not your mother's accent wall

remember this brad ford-designed screened porch at the hampton designer showhouse? one of the things i loved about it (and that everyone else who trekked out to watermill loved too) was the strung porcelain cones that covered one of the walls.

so i think it was the memory of that screened porch that made west elm's hanging wood strands jump out at me. while i previously might have liked them but wondered what i'd do with them, now i know. i'd hang many of them all along a wall and enjoy the view.


photos from www.materialgirlsblog.com and www.westelm.com

bright ideas

are you feeling like you need a break from all things holiday? i sort of am. not a long break - just a few moments. so let's take a few moments together...

in my endless web exploration, i found a slideshow of the georgia idea house on the southern living website. i love looking at idea houses (or slideshows of them) because it's a great perspective from which to see a house - you get to see the whole thing and understand the flow of ideas from one room to another, rather than just seeing isolated photos the way we often do in feature articles.

it can be very inspiring to look at homes this way, because even if it's not your style, there is always something that can be gleaned, something that resonates as it pertains to your own home and your own life, even if that means, for now, it's in your mind as part of your future dream home. it's important to keep our files fresh and idea houses give me lots of mental tear-sheets. here are some highlights of this one.

decorated by mallory mathison, this house is very traditional in the most lovely, pottery barn-esque of ways. while it's not oozing with personality, i find most of it very calming and neutral in a nice way. there's something about it that feels modern and fresh, even though it is definitely timeless, and in some areas, even a tad old-fashioned. i think what makes it feel modern is that you can see how functional it is for today's world and it's sometimes bold in its mixing of materials and finishes.

i love the way the kitchen blends wood finishes - a weathered blue-gray stain on the cabinetry, blonde wood accents and a dark wood floor manage to look at home together, and i think the well-used carerra marble, clean white paint and the punchy red prints make it so. also, love the table lamp on the counter every time i see it done.

there's also an abundance of counter space, including highly functional islands, one mobile and a few stationery. favorite thing ever? outlets on every leg of the main island! how smart?

just outside the kitchen and carefully tied in through the use of reds, i really like the dining room and how airy but comfortable it feels. and i adore the red-lacquered bamboo chairs and how they punch up a very traditional space.

i'm liking the idea of built-ins in a dining room - solves the whole "where do we put all the dishes" problem and doesn't visually or spatially interrupt the room the way even the nicest furniture can. and i love how here, the interiors of the cabinets tie in the red.

i'm kind of obsessed with the idea of a multipurpose room. i think most of us have a "multipurpose room" otherwise known as "kitchen" or "guest room" or "foyer" -- where everything is dumped. wouldn't it be nice to have a dedicated space for all your projects? wrapping, listing, organizing, entertaining...like a nerve center for all the good stuff. and this one has a sink, which makes it really functional - you could do all your planting and cutting and flower arranging here too!

the master bath is another space where mathison used a mix of woods and i think it looks stunning. first, i'm sort of loving the thought of wood floors in a bathroom. second, i love how they look with the moody blue-gray walls and the white trim and cabinetry. check out the vanity area too off to the right - love!

and i love the idea of graphic wallpapers used in certain spaces. they can really change the feeling of a space and give it a wrapped feeling, which i think is perfect for hallways, special corners and bedrooms. it creates a cocoon of beauty and i think it's used beautifully in both these pictures -- very glam in the entryway, and dreamy and gossamer in the guest room.

wouldn't you love to be a guest in this room?

i think it's very interesting to look through your tear-sheets, whether they're in your head, on your hard drive, in folders in your kitchen...and see the patterns in the things you gravitate to. for me, they definitely change over time and this slideshow underscored a few things i'm loving right now, providing some context for my thoughts. it's also cool because you can see motifs and styles used in very different ways. for example...

i responded so strongly to the dark floors in the georgia house, and i knew i'd bookmarked the look before, here from apartment therapy.

also, i've been very into the whole cutout look and the dining room chairs in the georgia house, while they're more bamboo-ish than others, feel similar to me. here are some other things in this genre i've been eyeing.

from west elm (here, here and here):



some of these mis-matched black lacquer dining chairs i blogged about a couple months ago touch on the style too:

and we've discussed my feelings about the ankara chair from crate and barrel:


i also love this chair from black and spiro:

and that brings me to the wallpaper theme that i loved in the georgia idea house and elsewhere.

