FALL DECOR + Living Room Tour Washington DC apartment tour

YouTube home and room tours are the super special thing where I get to have all of you guys into my home and I say, come in, come into my house. Welcome, so I have to have you. Have a seat, can I get you a drink? And we talk about how we like to do things and how we use our stuff. And 99% of people are just super nice and it really makes my day. And then there's two and a half people that come in and they sit in the back of the room and they say, I don't like the color of that pillow. And I love those people. And I don't want them to ever get bored. I worry about them. So I made this video for them. Welcome to my fall 2022 autumn decor, fall decor living room home tour. Hello, can you focus? This is my living room. I live in Washington DC in a row house. I share a lot of interior design stuff on my channel. There's a bunch of updates I wanna share today. I wanted to share my approach for fall decor and kind of decor in general. Also a couple of things I would like to do differently, things that I'm not quite satisfied with. And I also am going to link everything in the description, everything that I can. Of course I do thrift a lot and I get a lot of like vintage stuff and stuff like that. So obviously some things I won't be able to link but I do have videos on antiquing and thrifting and how I style it in case you're interested in doing that on your own. Okay, let's kick it. Fall. This is my dining area, no duh. I don't have like a ton of extra space in my apartment. I use the dining area as a desk. I love that. In my house growing up, we always did homework and stuff at the dining table. All my siblings and I just like to spread out. So I love having a dining table as a desk. My approach with fall decor in general is, and any decor really, is just like kind of subtle touches. Personally, I don't want it to feel like a theme. I just want it to feel like, oh, it's a nice day in my home and I like get to experience the nice fall season even if I don't go outside. And the other thing is that I don't have a lot of room to store decor. Like I don't have extra space. So seasonal decor for me, it has to be stuff that dies. It has to be stuff that's gonna die and it's not being stored anywhere. So it's really just like plants and a pumpkin that I certainly won't be carving. For a centerpiece on the table, I like doing a potted plant because obviously it lasts longer. You don't have to replace it all the time. Like, I don't know why we don't all be doing potted plants on our centerpieces. Maybe people are doing it and I'm out of the loop. This seat specifically is where I work like pretty much all day. I have like a nice view. The only time I move out of this seat is when I feel like my neighbors have walked outside and we've made eye contact too many times and I can't keep making eye contact with them. I'm not trying to look at them, but like, you know, someone walks by your window and you just automatically look up and then it's this eye contact and my immediate reaction is to look away. So it's all day. It's like a lot of me doing this at them and it just feels very rude. If that's happening a lot, I will move to the coffee table and like work at the coffee table. This is my office when I've made too much eye contact with my neighbors. I feel like my fall colors, my fall colors, which is a ridiculous sentence. I feel like my fall colors right now are like orange and red, a deep red. I'm really liking just orange and red together. Something really rich. I'm feeling the richness. I love my coffee table. It took a lot of effort to find a coffee table I like. Lots of trial and tribulations. This is a thing. I think it's all about like tinkering and experimenting and trying things out. And I think that's like how things end up the most fun. And also sometimes the things that you try are gonna suck. So that just has to kind of be part of it. I have like a stack, stack of magazines. This is like an actual vintage design magazine. Echoes. I think this is from the seventies. The magazine of classic modern style and design. You guys, this entire YouTube channel is made possible this month by Wayfair. And you guys probably know Wayfair for the same reasons I do. I use their home products in my own home and clients' projects. And they've just launched their own YouTube channel, which viewers of my channel, I think are really gonna like. I gotta pull it up and show you. Their latest series is called The Small Stuff. I would say it's adorable. Featuring this kind of like bumbling home improvement dad with his real family. I think he's a guy from YouTube and he's very funny. This is kind of the show that I feel like I would want to do with kids, with design. The kitchen can be a scary place, especially when you