CHRISTMAS HOME TOUR | Inside the MacKenzie-Childs Farmhouse in New York

Hey Homeworthy, I'm Rebecca. Welcome to the McKenzie Childs Farmhouse here in Aurora, New York. Come on in, I'll show you around. On today's episode of Homeworthy, we're heading to Aurora, New York for an exclusive holiday tour of the iconic McKenzie Childs Farmhouse with Rebecca Proctor, the brand's creative director Perched on a bluff overlooking the stunning Cayuga Lake, this historic farmhouse dates back to the late 1800s and was once the heart of a thriving dairy farm. Over the years, it has transformed from a reception area and office space into the headquarters for the playful and whimsical designs that have made McKenzie Childs a beloved name in American design. The three-story, 15-room farmhouse was meticulously renovated between 2001 and 2003, blending art, antiques, and McKenzie Childs' signature products to create a space filled with charm and inspiration. From dinnerware and rugs to custom kitchen tiles, the farmhouse is a living gallery of the brand's unique style. A big thank you to McKenzie Childs for sponsoring today's episode. Enjoy! You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. I'm Rebecca Proctor. I'm the creative director and chief brand officer for McKenzie Childs. I've been here since 1991 and I'm responsible today for the design vision for the company and all the things that we design and develop and visual merchandising. These are the teams that I work very closely with every day to bring this vision to life. Our farmhouse is located in Aurora, New York, which is in the middle of New York state. We're right on Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes District. It's absolutely beautiful here. Everything outside of our windows inspires the work that we do here at McKenzie Childs, which I'll tell you about in a minute. And we're in sort of rolling cow country. It's hills and valleys and hay bales and lakes and sunshine. It's an absolutely beautiful part of New York. The farmhouse is actually the centerpiece of everything here at McKenzie Childs on this 65 acre former dairy farm. And we invite you guys to come and tour it. We're open all year long. It's 3,300 square feet of McKenzie Childs beauty on three floors, and we use it as a showroom to showcase our beautiful designs. So welcome to the McKenzie Childs living room. It's filled right now with our Christmas decorations. And you can come to the house and tour the house and see this for yourself. But we go crazy during the holidays. We just love mixing fun products and designs together. These things that are here on the mantle are from this season's holiday decor. So you can find this at McKenzie Childs. But I love this mantle so much. It's always been one of my most favorite things in the whole living room. And I want to describe it to you a little bit. All these tiles were originally made here in our pottery in Aurora, New York, made by hand, painted by hand. But if you look from the top to the bottom, I just love the details here. You've got this sort of mahogany stained, beautiful mantle. This is trim, brass trim from France that is beautifully stamped out with thistles. Why thistles? Because McKenzie, after all, is a Scottish name. We love that nod to Scottish heritage. And then if you keep going down, hand-beaded trim, all done by hand. And then ceramic components kind of stacked together. And this might have been at one point in time part of a lamp. This is part of our globe lamp. But top to bottom, it ends with turtles. And why turtles? Well, as the story goes, Victoria and Richard, the founders, when they lived in England, I think they had a tortoise in their garden, which apparently is a popular thing there. But this room, completely painted by hand, this isn't wallpaper, is just sensational. It was painted by Corey Field, who was on our design team several years ago. And it's stripes and flowers, and it's soft and beautiful. So you can see we've got our Christmas tree that's so beautiful. The decor featured this year is largely sterling check. We have courtly check. This is sterling check, which is silver and white checks. You'll see it on dinnerware. You've got it on bows. We've got it on furniture. We use it everywhere. We love our check patterns. And the tree is just decorated within an inch of its life by someone on our visual merchandising team, the amazing Linda Walker. Linda also is a bagpiper. She does that on weekends. But she is so talented, and this whole farmhouse is just a testament to her love of Mackenzie Childs. We call our trees thrill, fill, and spill. What does that even mean? We've got things that are poked all the way back in the branches, things shooting out of it like these beautiful twigs, and then all of our ornaments that decorate it to a fairly well. Everything in the room has actually been a product in our line at one point in time. This is a Mackenzie Childs setting seat made right here on the farm in Aurora, New York. This was an upholstered piece that we no longer produce. These are gorgeous pillows you can find in our holiday collection. And then if you look over here on the wall, this collection is called Sweetbriar. We no longer produce it, but this was Mackenzie Childs doing white dinnerware. If you look really closely, it's very tactile and textured and beautiful. It's actually one of my favorite old things. Function is first and foremost the most important thing, but form is so beautiful too. They're like sculpture to me. And then this is a tuffet. This is a Mackenzie Childs tuffet that actually is also produced here on the farm in Aurora, New York by our upholstery team. I'm going to pick it up and show you. It has gorgeous ceramic feet, an incredible trim, and a ruched button, and fun combinations of fabric. But this is something that has been in the line, oh golly, since the 80s. So I love that. And then typical Mackenzie Childs upholstery. Oh, look at this lamp. I love this lamp. This lamp is so stunning. It was part of an older collection, so the