Life is a switchboard. A cacophony of conversation on the brink of happening. Hush the clucking and control the chatter, I tell myself even though I am drawn to it. Fold into the silence, swim in the abyss. Float on my back, buoyed by the dense salinity of the ocean where you are both separate and a part. A meditation that is as familiar to me as breathing. I long for the wisdom of water in these winter months when the year has yet to unfold and new beginnings are plump with possibility. Pluck we must, choose or have it selected for us, or worse yet, have it shrivel, sag, and curl in on itself, the life force and vitality disappearing from whence it came.

Too high-brow? I like to test out different writing styles. It’s a new year, and new year’s feel heavy with a responsibility to decide. Your word, your resolutions, goals, deadlines, commitments, convictions. Finally, you promise yourself, you are going to face your fears, throw caution to the wind – dive out of that plane into the sky and discover that you can fly, if only for a moment.

That’s a lot to tackle in the dark days of winter, which is why I haven’t selected the word, picked the direction, determined what the rest of my life will look like. Ralph Waldo wants me to “Write it on my heart that every day is the best day of the year.” It seems appropriate since no day of mine can be made bad by writing, and can certainly be made better by writing to you.

I feel sure that starting with something simple will get my momentum moving and so I have decided to tackle Design Trends and predictions. Some that I believe originated with me, but one can never be certain of that. Let’s just say I picked them up along the way, and I hope that you take from them a little inspiration for which to pepper you palace.

2023 and the MOODY HUE

I think of moody hues as being muddy. A little dinge thrown in to give the color personality, complexity, interest. You know, like a person with a past. I have been playing with my own moody hues for the last six months, which contributed to my momentary feeling of superiority, but I know I ripped the idea off of someone – probably Kelly Wearstler – I remain obsessed.

SCALLOPED-EDGED EVERYTHING

The scallop – not to be confused with the wave – is definitive. Half moon after half moon placed side by side rather than a tug of war rope pumped vigorously to produce a sonic ripple. Being a Cape Cod girl at heart I naturally adore a scallop. The challenge is that it can feel whimsical when what you are in search of is sophistication. Try tempering it with a traditional print or a dark brooding hue. Dare to give a scalloped shade an edge by painting it black. Baby – that’s both unexpected and bold.

NEOCLASSICAL

Let’s just say you won’t find it on Wayfair. They don’t have what this new trend wants, which is a little more luxury, a little more ornamentation and old world wealth. I just bought a Neoclassical French dolphin based dining table – just saying – I got it before they announced that it was going to be a trend. Don’t like the old world and don’t want to spend a fortune? Hit the yard sales and flea market’s for a traditional piece, and then take it to one of your local furniture refurbishing shops and have them paint an old antique sideboard in a high-gloss hue of your choosing. Neoclassical with an edge. I use Porcelain Patch & Glaze out of Watertown. They are wonderful.

MONOCHROMATIC ROOMS

My favorite way this is done is through the use of fabric covered walls with headboards and curtains all in the same pattern. It’s daring, it’s expensive, and it’s cozy. It feels southern and sophisticated, and I am always left scratching my head about who was charged with the responsibility of figuring out how to make the headboard match up exactly with the wallcovering – mathematicians they must be.

There are many more predictions than the few I have chosen specifically for you. Some will peter out quickly and others will prove they can last beyond the calendar year, but I hope this gets you started thinking and exploring. Isn’t design deliciously fun?

Part I: Writing. It is as pervasive a part of my life as sleeping and my morning coffee routine. I’m nearly always doing it. You are probably too. The little notes on the yellow squares stuck to the refrigerator reminding you to buy milk or pick-up the dry cleaning or some such banal domestic necessity. LinkedIn posts, Instagram, though not Facebook or Twitter – if either of those aren’t obvious you can DM me and I’ll explain in agonizing length my reasoning. My name must be penned on countless documents daily, though perhaps that’s an over exaggeration. I could count them if that was something I was inclined to do. I am more a stater of numbers than a counter of them. Then there are the blog posts like this one, and of course the writing, or writing again of that blessed book of mine. I am not cursing it. I do in fact believe that it will give blessed voice to this wealth building issue in the timeliness of times when rights are diminishing instead of getting heavy with possibility.

