棲居美學2 走進 50 年代明尼蘇達州迷人住宅

Hi, Homeworthy, I'm Kate. Welcome to my house in St. Paul, Minnesota. Why don't you come on in? Hi, I'm Alison Kenworthy, the founder of Homeworthy. And we're now offering a membership plan that gives our supporters early and exclusive access to new videos. Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Roz. You're here at my home in Los Angeles. Come on in. I can't wait to show you around. With this membership, we invite you to open more doors discovering new homes, rooms and personalities available only to those with the keys to our guest house. You'll be part of a community of people who are just as passionate as you are about interior design. Before today's episode, click the Join button below to support all of the storytelling we do on this channel. Our growing community of members help to directly fund more videos so we can capture these extraordinary homes from around the world. So join today to receive early and exclusive access to new Homeworthy videos. You're watching Homeworthy where we believe every home has a story. I'm Kate Ahrens, and we are at my home in St. Paul, Minnesota. This house was built in the 50s. The style of this house that's really hard to define. It could be called kind of like a Frankenstein house because there isn't one particular style that it would fall into in terms of the category. I call it a Cape Cod Rambler. It's got traditional elements. It's got some modern elements. It's got a stained glass ceiling. It really is a lot of fun. I think that's what you would call it. We moved in in 2020. This house is less than a mile from where we were living. And someone sent us the listing and was like, this is your house. And we walked in and looked at each other from across the room and we just knew this was the house for us. I think we just love the personality. We love the quirks. You know, we love the challenge of it and knew that we could really make it our own. I really like homes that have a lot of personality. And I don't think I really knew that about myself until I walked into this space and really just felt lit up by the idea of living somewhere that had so much energy around it. I live here with my partner, Joe, and our two kids, who are 6 and 7. And our sweet dog, Winnie. She is almost 10. I am what they would call an original gangster of the vlogging world. I have been writing and creating things online since 2009. And Witten Delight has been around for that long. So I think I was 24 and I was working as a graphic designer and just wanted to really write about things that I wasn't necessarily getting to create at work. And so the role of content creator, I guess, kind of grew up around that, I don't know, impulse to create and share that was part of the emergence of what we now call social media. So I have done a lot of things. And I think content creator probably isn't the right one word for it. I create products, I design spaces. And I think when I look back at kind of the through line with everything that I've done and created, it has been about creativity and expression. And I think living in a way that combines like curiosity and creativity. And the hope is that my work inspires other people to do that. You know, whether or not your work is creative, how you create your home and your life can be a platform to do that, whether or not you share it on Instagram or not. This is the entryway. It was the room when we walked in and saw the house for the first time that we fell in love. The star of the show is this chandelier. It's from the 1920s and it was an estate sale find that I saw and just immediately knew I had to make work in the space. I love the scale. We added the medallion at the top and it really just makes this entry moment like sing, especially when you first walk in the door. I've always loved round tables in an entry. I often have fresh flowers here. These are dried that I got at a local coffee shop. I love this rug. This is one of those things where I had like a full body yes when I saw it. It's a Swedish Killam rug in these beautiful shades of pink. All of the little side tables have lived in different aspects and parts of my house and right now they're just here to kind of hold junk because every entryway you need to kind of hide your stuff sunglasses, keys, all of that. This mirror I found at an antique store and I love it so much. It's also had a lot of different homes and different parts of the house but I love it here. It's like the last look before you head out the door and it just makes me really happy. One of the things I love most about the house is that when you walk in the entryway you have like a full line of sight all the way through to our dining room and we wanted to really highlight that view because it's lovely to see through the backyard so we really designed the flow of the house to elongate and enhance that. We've tried a lot of different layouts and have found that this is the best one where we have a sitting room and then the dining room that goes all the way through and really this space is all about framing that view when you walk in and it's probably one of my favorite parts of the house. And I just wanted to have a little bit of fun with color, do something unexpected and I fell in love with this Kelly green color and wanted to put it somewhere so I decided to do it on our doors. The entrance is black when you come in and it's sort of a surprise to see the green when you leave and I love