evidence of terracotta. We just love exposing that because after all, our Mieleka dinnerware is all about clay. And we've added this incredible beaded fringe to the lampshade and more. So this is one point of view on a Mackenzie Childs living room, but the idea is that it's cozy and a comfortable place to sit. Because after all, our designs are functional, but beautiful too. And the idea of just everybody sitting around the fireplace, what's more fun than that? Welcome to the Mackenzie Childs dining room. And as you can see, we're set, the table's set for the holidays. I love this combination of these neutrals, but look at all the texture in all these designs that are also available in our line as part of our holiday decor collection. I just love this room. To us, there's nothing more fun in the whole wide world than setting a beautiful table. And this is not just any table. This table is called the diorama table. And remember when you were little, maybe in art class and someone said, hey, take that shoebox and create an interior space there. Well, that's what this is all about. This table is made completely here on our farm. And if you look closely, there are multiple layers of landscape. The landscapes we see just outside our windows here in Aurora, New York. It has ceramic legs, and it's just a work of art. No two will ever be alike. But we've dressed the table this season with our new rosy check launched in March of 2024. And this ceramic dinnerware, all of this is made here on our farm. And that's a whole other story, but it's beautiful. And we love layering it together. Let's look at a piece. This pottery is so incredible. Completely made by hand, fired four times. This is 22 carat gold. And then on the bottom, ta-da! Mackenzie Childs. We love that evidence of terracotta, special clay formula that is produced in the United States. And we use it for all of our pottery here in Aurora. So we've set the table. This room, though, used to be a little bit different. Its first iteration, I remember in the early 90s, it was a landscape mural painted on the walls, but in beautiful shades of green and more. And then in the 2000s, it was hot pink, the whole room hot pink. But now we thought, hmm, what if we were to create a neutral palette? And we had this fantastic person in our furniture painting studio. Her name is Tammy Boucher paint it for us. And what's on the walls is exactly what you see just beyond and outside. So that's our production studio. And there's a painting of it. Over here, you'll see this is landscapes and Cayuga Lake off in the distance and hills and valleys in our front hedgerow. That's so beautiful. But over here, there's a squirrel climbing a tree. And that's where Tammy Boucher signed her name right on his tail. And she's a member of our furniture studio here, which we just have incredible artisans making things here all day long every day. So everything in the room is something that's either in the collection today or was part of a collection or was a prototype. So the rug, for example, we only made this one. It's absolutely beautiful. And it kind of showcases our love for silver. Sterling check is important to us as a pattern. And we sort of did that here. But then we popped in lots of fun colors like chartreuses and roses and a sort of steely blue. And then we put these fun blocks on the corner to anchor the room. And it turned out to be just perfect as part of the collection. I also love the lighting in this room. This chandelier is called the grandiosity chandelier. And it's really what McKenzie Childs does best. All the ceramic components are produced here in our pottery in Aurora, New York. This fun little tassel is added in our finishing studio. But the brass arms are from India. And the paper shades that are hand beaded are from a company in England, actually. And it's all these combinations of things, the crimped brass bead, the ceramic components, the tassels, these crazy shades. That's really what makes McKenzie Childs so unique. No two pieces are ever alike. They're like pieces of art for your home. And it's just one of my very favorite things. Oh, it also doubles as a terrine. That shape is a terrine called the pièce de résistance with a lid and everything. And then that's when it turned into a chandelier. Kind of how we do things around here. We take having fun very seriously. And we try and pour that into everything we do. All of our designs, everything you're going to see in this farmhouse today, and more. When visitors tour our farmhouse, you can expect to be overwhelmed by pattern and color. It's very fun here. Kind of like falling down a rabbit hole. It's quite extraordinary. But when you come here to the farmhouse, you're going to see three floors of how McKenzie Childs has reimagined home. And it changes frequently, which is kind of fun. It's fun to visit every once in a while so you can see the new decorations and what we're doing differently from season to season. You can also tour our production facility here. So we do have a pottery and a furniture painting studio. And we love that. And we welcome the public to come and see what we do and why this company is so special. We're one of the last companies in America making pottery the way that we do by hand. It's an extraordinary process. We'll save that one for another day. But it's just so much fun to really gain an appreciation for the origin story of McKenzie Childs. Well, now let's head to the room behind me. This is our library. So from the dining room, we're entering the library. This is such a fun space. I love everything about it. The majority of it was painted by members of our furniture painting studio. And every detail is so incredibly special. Let's just look at it up close, shall we? I mean, you've got this beautiful hand-painted treatment with courtly stripe and a beautiful green marble finish on the walls. But look at the ceiling. That ceiling is magical to me, filled with clouds and what McKenzie Childs looks like on a sunny day. And the shapes on the ceiling