian inspired powder bath, but I still love it very  much.  I shamelessly stole the idea for the sink from a photo that I had kept for years.

This is an aged and crusty looking urn that is actually fiberglass!  I had a basin made for it from hammered nickel.  The floor is that fun and inexpensive checkerboard ceramic tile with fabulous terra cotta accents.  My linen towel and soap dispenser have found their perch on an antique prie deau ( a prayer bench ).  I found the eglomise framed mirror at a consignment store and the sconces formerly resided in our family room in London.

This is a closer view of the sink.  I used some of the left over granite from my bathroom to make the diamond backsplash for the tap.

This is the prie deau.  I found it at Roundtop and fell in love with it.  I had no real idea where it would live, just that it needed to find a home with me.  After flitting around the house with it, I finally settled on this for its home.  The linen towel covers the carved cross on the back.  I am so happy that I found an answer for the problem of where to put the soap and handtowel in this bathroom – and it’s such a pretty solution, too.

This is a fun assemblage of garden and nature inspired pieces.  The antique print is a find from Treillage, Bunny Williams store in NYC, from a million years ago.  The other pieces are just bits and bobs from over time, and the type tray I have had since high school.  It’s now very sparingly filled, but I like the geometry of it.  The two drawings tucked behind the type tray are so sweet.

These are actually promotional pieces that were sent out by a local landscaping company.  I loved the look of them so much that I used them in the vignette.  That little matchbox is from my first anniversary dinner at The Box Tree in New York – over 28 years ago.  Goodness, how time flies….

I am a frustrated photo stylist.  I should have different colored soap in the dispenser, my towel looks very white against the creamy ivory of my walls, although it truly just caught the sunlight in this shot.  My Roman shade needed to go up a bit or down a bit so it didn’t have that funky little bulge in it….And this is the reason I don’t post more!! I make myself crazed and spend SO much time getting my photos to look just so.  I know I have to stop being such a perfectionist, so today I just shot, uploaded and posted.  I am closing my eyes and pressing the “publish” button right now.  OK, now.  Umm, now, seriously, now….

Kristin

Hi,

Goodness, it’s been a while.  I feel guilty, I really do.  But I am hoping to make it up to you with a big post on a room that you have only glimpsed in my house before, my master bedroom.  I am going to show you where I started, where I paused, and where I finished up.  The room really underwent a major transformation.  And the big take away for you will be all the budget friendly tricks I used to effect the changes.  For those of you who don’t hang on my every word, this could be a long post, so I have put in bold and italics all the fun bits about saving money.  Don’t worry, I’ll never know that you scrolled through super-fast….

First, let me tell you about my original vision for the master suite.  I wanted us to feel as though we were on vacation when we went to sleep at night and awoke in the morning.  When you have 4 children, that is a worthy fantasy!  We have never been to Africa, although we would dearly love to visit one day, and I am beguiled by the notion of going on safari.  John – not so much!  His direct quote, “You can get eaten to death.”  Hmm, and you have no farther to look as to why we still haven’t been on safari, or to Africa.  But the romance of safari definitely was the inspiration behind the bedroom design.  Here is the way it looked a few years ago.

Well, to be honest, this is the way it was styled for the photo shoot.  The throws on the bed and chair never really lived there, and the little tiger print stool was a temporary guest.  But the wallcovering, which is a Ralph Lauren woven raffia, the white linens, and the dark furniture all conveyed a British colonial African vibe to me.  Of course, the carved animal “trophies” which are so much fun, really punch the feeling, as do the antique animal prints on the wall.  I loved the feeling of serenity that this room provided.  Our previous bedrooms had always been drenched in color and this was a welcome respite with its warm neutrals and soft and fresh white linen.  But there were some things that I didn’t feel were quite right.  For one, the headboard fabric was not the right color.  It was the right texture – a sort of woven leather – but the color really read olive more than brown.  This is all my own fault.  As the construction was nearing its pitch, I got the cutting for approval and glanced at it and approved it without checking it against the sample.  That was a big mistake, as the dye lot was very different.  I am now fairly paranoid about cuttings for my clients.  Once bitten, twice shy.  Additionally, I had always intended to have a wonderful canopy of sheer linen made for the bed, but never got around to it.  When the house was being considered for publication in various magazines, the editors were fairly consistent in their thumbs down for the bedroom.  It was too safari like for their taste, too masculine, and without a pleasing hint of color.

While I really wasn’t bothered by the comments on the safari aspect of the room, the comments regarding the lack of color resonated with me.  The room was a bit too sere, too Kalahari-like.  And I was really struck by the thought that the room seemed masculine.  While I loved the flowing white linen of my drapes and chairs, and the beautiful embroidered linens on the bed, the rest of the room didn’t seem very feminine at all.  And I am nothing if not a girly girl.  And I had perhaps gone overboard with not wanting much color in the bedroom.  Now, here is where I will extol the virtues of neutral backdrops.  The grasscloth wallpaper, sisal like carpet, white bedlinens, and white linen on the chair and window treatments were put in place so that if I became bored or tired of the room, I could easily change the look of it without having to redecorate wholesale.  And, I don’t know about you, but my bedroom is the one room where I make the most frequent changes in my look and style. So my first budget friendly tip is to avoid prints and strong colors in the bedroom for the walls, carpet and draperies. These are the most expensive items to redecorate, although if your walls are painted, rather than wallpapered, then by all means paint them in whatever color appeals to you at the moment.  Paint is inexpensive and if you are willing to paint yourself, can be a huge transformation.

My bedroom began its metamorphisis when the regional editor of a very famous magazine came to the house, or more precisely, the metamorphisis began in a frenzy of activity before she came to the house.  And no, it is not getting published in this magazine, although the editor was extremely lovely and I do think liked the house very much.  And one day I will tell you all the story of that particular visit.  For now I will say that I enlisted the help of every family member to get the house looking just so, including our boys.

We use a feather mattress as our mattress topper and it was getting very lumpy.  What better way to smooth it out than a pair of rambunctious boys?  Do you spot another change, though?  It’s the canopy frame.  I had my wonderful metalworker make this frame out of steel rods.  Even with the curves and the brackets that he made to fit the finials, the price for this addition to the bed was less than $300.  Wait until you see how it turned out…

What a difference!  The sheer bedcurtains are made from Restoration Hardware sheer linen panels.  Since there was no way to hang them with a rod pocket or rings, due to the curves on the canopy frame, I had my workroom shorten them and use the extra fabric for ties to attach the panels.  I changed the bedside table on the left out with a really fun burlap piece from Mecox.  I think it retails for less than $400.  And it is really charming, with a nailhead detail.  I added some color with the greenery on the other bedside table.  I used the foliage from a persistent weed in my garden – I kid you not- with very expensive orchids.  I love the way it looks and even just the foliage, which was free(!) looked great.  So, if you want to change the way that your bed looks, consider adding a canopy, or if you have one, changing the hangings.  You can even attach the frame to your ceiling, using drapery rods, if you like.  If you don’t like the idea of a canopy, consider using a drapery rod and brackets and hang some wonderful linen or cotton panels on the wall behind your bed.  It could be just gorgeous.

Here I changed the chair that I had in the corner for a higher backed chair and a zebra print stool that I borrowed from Mecox ( David Lee of Dallas Mecox, is definitely going to heaven!)  I added a standing lamp with a pretty off-white pleated shade.  You can see the linen sheers of my drapes in this picture, too.  This is NOT a budget friendly tip, but it is a fun idea, nevertheless.  I love the look of sheers, but I don’t like using them alongside solid fabric panels – I feel it looks too “granny”.  But I also don’t like them used as the sole panels in window treatments either.  But something about the gossamer quality of them makes my heart just sing, and I had to find a way of using them in my bedroom.  So, I have a double rod in my bedroom.  The back panel on the rod is a solid white linen and the panel directly in front of the linen is the sheer. It’s like a ballerina skirt, to my eye.  I kept the arrangement of the room the same, as we really liked being able to look out of the window while we are in bed.

This is a closer view of the bedhangings and ties.  If I could sew, I know that I could have done this, but alas, I am no seamstress despite my grandmother’s best efforts.  The weed is in the foreground.