that it's in a high gloss. I love that it's unexpected. I love that it's like a happy color. And just to add that like unexpected pop of something is just a design philosophy I love to live by. I would say the vibe is me. There isn't really one I think style or look. I think I've gone with what the house has sort of told me. I think that also is partly influenced by who lived here before. The previous homeowners from what I understand traveled a lot. They loved color. They loved creating rooms of personality and I would like to think that I put my own spin on what was already here. So a lot of color a lot of layer and texture I would say that it is an eclectic expression of the things that I love and we love as a family. So green is one of my absolute favorite colors and you'll see it sprinkled throughout the house and speaking of green I want to take you into the room that is right off the entryway and that is our living room. So this is the living room. Our family calls it the green room. As you can see we are wrapped in this lovely green color that is it just reminds me of spring. I think that's the best way to describe it. It is where we watch TV. It's where we play games. It's where we hang out. It's just where we completely relax. We have fires going as often as we possibly can. It's one of my favorite things to do. This is a wood-burning fireplace and I love it. I love the process of building fires and tending to the fire and the smell of fire. So I love to have them going as often as we can. This is where I have another of my beloved Swedish Killam rugs. I'm obsessed. I love it. I love the green and the blue and the scale in here. This sofa is probably the most comfortable sofa I've ever sat on. It's a down velvet huge sofa that is great for napping and relaxing. One of my favorite details in this space really is that you feel fully enveloped in color and we gave it a lot of dimension by doing a flat paint on the walls and then going high gloss in all of the woodwork and it just adds like a little glint in a shimmer when the light hits it and you're allowed to sort of feel wrapped in color but you're not sort of like overwhelmed by it or it doesn't feel super flat when we add in we add it in that contrast of flat and high gloss. All of these things are just items that I have purchased or thrifted. Again, when I see something and I have just this visceral like it needs to come home with me moment and the way that I set up my mantle it changes all of the time. This just so happens to be the one that I have up after the holidays. These two horses are meant to be door stoppers so they're incredibly heavy and I just love how regal and I don't know, just like I love a little bit of metallic in any space and I love that they bring that in here. The warmth of this mirror I love a medium tone wood and I specifically loved these carvings and I just really felt that this space the green and having green on green bringing in a natural element really livens everything up. I think green, you know, it goes with so many of the colors that you find in nature. So I think just having that rich brown was lovely. Always have to have a plant and then this candelabra reminds me of like Beauty and the Beast. At any moment it might just sort of come to life. It's just got a lot of personality and it's super fun. Everything's a little wonky in this house and that's how I like it, you know. Everything's just like a little off-skew and I think that's kind of what makes it feel at home without sort of like, I don't know, being in your face. It's not like the house feels like it's like sinking or anything but everything's just like a little off. Everything in my house, I always joke that whenever you come over something that was in one room is now going to be in another room and used in a completely different way. This is a tapestry that we had hanging in the kitchen vertically and I didn't know what to do with this big long space. I'm still kind of looking for the right piece of art. But I love the idea of having something that is woven, something that is textural and so I just went into the basement and grabbed this and just stuck it on the wall one day when I was feeling impulsive and so it lives here now. And I think it's just like a good way of, I don't know, trying stuff out. If you don't know what's going to go in that spot, I don't know what's going to go there yet. I like the scale. I know I like the pattern and right now this works here. I love these English rollback chairs. This is where I do a lot of my reading. Being in this little nook, this bay window with floor-to-ceiling windows, sometimes it's hard to know what to do within that space. So these chairs, it's just a great way to catch a lot of light. I love the view out this way too. So sometimes I just rotate the chairs and look outside. Our TV is somewhat hidden in this gallery wall. It's a frame. These are just a couple of my favorite pieces that I've collected over time. This is from an antique store. This is an original. Some impressions and thrift store finds. And I just,I like the idea of the TV not being the focal point above the mantle. It works really well. It kind of blends in but it still is really functional for like game day,you know, and cartoons in the morning. These are all of my favorite antiques. I think probably one of my most beloved things is this Dalmatian lamp. I can't tell you why. I just,I find it delightful. And it's one of the