are inspired by this table. This is called our turtle table, also made here in Aurora, New York, set up for the holidays. We've got Santa Claus and a lot of beautiful patterns, some new dinnerware designs in a beautiful black tartan. There's a red tartan too. And the furniture, the furniture in this room, I love. This is actually the furniture I have in my own home. It's very special to me. And let's look at it up close, shall we? So we've got McKenzie Childs printed velvet. We've got an amazing tartan. And this little kilt pin, it was designed to look like a kilt and a skirt. And this tartan is a McKenzie Childs tartan woven for us in Scotland. I think I mentioned that. Also by Lacharen, one of the oldest mills in Scotland. I want to make sure you meet someone very special to us. This gentleman, who we haven't named, but he was a painting we found at an estate sale and then put courtly check trousers on him, a bluebird in his cap and a little beautiful floral flourish in his coat pocket. He's quite dapper, I think. And we are decorating for the holidays. So you've got our resting and sitting courtly check deer. These are called our Westminster deer. Some beautiful lighting treatments here. Everything about this space just pushes my happy buttons. Even this gorgeous arrangement done by Linda Walker with peacock feathers. Isn't that an amazing combination? You can do that too. I mean, taking McKenzie Childs ribbon and then feathers and florals and creating combinations that are irresistible. We love that. This chair, amazing. It's got a shield back, which we love covered in our tartan. But then look at the detail on this. It has nail head trim and leather and even caning on the back of it with a little hand-painted rose. That's very typical of McKenzie Childs furniture. There's so many beautiful pieces in our collection of furniture, enamelware, over-the-top hand-painted pieces produced here in Aurora. The range is pretty broad and wide so that you can find things to tuck into every little corner of your life. We want to be everywhere in your home, whether it's one thing or lots of things. The more the merrier with McKenzie Childs. So now, welcome to the breakfast room. And this is such a special room for so many reasons. As you can see, our table is set for the holidays with Santa Claus in the center of the table. We love to set a beautiful table, but I love this room for so many reasons. Look at the details. We've got this stunning wallpaper that's kind of lattice and floral. But if you look closely, this is a beautiful textile trim that you often see on a McKenzie Childs tuffet or a piece of furniture or even on a pillow. And we just decided it would make the perfect detail to align the room. And then I love the mix of antiquity. You know, we love to go to estate sales. We love to find things and then repurpose them or upcycle them to make them new and refreshed. So this has a fun courtly check paper shade with hand-beaded trim. And we've got these beautiful curtain treatments and panels. This room is just so special to me for so many reasons. This is a basket chair. It's part of our collection today made here on the farm. We import the chair and then we paint the whole thing here, adding fun things like this terracotta basket, beaded trim, hand-painted details, gold foil, hand-applied decals, paper newsprint decoupaged onto the legs. This is very typical of the kind of work McKenzie Childs loves to produce. You know, the devil is in the details. I think that's the expression, right? We love detail. We love details on everything. This room, actually, and these doors right here, this was the entryway into what was first our reception. And so you would walk in and there would be a desk there, someone would greet you, and we had a party line. This was in the, 1991 is the first year we got rid of the party line, but literally for years you'd pick up someone and say, Mrs. Jones, I need to make a call. Could you please get off so I can conduct business? We had a party line, we actually did, and a fax machine. That's how we got all our orders, remember those? So you would walk in here and then the room that we were just in before, the library, that was a showroom, as was the dining room and the living room, and the rest of the house was production, finance, and everything else. But this room is just so special to me. Look at the things on the table, for example, our tea kettle, right? This is the most iconic McKenzie Childs design that we produce. It's our absolute fan favorite. This is a two-quart rosy check tea kettle. The first one we did in 2003 was a courtly check three-quart tea kettle. We might see one when we get to the kitchen, but I love setting playful combinations on a table. You invite your guests in and we never set the table the same way twice. This chair, one of the first chairs ever in the McKenzie Childs collection, it's called our forest fish chair, and the first chair was designed by Richard McKenzie Childs. It was ceramic and very straight backed. And then we decided to mold fish to make it a little more comfortable so you could lean your back into it. And this is painted like it was literally dragged through a landscape. So it's our beautiful Aurora scape of Cayuga Lake and hay bales in the field and more. That's such a special chair to me. I love this. Oh, this is courtly check. This is our courtly check dinner plate in enamelware. Remember I was talking about this being so foundational? Try putting your grandmother's pattern on top of this. It's a real kick in the pants. You're going to love the way that looks. But even with white dinnerware, it's beautiful, or more McKenzie Childs. We love layering, layering, layering, and our black and white checks are unlike any other black and white checks in the world. They're really quite beautiful. So let's see. Again, just mixing antiquity. We always enjoy doing that. And these are some of the pieces in our collection this year. These fantastic deer, they're kind of retro, kind of 1950s. They're cool. And look