I had a console table that was outdated and worn, so I covered it in a burlap tablecloth that I had made for a Tablescapes table several years ago.  I arranged this vignette on it.  ( To see that table, you can click here. ) The chair has a little linen slipcover that I made with iron on hem tape.   I used some linen remnants from my drapes.  The other accessories I stole from elsewhere in the room and the rest of the house.  Another budget tip is to think about tablecloths, fabric remnants, etc. and see what you can do with them.  You might surprise yourself with how handy you can be with a sewing machine or even hem tape.  In the master bedroom especially, you can get away with a little imperfection, as only your family is likely to spend much time there.  Also, I love using a lot of fabric in the bedroom – it is soft and enveloping.

Well, this was a big change, and for the better.  I added more feminine touches, a bit more color, and had the chance to experiment with some different furniture choices.  But there was something about it that still didn’t feel right. And, the main editor of the national magazine that will not be named, did not like the bed on an angle.  Now, it’s true that the angled bed does not lend itself to great photos, but in the room it seemed to feel good.  But, I am game to try different things, so I decided to rearrange the furniture a bit.  Now, let me tell you that this bed is HEAVY, so I bought furniture “sliders” from Home Depot and put my family  – again- to work.

Now truly, this is a fantasy shot.  I put my bed where my dresser was and styled around it to see if I liked it.  I added color by stealing some pillows from my son Connor’s room  – free!- and borrowing a pair of Christopher Spitzmuller lamps from Mecox.  And since they cost in the four figures, borrow is the operative word there.  Also used a chair from my breakfast room near the window, moved my console table, and you can see that the safari prints are gone, replaced by some antique and reproduction botanicals.  This is a really big difference from where we started, isn’t it? !! I really liked it, but I wasn’t happy with the way the rest of the room looked.   The budget buster here is that all of the cables for our TV live on the other side of the room, and getting them fished to an entirely different side of the room would have been an expense.  (Our TV lives in the chest at the foot of our bed.  The piece at the foot of the bed in this photo is a linen ottoman ).  So, the bed was now in a different spot and we lived with it like this for a little while until the lack of TV drove us to swap it back to the corner.  But I really began to think that perhaps the corner wasn’t the right spot for the bed…..

Now, when I tell you what happened next, you are going to think that a veritable parade of magazine editors pass through my home.  And nothing could be further from the truth.  But a local magazine editor wanted to do a walk through and I wanted to put my best foot forward.  So, out came the sliders, and my imagination went into overdrive.  I couldn’t borrow things from the rest of my house for my bedroom because she was actually going to SEE the rest of my house.  What to do?  I wanted to move things and have them stay for once and for all without spending a lot of money to do it.

The first two changes I had at the top of my list were one of my bedside tables and my headboard.  I didn’t have the luxury of time to order in a beautiful piece for my bedside table, nor did I have the time to reupholster my headboard mistake from a few years ago.  So, I had to get creative.  I have had this delicious hand-embroidered organza tablecloth for years.  If you can believe it, it was a hostess gift from an Indian friend of mine, and it was made in India.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a table that this lovely will cover.

You cannot see in the photograph, but this is very sheer.  I decided to use it to cover my headboard!  I had a couple of extra yards of my oh-so- reasonable white linen, so I draped a piece over my headboard, and then tucked the tablecloth around it.  I love how it looks and I really love the fact that I can enjoy one of my favorite things every day.

The other thing I really wanted was a new bedside table.  I went over to my favorite haunt, The White Elephant to see if anything there caught my eye.  I was happy to get creative with paint or fabric if I could find a treasure.  I really wanted to find a way of bringing more color into the room, and I was hoping that the table might give me an opening.  Hmmm..

I found an old vitrine table.  Vitrines are usually found in sort of granny type homes, because they are basically glass cases or shadowboxes on legs, and they are typically filled with little Limoges boxes or collections of small whatnots.  When I spotted this table, I immediately envisioned it full of mosses and succulents.  I had been evolving away from the sere, wheat colored feeling of my bedroom as it first was done and had been gradually introducing a lush green,  through my prints and greenery.  But this, this is a big whallop of green.  And, from a budget standpoint, very inexpensive.  Moss can be easily purchased at a craft store like JoAnn or Michael’s and the succulents are actually fake! I never have to worry about them dying – and don’t they look real?  The table was very inexpensive, and I am sure that garage and estate sales will have something similar, if you like the look.

Here is the view of my bed.  It’s a different wall, the one that used to house my plate rack.  But, it’s closer to the cable outlets, so we can easily move them so my John’s lullaby (aka cable news!) isn’t interrupted.  You can see that I have covered the headboard with the tablecloth and the bedside table is in the shot as well.  I added some Pottery Barn pillows with a fresh green fern embroidery.  I love how they blend with the zebra.  More about the rest of the pieces in a bit.

I really love how this wall looks, and although having the bed where the dresser is looked great in photographs, I still love seeing this wall when I come into my bedroom.  I added some of my favorite green in a Pottery Barn knit throw over the chair, and I have two palms that I got at Home Depot for $15.00.  They add so much character to the room.  Even if I kill them, I basically spent the equivalent of a grocery store bouquet. You can see that the safari prints made an exit a while ago, and this is a better view of their replacements.  I had the large canvas picture of a protea already, but I surrounded it with two vintage butterfly prints that originally lived in my antique bookcase in the hall, and a pair of reproduction glicees that I got from the same vendor.  Nostalgia Fine Art is a vendor at Roundtop, and I love working with them.  The do have very well-priced antique and vintage prints, but they also do stunning glicees and reproductions.  And I have both on this wall.

The central piece is a collage of reproduction “Phoenix” prints that Nostalgic did.  I love them because they super-imposed the image of a Hooker print – get your minds out of the gutter – Hooker was an artist! – over the  scientific name and description of each type of fern.  They each cost around $25, before framing.  The pieces flanking this one are John Derian plates.  They are not by any means inexpensive, but I don’t think that I spent more than $125 for each of them. I really love my new prints as they introduce a more botanical feeling to the room, without being fusty and traditional botanicals.  The flowing lines of the ferns, coral, and the butterflies are very feminine to my eye, without being cloyingly so.  ( The safari prints have found a home in John’s dressing area, and they look perfect in there!)

Here is another view, looking toward the windows.  You can see that I moved my little gothic chair underneath the prints, and how great the light looks flowing through the linen curtains.  Do you also notice that I changed the vignette on the dresser?  I have a wonderful vintage mirror that I found for around $50 at the White Elephant propped against the wall, and I replaced the sand in one apothecary jar with a pretty piece of wood and an airplant.  The other glass piece is handblown and filled with reindeer moss and a lovely piece of coral. The feeling in the room is much more of an homage to nature in general, whereas before it was so distinctly African.

Here is a better view of the curtain treatment I described before, with the sheers overlaying the solid linen.  I love how my shutters look when they are open and the wonderful pattern of shadow they cast across the floor.

This is looking toward the corner where the bed used to be and into the bathroom.  I have perched this little antique English chair underneath the plate rack.  It always bothered me that it didn’t have anything below it to anchor in the previous arrangement.  And now it does!

I have a wonderful crystal William Yeoward ice bucket that I filled with reindeer moss and a wonderful orchid.  It needed to be a bit higher, so I used two books that are covered in Kraft paper as a pedestal.  Books as a pedestal are a favorite trick of mine.  Another budget tip for you is that ice buckets can be found at garage sales, estate sales and flee markets, and they make the most charming and unexpected containers.

Speaking of using books, these vintage lovelies have been floating all over the house, appearing on my living room mantel for Christmas, spending some time soaking up the sun in my family room, but they have found a great perch here, haven’t they?  I love how the green back of the top book looks with the moss and succulents.

I kept my arrangement on the console table as it was – I really liked seeing this as I walked into the room as well.