Writing – my year has been a blur of letters dancing on and off the page, a mosh pit of violent activity when I am begging them to perform a waltz. Such is the life of a writer awaiting the one perfect en pointe, the words dancing in balance. Grace, grit and sophistication forming a paragraph nothing short of reverent, the final footfall the exclamation point that keeps you practicing the art.

Part II: Reading. One cannot expect to be a good writer if one is not a good reader. Some of the most successful writers say so, and while I hadn’t given it much thought before “they” made mention of it, I have mostly enjoyed reading except when I didn’t. That is to say before I wrangled my dyslexic brain into subservience and before I gave up trying to hold my head perfectly still and let my eyes do all the work – before then, and when I was forced albeit unsuccessfully to read about military warfare for my political science coursework – a real snoozer that I never got through and almost prevented me from graduating. Thankfully between, Peter my Super Salad co-working and Foreign Relations Graduate student, and the active duty Army Infantry Officer that also served as a Bartender, pouring me hard cider’s, post shift, at Conran’s while imparting his real war experiences, I graduated. Aside from that I have enjoyed reading for pleasure and edification and I offer these books as some of my favorite of this past year.

Part III: Travel. I pack a suitcase as often as a mother packs lunches for her kids during a school year. Between house flipping, visits to the Cape and jaunts to visit friends or rendez-vous in European destinations, I travel – a lot. The first half of my year kept me closer to home as “home” was more temporary. The Troy had its conveniences which I have grown to appreciate in real time. Among them, parking on the roof of the building. The spot is always there, waiting for me, no matter the time of my return, which is a very nice feature of a place. Second, I could throw out the trash, just three doors down from my unit, whenever I wanted. I did not have to wait for a designated day or two to dispose of it. I love throwing things away so this feature of high-rise living is lovely. The Butterfly App which granted access to the package room offered its own series of delights that I will miss, but I’m a mover on’er and having secured my next condo – No. 6 if you are keeping track, I left the Troy behind for a third floor walk-up on Shawmut Ave, and though I have been too busy to do a thing to the place, in truth it didn’t need much doing. Of course that won’t stop me, I’m hardwired for change.

In June I flew to France to visit friends and film a documentary – well I didn’t film it, I was the talent, though I am not sure how much talent was required to eat and drink in the home that Julia Child built with her husband Paul built in Chateauneuf – Grasse but I can assure you I enjoyed it even if it was a bit painful to watch it play out on the tv screen. Twice I ferried to my favorite island for sun, sea and shopping. I ate my way through Charleston and walked my way across Amsterdam and London. I washed my clothes between visits but they largely lived in my suitcases which never got put away.

I think for the first quarter of 2023 I will stay put, plant a seed in my new place and see if I can grow a fragile root. As a writer, I feel like I absolutely have to pick a word for the year, but one word seems so limiting. I’m considering the mundane – there is beauty in a simple word like Pond or Frog, why couldn’t one of those be my word? Any who, this is good-bye to twenty-two. It was a very good year for me, and I hope it was for you too.

If it’s going to be frightful, at the very least I could make an attempt to transform the interior into something delightful. Like an old barn that is made magically special with a singular string of fairy lights, or maybe two, my yet to be started apartment, could certainly benefit from a sprig of holly and some evergreen. I can’t let the Instagram holiday decorating denizens defeat me before I even pull out my tree stand.

You know it isn’t real right? Like the wild wonky mirrors inside the circus tent that turn you into a thistle thin reed blowing in the tall grass or a plump peach of a pretty little girl that prefers playing with Barbie’s to riding her bike, it’s make believe. Try anyway. Perfection is overrated, and nobody worth their salt ever let a camera filter get in the way of a fun afternoon.

