the blog

I once read that you know you’re a designer if you have art stacked against your walls  in various places in your home. I think I took this as a badge of honor but maybe also a license to hoard the art and not hang it. You now know how I had lots of art packed away that MADE the library, but I should also tell you about the stacks of frames and various not so precious artwork in the garage and in my office. Some are pieces I found great deals on that I will use somewhere, some will...

We could also subtitle this “A Failed DIY Redeemed” or even “The World’s Longest Project” or possibly “When Things Finally Go Right” but let’s back way up first….  My grandmother was a “collector” of just about everything. We’ll leave it at that for today but when she passed away there was a lot of her “collection” that needed a new home. You also need to know that my grandfather was the biggest giver of all time so if you voiced anything positively about something he would immediately say “take it with you!” no matter how big or small it was....

I’ve sat down and started to wrap up the story of this library too many times to count. I literally have written thousands of words about the process and never hit publish on most of them. I’m having trouble sharing it for some reason and I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because it’s a hard space to photograph and get the feel of it totally. Or that no rooms in my house are ever really “finished.” Or maybe I’m not over how it fought me so hard on many levels. Or maybe it’s difficult to tell the story about how this...

It is a daily struggle to keep our kitchen clean. I'm a messy cook by nature but we also eat most meals at home and I make most things from scratch so you know that means our sink works overtime. There are days when I clean in out just to start over but all this means I sure do appreciate a clean sink when I can get it.  I've used about every "sink scrub" out there and they're all fine. I would say most are effective but the scents are either limited or down right offensive or they're over all...

I have used just about every cleaner ever made… all the smells, all the chemicals, all the “not chemicals.” I cleaned as a job. In college, I even had the most random job of supervising the dorm bathroom cleaners which once meant going to Walmart and literally purchasing just about every cleaning product available (using a university owned credit card!)  to see what could best purify and sanitize the nasty shared dorm showers. All this to say: while my house is never quite spotless, I know a few things about cleaners.  I am still just as enamored with my beloved...