a closer look, as seen on black and spiro:

and i remember adoring katie ridder's rooms at the hampton designer showhouse when i visited over the summer, and i mainly loved them because of their inspired use of whimsical wallpapers, particularly in small spaces, as shown here:


look at the wallpaper in this guest room at the nines hotel in portland,

and this fabulously wallpapered hallway i saw on the hgtv website:

ah, it's all just so gorgeous, isn't it? sometimes i wish i had ten homes to decorate. well, that was a nice diversion. i hope it was for you too. thanks for coming along!

the nines hotel picture from http://www.concierge.com/; all other pictures from linked sites

hampton designer showhouse: don't scale back

i think the most important lesson i took from my visit to the hampton designer showhouse was the lesson of scale, which is interesting because my conversation with jamie meares that same week also touched on the importance of scale.

the kitchen, designed by denise rinfret, was, to me, a true study in scale. because it was a large room with generous ceilings, "normal" size kitchen accessories and fixtures would have looked rinky-dink and silly compared with the rest of the space. so ms. rinfret clearly paid attention to that and chose things of ample height and stature. you can see it evidenced in these photos in the thickness of the countertop marble, the additional row of windows above the doors and windows, and the size of furniture in the breakfast-room portion of the room. additionally, the set of three varied-height candlesticks are much larger than most sets like that, and they work beautifully. the same is true for the three-tier serving tray, the glass shelves, even the footed porcelain bowl holding oversized moss balls was perfectly proportioned to the size of the room.

these choices showed an attention to detail that jumped out at me right away, and also made a strong impression on me about making choices that take into account everything about the space in which you're working. sometimes, no matter how much you love something, it just doesn't work where you're trying to use it, and i think it's important to see or hear that truth when it strikes.

the best example of this in my own home came not long after the designer showhouse visit, when i fell head over heels in love with the ps maskros chandelier from ikea. i wanted so, so badly for it to look interesting and fabulous in our dining room. it just didn't. if they had a smaller version of it, it would have been perfect. but they didn't, and it wasn't. so sad.

particularly sad because this is what it looked like in the box and mitchell still needed the use of his fingers after assembling all 160 pieces, hanging it, and then unhanging and disassembling it. thanks honey :)


first ikea photo from http://www.farm4.static.flickr.com/

hampton designer showhouse: have a seat

the first thing i saw and loved at this year's hampton designer showhouse was a room-length window seat along a full wall of the library designed by kristen mcginnis. (sorry for the blurry pictures, but they were the best i could get at that moment.) the room was all panelled in knotty pine, and the built-in window seat was no exception. i love that it spanned the entire length of the room and looked out to the very pretty front lawn of the house.

i think this is a great idea for a family room or great room, or maybe a large playroom - i can just picture a few people relaxing on it, each reading or looking out the window. i can see how it would easily become a favorite spot in a home, and one where someone looks forward to sitting each morning or evening. i know i would. it could be a good indoor replacement for my balcony when the weather is cold.

i also loved this golden tree stump table! in this room that was all warm wood tones and browns, the table sort of blended in but added a little bit of shine. but imagine the mega-wattage you'd get out of it in a room mostly done in white. or black for that matter. maybe with splashes of fuschia. oooh...picture it in front of this couch from my post on anna spiro's brilliant work with white and colors.

yes please.

anna spiro photo from www.blackandspiro.com.au

hampton designer showhouse: fabrics of a feather...

one of the best reasons to go to events like designer showhouses and other display opportunities is in keeping with why all new experiences are good - they open your eyes to another way of doing things, and expand your frame of reference in a variety of ways. in many cases, you're presented with ideas you might never have tried, or even seen tried. it reminds me of when my grandmother used to take me and molly shopping and we'd violently HATE something on the hanger, but she'd insist we try it on, saying "sometimes you don't know until you try."

one of the things i saw at the hampton designer showhouse that spoke to me was the use of fabric on different pieces of furniture within a room. i noticed this concept in a couple rooms, and i'm excited to direct you again to heather clawson's complete coverage of the robert stilin-designed living room, as well as the poolhouse by lillian august. you have to check out heather's poolhouse post - i could live forever in there (the house, not the post) - beautiful and muted, but livable and cozy too. tell me you don't want to crawl into that bed.

in the photos shown immediately below, from habitually chic, you can see how each of the chairs in this room were upholstered in a wonderfully soft, slate-colored woven fabric, and although there were a few different style chairs, they looked nice together, unified by the sameness in the fabric chosen.


here's another example, where the two couches facing each other in the poolhouse had different shapes, but the same buff linen upholstery. it definitely added to the heavenly serenity in that space.

