the blog

Many, many years ago when Tripp was about two, I got a spontaneous idea which isn’t really my jam (pun intended.) I was sitting at work at the “cube farm” on a beautiful late spring day knowing that out there somewhere the most perfect strawberries were ripe for the picking.   I called my mama and asked her if she would make sure Tripp was ready to go as soon as I got home because we were going strawberry picking that very afternoon! This is when he basically lived off fruit so I knew he would love being in the field...

As a self proclaimed Bird Nerd, I do love a barn swallow… their beautiful colors and forked tail, how fast they can fly, the fact alone that they eat mosquitoes makes them priceless but I draw the line at them making their mud nests on my porches!  They have tried to take over the front porch for years and we can pretty easily block them there but this year they decided the back porch curtain rod was a great place to land and start constructing a mud nest. They don’t care about the ceiling fan, they watch you open the...

Once upon a time, a sweet friend gifted me a jar of fresh strawberry freezer jam and changed my life forever. Somehow, I had only been exposed to store bought strawberry jellies and jams and as much as I love strawberries, those just never worked for me. Grape jelly only on my PB&Js please and thank you.  But real strawberry jam… talk about a delicacy. There is just nothing like it. It really is the closest thing to getting a fresh picked berry in the dead of winter.  Truth me told, I’m a bit intimidated by “canning.” I have goals...

The key to truly loving your home is not in the right color, furniture, square footage or anything like that. Those things matter. Just like “design rules” are rules for a reason. They all absolutely contribute to how our homes look, feel and function. BUT if you want to truly love your home, the key every time is making sure it is meeting your needs. That will look different for each and every one of us. It might look different in our own homes in different seasons. The bottom line is our homes should evolve with us and for us.  And...

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...