This is my plate rack that now occupies part of the space that used to house my bed.  I revamped the styling on this.  I had some lovely etched crystal bottles in the family room that I pressed into use, more vintage books, a glass cloche, and mint julep cups, which I just adore.  I added natural elements with the turtle shells and more fake succulents.  Here is a styling tip.  Look at the middle shelf.  I could have simply done a row of turtle shells, interspersed with the julep cups with matching succulents.  But how boring that would have been!  I elevated the middle shell with some books and then added height to the julep cup on the left.  This still feels rhythmic, without feeling starchy.  You can do the same with shelf arrangements by using stacks of books to emphasize a central element, and when I add an element that is higher than the rest, I do it to the left of center.  I’ve written this before, but we read from left to right, so we scan from left to right, making it more natural for the highest element to go on the left.

I have wanted something small to hang over the bed for ages.  I tried many different things, but none of them felt right.  I was inspired to use a small piece when I saw a photo in Elle Decor with a small starburst mirror hanging on a vast expanse of white stucco over a fireplace.  It was unexpected, but delightful.  I found this little gem at a local antique store, Nick Brock antiques. Nick Brock has been my source for a lot of wonderful things over the years.  They have beautiful things, and they are reasonably priced.  I believe this mirror is probably Indian, so it is fun that is has found a home hanging over an Indian tablecloth.  Try as I might, I cannot get a good picture of just how yummy that embroidery looks on the headboard, but I love looking at it every day.

But I had another design dilemma to deal with.  The bed looked great in its new home, but the walls on either side of it were really bare.  I had only a few days to find or create something unique for those spaces.  I really liked the look and feeling of the other art in the room, so I wanted to place some things that were distinctive and unusual.  Ordinarily this would have entailed browsing and pondering for a few months until I found just the right thing, but I didn’t have the luxury of time.  What to do?

I found the other tiny mirror in this shot at Nick Brock, too.  I originally was going to choose one to go over the bed, but this one was too pretty to take back.  So, I decided to make it part of an arrangement on the wall.  I had an old oval mirror finished in gold that I bought for a staging project a year ago.  It think it was a whopping $50.  I painted it with bronze metallic paint and let some of the gold shine through so that it would relate to my little treasure. I especially love how simple the lines of the mirror are.  Between the busy-ness of the table below and the detail of the mirror above, this piece keeps the space from getting too cluttered looking.

These pieces sit on the other side of the bed.  I found linen backed shadowboxes at Aaron Brothers here in Dallas and brought home these two sizes.  I have two of these wonderful leaves that I found at Avant Garden – an amazing local florist – and I haven’t had the right place to show them off.  This shadowbox is perfect for the leaf, isn’t it?  I also had a great little porcelain turtle shell that I stole from my dining room china cabinet and placed it in the smaller box.  Both boxes together must have cost $75 at the most.  I remember that my leaf was $18 and my shell was maybe $9.  All in all, a bargain for the pow of them. I love how the white relates to all the white linen, while at the same time harmonizing with all the natural elements in the room.  I am so pleased with how little I spent to create artwork on my walls, and how well it blends with the rest of the art in the room.  So, I went from this:

To this:

And then this:

And now this:

And this:

Who knows what’s next?  But to recap, here are some thoughts on updating your master bedroom.  First, it’s a lot easier if you have a neutral backdrop.

1.  Work with tablecloths, pieces of fabric, and vintage linens that you may have.  You’ll be surprised at how they can be put to use.

2.  You can really transform the look of your bed with drapery hardware and pre-sewn drapery panels.  Instant romanticism!

3.  If you like having fresh flowers in your bedroom but groan at the cost, consider using greenery from your backyard.  Too really punch things up, buy some inexpensive houseplants from Home Depot or Loews.  The cost will be comparable to a bouquet and the freshness of the plants is soothing and pleasing to the eye.

4.  If you aren’t sure that something is going to work in your bedroom, ask to take it out on approval.  Most stores will allow you to do so, and it saves a lot of heartbreak and money.

5.  Think about repurposing things you find at antique malls, vintage stores, flea markets and garage sales.  Ice buckets can become containers and “granny” vitrine tables can be reincarnated as a succulent terrarium.

6.  I obviously love using moss.  I adore the color and texture of it.  It is a wonderful filler and it brings the feel of the outdoors in.  There are lots of kinds, but I really like sheet moss, reindeer moss, and bun moss.  A simple bowl or container can look wonderful filled with moss and a single shell.

7.  Books can be used to vary the height of accessories.  If you don’t have pretty looking books, use what you have and cover them in decorative paper or even brown Kraft paper.

8.  Great prints can be had for very little money, especially if you are open to using reproductions or glicees.  Nostalgic Art has some of the best.

9.  For throws and pillows, look at places like Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware and even Target.  They have inexpensive and colorful things that have great impact.  And when you tire of them, there’s not much guilt in putting them aside.

10.  Create your own art.  Not really, but you can really transform a mirror frame or picture frame with paint and a small amount of time.  Ready-made shadowboxes can hold wonderful finds.  Shop for interesting finds in your own attic, or dresser drawers.  I would be willing to bet you will find something kind of wonderful.

I hope that I sparked some ideas for you.  It’s spring and time for refreshing, reimagining, and renewing.  What are you waiting for??? Go to it!

Kristin

PS.  How many blogs will you read today that mention Home Depot and Christopher Spitzmuller in the same space?  I am all about the mix, that is for sure!

Hi,

I  am keeping my New Year’s resolutions so far.  I am posting another project – although this one is my own house, and I have lost 5 pounds.  Yeah!  Maybe skinny jeans will be in my future…. ( if you are not in on the joke, please see my post on aspirational design involving skinny jeans, here).  And I know that you have seen Darcy’s bathroom below,

but I haven’t shown you her bedroom before.  I decided to do something about that today!  In many ways, Darcy is very difficult to design for.  She has very particular needs due to her condition and disabilities and she also has very particular tastes, so getting it right is important not just from the typical room flow and aesthetic point of view, but making it functional in the purest sense of the word was critical.  My hat is off to Lindsey Fusch Durett, who worked so hard with me on this room.  I think we got it right!

I really love the colors and patterns that Serena and Lily use.  And while you might think of them for nurseries first and foremost, I am a big fan of all their bedding.  I have been on the lookout for a new comforter for Darcy’s bed.  Her old one has been washed so many times it was really starting to look sad.  Plus I was never in love with it. Here it is below.

Also, Darcy is really difficult to shop for, so I am always scouring my head for Christmas ideas for her.  When I saw this Serena and Lily duvet cover, I knew I had found the perfect thing.  Darcy LOVES her room and loves to have it look very pretty, so I knew that she would love this new cover.  It’s Peridot by Serena and Lily. And you can see what a difference it makes here.  It really makes her sleeping nook perk up, doesn’t it?

Since Darcy has a lot of sensory issues – meaning that she doesn’t sense things in the same way that you or I do – and she also gets bored and can be a bit rambunctious, I have to be very careful about what does and doesn’t go in her room.  Darcy has a sleeping nook for her bed for two reasons.  The first is that she likes to feel cozy when she is in bed and a small space does just that.  The second reason is that we needed to devote most of the space in her room to open space.  Darcy often uses a wheelchair and the openness makes using it that much easier.  Also, Darcy was homeschooled in the past and may also be in the next few years, so we needed to have a space that would easily accomodate that.  Hence, the nook.  She has a TV mounted on the wall so that she can watch TV in bed which is great when she isn’t feeling well or has to have an infusion.  You’ll also notice the unconventional “headboard”.  Here are some detail shots of it below.

Darcy’s headboard is more like a window treatment than a headboard!  I found a great branch on the side of the road while I was walking one day and dragged it home.  Yes, I know, the neighbors did stare, but I had to have that branch.  I used drapery brackets to hang it to the wall, hung a white cotton shower curtain from Anthropologie from it with brown cotton tape ties and then dressed it up with turquoise butterflies, vintage metal clips and white silk butterflies.

We don’t have a typical headboard for Darcy anymore because she loves to hear the sound of banging, amongst other odd and unusual sounds that make her happy.  You can imagine what banging a headboard against the wall does to a) the wall b) the headboard and c) our collective sanity.  While Darcy is not autistic, per se, many of the repetitive behaviors that are characteristic of autism are part of Darcy’s personality.  At one point we thought that Darcy should title herself as an environmental musician, as she can make the most interesting sounds with the most commonplace objects.  We just were tired of the headboard being one of them!