Insta is aspirational, inspirational, infuriatingly fake perfection that I am going to attempt to copy. Armed with handfuls of Command Hooks, spools of twine and thin green wire. I’m not afraid to pull out the hot glue gun and the duct tape too if it comes to that, nor should you be afraid. If you were a paid influencer with a slue of Martha Steward minions – the likes of which hailed from her eponymous Mag, that would be one thing. The creation of an entire town cut out of gingerbread and piped with icing, sprinkled with crystalized sugar and presented in under an hour, commercials included, would be de rigueur. Me, I would leave my kitchen looking like a flour bomb went off, a dilapidated house held together by string, a few tall candy canes shoring it up, and a large glass of wine in hand. My consolation prize for the effort.

While I suspect my merry making might have a similar outcome it feels worth the effort. I’ll turn on the tv to White Christmas, I really adore that leopard pill box hat and poof that Vera Ellen dons for her arrival in Vermont, and create my own original decorations. Just as I might not be able to create the much adored designs I’ll find on-line or hung from the chimney’s of every retail store from Madison Avenue to Bond, they will not likely be able to replicate mine. It only seems fair. Now for the merry-making.

The phone was pressed to my ear, its battery life letting itself be known in the hot thudding pulse that radiated through the cartilage and the soft tissue cage designed to capture sound, but today most notably was holding my fear and shame.  How could I have embarked on such a big journey, such an adult undertaking, advanced in my years and yet still entirely unprepared. How had I had not known this thing.  My face started to burn, waves of frustration rippling through my chest, tears pricking the fleshy corners of my eyes.  I pinched my nose hard. 

“Are you listening to me Sarah, asked?”  “This kind of thing happens all the time.” 

“Was I supposed to know that?”  I asked angrily, though the anger was at myself, not this smart, efficient no-nonsense woman.  My attorney. 

“Of course not”, she replied.  “You don’t know until you know.”  “You might have gone two or three transactions before stumbling across a Certificate D, as you bought and sold, and searched and renovated.”  “I didn’t even start to see this until as recently as last year and I do dozens of transactions every month.”

“ohhhh” I replied feeling just a little bit better than I had when the conversation started. 

I didn’t know when I was confronted with the uncomfortable reality that my fire escapes had not passed inspection and would require an expensive overhaul.  I was aware that condominiums were all about communal living.  That we owned the air inside our space, but not much more, and that decisions regarding repairs required the collective approval of the other owners within the building.  Laws are laws.  I understood that, but over the years I would be confronted again and again with some sort of a nuance, a new regulation, a new certificate, a difficult party that held a disproportionately large percentage of the building’s ownership and thus could swing a vote in one direction or another.

These blind spots exist everywhere, but then I turn a corner, have something explained to me by one of my team of experts, or a friend that wants to help, and it becomes crystal clear.  I’ll never round that corner again and be surprised by what awaits.  There will be other corners of course, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get in your car and start driving.  The lessons that we learn in real time are the stickiest. 

In this weekend of Thanksgiving I am so grateful to all the brokers, builders, designers, vendors, agents and lawyers that have taught me some aspect of homeownership.  Schoolhouse Rock used to espouse the belief that “knowledge is power”, and while I don’t disagree with that, I think knowledge is freedom.  Every bit of wisdom I am able to tuck away gives me a little more agency in this world.  My map becomes full of stop signs, and routes, crossroads and bridges to new worlds.  Don’t let a little thing like not knowing something stand it the way of your path forward.  One step at a time.  I am happy to help and so are countless others.  I am grateful for that.

I’m not looking for a formula. I’m searching for fantastical. I want magic, I want to surprise myself when all is said and done, but these days I am doing a lot more saying than doing. Sometimes you just have to start. I thought the purchase of the table was a good start, and I suppose it was, but since it hasn’t arrived yet, to bath me in the historical glow of ballroom dances and prearranged romances, country homes and noble tombs, it isn’t inspiring me. I may only be able to capture the smallest of snapshots from the fantasy. My table being of modest size it would have become friendly with, dare I say, hundreds of other fabulous furnishings in a single castle’s room. Still it would have been admired by the curious discerning sort that would certainly have been invited to dinner. In its absence I am forced to focus my attention on that blessed fireplace.