at all the detail in some of the trees that we produce. And don't try eating this. You might break a tooth. Those are props. This is just a fun little set of boxes that are in our collection this year. One's a gingerbread man. The other is a deer. So we make crazy decorative things that are sweet and fun and sentimental, and you can collect them through the years. Some of our fans have so many Christmas decorations. True story. One friend of mine has 17 boxes in her basement. She gets out every single year. Who doesn't love a holiday after all? The thing I love about McKenzie Childs, especially the dinnerware, is that you can create a really formal, beautiful tablescape with your finest things, right? And McKenzie Childs is going to give that lift and light and pattern and fun. But we can also be used in a really casual atmosphere. And I think that's what McKenzie Childs enamelware does so well. Here's an example. This is enamelware, right? Enamelware is heavy gauge steel that's then covered in something called frit, which is ground glass, and it's hand painted onto each piece. And I love it, right? It's easy to use. It's easy to care for. And we consider this kind of McKenzie Childs every day. I think the whole idea of McKenzie Childs every day is what I love most. I mean, why wait to use those special things? Use them all the time. Use them all the time. If you have your grandmother's china in the basement in a box, get it out and have fun with it because nobody's enjoying it in the basement collecting dust. Just get it out and have fun with it. That's what McKenzie Childs is all about. Here's another example of McKenzie Childs lighting at its finest. So this is produced here on our farm in Aurora, and it's got a rooster sitting on top of it. And the reason we have a rooster is because we love chickens, and we love roosters, and we love farm animals. You'll see later on the tour the McKenzie Childs chicken palace. And it is a palace where all of our fowl live. I think our sheep live there too. So I love the combination though, again, of black and white and lustrous golds and that evidence of terracotta. And it really is like a sculpture or a work of art for any room where you need a chandelier. And this lamp is our lamp mannequin. And it's retired now, but this was actually a product that we produced, taking a dressmaker's form and then completely painting it by hand. So we've got the landscape on her bodice and a lovely little waist with hand-beaded fringe. It's got ceramic components and a handmade lampshade, a bird on a ball finial, which I adore, and this extraordinary necklace that it's sort of like whatever wasn't nailed down in the design studio that day made its way onto this floor lamp, which I think is just such a work of art. I love it. I think what I love most about the breakfast room is it has so many iconic Mackenzie Child's designs in it. One of them is this tap dance table. Why is it called that? Because it has Formica or linoleum tiles as the tabletop. And rumor has it that it was danced upon once, actually tap danced on, which I love. And it has ceramic legs. And it's just kind of all those combinations of things that I think make Mackenzie Child's really, really special. And somehow they all came together in this room. Mackenzie Child's has lots of pattern. In fact, we're pattern-centric. We're known for irreverent combinations of pattern, flowers with checks and stripes and polka dots and more. We love that. We love the playfulness of that. And there's one pattern called courtly check that I think is most iconic for Mackenzie Child's, and that's a black and white check. But it's not just any black and white check. Ours has color dragged through each one of the checks that makes our pattern really unique. When courtly check is used in a lot of our designs, more often than not, it's painted by hand. And so there are sort of perfect imperfections that happen in that pattern. We don't use stencils. It's painted freehand. And that lovely drag of color makes it not only iconic for us, but beautiful too, because no two courtly check items will really ever be alike. We kind of consider courtly check as something we call underpinnings. Underpinnings being foundational. So for example, we'll have it on furniture. We'll have it on glassware. We'll have it on dinnerware. But try layering courtly check in with other things you already have. Your grandmother's favorite china pattern, some other floral combination. Try layering those things together and you'll come up with the most outrageously lovely combinations. Welcome to the McKenzie Child's kitchen, farmhouse kitchen. We love a kitchen. And why? Because everything happens in the kitchen. We actually trademarked a term called the entertaining kitchen, because that's the center. That's the pulse. That's the heartbeat of the house, right? You're doing homework with the kids. You're preparing meals for family and friends. You're cooking. You're entertaining. That's how kitchens are today. This is an old house, so this is kind of an old version of that. But it's got everything that I love about McKenzie Child's in this room. These gorgeous tiles were made here on our farm, in our pottery production studio. And oh, here's that three-quart kettle we were talking about. That's our rosy check three-quart kettle. I mean, isn't that a work of art? I love it. It's functional, but it's got all these beautiful decorative details. And you can bring water to a boil pretty quickly because it has a really big bottom, just saying. And you can also use it for floral arranging. We have some customers that have as many as a dozen tea kettles in their lives, just saying. I mean, they're marvelous. But we've got all the things that make this space unique. These beautiful knobs that are made by hand and painted by hand, and functional things like our canisters and our cake stands and our mugs and more Christmas decorations. But I love this space. I love mixing antiquity with new. You know, the old lace curtains, the beautiful