So, you know that Darcy likes lots of different sounds that she can create, but you should also know that birdsong is one of Darcy’s most favorite things in the world.  We have many CD’s with birdsong and Darcy so enjoys listening to them.  That gave me the idea of doing some sort of tree with birds that could hang from the branches.  I had seen a wonderful tree in the display window at Anthropologie and I thought we might be able to recreate that.  Lindsey did one better and called the store and asked who did the window and made the fateful call to get the actual artist who made the tree to come to the house.  I love this tree and the pictures don’t really capture how ethereal and whimsical it is with the parasols, lanterns and glass birds hanging from it.  The addition of the parasols and lanterns was Lindsey’s fantastic idea.  I wanted to keep everything white or silver, so it wouldn’t be too visually stimulating for Darcy.  When the ceiling fan is on, everything sways and the chimes on the parasol tinkle faintly.  It is truly heavenly.

The “tree” is is made with rope and painted chocolate brown.  The artists that constructed it used graduating sizes of cardboard tubes cut in half and then attached the rope to look like stylized bark.  I love the whorls that emulate a natural bark pattern.  A little glittery bird is perched in the crook of the tree.

A wonderful Balinese parasol hangs from the tree, and as you can see, the branches extend out onto the ceiling almost the entire length of the room.

This is the view of the room from Darcy’s bath.  You can see her workspace, with a small “partners” desk.  It’s perfect for when Darcy is doing any homeschooling.  Plus she really loves her Pottery Barn swivel chairs.  Wheeee!!  This whole unit is Pottery Barn and so is the chocolate brown chair in front of it.  That is an ichair from Pottery Barn Teen.  It has built in speakers and can be connected to an ipod.  As you can see, there is a lot of open space for Darcy to move around easily, either on her own or in her wheelchair.  No more lumps and bumps from banging into furniture.  The color scheme was really dictated by the dreamy color of the tile in the bathroom and of course, the tree.  The chocolate brown carpet is the most practical thing I have done in years, in years, I assure you!  Now, I know that the glaring omission in this room is curtains, drapes, whatever you would like to call them.  I have gone back and forth about doing something.  It would be lovely to do a white patterned sheer for curtains and I may at some point.  My hesitation has been that Darcy has on occasion, how shall I put this, hmmmm, used her curtains as a swing.  Or a napkin.  So, you can see the hesitancy.  The good thing about white is that you can always use bleach, but you can’t always easily repair walls where bolts have come out of them.  As you can tell, I have made a lot of mistakes with Darcy’s rooms in the past.  They were always beautiful, but not that practical.  Now, she has both.  It’s a very special room for our very special young lady.

I love this room.  I feel instantly wonderful when I walk in.  If birdsong is playing, and the lanterns are swaying and tinkling with the ceiling fan, and Darcy is softly chuckling about something that she finds amusing, there is no place that is better.

Kristin

Hello!

Like many of you, I am busy decorating my house, shopping for presents, addressing Christmas cards and party invitations, and joyously participating in the mayhem that is the holidays.  Our Thanksgiving was spendiferous, with lots of laughter and good cheer.  We added to our already burgeoning stable of Thanksgiving anecdotes this year and I will take a moment to share it with you…

My daughter Darcy tends to like to stay in her room and away from all the fuss at Thanksgiving.  This year was different and she was so happy spending the entire day with us through the craziness of meal preparation and the excitement of the football games.  After I fed her her Thanksgiving dinner and was eating mine, she finally decided that enough was enough and that she was ready to take a break.  My son Connor obligingly took her to her room and came back down to join the table, but he forgot to lock her bathroom door….

( I don’t know if you know this about Darcy, but she thinks her bathroom is her own personal water park, so we always, always, always lock the door when she is unsupervised).  After dinner, I asked my son Cameron to check with Darcy to see if she would like to rejoin us.  A few short moments later, a panicked Cameron was calling us from upstairs.  It seemed that my darling diva had decided to give herself a bath!  Cameron found her fully clothed, shoes and all, blissfully swaying in the warm water of her tub as the jacuzzi merrily bubbled around her.  To make matters even more comical is that “the boys” – all the men in my family- were on duty for  child care and clean up after dinner.  To see them all racing around to get Darcy dry, the bathroom tidied, and throwing tons of towels in the dryer was hilarious. Good times….

Ok, if you haven’t already decorated your home for the holidays, I thought that I would re-run my Christmas post from last year.  It was posted too late to help inspire anyone, so this year I hope it will get your creative juices flowing.  I am doing the same decor this year as I am using all my creative energy just now for my clients!

Enjoy!

Kristin

***********

Hi,

This is going to be a long post, but I promise you won’t need to do too much reading!  I am just going to take you on a tour of the house decorated for Christmas ’10.  I had two great motivations for doing a bit extra this year.  First, I did very little decorating for Christmas last year as Darcy, our daughter, had been so sick.  So all that pent up decorating energy got a great release this year.  Second, Tartanscot hosted a fantastic decorating contest, and I decided it would be great fun to do some entries.  I have been quite a busy bee! And yes, I know I promised to announce the Design Online Giveaway winner – it’s at the end of the post where you can scroll through, if you must!

This Christmas the house looks extra festive and is a perfect haven for us as we celebrate Christmas early this year.  We just got news that after a year and three brain surgeries, Darcy is finally healed! We are profoundly thankful that our prayers have been answered.  So, welcome to our joyous and peaceful home….

This is really our only outdoor decoration this year.  I decided to start from scratch with our outdoor decor and I am going to add a bit at a time.

Rocket the Wonder Dog is waiting to show you around.

Our manger scene this year.

My antique French bookscase is bedecked for the holidays.  This year, I kept to a very neutral palette with lots of greens, ivories, chocolate browns, silver, and sea glass blue.  Again, I used my favorite natural elements, existing accessories, and one of my Russian Santas that I bought in St. Petersburg.

Here a feathery friend perches on a vintage wooden container and gray Spanish moss.  For some reason, the color of this moss felt fresh again after many years of me feeling that is was dated and old.  It is always interesting how textures and colors cycle through our decor.

My wonderful Russian Santa anchors an arrangement of greens, driftwood, finger sponges and mercury glass acorns.

I found this wonderful carved fragment at a vintage store and snapped it up.  He nestles among glittery branches, faux antlers and mercury glass pinecones.

Here is my Roundtop deer, sitting on my French ledger.  My Aidan Gray spire is decorated with mercury glass birds and more of that gray Spanish moss.  The pretty pale blue candlestick is a find from a trip to New Delhi several years ago.

This Chrismas, I continued the soft blues and greens from the hallway and entry out to the loggia.  I recycled the white pumpkins from Thanksgiving – and truthfully the big pumpkins on the hearth are from Halloween! – and used them with evergreen wreaths and bark chargers. I was hoping to do a fantastic tree out here this year, but the time just got away from me. This is our view from the family room, and this year I had great fun with the mantel for Tartanscot’s contest.

Here is Walker sporting a gag gift for his Dad – a leopard-print snuggie!  This is part of my collection of Santas.  You can see the loggia off to the right.

Here is one of my favorite Santas hitching a ride on my vintage suitcases.

Here are my bookcases decked out for Christmas.  I really like the plaid ribbon I found for the wreaths this year.

It’s hard for you to see, but there is a wonderful green wool bow attached to the trophy – it sort of looks like a Christmas-ey awaard ribbon.  I really just put touches here and there, as I couldn’t find my box of decor for the shelves from two years ago.  But I am happy with the way that they look, as the focal point is this:

This is the first year that Cedric the deer has worn a wreath and I am so happy with how he looks!  I made this wreath from two different garlands that I wired to an embroidery hoop that separates at the base, so I can easily slide it over Cedric’s neck rather than pulling it over his head.  Most of the objects on the mantel always live there, with the exception of the carved Bavarian liquer case.

I always add “skirts” of juniper greens to my sconces.

