“The ache for home is in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”

~ Maya Angelou

It seems that in the fall I feel a greater need to nest…to make our home beautiful, cozy and inviting. I begin to pour over beautiful decor books and magazines and look at new fabric to cover or recover chairs and sofas! I want to light candles, make a big pot of soup that makes everything smell good!

Now, more than ever, it’s important to have a safe place where we can be sheltered from the world. Home means a sanctuary, a place where we can rest, relax, enjoy time with friends and family and just be ourselves. Our homes should be a reflection of who we are and what we think is important in life.

“Sacred Space is where you can find yourself again and again.” ~ Joseph Campbell

No one ever tells you how much of an adjustment it is when your children grow up and move out. It takes time to get used to being empty nesters and it’s often a time of unrest. I’m very thankful to have found blogging because it filled a void for me. My daughters had been my life and when my last daughter moved out, to say I felt devastated would be an understatement. While it’s fun to cover and recover furniture, pick out pretty wallpaper and buy fun accessories, home just isn’t the same when your children aren’t there. Adjusting is difficult, but eventually, we learn to create new lives and hopefully create something we can call our own. Baldy and I had finally began to figure things out (we’re a little slow sometimes) when quarantine happened. He traveled constantly and I was writing this blog and getting used to being alone quite a bit. All of a sudden…he was working from home, as was our daughter Rebecca, who lives in Boston.

I think we all will agree that 2020 has certainly brought its share of chaos and my day to day routine changed so much when quarantine started because of our daughter and Baldy being home all of the time. I started to feel overwhelmed with the extra responsibilities added to what I was already trying to do. I was cooking more and cleaning more and I felt that things were getting a little out of control everywhere, including inside the walls of our home. There were piles of laundry, the kitchen was always full of dirty dishes, we had a new puppy…it was crazy. However, looking back, home was exactly what it was supposed to be at the time. A place where we could find refuge from everything going on in the outside world and I’m so grateful that our daughter had us to come home to!

We call Amos our quarantine dog, because we got him right after quarantine started in early April. He is the best dog and has become an important part of our family! If it hadn’t been for quarantine, we wouldn’t have had the time to take care of him and I don’t think he would be as easy and wonderful if he hadn’t had so much attention when he was a little puppy! He has pretty much free rein in the house, with the exception of our new sofa. I just hope he knows that when we’re gone.

Amos makes himself right at home and loves to drag all of his toys to the front door so he can look out and play at the same time!

I’ve been really fortunate over the years to have had a very talented designer to help me make decisions about decorating our home. Leigh Jones, owner of The Very Thing Ltd. has been helping me for 20+ years and three homes. We even made it into Southern Home Magazine’s Christmas issue several years ago! It was such a thrill (and so much work) to be featured in a magazine! Our decor has changed a bit since the magazine feature and it’s fun to look back and see how my taste has evolved. I guess as our lives change it’s inevitable that our taste changes to meet our needs.

Our living room sofa was one of the first pieces we purchased when we moved into the house in 2006 and the fabric was fine, but never my favorite…however, for some reason, I never had a vision of what I wanted so I left it. One day a couple of years ago, I was looking through a magazine and saw a picture of the perfect sofa…sitting in Tory Burch’s living room. I knew at that moment, I wanted to copy her sofa and it only took two years to make it happen!

The search began for the perfect green velvet, cording, trim and, of course the beautiful fringe at the bottom. It all came together and I am thrilled and absolutely love the results. I can say that after 14 years, our living room is almost complete!

We’re excited to use the living room more often this fall and winter and it will be beautiful decorated for the holidays!

As I mentioned above, I love to pour over design books for inspiration and have quite a collection to choose from. Mixing traditional elements and with some a contemporary twist here keeps things from looking too stuffy. I also love that the rooms in our home have come together over a period of time. I have felt some impatience over the years because I couldn’t do everything as quickly as I wanted, but the house definitely is a reflection of our lives and taste and not too “decorated”!

Life has changed for us and will likely never go back to the way it was before. Baldy will begin to travel again eventually, but never as much. We’ve had to adjust to being together almost all of the time, but we’re getting used to a new normal and I’ll have to say that it’s a better normal. It’s so nice to have someone to eat dinner with, wake up with and count on!

My goal is to make our home peaceful, calm and welcoming. I hope people feel that…even when they walk in the door and trip over 10 dog toys and a big fluffy puppy named Amos!

If you’re looking for decor inspiration…here are a few of my favorite books.