glass panes, and just, ah, this is just such a special room mixed with very contemporary appliances. So we love a kitchen. We just love a kitchen. And our customers do, too. The thing I love about our McKenzie Child's point of view on a kitchen is that things are functional, but they're beautiful, too. We can transform a kitchen space really quickly with just a few things, like these beautiful canisters. I love these. They're functional. They're amazing. Oh, my gosh, look, they have rubber gaskets to keep whatever's inside really fresh. But we've decorated. I'll use my rolling pin to point like a teacher. If you look at our shelving, these are old designs mixed with new designs. And a lot of our collectors who have had McKenzie Child's for a long time treasure those things that we no longer produce because we're constantly bringing in new things. But we've just decorated for the holidays here, this lovely deer with a little tree in his back mixed with some of our favorite McKenzie Child's kitchen products, mixing old with new. We love that. Before we go upstairs to see the second floor of the house, we have to stop here. This is what makes a home a home. It's so charming. This is called our grand flower clock. And we only ever produced a few of them. But I just want to show you from top to bottom why this just pushes all my happy buttons. It's got beautiful metal sculptural flowers at the top, all completely painted by hand, just bursting and blooming out the top of the clock. Marble treatment, a great clock face with courtly check trim, more of our tortoise shell, this sensational gold leaf with hand applied color transfers that we used to use on some of our ceramic dinnerware. This is where you can little window to see the pendulum swinging back and forth. And then the landscape mural and stripes at the base. So it's so sensational and so over the top. And it's the first thing you see when you walk through the farmhouse front doors. There it is. So that's our grand flower clock, a work of art. And for those of you that have it, you're very lucky because we only ever produced a few of them. And I just think it's sensational. Let's go upstairs now, shall we? I'll take you to the second floor and you can see that it's incredible. So many creations upstairs as well. Let's go. Okay, at the top of the stairs, we're now on the second floor of the farmhouse is one of my favorite, favorite designs. And I say the word favorite a lot because everything is a favorite. Everything's a favorite. How can you not have so many favorites? This is actually called our armoire. And later in 2015, we changed the name to kitchen in a cupboard. Let me show you why. So this is a landscape mural on the outside of what you'd see out our windows, as I explained earlier. If you open it up, creek, ta-da. So this is a complete kitchen in a cupboard for your pied-à-terre. We have a microwave up here behind this beautiful hand-painted treatment with maps. We have running water and a sink. That's beautiful. A landscape behind it. You've got a little fridge here for champagne for a late night snack or whatever you'd like. Shelving here for crackers and biscuits and your favorite sweets, whatever you want to put in there. Places to store your glassware. I mean, isn't this so special? I love this design. What I also love about this is all the combinations of decoupage and all the different patterns that make it so unique. But I believe that this is one of the first uses of courtly check, that pattern that we love so much. Used here to really define and divide other patterns, whether it's tortoiseshell or something floral, you've got it on the bonnet and the base of the armoire. And we did have it on a couple of pieces in the eighties, but this I think is one of the first uses and it is so special for that very reason. So let's go into one of the bedrooms. This is called the morning suite bedroom. Come on in. Are we having fun? Because that is what this experience is supposed to be for you. This is such a beautiful room for so many reasons. We talked earlier about that furniture we were making in Surabaya, Indonesia in the early nineties. And this is one of those beds. So originally this bed had a huge canopy with dried flowers at the top and a dried floral arrangement on the headboard, but the ceiling was too low and we couldn't add the canopy. But what I love about it is all these combinations. We hand painted this beautiful mural on the headboard. We've got hand carved roosters from Bali, Indonesia, crowing north, south, east and west on each of the bedposts. And then it's just dressed in beautiful Mackenzie Childs, what we call serendipity pillows. These were special pillows we made that were kind of like one of a kinds using all kinds of beautiful fabrics that we had lying around. We want to put all of our remnants to good use. Now over here, this is another special piece, now retired, but one of my favorites. This is the Chicken Palace jewelry armoire. So look at this piece. It's got lots of secret compartments for you to put all of your treasures in. And beautiful handmade rabbit drawer pulls, all lined in kind of a dusty rose, beautiful velvet pink. It's got lovely embellishments. This pattern called Parchment Check is very important to Mackenzie Childs. But you could put your favorite jewelry or love letters in here. Look at this little secret compartment to hang all of your beautiful jewelry. It's just the most special piece with a bluebird sitting on the top. And you know, here's how we use our components for multiple things. We thought they'd make great sort of architectural details for the top of the house, but they're actually courtly check knobs that you can purchase in our collection. But everything about this room is so special to me, whether it's the soft floral wall covering that's amazing. Oh, look at this piece. This is a piece from the 80s that Victoria and Richard designed called, this is a console table, but it was part of a whole series. Again, with fun pastimentary trim and hidden