When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 3 of 3

After a year of decorating with wild, passionate abandon, and a year of ultra conservative "I'm just going to have such a spotless house all the cockroaches will starve" home, I learned a few things.

Design is a process. Don't be afraid to start the process, just because you won't be in the same house five years from now. Chances are, even if you were in the same house your style, skill level, and resources would change so much in five years you'd have a "new" house anyway. Don't deprive yourself of joy today for fear of leaving tomorrow. If that joy is simply cutting out paper hearts and taping them to the door, so be it! But let yourself create!

Design has seasons. Sometimes it's time to design, and sometimes it's not. It's that simple. Money is short, or stress is high, it's just not time. Let that be okay. I do recommend always keeping things tidy and organized and maintaining your dream notebook.

True passion can not be stopped. Keep your dream alive, if you don't have money for a headboard find pictures of the headboard of your dreams and get a mason jar to fill with left over grocery money till you can buy it. If you don't have left over grocery money, paint a headboard on your wall, pin the picture of the headboard above your bed, start a dream notebook, don't let anything stop you. You can always create on some level, even if it's not the grand level of putting the actual room together, just yet.

If it's not yours, tend it, don't mend it. Everyone warned me not to put money into that condo we rented, but I couldn't hear them yet. That's life, sometimes we have to get burned to know the stove is hot. While I do think it is important to be an honest and respectful tenant of the landlord's property, it is ultimately their property and it is not your job to put any money into repairs or improvements unless you really want to. I recommend saving that money for your own house. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that now, but I probably wouldn't have listened. Oh well. Life goes on!

Create a vision and dream notebook. I have an entire blog entry about this here. Keep it updated, keep working on it, keep the dream alive. You will feel like you are moving forward even if you aren't making any physical changes to your space yet.

Plan to take it with you. Invest in things you can take with you. As you get clear in your dream notebook you will create a vision for your dream home, so when you make purchases you know you are moving in the right direction. My favorite investment in something I can take with me, is my beautiful headboard and custom bedding. My bed will never change where ever I live. Curtains and even furniture might depending on window sizes and house layouts. But knowing I have a beautiful bed to set up wherever we go is always a comfort to me.

I hope that my stories and insights are helpful to you as you find that balance as a tenant and home maker, while you rent. Just don't give up! That is my best counsel, don't get discouraged, even now you are building your dream home and as you create and hone your talents and vision you are preparing to make that home into something truly wonderful for you and your family.

When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 2 of 3

Not only am I a renter, I am a Navy wife. So we move. A lot. A year after I poured my heart, soul, time, energy and money into that beautiful little Monterey Condo, we left. We handed our keys over to a VERY happy landlord and we said goodbye forever. That was heart breaking.

When we got to Goose Creek, South Carolina things were different then our honeymoon year in Monterey. Again we were renting, an old, stinky, oddly designed, cold, military house on base. I had a brand new baby. And Josh was going to Nuclear Power School. You should feel happy to know that the United States military has the most difficult Nuclear power program to get through, in the WORLD. To say my husband was stressed this year is kind of an understatement, but he got through it. I think some of that stress translated into my design work though....

This was our master bedroom.

It looked like that the entire year we lived there. I didn't even buy a bedspread. This was the quilt from my bedroom while I lived at home before I got married. I kept the house very clean, and I did my best to make it pretty. Okay, not my BEST. Sometimes I just settled for "functional". These were the only curtains we had in the house.

This too, was in the master bedroom. Here's me being real, sometimes the best you can muster are towels to block the light in your bedroom because your husband has to sleep all day so he can work all night. Sometimes, it is simply enough to keep your house clean and functional. To make dinner every night and be there with open arms when your husband is going through something tough. We quickly realized that unless we wanted to acquire some serious debt, we needed to stop the frivolous budget free ways of spending we lived in Monterey. So we really hunkered down this year and saved. I didn't spend any money on decorating. I bought a few things we needed, used, and my amazing mother in law bought us a king sized bed, but other than that this was a simple year for us. And it was okay that way. I did things like, cover our bedroom door with paper flowers and hung scrapbook pages on the wall to brighten my craft room!

If you really want to create, nothing can stop you but yourself. This is where I came up with the Dream Design Notebook idea and started working on it! Ultimately, I learned a few things from these wonderful homes and life experiences. 

Which you can read about in part three of this series tomorrow!

When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 1 of 3

When I got married, I was over the moon ecstatic! Anyone who knew me could tell you I lived on cloud 9, Heck, I OWNED cloud 9! I was marrying my best friend and love of my life. He was everything and more than I'd ever dreamed of in a man. We were moving to not only, sunny California, but Monterey California,  the most wonderful place to live in the world. My life was a fairy tale come true in every way. We rented a ridiculously overpriced condo, that needed some work, and I got right to it. To me, improving the space even though it wasn't mine made complete sense in my newly married brain filled with cloud nine cotton candy goodness. Every person that came to visit our one bedroom 1960's love nest, said the same thing, "Wow! This does NOT look like a newly wed apartment! This is gorgeous!"