have kids. I'm talking softly because I do have kids. What if there's a way to make it not scary? To make it, dare I say, convenient? I know your kids are just as unique as mine and it's okay to do what specifically works for you and your family. He's talking about family dynamics and then solving home design problems along the way. It's darn sweet. They really did it. Wayfair also has other shows on their series like Interior Motives, which is hosted by a YouTube interior designer. They draw on their expertise and their wit to give these kind of ridiculous roundups of Wayfair product recommendations. And it's kind of like the onion meets apartment therapy. It's a good time. Listen, if you enjoy laughter, you're gonna like this show. Go check out a full episode of The Small Stuff or Interior Motives and make sure you subscribe to their YouTube channel if you wanna stay up to date on all the very sweet content they have. I've included a link in description. Duh. You know what? You're gonna laugh, you're gonna learn and dang it, you're gonna be delighted. Is it straight? It's gonna bother me if the line of the couch is not parallel with the bottom of the screen. That's no good. Oh, come on. But now this isn't straight. How do I do this? What's wrong with me that this is happening? That's tolerable. I feel like I can tolerate that. This is something new that I haven't shown yet that I'm very excited about. This is a wood shade on this sconce. I can't turn it on yet because I need to buy an extension cord for it to fit in the outlet. But I got this off Etsy. This is a wood shade. What the heck? I didn't really wanna crowd it with another side table over here to put a lamp. I didn't really want a floor lamp. It gets busy and it's like kinda already there's stuff happening over here. Sconce gets the lighting up and off the floor. Just like saves you room. It can be very clean. But I also like these little cord covers that you can use to cover the cord with. I probably will cover this cord. I may, I may not. It's actually kind of fine right now. It did not come with a swivel but I really wanted it to swivel. I wanted to do one of these. So I just asked the seller if I could add a swivel. There was just an upcharge and they added it for me. So I'm really stoked. I really love this. I wish I could turn it on for you but right now it's going to nowhere. I don't care though. It's making me happy. This guy I did make. This is a DIY. No, shush. What the heck? My phone says it was just taking a screen recording. For how long? Oh, a 23 minute screen recording. Wasn't aware of that. This is a DIY that I did. I have a video on it. I don't think I did it a very good way. Some people commented like I should have done a support beam on like the back to help it stay straight which makes a lot more sense than what I did. So it's kind of a little crooked but it's just made up of fabric samples that I love. I really do like it. I don't know if I'll have it forever till I die but I do really like it now even though it's kind of a little wonky. Like I made it and it's something that nobody else has. And it's made up of all these little pieces of my work and also something that I just like delight in. I really didn't know what to do. I struggled for a while what to do with like this big wall. So I'm very happy with this. I will say. I think this is my favorite like little corner of the whole room. I just love this corner. And it's the first thing I see when I come into the apartment. I like really focusing on like, what are you facing first when you enter the room? Because if you can perfect that, I feel delighted. Like every time I walk in the room, I love this stupid little corner. Keeping it kind of subtle with the fall decor, like not a ton. And most importantly, I don't want it to ever be in my way. I don't want it to be like there's decor somewhere and so I can't even use my table. So I personally like to make sure it's in places where like it's not gonna be annoying me. I have some kind of congenital issue where like things annoy me very quickly. So it really is something I kept to keep in mind. It's definitely genetic. It's the whole family suffers. These are just sketches that I drew. I thrifted the frames and they're blind contourings, sketches that I did of my family members when we were on vacation in like Costa Rica and I was bored. I had a pad of paper and I would just stare at them or at a photo while I drew. And you don't look at the paper while you draw. And then it comes off like really offbeat and kind of weird and you don't have to be a great artist to do it. The only one that's missing is my brother because he wasn't on that trip. So I need to do it on my brother. I usually have my camera sitting right here because I can't look at it. If the camera's pointing