Finding your style, so that you can bring it to life.

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Before we moved I did a serious closet purge and got rid of most of my clothes. {honestly, I could still get rid of more} I would literally stand in front of the closet every morning and, feeling defeated and uninspired, I would literally say out loud with a sigh ~ I don’t know what to wear. Every day. Did I love anything in my closet? Do I even have a style? Probably not. It’s so easy in our closets and our houses to just amass a random collection of things over time that we often unintentionally end up living in…

An Ode to all the ‘Bad Girls’ and Rebels

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Sunday was the 98th anniversary of women winning the right to vote. Can you believe that? It’s hard to imagine not being able to vote… the more I think about it it’s hard to imagine not being able to do many things that women haven’t always been allowed to do. Work Own property Have my own bank account Wear pants That’s just a tiny few. It can really be such a big deal for us to have more of anything, ever. Sometimes just doing what you love is a supremely rebellious act. {Susan B. Anthony, a primary leader in the…

Design 101: Listening to the language of your house

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So how do you create a great design? There are many many rules of thumb and practical tips… and you can always pay lots of money to go and get a formal education to have all of the official answers for yourself… But maybe one of the most basic things that everyone should remember, and one of the most helpful, above {and before} everything else is to listen to the language of your house. What does that even mean anyway… A while back we helped a couple buy a mid 90’s frame house that was a contemporary style. Pretty clean lines,…

Recipe for a Spectacular Outdoor Space

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Happy Holiday week! Hopefully you have some time off this week to enjoy the summer weather and some good company. Maybe you’ve got a bbq on a great rooftop planned? We’re going to be heading out for a lazy rooftop morning on Wednesday before we head out to the suburbs to spend the afternoon celebrating with friends… Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about great outdoor space, mainly how much I miss it and want it! It’s been a long time since I’ve had anything close to amazing outdoor space and man, am I seriously longing for it lately. In Chicago…

The ‘in-between’ space, and how it’s turning out to be a blessing for our real estate search AND my purge!

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If you’re buying a house you might need an ‘in-between’ space. Maybe just for a few days, or maybe for a few months… Cue the panic. And the resistance. Noooooooooo!….. Often there is considerable stress about timing when it comes to real estate. People selling their houses are worried about being able to find something new, so they won’t put their house on the market until they’ve found ‘the one’. The trouble with that is that great spaces sell extremely quickly, and the market is competitive enough right now that most sellers also won’t accept a home sale contingency {that’s when…

Sofa Dreams

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Since we’re doing this sublet through the end of the year that means no big designing and no big furniture purchases for about nine more months, until we find our permanent place. But that hasn’t stopped me from becoming really pre-occupied with what sofa I want in our next living room. I haven’t even really started imagining too specifically what our next space will look like design-wise overall, because we want to be open to different types of spaces and buildings that could work as far as fixer-uppers. I think once we get moved into our immediate next space I’ll…

Brick & terra cotta ~ you’ve stolen my heart

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I love a good vintage space. And I love finishes that aren’t necessarily the ‘hottest’ or ‘trendiest’, but are beautiful, classic, timeless or even just unexpected but make a space really stand out. One thing I’ve been seeing pop up here and there a bit lately is brick and terra cotta flooring, and I’m in love. It’s not super trendy {and that’s one thing I love about it}, but it’s beautiful, and moreover, it’s timeless. So a house that has 40 year old {or more} brick or terra cotta flooring is suddenly in again, without changing a thing! I love…

Rethinking {upper} kitchen cabinets

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Would you ever go sans upper cabinets in your kitchen? Did you just think to yourself ~ what is this chick talking about?! But  really, think about it, it’s a string of boxes hanging on the wall, floating over that precious counter space… and those top shelves are always so hard to reach! You don’t see a lot of kitchens without upper cabinets, but I’m totally in love with this look and can’t wait to have a space that I can design this way. It might be a little tough to go this design route if you are tight on space, and using vertical…

Minimalist or Maximalist… style, my struggles with purging, and finding balance

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It’s super crazy at work these days and we are making {very} slow progress at home purging and combining our things while trying to keep miss Penny from jumping everywhere post knee surgery {we kind of stink at that}. Life these days is chaotic and messy but I’m {mostly} loving it. At first the purging of stuff was pretty easy, but I’ve hit a point where I’m starting to struggle with getting rid of things. Fear of regretting letting something go, feeling obligated to keep things just for sentimental reasons, or possibly needing it later… the list is long. I’ve…

I have no style… and it’s costing me.

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I wrote a while back that I was starting a big purge of my space… then I moved so it all got put on hold and much to my frustration I ended up packing and moving a lot of things I will end up getting rid of. But as I unpack the purging continues, one thing I’m thinking about a lot as I go through and unpack the seemingly endless pile of boxes is how much I don’t want to do this ever again! The one area of my space that I’m the most frustrated with is my closet. I don’t…