Monthly Archives: August 2020

Is Your Home Driving You Crazy? I Can Help

Posted in Seating, Shop Locally, Side Tables by

It feels appropriate right now to acknowledge all that we have lost during this pandemic. I’m all for positivity. I love being around positive people, it makes me feel amazing. Throw in a little manifestation, an affirmation or two, some being in the moment and you have the makings of a hot fudge sunday with marshmallow, nuts and a cherry on top of the happiness hill, but NOT acknowledging loss can lead to listlessness or worse, and we can’t have that.

A friend, of a friend, had reached out to me over a year ago to talk about reconfiguring her living room. Then life got in the way, as it is want to do, until so much of this life got in her way that she was finding a classroom, a dog, two kids and a husband underfoot. She hadn’t just lost her work-from-home, make my life easier existence, she’d nearly lost her sanity, and can you blame her?

Elizabeth Bishop and Dorothy Parker, both poets, could wring tears from scorched earth in the Sahara with the prose that spilled forth from their pens, on the subject of loss. At turns brash and edgy, and then slow and sorrowful, they saw what it was to be left wanting – a hunger pain begging to be fed. I suspect many of us are feeling this way and I think I have an answer – we must gravitate toward structure during these times to manage the loss.

Kate, in her wisdom, knew this to be true, and I am happy to help show her some ways in which order can be brought to chaos through reordering her living space, relocating her office, so the kiddos don’t think that “seeing” is believing, that Mommy is available for games, consultation, lunch prep, or an attempt to locate the left sock with the locomotives on it – she’s working.

This pandemic has made me a believer, even the most free and easy among us crave structure. Here are my top three tips:

These beauties will be displayed prominently in the space.

  • Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. Keep the furniture that speaks to you in some way – most of the time it can be made to work,
  • Find ways to store, hide, arrange and organize the little things (bins for legos, blocks and art supplies, files for bills, trays for keys, loose change, and remotes, and baskets for bigger items), also, don’t be afraid to hang it on the wall – that guitar would look great in the kids craft area!
  • Grab your partner or a friend or two, a bottle of wine and start moving that furniture around the room. Break every rule! Put the sofa in front of the window, the media cabinet “floating” between spaces to create barriers between space uses. If you hate it, move it back – no law.

Take a deep breath. This will end, and if it isn’t ending soon enough for you, I find screaming into my pillow helps. Happy Sunday.

What’s Your Design Voice?

Posted in Interiors, Uncategorized by

I’ve often wondered what my life would be like if I had a voice like Uma Thurman’s, I could have you know. She developed that voice out of thin air, well maybe it wasn’t thin, it could have blown in from the Swedish Alps. Her grandmother was Swedish, her grandfather German, and her mother was born in Mexico City. Throw that in a blender and see what you come up with for an accent. Don’t forget that Uma herself was born in Boston, mostly raised in Amherst where her very famous, Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies father taught. Now if an I-T Buddhist doesn’t have a voice, than I’ll Winnie-the-pooh myself back to the 100 Acre Wood and re-read the Tao of Pooh until I get it right.

Like the color orange? See where it takes you.

One thing is for sure, Uma may have been an uncarved block when she started, but she and her vague European accent catapulted her to stardom, and I for one, believe that voice of hers had something to do with it. Which got me to thinking about my own voice. I’ve never liked it that much, the sound of it that is. My passion is mistaken for anger, and my voice is loud, so very loud, that I’ve been told repeatedly, and much to my chagrin and personal humiliation, that as a result of it, I cannot be heard at all. That’s just disrespectful.

Gray – don’t you just love that sound of that color?

A voice is so much more than the sound that rumbles up from your chest, and whistles past your lips to find a brief moment of freedom before it winds its way into the ears of its intended, and sometimes those that co-opt it, as if they were part of the conversation. I sometimes do that in a beauty salon. The things people say, right out there in public, astounding. There are other types of voices too. My writing has a voice without ever making a sound, and so too does your fashion, and of course your design style.