drawers and things like that. This is the rabbit Warren armoire. Actually, it's where you can put your jewelry on or, you know, whatever your makeup sit there. And that's kind of lovely. This basket we repurposed, this is on our flower basket chair, but we used it to pull our gorgeous silk drapes back. We thought that would make a great detail. And then, I mean, I'm looking out the window right now. Every view is just spectacular. That's what it's like being in Aurora, New York. I mean, to come to work here every day, I think I'm one of the luckiest people in the world. I think a lot of people that work at McKenzie Childs would say that too. We have gorgeous upholstery. We've done some spectacular upholstery through the years. And then come on in. I want to show you this bathroom. This is a really special room too, because of all the tile that we've created. And so we put it together in fun combinations. We made a mirror here using a bullnose, big, beautiful border trim. The shower is spectacular. I even like the hardware that we chose. Everything about every square inch of this house is so special. And you could live here, but I've heard that it's inhabited by ghosts. Just saying, I've never met them, but I've heard they're here. I just want you to know that. Why don't we go now to another room? Follow me. Let's go down the hall. And I want you to meet someone. She's very special to us. She's a member of the McKenzie Childs design team, and she's reading a book. Sometimes she's cocktailing, but she's actually reading a book. So this is one of our lamp mannequins. And isn't she gorgeous? We went through a period about 10 years ago where we only produced maybe 15 at most of these using beautiful things that we had lying around the design studio. And then all of their beautiful clothing is made by hand, but you've got the dotting decal treatment on her wrists, and she's actually a lamp that turns on and off. Look at this beautiful detail here. The hand-painted shade, even the finial on top, which is a miniature pitcher, is so special, stuffed with little flowers. We use these often, actually. Our original store was on 69th and Madison. That was opened in 1993. And then in 2001, we moved to 57th and 5th, and we would start making and using these as props in our store. And customers would come in and talk to them. We did sell a few. They're so special. She's incredibly special. So from this hallway, I'm going to take you into the rose petal room. It's everything pink that we love. So come on in and look at this beautiful bedroom, filled with Mackenzie Child's treasures. This bed, this is called the Cakewalk Bed, produced here on the farm in Aurora. And it's got finger painting on the headboard, literally painted with fingers in these icy, gorgeous tones. It has a hand-tufted headboard. And then just all these details, these vases. Actually, you could put fresh flowers in them if you'd like to. We've got faux in there today. This is our Haas & Pfeffer Lamp. Haas & Pfeffer, we learned, actually, I think it means rabbit stew. We meant for it just to mean rabbit, but it's the Haas & Pfeffer Lamp nevertheless. It has a beautiful base and hand-beaded trim. Everything that you see has been designed and produced by Mackenzie Child's. And the combination of this all together, every time I come here, I'm re-inspired to do something new with our collection. It's so much fun. Oh, this is important. This is a lamp, but it was originally designed by the founders as a way to show people the finials that we produced, because we used to sell those. But then we turned it into a lamp. And it's just kind of a sculpture, but it seemed to be right at home in this room. So beautiful. This is typical of a Mackenzie Child's floor lamp. This is done in our Farmhouse Pink. And making one of these by hand, it's really hard, because it's got several components that are all fired individually, and then all sort of put together, 22-karat gold. Getting a first across a production floor through all these steps is a miracle, but we do it. Every day. So it's incredible. Let's go in here and see the powder room. You'll pass through that. This is like a little dressing room area, and into our rose petal bathroom. So I'm in the rose petal bathroom, and this is such a testimony to femininity. I mean, it's pink. Everything's pink. It's soft and beautiful and kind of magical. And I want to show you the kinds of combinations that we create using all of our tiles and even our knobs. If you look closely at the wall, this is three different tiles. It's this beautiful trim, these skinny sections, and these beautiful knobs. And so we are very, we're really good at putting these combinations together to create something really, really unique, and you can do it too. But I adore this bathtub. I mean, look at this bathtub. It's so pink. This whole room and this whole suite actually inspired Rosie Check, which we launched March 2024. It was just when that pink thing was happening, but pink has always been really important to our customer. Pink is a power color. Pink is a feminine color. Pink is fabulous, and we love it everywhere. I mean, come look at this. Look at this shower. It's just absolutely beautiful. I love the way that the tile looks, and it's for just people that love pink. What can I say? Everything about it is pink and perfect. Pink is perfect. It really is. Let's talk about the sink for a second. This is Farmhouse Pink, this sink. That's what it's called, but it's amazing and very difficult to make. This one was produced here on our farm. It was made by hand, painted by hand, hand-applied decals, so it's fired four times and then banded in 22-karat gold. As I was saying, to get one of these across the production floor is really challenging, but then when it happens, it's a work of art, and it becomes really a centerpiece for anywhere you choose to use it. I love that, and I love the juxtaposition of that with all these other scales of checks. This is a one-inch scale. This is a half-inch scale. This is a