I used a garland, fresh greens, faux antlers, crimson glass ornaments, and jeweled berries for this mantel.

Here is the kitchen in the midst of cookie baking.  We have a North Pole village that Walker likes to put out and the zinc countertop is the perfect spot.  He uses a LOT of snow!

This is how I decorated the breakfast room for Tartanscot’s contest.  The canvas dropcloth from Tablescapes came in handy again as a tablecloth.  The floor cloth is a primed, but not yet painted project-in-waiting.  I really, really love how the bookcase looks with the garland and oversized mercury glass ornaments.  That great satin ribbon was a find at the new Wisteria Outlet.  I hung icicles and glitter snowflakes from the light fixture with vintage gray binding tape that I found at Roundtop.  I love the wintery whiteness of the room like this – it feels Swedish, yet also a bit French.

Here is the bookcase in a closeup.  I re-used the glass cloches from Tablescapes to highlight a great big weathered jingle bell and a forest Santa.  I have every single antique red book that I own on display.  I do so love them.

Recognize these?  They are from the post I did on Wisteria a while ago.  I said that I really wanted to buy some, and so I did at their wonderful new outlet store.   Don’t they look lovely lit from within?

This is a close shot of the wreath, bark charger – another vestige of  a previous Tablescapes table – my oatmeal linen napkins, Christmas china and more patinated jingle bells.

This is how our table will be set for Boxing Day dinner – the day after Christmas when my sister and her family join us.  For Christmas dinner, we will be in the dining room proper, which looks the same this year as in years past.  ( I confess I have wonderful plans for it for next year – a Chinoiserie Christmas fantasy….)

This mantel is all chocolates, silvers, and chartreuse greens.  It’s a completely new design that I conjured up with things I gathered from the house and combined with previous mantel decorations.  I almost never get an unsolicited comment from my husband about my decorating – he and the boys just accept the ever changing vignettes and arrangements in the house – but this really drew a great response from him.

I use on of my Pier One trees in the living room year round, and I put it in the antiqued mirrored container which is now filled with pine cones.  The other tree was tucked away in storage.  I don’t like their bases at all, so I glued some glittery snowflake ornaments that I had to them and voila!

More antique books made their way into the Christmas decorations this year – a trend, I know.

One of my favorite Santas anchors this side of the mantel with frosted grapes and chocolate glittered sprigs and sprays.  And speaking of Santa, it is now time for me to get out and take care of my Mrs. Claus duties.  Northpark Mall, here I come.

But not before I announce my Giveaway winner – Garrett!  I am so excited to begin working with him on his project, whatever it may be.  I hope to be able to share progress updates with you.  Thank you so much to all of you who entered the contest.  I hope that you will contact me if I can help you with your home.  Let’s have fun together!

I will probably only post one more time before Christmas.  In the meantime, have a blessed holiday week, full of joy and grace.  I know that we will.

Kristin

Hi,

You have no idea how many things I want to write about these days – I just need the time to do it all!  I am thinking that I need to lock myself in a closet with my computer and just write like crazy for several days.  Since that’s just not going to happen, I am hopping in and out as I can.  I do have a big, big announcement to make and I will do it in my next post.  It involves a) something new for Covetable b) something new for my readers and their friends and c) my biggest giveaway yet.  So stay tuned!

All of these photos are from Christmases past.  I found a great tabletop wreath stand and made it the centerpiece of this dining room display.  You can barely see it here, but there is a red organza bow on each side – I used two wreaths.  The runner is burlap and two mooses ( meese?) wear a coat of antiqued silver glitter.  I arranged two groupings of candles, cloches, crystal, mercury glass and fresh greens on either side.

Here is a closeup – and a flash shot for sure!- of one of the arrangements.  I also tucked some berry sprigs, faux antlers and a feathered red cardinal into the mix.

I have a wonderful time decorating my hallway for Christmas – the neutral palette makes everything feel warm and wonderful. Here is my beloved one-eared Roundtop deer.  He is all dressed up with a grosgrain bow and sitting on a bed of evergreens and my Aidan Gray spires are home to charming mercury glass birds.  The silver “threads” that you see on the live wreath are actually wire garland that I found a few years ago.  I loved using it and only wish I could find more – it is very airy and magical in person.

This is another deer that I found at a local shop.  He is sitting on top of some vintage books and flanked by these wonderful trees made with some sort of sea sponge.  This year I have simplified this grouping and I like it even better!

Again, this is over-exposed because of the flash!  This French bookcase is where I typically display my own Cabinet of Natural Curiousities.  There is a vignette on each shelf, and I tried to introduce little pops of red here and there.  I used more faux antlers, a combination of fresh and fake greens, lots of pinecones and mercury glass.  The sparkly branches are pretty wonderful in person, not so fantastic on a computer screen!  My favorite element of this whole display is the topper of garland, embroidered silk ribbon, and icicles and German glass acorns that hang from pale green organza ribbons.  It is literally over-the-top!!  It’s obvious that at Christmas time I tend to throw out any notion of editing and negative space and just go for it!

This is a close-up of the topper garland.  You can see some swags of that wonderful gossamer silver wire garland.

And here is the stairway decked in a lush live garland.  The ribbon is embroidered with silver thread and tiny mirrors in the shape of snowflakes.  I added silver leaves, nests, thistle “eggs”, and birds.  This is the most dramatic thing that I do each Christmas, so I have lots of photos.  I’ll share a few more with you.

Here is a closeup of the garland draping the newel posts.  I forgot to note the silver feathers that I use as part of this arrangement.  This particular year, the garland was amazingly lush.  It really makes everything look so much better.

This isn’t the best picture, but I thought you might like to see the staircase all the way up.  The open door on the left is to John’s study.

This is probably the best overall image.  I decorated each post cap and top of each swag with a smaller version of the festoon that I did for the newel posts.  Sometimes those thistle “eggs” will bounce their way down the stairs.  In the background here, you can barely see a gilded mirror.  It’s an antique over-mantel that we bought many, many years ago.  It’s been everywhere in our houses.  Now it serves as a lovely ledge for some sea fans, shells, and a starfish.

Last shot for now.  This is our back porch.  I used some red cushions, throws, and a wooden bowl filled with vintage jingle bells to give this area a nice holiday feel.  My favorite touch out here is the gorgeous collar on our stag.  It’s a remnant of the garland that we used on the stairs and so it is incredibly full and lush.

OK, so I am making my BIG announcement in the next post, and I really hope that you stop by.  It will be the biggest giveaway I have ever done by far!  I can’t wait!  I also will show you my living room and  family room bedecked for Christmas.  After that, I should have some shots for you of Maison Mullen as it currently looks.  Come on back!

Kristin

Every now and then, my house is used as a backdrop for catalog shoots.   You may have even seen it, although you wouldn’t recognize it, as I often don’t myself.  But if you have gone to Neiman Marcus’s website or gotten Horchow’s  catalog in the last couple of years, you might have seen the house.  Our pool deck was in outdoor shots for Brookstone at one point.  That was an interesting moment in time.  Catalogs usually shoot about 6 months in advance of us receiving them in our mailboxes, so we have had Christmas in July here and summer in December.  So on a very nippy December day, a beautiful bikini clad model was lounging/shivering out by our pool.  None of the men in my house were here as the boys were at school and John was at work.  Rocket, my practically perfect golden retriever, more than made up for the lack of human male attention for this poor girl.  Every time she walked back into the house, Rocket was there waiting to give her what we euphemistically call the “Oklahoma Hello”.   ( And this is why Rocket is only practically perfect, as if he didn’t do this he would be perfect, truly!)  We had to keep dragging the amorous dog away from this poor girl.  The funniest thing was that Rocket kept his nose pressed to the window the entire time that beauty was outside, literally panting.  I believe to this day that Rocket was the alter-ego for all the men in this house who would have most enjoyed the scenery outside!