things that I would grab if my house was burning down. Yeah,I think I bought it during the pandemic and I was just really feeling, it was one of the first things I bought for this house. And I think it kind of had the irreverence and kind of playfulness that I felt while I was here. And so I love this lamp so much. This is actually a printed replica of an original from St. Frank And it's so good. It really looks like it's actually woven. I love the pop of red theory, the idea that if you bring in just a tiny bit of red, it just sort of like creates this elevated,unexpected, kind of playful element to a space. And so this is the pop of red in this space. I think I have a little pop of red in every space actually. So I love this print. I love the scale. I love the depth. I like that everything sort of feels really textural here. This is one of my favorite pieces that I found in an antique store. It has a secret drawer down here that isn't holding anything right now. But I will put treasures in here someday to hide from my children. But it's in just great condition. And this is a, I think it's a Victorian era type piece. This way, this is a cupboard from a kitchen that was reclaimed. I found it in an architectural salvage store. I love it. It's crooked. It's wonky. But it has, you know, just all of my kids' toys. We just shove it away. Things don't have to be organized or anything like that. But the doors don't always close. But I love the warmth that it adds to the space. And that is really informal and feels cozy. I feel like the space behind our couch is a place where I'm still kind of playing around. I love having console tables behind sofas because one, you need a spot to put your coffee. And two, it's a great styling moment. So that's something that I am playing around with right now. The golden horse is again something I picked up in an antique store. I love horses. I don't know why. I think they're just impressive, regal,beautiful creatures. I love to have them around my house. Yeah. And I often will like put in dried flowers into that big urn. That's again one of those things I found at a thrift store that,you know, sometimes you find these things that have a great size and scale and shape that are hard to find and,you know, retail today. And so I just grabbed it. And it always has a home in my house. Right now it happens to be in this room. So this color is not for everyone. And it changes a lot based on the time of day. And in the morning time it feels really bright and springy. And at night it feels very like,I don't know, cozy and cooler. I think it's better in person to be honest. I think the whole house is better in person than it looks actually when it's kind of lit up in camera. I mean and that's sometimes the point I guess. So this is where our dog Winnie sleeps. This is the folding laundry chair. My husband, my husband like has to sit upright when he folds laundry. So we call it his folding laundry chair so he can watch sports and fold laundry. That's Papa Joe's chair. This is just for throwing our feet up. And I love the size of these two pieces of artwork. I think,you know, if you're going to go with a color that's this bold, bringing in elements that ground it and really give variance and kind of bring out all the different tones was important and those pieces were specifically selected for those, for these two locations. So one of the few things that hasn't rotated out of here are these two pieces. Let's go check out the sitting room. It's just this way. Welcome to the sitting room. This is one of the rooms in the house that people usually look up and go,what? Like this is one of the rooms I'm talking about when I say that the house is sort of a Frankenstein house. There's just this lovely glass, stained glass ceiling in the middle of the house. When we bought it, there was a piano in here. I imagine this was the music room. It is right off the dining room and there's this great connection between the space. The dining room is a step down. So I imagine that people had dinner and maybe someone played music and that was sort of how the evening went. We are not those people. I don't know how to play the piano. So we had to pay someone to move it. Now it's a sitting room. We've tried a number of different layouts for this space. This is the one that works the best. We have a loveseat and two chairs. These are beloved. I found them at an antique store in their 1960s Danish chairs that have been refurbished. I love them. It really is about conversation and hanging out. Our kids love to sit here and talk about what happened after school. We play chess. I serve cocktails in here and it feels very civilized. We enjoy the view. This is our chess board. My kids are in chess club at their school. It is one way that... I don't know. I think it's a great way to figure out how to talk to them about what happened in school without really like... I don't know. Asking them a million questions. I like to beat them at chess. I still can right now but my days are numbered. So we like to just kind of crouch down here, play some chess. Oftentimes when we're having friends over for dinner we'll have cocktails in here. One of my favorite views of the house is like this moment right here. I feel like it's my personality and style in a moment. This is a Gail Albert Holuban print that I purchased from a local gallery and it's a Venice and I love it so much. There are these moments happening within the still