three-quarter-inch scale mixed with flowers and stripes and polka dots and all the things that we love together. It's just beautiful. Imagine having one of those in your home. Pretty special, right? Each one of these rooms in the farmhouse is so distinctly different. From the rose petal room, now I'm going to take you into the sitting room. Completely different palette, completely different vibe, but fantastic nevertheless. See what you think. So now we're in the sitting room, a great place to hang out on the second floor. We have sweeping views out of these windows of Cayuga Lake. It's such a pretty spot, and this room is filled with a lot of pieces that McKenzie Childs no longer produces. These are retired pieces that are really important as part of the heritage of the company. This is the most beautiful secretary. We only ever made two of them, and you can see all the details, the ceramic legs produced here in our pottery, this beautiful brass fringe from France, linoleum tiles that we've just patched together in fun combinations, and then beautiful things like anaglypta wallpaper, or beautiful paper made in Florence, and stained glass windows. This is kind of how McKenzie Childs made its mark, really creating art for your interiors. And look at this basket chair, also an early piece. We still produce this one. I think I showed you one downstairs. This one's a little bit different than the one that was in the breakfast room. Look at the rug. This was part of our collection years ago, and rugs are a big part of McKenzie Childs' design. This one we no longer produce, but I love the way it looks in this room. This chair is incredible. We've done this particular silhouette in so many fabric combinations. You might recognize this as early Pierre Deux fabric. We love Pierre Deux, and we use it. We've used it on many things. We also adore Designer's Guild fabric. They're just so beautiful, and you'll see those sometimes interwoven into our pieces. This particular beautiful mirror we make here in our furniture painting studio and wood shop. It has gorgeous marquetry trim, and a lot of hand painting, and a decoupaged floral wallpaper, and that combination is just so spectacular. And then there's all the Christmas, all the Christmas decorations that we've created this year. We've got a whole collection of nutcrackers that we adore, and some fun baubles over here, and oh, I should talk about this guy. We love going, I think I said this earlier, to estate sales, finding old paintings, and then we might redecorate them a little bit. This guy's wearing a courtly check vest. We don't know who he is, but we've named him Milo, so there's that. And I love the wallpaper in here. This crackle wallpaper has a beautiful effect. Butterflies flying up the wall. Oh gosh, there's so many fun designs here. This grandfather clock we produced, not very many of them, but it was in our collection very briefly, and you can see all the evidence of hand in this, from the landscape painted on the face, chicken wire, the fish knob, and all these gorgeous details. I love that piece. I love every piece. This piece, this is called the P&G Satie, also no longer produced, and this is a new version of it. The original version of it had a hand tufted, hand rolled, blue and white ticking mattress, and the idea is that you would release these beautiful leather belts, the sides would fold down, you'd roll the mattress out, and it would be a place for your guests to sleep. You can store the linens below in these drawers. So that's a really great piece. The thistles, hand carved in Bali. We talked about that a bit earlier. Now we're going to go from the sitting room up to the third floor of the farmhouse. The third floor was originally the textile studio. We made things up there. It was a costume shop and a couple of offices, you'll see. But today it's just kind of a sitting room and some more fun bedrooms. So come on up, let's go. Now you're on the third floor of the farmhouse. Come on up and I'm going to show you around. So first we have to shut and fasten the gate. This is just so you won't fall down the stairs into the second floor. But I love this stairwell. So look at it closely, really. There's so much evidence of hand work in this, which is what we love at McKenzie Childs. These are like chair spindles. We've got courtly check and dot and decal and some really fun punctuation marks of red and stripe and other things. We've got our beautiful tortoiseshell treatment. And it just kind of frames this whole area, which I love. I also love the color of this room. It makes me feel so warm. This gorgeous ochre yellow. And if you look around the room, those are tiles that we used to produce here. Black and But everything about this room is so warm and so special. And you can, you can hang out. We've got it decorated for Christmas. Santa Claus is even here. He made his way here a little early, but nevertheless, here he is. We've got beautiful upholstery furniture. This is actually part of the McKenzie Childs collection. This, oh, oh, be still my heart. This particular tuffet. We only made a handful of them, but I want to describe it to you. Back in the early nineties, we worked with a company called Lacharan. They're one of the oldest mills in Scotland. And we bought a bunch of these boy school neckties. They were $1 a piece. They're all wool in all these beautiful tartans. And we created this tuffet with a woven leather button and gorgeous claw feet. I mean, isn't that stunning? Nail head trim on leather. That just says it all to me. Says a lot about McKenzie Childs and it says it all to me. It really speaks to my heart. And I love the tartan carpet. But what a great place to hang out. We even, we even framed our TV to make it sort of, this is McKenzie Childs camo, camouflaged with a beautiful frame just to make it sort of, you know, blend right into the room. This lamp is called our lighthouse lamp. And it's made from formerly a chair leg that we just thought, wouldn't that make a terrific lamp? I remember a girl on