at me when I'm like clocked out and like not working, it freaks me out. I just feel like it's watching me. So I have to put the camera down there. Although obviously I'm filming with it right now. My couch is West Elm. I do freaking love this couch. It's very comfortable. People ask about it all the time. I highly recommend this couch. It is super comfy. However, I will be replacing it because I've discovered, I didn't think about this when I got it. My legs are very, very short. And when I sit on the couch, they dangle like this, cuckoo style. If I want to put my legs up, I have to do like one of these. When I'm watching TV, it's kind of hard to like lounge, but it's also not long enough for my feet to not dangle. I don't know if I'm properly explaining how annoying this is to me, but like it's not that comfortable to always have your legs dangling, especially if you're like trying to watch a movie, you're just like this. I don't know. It's weird. I really want a deeper couch. So I'm going to get one that's a bit deeper and has like a foot situation. My hack for taking really good care of the couch is that like I still eat and drink on it, but I got this really thick, really comfy blanket, which is also just an amazing blanket. And then on the other side, it's like fluff town, you know? But I laid this down, like if I'm going to eat on the couch so that even if I spill, it's probably not going anywhere. Like we covered these lame shades, this lame shade and the one over there in one of my vlogs. I'm very happy with this. I love it. One upgrade that I'm very glad to have done is I just changed out this light switch plate. It was like a silver one before and it just like caught the light all the time. It was metallic. It was something I wanted to cover. And then I just like found a freaking cute little white one on Amazon real easily. It was a nice little tiny trim detail. And I way prefer that. And then, you know, I just saved the old one and I'll put it back when I move out. Or I won't. I probably won't, honestly. Like I want that there. Excellent. I'll tell you one thing. That's a big old lie is this chair. No one sits in this chair. I love this chair. I love this chair, but no one sits in it. It's not a good living room accent chair. No one wants to watch a freaking movie sitting in this. It feels very fragile. It doesn't feel like you can really get comfortable in it. I don't like it. Really nobody sits in it. And any like adult sized man feels like they're gonna break it because it feels very fragile. Like I feel like I'm gonna break it. What this would be perfect for is like an entryway chair. Like that you throw your coats on or your something just like kind of sitting, you know. If this was a wider space, kind of like if there was more, am I even in the frame? Am I? Yes, I am. Like, you know, next to the door or something like that, but I don't really have space for it. So it's quite stupid out here. So that's one thing that is a lie. We may eventually replace it, but I don't have the budget right now. Get rid of that glare, huh? I do love this Prudenza size two pieces from Ikea that I put together. It needs to be mounted on the wall actually, but I don't have the confidence to do it. I'm probably gonna task rabbit it. I haven't gotten around to it. But I love this. I knew I wanted a super long piece for lots of surface area to stuff put up here without it feeling like too cluttered and to just like kind of span the length of the room. I feel like this wall is one area that I don't feel satisfied with in the room. And I do have plans for it, which are a secret, but I'm not there yet. This is another corner that I feel like I really like. Little catch all here for my keys, sunglasses. This is like a plant stand. It's like a plant thing that you put a plant in. You guys know what a plant stand is, right? Can you focus though? Can you focus? Hello? No, that's not what I want. I put my body here. Will you do it? Stop it. What did I say? Thank you. Yeah, it's like this, just this little like ruffled metal plant pot, whatever. I got it from Anthropologie. Shush, shush motorcycle. And I'm using that as my catch all. A couple design coffee table books that I love. I'll link them. One thing I feel kind of proud of is that I've been struggling to figure out how I wanted to fill this space. There's a big square right there. So I don't want to put just like another big rectangle or square thing here. I really like this mirror for its curves and it breaks up some of that, but it's not nearly large enough. Like the proportions of this mirror are way off for this area. And I got a really big mirror that I showed in my last antiquing video. It ended up feeling too heavy to me. There was something, I didn't like it. I just didn't, I didn't like it in the end. It