life. So there's always something to kind of discover within the print. Her work is incredible. This piece right here is also beloved. I found this at an architectural salvage place and I fell in love with the scallops. It's wonky. I have to fix it often but it holds a lot of my absolute favorite things. I got these French coupe glasses for Christmas. I just love the boldest shape of this really cute picture. I can't remember. I know that these were made in the 60s and the 70s. All different sorts of little coupes and things to serve drinks in. Toothpicks and some books on making drinks. So this is just one of my absolute favorite pieces and it's got so much personality and I think there's markings in here from the builder who made it and it makes me really happy. I love a juxtaposition that clashes. I think it makes sense to me because there's tension between those two things and in a room like this it works because we have a really ornate ceiling but we have a white box to work within and so all of the traditional elements serve as sort of this grounding space for other more modern elements to come in and little pops and that's really what the chairs do and the lights do and the coffee table does. And so it was a moment in this house where I was really able to I think enhance that juxtaposition where in some of these other rooms they lean a bit more traditional or a bit more modern. This is the room where I think they all come together and I love that it's in the center of the home. My daughter when we first moved in called them Mickey Mouse ears and I cannot unsee them and now you won't be able to either. I think this was very traditional of the 1950s like rambler style molding and they were everywhere. I actually took a couple of them down and I just it was a little bit too much especially once you see Mickey Mouse everywhere. But I love how they punctuate the more formal spaces and I think they have they have a nice moment here. The lighting in this space in the dining room this existed. I added some of the lampshades just to add a bit more texture and a bit more contrast. I love a contrasting piping but that's really all that we did here. This originally had this hand-painted silvery wallpaper and like a teal color like a light teal molding and I really liked the idea of letting just one element sing and that was the chandelier and the stained glass ceiling. So we painted it a creamy just off-white white and I think it really does that. It lets those elements shine. How I would describe my sense of style I think it's like an amalgamation of words and feelings. Comfort and warmth I think is like the number one thing that people say they feel when they come into my house. Classic. I really do love traditional elements of architecture and furniture and then like a little weird a little zany. I'm always kind of bringing in something that is modern or it's going to kind of like mix things up. So I would say it's a mix. It's like the Kate mix and I'm always really happy when people walk in and just sort of you can see they feel relaxed and like nothing's too precious here and that they can stay and take off their shoes and really feel at home. Welcome to the dining room. We call it the peach room for obvious reasons. I love this space so much. It was probably the room that sold us on the house to be honest. The view, the ceiling height, the floors, the color, everything about it just I mean it was like my dream room. It is my dream room. It works really well as a dining room. That's originally how it was designed. We for a long time had this as a living room and just found that we weren't it didn't really feel right. We weren't using it in the right way and one of the things I love more than anything is to host and when I realized that that's what the space was really wanting to be, we redesigned the space to really be that and I think it sings this way. I want to show you one of my favorite things about the room and that is that these are china cabinets for plates and things which is just like I mean that's how you know it's meant to be like this was meant to be a dining room. It's got enough room for like a really big table and it makes me so happy. This fireplace when we got here it wasn't working so we put in a gas insert just for ease and we love it. I will often sit at this table and flip through cookbooks or meal plan or you know write or things like that and I'll have the fire going and it's just a nice change of pace to come here and enjoy the view and the color and just the grandness of the space. It's really beautiful. This piece of artwork is one of my absolute like favorite things that I own It's a painting that was done by artist Paolo Ventura during the beginning of the pandemic the date up there 4-3-2020 He is based in Italy and painted this when the pandemic was just ravaging northern Italy and he painted just inanimate everyday objects that he found in his house and we bought it I think a year a year after the series was done and just loved how it worked with the colors in this space This paint color was here when we moved in I definitely thought I was going to paint it and the day that we were bringing all of our pieces in here I was sitting on a couch and I was like I absolutely cannot paint this like I have to keep it This room is an example of letting the house and the previous homeowners really influence the design decisions we made We loved this room and realized that removing