When all this artistic and creative mayhem is going on, there is always a warm and steady presence here, keeping everyone moving and on track.  And no, it certainly isn’t me!  It’s my friend Joe Horner, Rocket wrangler and photographer extraordinaire.  Joe’s wife shot all my portfolio photos of the house, most of which you will have seen in my previous posts titled The Story of a House.  But Joe is a gifted photographer, too.  He has helped me with photoshop, advised me on the right camera and lenses to purchase, etc.  He has been wonderful.  Last week, Joe showed me this wonderful gadget that he bought for his Iphone.  It’s a magnifying lens that can be attached to the camera eye to create extreme closeup photos.  The lens is just a little thing that has sort of stickum on it to allow you to attach it and remove it easily from your phone, which is really neat.  But what blew me away were the photos that Joe was able to take with this little lens.  Here are four of my favorites:

This is a closeup of a thistle bloom.  That pop of color is fantastic, isn’t it?  This photo won an international competition sponsored by the lens manufacturer – way to go, Joe!

This is a cactus.  I love the texture on the surface of the leaf.

Wow!  So autumnal in feeling, isn’t it?

This is my favorite.  It sort of explodes out at you and the color is divine.

Joe says that the quality of the images is very high, and that prints of them are really lovely.  If you would like to see more images, go to his Facebook page.  Search for Joe Horner and you will get there.  While I love the color of these, I am considering asking Joe if I can buy some prints from him in black and white or sepia.  I think a grouping of them matted in white and in a dark frame would be incredibly striking.

If you are interested in the lens, the link for it is here.  It is a whopping $2.57.  Imagine!!  It will also fit on compact digital cameras, too.  What fun you could have creating your own art.

One thing that I have realized with this experience is the unsung artistry of photo stylists.  These are the people that work their magic behind the scenes, but whose influence is huge.  They are responsible for “propping” the picture, adjusting the placement of the objects and furniture just so,  and finding fresh and creative ways of displaying the mundane or familiar.  So some if not many of the details that are remarkable in pictures that we see in magazines like House Beautiful or catalogs like Wisteria or Pottery Barn are imagined by the stylists and their artistic eye(s).  Here are a couple of images from Pottery Barn’s website featuring Inspiring Wall Solutions.  Now, I know that the art is mostly Pottery Barn generic, but the way that it’s presented is very striking.

Ignore the arrows everywhere and just look at the composition.  It is balanced without being symmetrical.  The greenery in the paintings picks up on the greenery of the topiaries and in the prints.  Also, the black and white photo of the tree ties in as well.  The more closely you examine the wall, the more you see that these items are all related in some way to leaves, trees and nature, without that fact screaming at you.  The art differs from photographs to prints to shadowboxes to objects.  You can take this template and reinterpret it with your own art and objects.  The metal bookcases on either side have been treated differently.  It is so much more pleasing than if they had been styled perfectly symmetrically.  Now I know that most of us do not have a huge collection that would easily lend itself to following this formula exactly, but we can artistically reinvent if for our homes and spaces.

I love the wall color first and foremost.  Everything looks pretty wonderful against it.  Again, I am not a huge fan of the individual pieces here – really  don’t love the legs on those hurricanes – but the overall impact is very dynamic and pleasing.  The tobacco leather of the trunk and sportsball (not a word, but I can’t tel what kind of ball that is!) beautifully echo the caramel matting on the artwork.  The flowering branches have beautiful warm blossoms which further tie into the whole.  These are the kinds of details that stylists dictate in a shoot and which can inspire the rest of us.

In my own home, I have definitely been influenced by the way that stylists and other designers display and hang art.  We have very few pieces of art that are gallery worthy, and that gives me great artistic license to display our art in a more stylish way, with less emphasis on any one piece and great emphasis on the display as a whole.  Here are a few examples; all from my entry.

This arrangment is to the right of my large French bookcase filled with natural curiosities, old books and prints.  These prints were all found at Roundtop a few years ago and beautifully framed by my favorite framer,  The Frame House.  The bracket is a remnant from my formal living room in New Jersey and the crusty stand for the ostrich egg was picked up at a local haunt, Mary Cates.

This vignette sits to the left of the French bookcase.  Sometimes a mistake can be a good thing.  The picture hangers made a mistake when they were hanging the lower prints.  If I had asked them to move the prints, there would have been visible holes in the plaster, so I decided to work with them as they were.  My homage to fungi didn’t start out intentionally.  These prints I also found at Roundtop and I thought the colors were wonderful.  My concrete mushrooms were bought to go in my vintage aquarium, but got pressed into service here instead. My vignettes are balanced, but certainly not symmetrical and they relate to each other loosely in that they are both inspired by nature.

This vignette gets the most attention when people come to the house.  It hangs in clear view of the front door and our guests are drawn to it pretty consistently.  This is an idea that I know for a fact was inspired by a Pottery Barn catalog photo from several years ago.  ( Many times I have no notion of where I saw something that inspired me….)  These are more Roundtop prints of various creatures that have similar colorplates.  Because none of these prints are precious or particularly worthy of individual scrutiny, I decided to layer them over each other.  I really like the way that this turned out, and the boys who visit our house LOVE the moles, rats, fish and snakes that are depicted here.  So everyone is happy!

I get a regular charge of creative energy from spending time with people like Joe and the stylists that come to these shoots.  They make me look at my home with fresh eyes, which is always a good thing.  I am so lucky.  But everyone has access to inspiration -  you just have to look for it.  Even if you don’t have an artistic eye, shamelessly copy someone who does.  I promise not to tell…

Kristin

Hello!

I just got an e-mail from the editor of Beautiful Kitchens and Baths that my master bath will be featured in the Spring issue of the magazine, available in early February.  Hooray!  I am so happy that these pictures will finally be out there.  Joni did a very thoughtful post about old photos appearing in magazines.  If you haven’t read it already, go and read it here.  I have chosen to err on the side of caution and show no images of my bathroom- before now.  But  I can feel good about it as they look nothing like the amazing shots that were taken.  These shots were taken about two years ago and my bathroom has changed a good bit.

The zebra rug was the inspiration behind the master suite.  I wanted to do a Hemingway-esque,  Out of Africa type feeling in the area.  It’s pretty unorthodox to put a zebra rug in the bathroom, I recognize that.  As a matter of fact, we moved the rug during the shoot so that only a tiny bit of it was visible.  Apparently magazines get all kinds of complaints if they show zebra rugs, animal trophies, and the like.  I choose to believe that my guy died a peaceful death at the zoo.  Please do not disabuse me of that notion!  The other big design element are the vintage mahogany shutters which I found on 1st dibs.  They are from Louisiana and, oh my goodness, they weigh a TON.  The canvas is something that I picked up at a gift show in London and it’s really fun.  It now lives in my bedroom and it has been replaced with a wonderful grouping of fern shadowboxes.

This window and its treatment were a major issue during design and construction.  The window is actually a set of french doors, as we had originally designed the bathroom to lead out to the side yard.  My architect’s plans called for a garden courtyard, where John and I could relax at the beginning of the day with a steaming cup of coffee, courtesy of the built in coffee bar in our bedroom.  In the evening, we would be able to sip a glass of wine from a bottle nicely chilled in our minibar, also in our bedroom.  Kind of like a vacation at home, right?  WRONG!!!  How many ways did this idea change?  One: we did not account for the fact that the grade of the area was so much lower than the doors that we would have had to build a flight of steps, at least 6 of them, to reach the ground.  Two:  this would have created a preciously small courtyard.  Three:  it would have cost a lot of money in landscaping, which we wanted to use elsewhere.  Four: we would have constantly been pulling and drawing draperies for privacy.  Five:  coffee in the morning and wine in the evening in our our couple’s oasis.  With four children?  Who were we kidding!!!  Six: built in coffee makers are really expensive, and I mean really, really expensive.  Seven: what are we, legless?  John has a small bar in his office just next to our bedroom with a refrigerator and coffee maker.  Eight:  we have never, ever, ever sat down with  a cup of coffee in our bedroom.  Nine:  as for the wine, I am not telling.

For the photo shoot, we put a white slipcovered chair and ottoman at the window.  It looked so beautiful, but I worried that John would not want something in the way of his direct line from his closet ( it’s the open door to the left of the window ) and the shower, which you can’t see but is directly opposite the closet door.  What followed was something that we all need to remember.  John also liked how beautiful the chair looked, and he simply walked AROUND the chair on his way to and fro.  And sometimes, he even SITS in the chair to put on his socks or shoes. Amazing, no?  The moral of the story is that humans change our traffic patterns in a room without too much thought or difficulty.  Walking around something in a space is not always a bad thing, and just think about all those calories you burn with the extra steps!