That's right I thought. That's just how I roll.

I repainted....The walls. The ceiling. The doors. The trim. I replaced all the hardware on the doors and lighting. We even helped pay to have the kitchen redone because I couldn't stand not having any drawers that opened. I bought furniture and bedding and curtains....and the rather impressive nest egg my husband brought into our marriage got fried up and served for dinner at our new kitchen table. We inhaled that delicious little egg.

Oh, but look how blissful I am! Painting my landlord's door...(To add to the absolute bliss I got pregnant a month after we got married so now we can throw some oxytocin into the mix along with sleeping every night with prince charming, so who WOULD'T smile because they were painting. (With non-voc paint of course. We can't blame fumes on anything here!)

The reason I am sharing this is that a lot of time, when people rent they feel restrained. The property is not theirs and so they hold back, thinking making improvements is not going to help their pocket book and they have to leave anyway, so what's the point?

The point is, you have to live there. I'm a firm believer in creating a beautiful home wherever you are, whoever owns the home. The immediate blessing is the joy of creating and nurturing your creativity. You will also gain important skills and experience that will be a benefit to you when you DO have a home of your own. It will also help you form very solid ideas of what you like. Life really is too short to deprive yourself of beautiful surroundings just because someone else owns it, and remember you are the steward. Just as God put us on this earth and made us the stewards of it, we are also stewards of the dwellings we inhabit. While I  believe and strive to live this, I think there is a balance. 

There is a part two, to my high in the sky eating love pie story, and it is well worth the read in our quest to understand where we stand as renters. See you tomorrow!

Go Make Your Bed!

One of the fastest ways to make your bedroom look more appealing is to make the bed. Consider the fact that the majority of the floor space in your room is taken up by the bed. If the bed is a mess, most of your room appears messy, if it is tidy and neat your room will instantly feel more in order.

If making the bed is not already a daily habit for you, try creating a link to the activity that you find rewarding. Turn on your favorite music while you make the bed, or after the chore is done reward yourself by reading a favorite page out of a book, your scriptures or take the time to meditate and pray. These are all wonderful ways to start the morning anyway.

If you really want to make it special, do something out of the ordinary, spray your favorite perfume between the sheets. Wash your sheets with a few drops of your favorite essential oil. Place a rose on the pillow, sprinkle rose petals on the blanket, make a special award or gift to place on the pillow for your spouse or top the pillow with a mint, or chocolate. Making your bed special will make you feel special. You spend half your life in your bed let that part of your life be a delight!

Create A Dream Design Notebook

Design is a process and requires clear vision. We are bombarded with options and styles, this is both wonderful and overwhelming. If you don't have a clear vision of what you want you will not be happy with your efforts. I suggest beginning your journey with a dream design notebook, to hold all of your inspiration.

I use a beautiful 12X12 scrapbook. The pages are bigger and give me more room to spread out. My book started with a journal entry that simply talked about how my dream house felt. I didn't even mention color, fabric or style. I wanted to understand the mood. I thought I would start with an entire dream house but this quickly became too big and overwhelming. As I worked the book naturally narrowed down to my dream master bedroom. This allowed me to really focus. Consider these elements when assembling your own book.

• Start with a single room you are passionate about, master bedroom and bath, or a kitchen or family room. You will be able to fill a book dreaming up one room.

• Find a fabric you love and work within the colors of that material, if you struggle to find a fabric you start gathering samples of fabrics you like. As you gather many of these one may soon stand out as a very favorite.

• Journal out the mood you are trying to create, consider the activities that will take place in that room. Mood and Function are always the first things to determine when creating a space.

• Be sure and include poetry or lines from your favorite song, scriptures or favorite quotes, anything that reflects the mood you are seeking to create. 

• Gather tangible pictures you can cut and paste into your book. Pintrest is lovely, but there is nothing like scouring through magazines and cutting out pictures then pasting them into a book you can hold in your hands as you sit on your couch and turn each lovingly made page. It's also fun to share with good friends.

• Include descriptions and pictures of as many aspects of the room as possible, including accessories and even the type of music you would play or scents wafting through the air. 

• Be ready for your ideas to change, the beauty of this notebook is that your ideas will evolve, and you get to make mistakes and find out what works on paper first, without busting the bank!

Have fun and take your time, this is a project to enjoy! My dream master bedroom notebook has expanded into two books and I've been working on them for the last four years! It has been a delight for me to create these books and has helped me develop my style immensely. I hope your book will give the same to you!

Master Bedroom Part 2 of 2

In my last entry I talked about the approach of decorating a master bedroom to reflect a more feminine side. In this entry we'll discuss the merits of a more balanced approach in decorating a master bedroom.

Creating a bedroom that unifies both masculine and feminine is a beautiful way to honor each partner and their taste. The idea is to create a space both people feel totally comfortable in. Where as in a more feminine room the spirit of the room invites a man to enter, in a combined room both sides are equally represented.