the visuals team, Susanna Huebner was her name. She designed this lamp and it's got the beaded trim and a really fun finial. It's a special space, no? I love it. I love everything about it. So this room was one of the first rooms on the third floor ever to be painted in courtly check. There are all kinds of fun bells and whistles. For example, this, ta-da! That is the shower. It's just hiding behind a door. We love that. We love using closets in unexpected ways. Super, super fun. And then if you pan the room, let's go over here. I want you to meet somebody else. This quiet fellow was a creation we made for our retail store on 57th and 5th, which by the way, is no longer there. We're down in Soho now. So go see us. There are a few more creations at that location as well. But he has putty shard arms made of broken pieces of pottery, courtly check trousers, these amazing legs, a courtly check head, an incredible lampshade on top of his head. I think he's a work of art. And he's the only one of his kind. So we love him. Then there's a lot of antiquity in this room as well. Pieces that were collected over the years. And this is such a special, a special space. I think it took 17 days to paint this room. That's what my memory tells me. And that's why it's so special. No stencils ever used, all painted by hand, and all in this gorgeous courtly check pattern. This room is all about hand-painted everything. I mean, look at the details in the dormer windows. I absolutely love those paintings. They're some of the sweetest spots in the whole house. But this room is a combination of antiques and things that we've made, things like this chair that have been in our line for years, and this beautiful bed. It's just a great combination of old meets new meets courtly check and everything we love painted by hand. It's a very special place in the house. And it's sort of the tip of the iceberg, right? It's at the very, very top. You've got to climb three floors to find it. But when you get here, you're like, what? This room is crazy. And it is. And we love it for that very reason. I mean, this is a wow room. Who in their right minds would paint walls like this? Well, we would because we love it. If you look at it too long, it makes you a little bit dizzy, but it's also it's also just stunning. And we love the combinations of all the patterns mixed together, mixed with antiquity. It's just to me, it's perfect, perfect room. So let's go check out another room, shall we? So now we're in the pure sunshine bedroom, third floor. I love this space because it really is just beautiful. I mean, the walls are completely painted by hand. It makes me feel very warm and sunny. And I love the juxtaposition of crazy Mackenzie Child's furniture with these walls. You know, for us, more is better. We are maximalists at heart. So the more the merrier. And that is true for pattern and color and fun combinations. This bed made here on the farm, this is called the Dixon Road Bed. And it's all the things that I love about Mackenzie Child's, you know, these great finials and decoupage tartan wall covering and a hand-painted landscape mural against this headboard to me just equals delicious. That is just absolutely yummy. So we've got the bed. This is something that's retired and it used to have a little, it still does, a little bell here. This is a breakfast tray. Would you like breakfast in bed? Maybe I could pour you a cup of tea. This iconic, beautiful, original teapot was one of the first designs in the Mackenzie Child's collection. And this particular pattern was done in the early, actually late 90s, that one. We've got a little rattan furniture over here. We talked about that earlier. Oh, this is called the pièce de résistance or the PDR as we call it in production. And if you remember down in the dining room, there was a chandelier that looked somewhat like this, but I want to show you something fun. So if you remember, the chandelier, the bottom of the component was like that. So we love taking interesting components and using them in sort of unpredictable ways to create these things. But this is really a work of art. It is a mesh, a brass mesh bead, all this hand painting, all these color transfer, gold dots, these beautiful platinum and gold handles, and the marble finish on the base. It's really beautiful. So imagine serving something incredible in that for Thanksgiving. To me, that's just the bee's knees. I love that. Great views out every window. This is called the Argentina floor lamp, made here on the farm. This room just says a lot to me about our history, our sense of place, our ability to mix fun patterns together. I love everything about it. Oh, look at this fish chair, yet another version of a fish chair, also retired, but amazing. This has beautiful stripes, colors we call frank and mustard, because that's what they are, frank and mustard, right? That's what it looks like. These are Torquay vases, everything about this chair I love. So what does home mean to Mackenzie Childs? I mean, it means everything, right? Home should nurture you. Home should be comfortable. Home should express who you are. And our customers do that so beautifully. If you think of home like a blank canvas, you want to fill it with all the things that you love and mean something to you. To me, cookie cutter homes aren't that interesting. I want to know who you are when I walk in your home, and I want to see the things that make you happy, whether they're postcards that you collected, you know, through the years, or items that your children have made for you and given you since they were tiny and in their first art class, to the beautiful designs that we create. We love home as an expression of who you are. It's individual, it's personal. And hey, you know what? There's no design authority. Home is what makes you feel good. And that's our whole purpose, is to share our love and our spark and our craziness with the people that appreciate a little bit of fun in their lives. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.