A lot to love with texture.

The care you take in putting your house together says so very much about who you are, that if you were on the receiving end of an actual voice, you’d be begging for some peace and quiet.

Look at those birds, singing a pretty song.

Like my quest for Uma’s breathy, insert made-up country across the pond here, I want you to discover what your design voice is – in the way it will reflect the very best of who you are, and hope to become. Uma, cue the story boards to sell this production, well, to a producer. The storyboard is your ticket to finding that voice. Start clipping, circling, tearing, pinning, and gathering all the things that you like, and that inspire you. That voice will start to emerge like an opera singer hitting a high note. Go get ’em Tiger.

One King’s Lane

Posted in Coastal Design, Designer Profiles, Uncategorized by
Closed due to Covid and 19 other reasons these windows are papered.

Another victim falls. I just want to cry and scream and throw a proper toddler-style tantrum that adequately convenes my frustration and powerlessness in the face of this pandemic. Those three year olds have it figured out – rage at the indignity and injustice, exhaust yourself in the process, take a nap, eat a snack, feel better. There is beauty and simplicity in their approach, and freedom, oh blessed freedom.

Taste Maker . Corey Damen Jenkins

Clearly I do not have that luxury. I had my three year old chance, and now that time has passed, being well beyond three years – even three decades, but still surprisingly feeling quite young and vulnerable at times. I am going to have to accept, in an irony, bookended by disastrous recessions, that One King’s Lane’s Boston retail shop couldn’t survive.

Curated collection of interesting objects is signature OKL.

I doubt that they are on a respirator, are we still in dangerously short supply of those? When they launched their on-line store in 2009, they did it in the midst of one of our worst modern day recessions. Such ingenuity and can emerge in times of great distress – I for one have my eyes peeled for a little magic right now. Their model was built on two primary premises, that they would cull overstock items from brand name designers – many of whom would formerly only sell to the trade, and offer them up to you and me (regular people without a tax id and a list of vendor references that rival the guest list of the MET Ball). The second crucial element of their business plan included the use of flash sales. This lent an element of distress to the moment, playing on our greatest fear of missing out. Those FOMO geniuses built an empire, founded on that fear, and I am fantastically jealous of the fame and fortune that followed them.

Celerie Kemble . Interior Design Celebrity and Taste Maker.

Them – clever dames, Susan Feldman a fashion industry veteran that moved from NYC to LA, and became obsessed with the home goods marketplace, for which I am grateful, and Ali Pincus who brought some much needed Silicon Valley know-how and I suspect money to the table.

No need to be blue when this ocean of happiness awaits.

They used their industry connections to maximum benefit, conducting Taste Maker Tag Sale, with items plucked from the homes of celebrities including; Steve Martin, Dianne Keaton, and Courtney Cox, and went on buying trips across continents with the likes of Bunny Williams, Nathan Turner, and Michelle Nussbaumer. In 2015 they opened their first brick and mortar location in Soho, added interior design services, and caught the attention of some serious big wigs. In 2016 they sold to Bed, Bath and Beyond for $12M. Like so many companies that lose their founders, the company floundered. Taste, passion, vision, design eye, the pulse of the marketplace is often diluted in the sea of corporate execs. A few more tears certainly won’t help this situation.

Leopard is a neutral after all.

I think I’ll spend my afternoon surfing through the vintage section, swinging by the swell slipper chairs, and humming a happy tune of gratitude for democratizing design on my behalf – and yours.

Don’t Fence Me In

Posted in Architecture, Uncategorized by
A home of her own.

I adore being a contradiction in terms. The high fashion, well not skyscraper high, but at least mid-rise high – we’re Boston, not New York City, stiletto wearing gal that works in the construction industry. The diagnosed dyslexic that veraciously devours volume after volume, of whatever I can get my hands on. The singleton that dreams of a house with a white picket fence, but that fence is strictly there for aesthetic purposes, and I own it.