I have spent a good bit of time with my girl lately and I decided to show you her bathroom.  Backstory below.

First of all, the tile in this bathroom really is this dreamy.  And it was eye-wincingly expensive.  Here is how I justified it.  My two youngest guys have standard white subway tiles in their shower enclosures up to a border.  Their floor was also a great tile that was very reasonably priced.  Their walls are wallpapered.  So, I saved a lot of money in my tile budget on their bathrooms and poured it into Darcy’s bathroom.  I will show you their bathrooms and you can be the judge as to whether they were poorly treated out of the deal…The tub has no glass shower enclosure or shower rod, as we have a huge drain in the floor for splashing.  Darcy likes to create her own waterpark in the bathroom.  Many patches of sheetrock later, we got smart and decided to put a huge drain in her new bath.  The mirror is Venetian and used to hang in our formal powder room, but I love it here, hanging over the Kohler sink.

Restoration Hardware sconces.  See, I didn’t go completely crazy!

The tile shelf next to the bathtub was intended to help her transition herself into and out of the bathtub. But it turns out that Darcy can easily swing her legs over the bathtub without anyone’s help, so it’s a great space for storing extra things.  And if you are thinking that calla lily and candle set up is there day to day, yeah, well, not so much.  The etagere is from Pottery Barn and it’s really great, but it’s a bit wobbly as it was delivered without a rubber bumper on one of it’s feet.  Three years later and it’s still on my to-do list.

This terry covered stool is also from Pottery Barn and it comes in so handy with bathing Darcy and just as another surface for putting things on.  Again, for those credulous few who don’t believe that I wouldn’t style this photo within an inch of its life,  its normal occupants are not really a vase of greenery.   If the bathroom seems really roomy, it’s because it is.  We designed it for wheelchair access, even though Darcy can walk with assistance anywhere in the bathroom.  The extra space is great for the extra body that needs to help Darcy with her grooming, etc.

When I was taking these pictures, I realized that I had not purchased a hanging fixture for this room.  I completely forgot that we were going to put one in until I saw the box in the ceiling, which is very high so it’s not noticeable.  That’s another to-do that’s been waiting a while.  All in good time….

And if you thought from the title that I would be posting pictures of Beautiful Kitchens and Baths instead of writing about the magazine,  I am sorry!  It’s just my bathrooms.  Hope you weren’t too disappointed.

Kristin

Hi,

I started writing this on an airplane heading to Boston with my teenage son.  It is hard to believe that technology is such that I can do a post on my blog at 30,000 feet above the ground!  I have posted my own portfolio photos of my kitchen before,

here, and I wrote about the design inspirations behind the kitchen.  I love my portfolio pictures, but I also think Tria Giovan did a fantastic job with the photos for Beautiful Kitchens.  It’s interesting how different the color of my cabinetry looks than in my portfolio photos, which are closer to reality than the BK photos are.  See what I mean?

Photograph by Tria Giovan, Beautiful Kitchens

This is a wider shot and shows more of the ceiling, obviously, but you can see the difference in the way that the pale yellow reads in each photo.

Here is the Beautiful Kitchens overall shot, taken from a slightly different angle.  It shows the two islands, our refrigerator and pantry and our cabinetry wall.  The two islands came about as a result of the vaulted ceiling, interestingly.  The central point of the vault makes such a strong architectural statement that I felt that the central axis leading from it in both directions had to be symmetrical.  Originally, we had planned one island that would house the ovens and drawers and would serve as a breakfast bar.  But in order to situate the island close enough to the sink to be useful and to stay centered in the room, the single island would be absolutely enormous.  Eric Greene from Jackson Hole Cabinetry taped the cabinets out on the floor in various configurations over the course of many long hours.  Finally we came upon a solution that worked – two islands, connected to one another, with different heights, surfaces and paint finishes.  I am so happy with the result.  Sometimes the most difficult problems present you with the most creative solutions, and I think that was the case with the islands.  William Ohs did the actual cabinetry and it is just so well made and well finished that I could not be more thrilled.

Here is the range.  I have a Wolf stove with two typical burners, a grill and something called a French burner.  The French burner, which is underneath the cutting board, is a flat expanse of metal with concentric rings marked on it.  At the center of the rectangle the heat is the most intense and at the edges it is least intense, with the idea being that you can fit many pots and pans on it.  This is the only element of the kitchen that I regret.  The burner takes thirty minutes to get hot enough to do anything!  I am not disciplined enough to turn something on 30 minutes before I need it.  This small detail was nowhere in the manufacturers information when I ordered it.  At some point, I may have this part of the range replaced with a conduction cooktop.  The great thing about Wolf rangetops is that they offer different components in different configurations, so I can simply replace this component for another.

You probably want to know about the hood.  This was cause for a lot of design back and forth.  I wanted a very, very simple shape that was shallow and not overbearing.  We finally got the shape that we wanted and then the next challenge was to have it fabricated.  I wanted a zinc hood to coordinate with the zinc countertop.  However, zinc sheets are not as wide as the base of the hood, and to use zinc we would have needed to rivet the front pieces to side pieces, which was not at all the clean look I wanted.  In the end, we used sheet metal to form the hood and my painter did a wonderful finish to mimic the zinc countertop.

The drawers below the cooktop are for pots and pans and the have pegboard and pegs in them to keep things tidy.  This is a feature that I had from my Mark Wilkinson cabinetry in London and I loved it.  It really does keep things in their place, so much so that I am able to store plates, bowls, etc, in drawers rather than in cabinets.  This makes it so much easier for my kids to help themselves.  Here is an image of a china drawer.

I love how versatile this is and the placement of the pegs means that things don’t rattle around.

This is a closer view of the range.  The backsplash is an antique French fireplace back and the tile is limestone from Ann Sacks.  I wanted a herringbone pattern as that is more in keeping with a true hearth.  I have a spice pullout on the right of the stove and a pullout for oils and vinegars on the left.  So handy for cooking!  Also, my knife drawer is directly across from the stove, so my meal preparation goes on right in this area.  It is very, very convenient for how I cook.

Just to the right of the stove is the butler’s pantry, which leads to the dining room.  I originally wanted to bring some red into this area to tie it to the dining room, but in the end the mountain came to Mohammed and I took some of the soft yellow and charcoal into the dining room.  I kept the X motif that is prevalent in the house and especially in the uppers in these cabinets and the kitchen cabinets.  To dress up the space, I had the cabinets painted the near black that is everywhere in my house and did a dressier Bouvet hardware in satin nickel on them.  The brass version is on the china cabinets in the dining room.  I toyed with the idea of doing an antique mirror backsplash, but in the end I decided that the golden onyx countertops were flashy enough, and I am so happy that I left the backsplashes in both kitchen and butler’s pantry alone.  They tend to be superfluous unless you have a working sink or a cooktop in the area and they can get very expensive, to boot.  The butler’s pantry has a warming drawer, an icemaker and two drawer style dishwashers that I LOVE.  They are perfectly sized for china and crysal and are great overflow dishwashers for the main one in the kitchen.  If I had a smaller family or were an empty nester, I would install these as my primary dishwasher in a heartbeat.  They use much less water, are quiet and obviously slip into a small space.  I guess that I am a little drawer happy!

This is my refrigerator and pantry unit.  The shelves with the “books” house my pantry.  and the doors with the X motif are my two refrigerator units.  The two huge drawers are in reality four freezer drawers and again, I LOVE them.  No more digging around to find things.  We tend to keep things more segregated and organized this way.  This is a design idea that I used in my previous house in New Jersey, and the beauty of it is that I set my groceries down on the countertop and all the food goes in one area.   For the faux books I originally wanted to use book titles that had to do with wine or food, but when I realized the cost would be astronomical, I decided to use the titles that the company provides as part of its line.   Here is a peek at a freezer drawer.