was really close to being right, but I so prefer like this light wood and some of the detailing. My solution, I ended up selling the mirror, but my solution was to basically flank it with smaller artworks on the side. Like if I find a correct size, large mirror, maybe I'll buy it. They're also totally expensive. And so in the meantime, until I find the perfect piece, I felt like I found like a compromise by just kind of bulking it up with a couple of pieces on the side. And that actually feels like the proportions are on to me. I can put more of my artwork up here. I actually really like it. So I felt proud of that. Didn't buy anything new, just kind of found a work around to make, to kind of fake the proportions here. Back out of the shot. I do put my backpack in this corner, but I'm gonna do a YouTube lie and move it out of the shot. Although this is the coolest backpack. My friends gave me this backpack for my birthday, which was very nice. Cause I, it's like probably out of my price range, but like my three friends together gave it to me. Ashley, Alejandra and Sam. I feel like that's a great way to give a gift. It's like something that I, you might not be able to get for yourself. This backpack is so crazy. First of all, it's freaking gorgeous. It's like my staple now. It like can like fold and arrange like six different ways. Folds all these different ways. I mostly use it as like a backpack like this. And I can also like fold down this way as a perch. Like I use this pretty much for everything now. And it's handmade by Craftsman. I think she's Swedish. No, Dutch, French, English. Oh, Bulgarian. No, I guess I could just say a bunch of countries and I'll use whatever take is correct when I look it up later. Finnish, Danish, Czech. I'll put whatever it is. Whichever one is correct, I'll put it on here. It's just like super gorgeous and it's really versatile. Anyway, I'll link it, but I am going to take it out of the shot. So again, I can't kneel yet. I keep forgetting I can't kneel since my surgery. Again, like kind of trying to go subtle with the pops of fall decor so that it's not overbearing. And it just like, it has a light fall feel. And you're like, oh my God, is it fall? Oh, I didn't even think about it. I'm really pretty obsessed with these. That's like an annoying YouTube thing to say. I'm obsessed, whatever. I guess I'm annoying now. I'm quite enamored with these little bud vases. They were also given to me by my cousin. They're a total encapsulation of imperfection. Frickin' look at these little tops. These like hand-drawn lines and hand-drawn, what's it called when you mark something in pottery? Not a scratch, etch, score, scores, maybe? I feel like I am always changing stuff on the mantle. I mean, I am always, but that's okay. I really love like the layering stuff in front of stuff. Stuff in front of stuff, it's delightful. Books, what's up here right now? National biography of people born 71 to 80. I haven't opened it once. I did finish this one. I feel like I've gone through several Malcolm Gladwell, Malcolm Gladwell phases and then been over it. And then I'm like, no, I miss you. I really enjoyed this book. Yeah, even just the way it was structured, it's like amazing, like throughout the book are the like end up, there's like all these like mini arguments throughout the book. And then they end up being the building blocks of the larger argument. I guess that's actually just how, that's just what books are. If you read it, what I said doesn't sound as stupid as it sounds. As if you didn't. As if it sounds when I, if you haven't read it. What I said was not articulate just then, but it actually, I think makes sense. My mother gave me this. This is a sketch or a print of Parma, Italy, where I was. Per un anno, quando, prima di andare all'università, lavoravo come tata a Parma, in Italia. Conosci come Parmigiano-Reggiano. Ho lavorato e ho visuto con questa famiglia fantastica. Quella famiglia adoro. Poi ho imparato a parlare italiano lì, per forza, perché nessuno parlava inglese. Però adesso non parlo mai. Temo che faccio tanti errori parlando adesso. My bad. Can I sit here? So this is wild, but I was given this artwork just recently. And I won't get into too much details because it's not really mine to tell, but this artwork was given to me by my removed cousins. Their father died and had all this art and pottery that they didn't even know what to do with. And so they just started giving it to their family and friends. It was kind of crazy. Yeah, so I, which I'm talking about it, I feel like it's not mine to talk about. So I'm not going to talk about it a lot, but I all of a sudden have all this fine art in my home. So I feel like I had to explain it. So I don't know anything about it. So I have a couple of pieces of artwork that I