Blyth Collins Interiors

I have decided to keep it. Even if it costs me precious square feet, and it does, and it’ll cost me even more when I am forced to build out on either side of her expanse to make her not appear as expansive as she is. It sounds contradictory, but I can assure you, once I’ve added to the girth by building that cabinetry – say a foot back from the mantle (aka – the entire encased gas box) it will feel a little bit more like it belongs. Perhaps I do it a second time too, another foot – I have it don’t you worry, gradually blending it into the wall, maybe even running shallow storage along its expanse. It’ll cost me, but I consulted the powers that be and they were addiment. “Do not remove that fire place” they said. One even screamed “NO”. People love fire, and they were fired up over the thought of it’s removal, so I stepped back from it. The subject was too heated if you get my drift.

I did receive a single affirmation regarding my decision to lob off the kitchen island’s overhang. When I say lob, I really mean surgically remove it, with the help of a professional stone cutter so that it is a normal sized top. This will help some, providing a three foot runway behind any furnishings designated for the living room area. I’ve spent a good deal of my life shimming by one piece of furniture or another and because I don’t move slowly unless I’ve been recently hospitalized, I bump into things. I bruise terribly, though the furniture seems fine, it would be nice to have some clearance, while still having a place to sit.

I’m going to paint the kitchen cabinets green. I can’t believe I am writing it for the entire world to see. I’ve never painted anything green – never. I feel strangely compelled to do it and so I am, and it will be moody because I plan to paint them in Farrow and Ball. The walls will be in the same color. I might keep the base white, but I might not. Progress. If we aren’t moving forward we’re falling behind, and I hate it when I can’t see the future, don’t you?

My lips parted and my mouth formed an “O” of surprise. If anyone noticed it was only to confirm that the others gathered in the bookstore/cafe were wearing a similar expression of reverence for the space. In an age when bookstores are disappearing at an alarming rate, only to be replaced by corrugated cardboard boxes adorned with a swooping blue arrow, the arrival of a new bookstore on Charles Street in Beacon Hill, where two others have shuttered their doors on this very street, feels optimistic to say the least.

Fortunately for me, I adore optimism. I encourage bravery. I live for a good restoration project, and I applaud business ingenuity. Melissa Ferret, if you happen upon this little blog of mine, I hope that you can imagine me, in your minds eye, bowing down to you. The same goes for you Cathy Kincaid Interiors.

The five story brownstone houses a cafe and wine bar on the terrace – not yet opened to the public. Permitting. That’s all I will say about that, but food aside, the setting made me long to be sitting in the serene blue and white subterranean dining room, accented by Nantucket Red trim, here and there, with an abundance of Sister Parish wallcoverings and fabric. The sister’s design aesthetic manages to be sophisticated yet fresh. It’s grown up whimsy. I’m planning a private event, for whom I have not yet determined, for what occasion? One will present itself to me, and if it takes too long, I’ll make one up.

You will find on each floor a lit fireplace. The narrow floorplates accented by floor to ceiling bookshelves, little nooks to hideaway and read, ample comfortable seating, natural light, and squirrels. Yes, there are squirrels everywhere. Which came first the Beacon Hill book about a squirrel or a building that happened to have a few in residence? If it sounds nutty, it is, but in a good way, and they run with analogy by placing an acorn on a book each day that the squirrel recommends to young readers. I love sugar so the concept isn’t too sweet for me, nor is the little train that rambles on the custom track that circumvents the perimeter of the room just below the ceiling, disappears from view as it enters a tunnel and makes its way back to you. Surprise and delight. Surprise and delight. Whoever came up with that idea, and the tiny little doors that lead from the children’s room to the hallway should be entered into the hall of fame for fabulous ideas.

Stop by for a visit at 71 Charles Street . Boston . MA. Be prepared to wait your turn to get in.

We took a boat cruise around the Charleston Harbor.  Being on the water for me is as ordinary as my morning coffee and as necessary.  It grounds me in a new place.  Allows me to gain perspective, to be an observer, to listen to the distinct inflection that comes with the colloquial delivery of one’s homeland.  In the case of Charleston it’s all about the “yaaaawl, usually followed by “have a good day”.  Those southerners are nothing if not polite. 