The most difficult part of creating such a room is in the communication and compromise when it comes to style. It's really important for each of you to take the time to search through magazines and choose pictures you each love to use for discussion and reference. As the two of  you gather more and more photos you will begin to notice patterns in the examples. For instance, I have been gathering pictures of beds I love for many years. One day I lined them all up and looked at the collection as a whole, I noticed that a certain canopy treatment showed up multiple times, and when it wasn't featured one very similar to it was. Now I know exactly the type of canopy my dream bed has, because I had already chosen it multiple times from various sources. You will see patterns like this too.

Here are a few patterns to look for:

Color are you repeatedly choosing warm colors or cool? Black and white with a hit of one color, or multiple colors? Do your colors have a more naturalistic feel with lots of browns, greens and other earth tones? Are your colors bright or subdued? Do you see a lot of white in your pictures? What are your favorite colors to wear, often this is a color you are very comfortable with.

Textures are you seeing a lot of soft, fuzzy, furry textures in your pictures, or finishes that are harder, sleeker and clean? Texture applies to carpets and fabrics, even the plants you are drawn to. Think of a lacy delicate palm versus a wider leaf plant.

Style do you see a more tailored, finished look showing up over and over or a more layered, relaxed look?

Patterns Stripes, flowers, geometric, solids, or a collection of all of these?

Lighting are the spaces you admire bright and cheery, or dim and romantic?

Groupings what is the accessorizing like in the pictures you've chosen? What are table tops like in your pictures, are there candles, flowers and a well loved book perched just at arms reach or are the table tops simply featuring a simple lamp? Are there collections to look at, or is the room very sparse?

Paintings and artwork are there people in your paintings, animals, landscapes, abstract or graphic art? Or are you drawn to sculpture?

The more pictures you each gather the more clear your tastes will become. You will begin to notice these reoccurring patterns everywhere if you look. As you gather these pictures I highly recommend you don't analyze them in the magazine. If you mind says "yes" tear it out if it (even if that yes surprised you at first) if it says "no" just pass it, move quickly, your initial gut response is what you want to be listening too. You won't second guess yourself this way and you'll get a lot more information.

The first year Josh and I were married I felt a great desire to unify our tastes and create a master bedroom that reflected both of us. I chose a leather finished headboard, and matching chairs. I used clean lines and a tailored finish on the bed skirt. The blankets were brown and white and were quilted with subtle geometric patterns. The inspiration fabric was brown and teal, colors we both loved, the fabric featured lovely intertwining, swirling tropical flowers. I hung vintage looking tropical flower paintings on the wall, as a nod to our honeymoon in Maui, and hung long flowing curtains. The table tops were kept very clean with simple black and white engagement and wedding photos. It was a beautiful marriage of our tastes and we both loved it.

When we moved from our California abode to Washington I changed everything. Josh was deploying a lot and I felt a need to create a space that truly supported me while he was away. I wanted a romantic space that felt like an extension of me so that whenever he returned home from a deployment or a long day at work he felt entirely encompassed by my embrace, I wanted that embrace to extend into the very room he walked into.

Both approaches were just right for us at the time I chose to implement them. Josh has loved me in a master bedroom designed to reflect each of us equally and he's loved me in a room that I created to be an extension of myself. We have both been very happy in each space. Whatever approach you choose for your marriage at this time is just right for you.

How have you found ways to incorporate differing personalities in your master bedroom room?

Master Bedrooms Part 1 of 2

There are two very distinct ideas for the decor of master bedrooms, one idea is to create the room as a feminine reflection of her, the other is to meld the tastes of both partners to reflect the couple as a unit. I think both ideas are wonderful and it really depends on the personality of the clients. Trends right now are really in favor of creating a master bedroom incorporating the tastes of both people in a relationship. I do of course, have a preference (everyone does). As long as your spouse is in agreement with the plan, I really feel either approach can be implemented beautifully and successfully.

In my own home, I lean toward creating a master bedroom for her (me). So this entry will illustrate the merits of this approach. Later I will write an entry discussing the strengths of a melded master bedroom approach.

The personalities of my husband and myself really lend themselves to a master bedroom with a focus on the feminine. Josh simply loves to see me happy, and I felt very strongly that I wanted a master bedroom that truly reflected me and my idea of romance, so he handed me the reigns and said "Make it into something that turns you on." This works nicely for both of us.

The nature of romance requires a degree of invitation and surrender. By creating a room that is an extension of myself, my personality, my perception of romance, my creative expression, I am building a world I can invite my husband into. To me, this is the ballroom where we invite each other to dance. This room is such a reflection of me I feel completely comfortable and content here. In my eyes my master bedroom is the epitome of romance. And in Josh's high stress world of work, with all it's deployments, refits, deadlines, and long hours, coming home to a room that is soft and warm is always a welcome retreat. It's as if the bedroom is as eager to embrace him as his wife. And, because I am so completely happy with the space, he is happy!

Have a conversation with your spouse about the approach you feel would work best in your relationship.
The master suite is the most important room of the house and can potentially be one of the greatest sanctuaries and retreats in your marriage.

How have you found a way to create a master bedroom both you and your spouse love?