Again, so convenient for my kids and for me to get to food.  We can all easily see what’s in there and with four drawers, there is enough storage room for even my big family.  More drawer happiness!

Here is the pull out for my pantry.  Again it is so easy to see where things are and so accessible.  While I love the way my kitchen looks, I am more in love with how well it functions.  There is one last purely visual detail that I want to show you for the glass fronted cabinets.  Nothing practical, just a detail that Jackson Hole Cabinetry specifies in all its William Ohs glass cabinetry that is just fantastic.

They do a wooden edge around the glass shelves, so that when you look at the cabinet, the edge looks solid, rather than the greenish edge that glass has.  But the shelf itself is glass, which allows any downlighting to go straight through to the bottom shelf.  It’s beautiful and so detail oriented.  And before you ask, the pottery pattern is Black Toast by Emma Bridgewater and we bought it when we lived in London. Very pretty.

I learned so much on this photo shoot with Bonnie Broten and Tria Giovan.  Bonnie is a great stylist and Tria is a master photographer.  She and Janet, her fantastic assistant, were just fascinating to watch.  Bonnie styles by imagining a “story” that is happening in the room and what would need to be out and where in order for the story to take place.  It is all, truly, theater.

Well, I for one, am so relieved that this story is published.  So many of the projects that I work on happen on the island in the kitchen and I have been so worried about showing too much of it in the background when I photograph things.  The same is true for the breakfast room.  Now I can show you whatever I like and it will be old news to you!  Do go and buy the magazine, though.  There are lots of beautiful kitchens in it – the name delivers what it promises!- and the article is fun reading.  Plus there is a great shot of the breakfast room that I haven’t shown you.

And I am sorry that I have been offline.  I have been traveling so much to lacrosse tournaments and camps that I just have not had the uninterrupted time that I needed to sit down and do some thoughtful posts.  So, I am back for a bit, and I will be posting a likely blizzard in the next few days.

Kristin

Hello from steamy Dallas,

While the temperatures here are relatively mild for June, the humidity has been a bit unseasonal for us.  However, I am not going to whine about it, as all my new flowers are loving the moisture.  Planting season here in Dallas is very tricky.  By the time the nurseries have the plants that Daniel- my landscape designer- and I wanted, it was already getting quite warm.  Not ideal conditions for planting.  However, we really needed to make some upgrades.

When we first installed the perennial gardens three years ago, we had to put in what we could scrounge from Daniel’s growers and local sources.  It was September, we were behind schedule due to the virtual monsoons that we endured all summer long, and we had to jettison our original planting scheme and put in what we could find.  The alternative was to look at bare beds for several months until we could plant in the spring.  I opted for instant gratification and the gardens were truly beautiful.  However, we have had some hobgoblins in our watering system and those nasty spirits ultimately claimed several clumps of perennials.  So, Daniel and I seized upon the opportunity to plant in the perennials that we had originally hoped to use.

This is one of the pair of front beds after we cleaned it out.  The rosemary had totally taken over this space and had gotten woody and sparse, to boot.  The salvias were getting choked out, and the Brazilian Verbena that I adore so much was no more.  The upside is how much space we had to put in purple loosestrife – and gardeners, do not yell at me as here in Dallas it is not rapacious as it is elsewhere- alcea zebrina, which is a hollyhock relative, and agapanthus.  We also were able to source ladies mantle and lovely hostas.  Now in New Jersey and London these flowers are a dime a dozen, but here in Dallas they are not commonly used so we had to order most of these flowers and they were delivered in bulk.

Doesn’t the purple loosestrife look lovely?

Here is the crew that was charged with getting things back in shape.

This is a nice view of our gravel driveway.  This may be one of our favorite things that we did with the house.  We had a gravel driveway in London and it was so lovely, but also great for the environment and security.  How?  The gravel allows stormwater to drain directly into the ground without running over paved surfaces and picking up oil and chemicals.  The gravel also helps to filter the water before it goes into the groundwater.  From a security standpoint, the crunch of the gravel as cars and people approach the house is unmistakeable and we found it to be a great boon when we lived in crime ridden London.  Here in Dallas, the crunch is merely a wonderful and satisfying sound.  The story of the gravel is a funny one as well.  This part of the project was one of the only aspects of the entire process that my husband was interested in.  We went to a local stoneyard together to look at the different types of gravel that they had.  After looking at all the various mounds of gravel, we were disappointed that none of them were what we had in mind.  John was convinced that they had better gravel somewhere and he said that he was going to ask them about it.  Surveying the dozens of mounds of stone, I was incredulous that he would think that they would have inventory elsewhere.  Undaunted, he strode to the counter of the stoneyard and flagged down a clerk.  He told them that we had looked at all the gravel and didn’t like any of it.  “Where,” he said, “is the good stuff?”  As though we were at a neighborhood bar and he was looking for single malt scotch!  My jaw dropped when the clerk reached under the counter and pulled out half a dozen displays of various colors, sizes and shapes of gravel.  Triumphantly, my husband looked at me, literally said, “I told you so” and we found our gravel.  Lesson learned.

Here is Daniel Houchard, landscape designer to the stars!  Actually, not.  But he should be!  He is wonderfully talented and incredibly fun to work with.  He is so imaginative and has moments of pure genius on a regular basis.  This is our curbside bed.  I do have another photo of Daniel’s backside, but out of deference to him I am reserving it. Although I could use it for future blackmail!  I wrote about Daniel before, here, and you should also visit his website here.

Here is a view of the front garden newly replanted.  I love how the agapanthus looks (it’s the round blue blossom nodding under the tree).  Daniel was not sure about putting it in the mix with such traditional perennials as roses and salvia, but both of us are so happy with how it looks now.

Here is another view of the other side.

This is the rill that falls into our pool.  We really took a chance on the river birch that we planted here.  They are very temperamental here in Dallas, and we had no idea how they would do.  They are so happy where they are that we are constantly trimming them back.  They had been underplanted with Chinese fringe flower, a lovely shrub with a soft purple leaf, as part of a fantastic perennial garden planting.   But the fringe flower was also wildy happy and consequently it took over all the perennials.  We transplanted all of the fringe flower shrubs and started from scratch.  The hanging lanterns were purchased from a stall in Leadenhall Market in London.  At our garden parties in London, we would light citronella candles in them and it was a magical effect.  Here in Dallas, I decided to have them electrified. They are just so charming and we enjoy their dancing light every night.

Here is Daniel again, on the rill bed, talking to his supervisor.  That enormous white blob in the corner is the pool basketball hoop.  The boys and John are constantly playing on it, and so I tolerate the blight that it is to the view.  Although to be honest, I love the view of all the guys wrestling with each other and their friends while they play.  And when we have a dressy party, the hoop goes to the garage.

Here are the freshly planted perennial gardens under the river birch.  We planted more purple loosestrife, Brazilian Verbena,  and Mexican feather grass ( I think ).  I love how this looks now.  Here is another view.

At the back of the bed, nearest the water spouts, Daniel suggested that we plant iris – Siberian, I think.  They are going to be so happy in the marshy conditions back there.  I can’t wait until they bloom next spring.  I think that I have mentioned more than once how much I love the work of British landscape architect Tom Stuart Smith.  It was this garden that provided the inspiration for the rill.

See the river birch, the iris, the grasses?  I don’t think that the plume

y purple flowers are loosestrife, but it has a similar feeling.  I love the alliums ( the small ball shaped purple flowers) and we are going to plant some in the fall, as they are a spring flowering bulb.  Here is another view:

Here is another view of this inspirational garden:

I have been so lucky in my life.  After years of dreaming of going to the Chelsea Flower Show, I actually got to go for the three years that we lived in London.  It was so wonderful.  As you can see, our plantings have not yet reached the beautiful maturity of these show gardens.  Also, and regretfully, so many of these flowers would shrivel in the first blast of Texas heat.  But I do so love what I have.  It gives me great pleasure every day as my favorite spot is the corner of the family room where I have my laptop and a fantastic view of the rill garden.

In my next post, I am going to show some photos of the wonderful container plantings that Daniel created for me.

See you soon!

Kristin