i love that by using this approach, the room isn't overly coordinated, but still looks intentional - there's a calmness to it that i really related to upon seeing it, and i don't know that this specific thought about fabric would have occurred to me had i not been there to see it and respond to it.

a few days later, i was at homegoods and saw two chairs i really liked, and i immediately noted that the chairs were slightly different in shape, but that the frame details and the fabric were the same. if i were in the market for something like this right now, i'd go for these, and all because of a style i realized i like only by seeing it done in the showhouse.

an alternate way of using this approach would be to flip the equation and use identical or similar pieces of furniture as the sameness, and use different fabrics. looking at chairs online the other day, i came across the two below and found the look soothing in its sameness but electric in its variety. it's an interesting combination, for sure. in a certain type of room, though, they work, and it's largely because one of the elements (in this case, the chairs' frames) are the same, so it grounds the look.


i guess being opened up to new ideas and broadening one's sensibilities are reasons why it's worth paying the $30 admission to something like the hampton designer showhouse - because you take lessons and thoughts with you that can have a huge impact on your home for many years to come. my grandma was on to something -- you really don't know until you try.

exterior showhouse photo from http://www.hamptondesignershowhouse.com/; interior designer showhouse photos from www.habituallychic.blogspot.com; "cheery chairs" photos from www.lalalovely.blogspot.com

hampton designer showhouse: not your mother's screened in porch

the screened porch at the hampton designer showhouse, designed by brad ford, was definitely a highlight, and one of the most buzzed-about spaces both at the house and in all that has been written about the showhouse.

situated off the kitchen and breakfast room with an additional opening to the patio and pool, this room is a reimagining of a screened porch. no stodgy wicker furniture or musty upholstery here - ford took the relaxation factor of comfy couches and porch swings and hybridized them in this room that utilizes two loveseat swings suspended from the ceiling. add to that a fireplace and an installation of strung (i think porcelain) cones against the back wall, and you have a screened porch with an airy elegance that is fresh and nostalgic in the same breath. the lines of each piece are modern and the blend of pale neutrals is soothing.

as explained in heather clawson's post on habitually chic, ford was inspired by his childhood growing up in arkansas and he translated his notion of a traditional porch into something fresh and modern and...awesome. yesterday's porch swing became the suspended loveseats, while the standard windchimes have evolved into the cones. and when the wind blows, they actually do chime.

i think that's what i took away from brad ford's treatment of the room -- the idea of working within a space to reinvent something that resonates to you already, but in a fresh and modern way. i also think there's something really special about the idea of feeling the echoes of places you loved in the past in your current home. while the same elements might not work in your adult home that worked in a childhood home because styles and times are so different, i think it's great to be able to revisit fond memories by reenergizing that connection in a modern way.

do you have any examples of this reinvention concept in your own home? or do you have a concept you'd like to modernize but aren't sure how?

photos from www.materialgirlsblog.com

hampton designer showhouse: a trip to the near east

last weekend, i took a trip to the hampton designer showhouse with my sister and mother to see what there was to see. we had a nice drive out - luckily, no epic traffic on the LIE - and found easy parking on the quiet water mill street outside the showhouse.

as we approached the house, we admired the size and expanse of the front yard, and i envisioned aloud the types of parties i could host on a lawn like that. i pictured a billowy white tent, live cole porter music and a discreet waitstaff with platters of champagne cocktails and killer hors d'oevres.

so involved was i in my little hamptons fantasy, that it was particularly abrupt when i was ripped out of my daydream by a mysterious dripping on my leg. apparently my water bottle didn't get the memo about classing it up for the day and decided to open in my bag, dripping shamelessly all over the showhouse walk and me. back to the car i went to remove everything from my soaked bag and leave it in the car. slick.


it was all uphill after that, and dry, which was nice. there were several beautiful spaces, and for some great overall coverage of the rooms, you should check out posts on the showhouse at habitually chic, one of my favorite blogs, where heather clawson heather discusses most of the spaces in detail.

so much has already been written about the house, and because i'm not an expert on interior design, and because somehow we missed the entire second floor of the showhouse (due to very poor signage on their part and apparently very little curiosity on ours), i've decided that rather than reviewing the rooms, i'm going to write about several aspects of the house that stood out to me as examples of concepts i'd like to emulate in my own spaces and events. i hope they're useful to you too. stay tuned for a post each day this week highlighting one of those such concepts.

and close your water bottles tightly.

first photo from www.hamptondesignershowhouse.com