want to do research on. I don't totally know how to do that. I feel like I might try to Google image some signatures or try and read names and look them up. If you know how to do that, please let me know, because I don't know. But I really love having a more contemporary piece over here. I'm really loving contemporary art recently and accent pieces in my otherwise very traditional room. I don't know, I love that balance. It's labeled birthday party, birthday party. I've recently improved like my whole desk setup, my pens, and then I have a little dish that holds like measuring tape for design work, fabric samples, hard drive for my editing. I also have this wallpaper sample. This is like the most, maybe the most beautiful wallpaper I've ever seen. Cherry blossoms, it's like an amber color. I kind of just want to frame it. Like that's something I like to do with samples a lot. It's like their art to me. So I might just like put this in a frame and put it up on the wall. It's so beautiful. We'll link it, we'll link it. So this is how I get away without having any drawers. I'm very proud of this. Like my entire, all my desk stuff is sitting here. Back here, I got a little file organizer for all my papers, notebooks, whatever. And I have a little printer that sits right on the sill, but you can't even see it. Literally, it's like super narrow and it fits right on my window sill. I think you can also sit it like this way on your desk. If that's exciting to you. This is a book, family photos and stuff that my dad put together and it's enormous. And I haven't known what to do with it. It's like not the same size as other coffee table books and stuff. So it like stacks weirdly and it's like so big. And then I finally decided like, I just want it out and open here. And so I kind of flipped through the pages right now. It's open to like an autumn day. It's open to a fall day. Young Caroline carves a pumpkin. This is me, Elizabeth and Luke going to school when we first moved here from Germany. And we had these enormous backpacks because we had scoliosis. I wore a back brace for 11 years. We like weren't allowed to carry normal backpacks. Also look at these coats my mom put us in. Why? I mean, I look like Hocus Pocus actually. We had this like very weird like German style. We were living in Germany before we moved to DC and actually before, these backpacks were the upgrade though. Before that we had these really square, they're literally square like cube backpacks. I'll have to insert a photo of them. I don't know if they use those still in Germany, but that's like what everyone had. When I was going to freaking kindergarten and then I brought them, I remember I brought them to my first day of second grade in the States and they wouldn't fit into my cubby. And I was a loser. So then my mom was like, don't worry, we'll fix this. And instead she dressed me up like this. I like having that just open so people can actually like see the photos. And then I kind of just like flip it on through. Lots of school photos. Oh my God, that's the square backpack. You can see it. You can kind of see it poking out here. Luke has it on. This is when we first moved. This is giant, enormous square. Okay, what else is happening here? I think that's pretty much it. There's definitely still stuff I want to work on. Mostly that wall, I think. Feels not complete. I do, I spent like most of my waking hours in this room for better or for worse. I always just want things to feel comfy and like livable. And like, I'm not afraid to get stuff dirty or break stuff because that is just a reality of my living. I'm gonna break things. I'm gonna mess them up. So my dining table is covered in scratches and I'm cool with it. My coffee table is pretty much unscratchable and that's intentional. You can like, you can subscribe if you had a fun time and I'll see you around the channel soon. Oh, actually, actually. Dude, don't be afraid to share with me what you would do differently or what you would change. And I do really get good ideas from the comments. I've changed several things from input based on you guys. It's really helpful just to have somebody else's eye. Once you've been staring at something too long, you know like, if you ever like stare at yourself in the mirror too long, and you're like, I don't even know what I look like. It's kind of like that. You need like a fresh eye. There's a couple of things in here I've changed or adjusted based on comments. So give it to me. I don't know what's, I don't know what video is coming out next week. I don't know. I kind of often never know. It's obviously pretty random, but I hope it's still fun for you guys. I'll tell you what, I am starting to look at Christmas decor. I'm getting ahead of myself. I know, I know, I know. I'm sorry. Be in the moment, God.