I like to keep as much of the structure as possible to save money – I’ve got big ideas for the inside. Toward that end I’d carefully remove the lattice from above, plug the holes, add the new details, and repaint. On the lower level, I’d either match the house paint’s pale green and see if we can make it disappear or clad it in stone. I do the same with the risers.

Kate Smith, Ella Fitzgerald, Patti Page and many before, sang about, or as I like to tell it – demanded: “land, lots of land, under starry sky’s above”…”let me be by myself in the evening breeze” …. “let me straddle my old saddle underneath the western sky”. They begged not to be fenced in, just as I beg any gal that will listen to me, to buy real estate. It’s the realest thing you can do, to build financial security, which is why I am so happy for my friend Jenn. She took those reigns, mounted that horse, put in her offer, and she’s off and running.

Give the steps some distinction.

To this city dwelling gal, the home feels really big, so we’ll need to take the renovation in stages. It has great bones, and looks to be in really excellent shape, but that doesn’t mean that she won’t want to put her own stamp on it, and to begin with, she plans on stamping out the lattice at the front entry. I agree, it feels like it’s having an identity crisis, so I have made a few recommendations for alternative fence options for the porch that feel a little more in keeping with the neighborhood, and its Colorado location.

In this second option I am recommending the removal of the lattice from the fence and top, replacing it with vertical running wood details, and adding trees to block the lattice and create a more welcoming approach.

Once the lattice is gone and is no longer a distraction it would be really nice to have a zippy front door color. I’m back to being in love with a racy red or a violet. I’d avoid orange, though I love that color, I’m afraid with the home’s pale green exterior it will look too much like a pumpkin, and since Jenn has just made it clear, with this offer, that she needs no prince charming to save her, we’ll leave the field mice to convert someone else’s pumpkin into a carriage. She’s taking that horse and plans on jumping the fence.

    Playing it Safe

    Posted in Coastal Design by

    Left: Hable . Beads . Sea Foam Right Top: Hable . Tiny Stripe . Barbados Ombre . Right Bottom: Hable . Mum Eden

    Is so utterly boring that I cringe a little when I type the title here. Who wants to read about someone’s bold and wild adventure into the use of three different shades of white, and a punchy taupe grey – yawn, but when it comes to choosing a color for our house, our front door, or our living room we balk. I know I did. I carefully selected three daring hues for my front door – a bright blue, a Louboutin, sole of your shoe red, that would have suggested that what was behind that front door was worth seeing, and a violet that just made me happy. It was all ridiculously expensive because I had to buy the quart size, and I had to have Aurora, and of course I wanted to see it in high gloss. Guess which color I picked – white. That’s right.

    Top Left: Sister Parish . Appleton . Sea Foam . Top Right: Sister Parish . Tukerman . Kravet . Switchback Nautical Trim

    When it comes to taking risks, you and me, we’re not that practiced at it, and practice is just what we need to get better. I call my technique for this, Lilly Padding. Sure when you take that first hop and the lily pad bobs and wobbles threatening to throw you off, you immediately begin to question the veracity of your decision to jump in the first place. Settle down, the platform is pretty wide, and the place you came from is right there, in spitting distance. Your little leap didn’t take that much bravery, but when the ripples subside and you become comfortable on your slick green platform, and you spot a gorgeous pink blossomed water lily a stone’s throw away, you decide to take another little hop in its direction, and well, before you know it you’re leaping left and right, making faster and faster gains, until you can barely see off in the distance that place that you started from.

    Serena and Lily . Blake Coffee Table

    It’s pretty amazing how far you can go when you muster up that courage to dip your toe in the water. I recommend starting with a story board, a slew of samples, a favorite color, and maybe even a lovely tray from Home Goods to toss it all into.

    Charlestown Lacquer Side Table . Green (because what would this post be without a lily pad green?)

    Here’s my attempt at mixing and matching, playing it safe was making my lily pad feel awfully small. Happy Sunday.