I adore exploring a new place through the observant eyes of a child.  The wonder of watching a formation of five pelicans swoop low across the water, followed by a pod of dolphins arching through the water had me squealing with glee at my very first sighting.  I’d be remiss in my reporting if I didn’t admit that I squealed when I saw the array of thousands of BMW’s ready to board container ships and cross one ocean then another on the Atlantic Route to Japan.  Who knew we manufactured BMW’s in Charleston?  Needing a new car and lamenting the chip shortage that is limiting my options, I considered hopping off to broker a deal.  Would they really miss one less car?

No wonder the antiquing is so fabulous, two days from France to the 6^th largest port by volume in the U.S. equals fantastic and affordable furnishings from the 19^th century, and by the way when you buy there and ship home you don’t pay any tax.  Did your heart just skip a beat like mine?  I not only found one dining table for my new home which largely unlocked the key to the layout I was troubling over these past few months, but two!  One English Loo Table with incredibly marquetry, and a second French Regency with a dolphin base to die for. 

A town that survives on tourism is bound to have good food.  My dear southern friend mapped out a culinary experience for us girls that would make a star-studded Michelin Chef smile with supreme satisfaction.  The Caviar Experience at the Zero George was magical. The candle-lit veranda was aglow in fairytale light.  The bar tucked at the end of the porch a jungle of tropical plantings lorded over by a King, known as both a purveyor of spirits, and the resident photographer – look for him in Travel + Leisure Magazine next month.  Young, polite, handsome Huck – yes, that was his name – Huck, don’t you just want to keep saying it?, served us Osetra in silver domed glass dishes, accompanied by split soft boiled eggs their golden yokes puddling on the plate, brioche toast, ramekins of crème fraiche, and chive, and salty potato chips.  You won’t believe me when I tell you that the crab souffle that followed was even better, but it was. 

If you haven’t been to Charleston, get it on your list and include:  Frannie & the Fox at Hotel Emeline, Husk for the Chicken and Waffles, Leon’s Oyster Shop for the Buck Bay Blades, and Bar 167 for the Arroz con negro.  Go hungry, leave happy.

People are always saying you should “think outside the box”. Which aside from the fact that it feels as tired a saying as “let me unpack this for you”, or “the optics are bad”, the overuse of these metaphors are unimaginative, and imagination is the very reason we are implored to leave that corrugated cardboard vessel in the first place.

I am not living in a box, though the developer left the space decidedly without detail. I did read in some design magazine about a group of architects that got edgy when they conceived of a home erected from storage containers, one stacked atop another. If the box requires a rebar ladder to climb into bed at the end of a long day, it’s not for me. The trouble with thinking broadly, differently, expansively, is that despite all the proclamations cast about in pursuit of a panoply of possibilities, people largely want something on the fringe. They don’t for instance want you to place you bed in the middle of the living room next to the kitchen island because that room has better light, or less light, or its proximity to the coffee machine suits your morning routine. The bed belongs in the bedroom, the sofa and chairs in the space designated for living. In keeping with the box analogy, it might be best to just pop open the flap and let some fresh air and light in to shift your perspective.

That is precisely what I am trying to do with my new condo. It’s an inelegant process that can find me disassembling the components of the sectional sofa and dragging them around the living room to try out different layouts. None of them have been satisfactory to date. I’ve tried snuggled up close to the fireplace for intimacy. Pushed back against the wall in the L-Shaped nook that looks like it was made for a sectional, but that I want desperately to place a custom-made banquette and circular Regency dining table. Aside from the fact that the chaise is oriented on the right side instead of the left, if all feels wrong.

I’ve tried it in the bow front window, but am disturbed by the half moon gap left between it and the windows. Considered a modern crescent shaped sofa, and another that was highbacked – a diver sprung from the board beginning to form a jack-knife. None of it feels quite right. I’m going to continue to stew over the layout for a while longer, but I can’t be held responsible for having resorted to tearing out the kitchen island, stripping it of its waterfall marble, and relocating it a foot deeper into the space designated for cooking. I rarely cook in the city. It’ll be fine.

Suggestions welcome. Please feel free to open the flaps of the box wide, and provide me with a proper desk, sitting and dining area.