the paint color and the chandeliers would really just change the feeling of it in general It's not necessarily us but we brought in our own personality to what was already existing So the paint color was here The chandeliers were here The sconces were here And we really just brought in furniture that doesn't skew too formal doesn't skew too traditional In fact, I thrifted these chairs They're from an old from a Thai restaurant that went out of business and painted them a fun blue and recovered them And this table is second hand And the artwork is kind of a mishmash of all different styles And I think that that really That's us It takes the sort of formality of this room and makes it feel really approachable and comfortable And creates a really fun dining experience What type of host am I I am a like celebrate the little stuff kind of host I'll say come on over for soup Or I made a big thing of braised pork belly Like whoever is available in the neighborhood Come on over And we can just chow down I love to put love into the food Into the ambience And cooking is a creative outlet for me So to be able to share that with people The space really allows me to do that In a way that is really easy And I think too it creates community Especially within our neighborhood I love the idea that I can host here And it's pretty easy for us to have Three other couples It feels like That's one of those Like dream come true Type things about the house That I'm able to do My ride or die tip for hosting Is to make things That you know are good And that you are really Comfortable cooking I do not cook something new Try something new Do not put too much pressure On yourself You know I think that That's the biggest The biggest tip I have And I don't know to not overdo it Like I think like a great pot of soup Is like totally Dinner party worthy And so I think a lot of people Kind of like put the pressure on the menu Or sort of like I have to like Create something that's really like Dinner party worthy And I don't know I think just being yourself Doing the things that you know How to do well Is really the ultimate like tip For hosting a party That people really enjoy As I mentioned before I love artwork And this is where we have a gallery wall It's a big space that we had left Blank for a really long time And we didn't necessarily Purchase any of these pieces For this space It was something that I just looked at what we had And kind of curated Something that felt like It had a nice sort of scale And movement and variety within it I love texture I love things that don't necessarily feel All of the same medium And so you have this Beautiful grass necklace That's been framed This is printed on linen I got that at an antique store I love paintings that people Like give away at thrift stores Some of them give me really fun So these are I think Paintings that people have done I think they've been like Kind of dubbed amateur work But I love them This is a Picasso print I've got a few original pieces That I've collected over time I would say that each one of these things I individually love And I think sometimes we overthink How we curate gallery walls Like they all have to sort of feel Like they match Or there's just sort of like This right amount of like tonality Or size and scale that goes with it But I really do think that If you put the things together That you love They often kind of hang together in a way So I try to have a bit more of a loose grip On the way that I throw together gallery walls And I think this is a good example of that This console table used to live in there It's not the right size or scale But it works for putting dishes down You know we've lived in this house A couple of years But so much of designing a home And curating a home Is about knowing how you're going to use it And so having all of these pieces That have lived in different rooms Putting them where we know we need to use them Has been a really great way Of just figuring out how to utilize the house As best as possible So this is actually a sofa table That I'm standing in as a console table Eventually I'd love to have a buffet Where I have a bit more storage But here I love it I think it's like It's got this really fun texture and print And it really just is here to flank the gallery wall And to put wine and food on When we have our dinner party I would love to show you the kitchen next So come with me What I think makes a home come alive Is when the people inside it Are really expressing themselves For me it's all about artifacts And seeing someone in a space The homes that really influenced me as a kid Were ones where you could tell That the people inside Just did a lot of different things My grandmother's house Was full of furniture that they collected From the 60s And fossils and books And whatever they were interested in at the time And the line between decor and hobbies Was really blurred And to me that is the soul of a home It's almost like the objects Themselves are They hold the energy of the person And I don't know I think sometimes you walk in a space And you just sort of feel that it's more alive And more like the person inside And I think that's a really special moment And I think all spaces really have it I think some people are more In tuned with what that means than others So this is the kitchen It's a pretty unique shape So you're only seeing one portion of it right now And this is what I call My portion Which is where most of the cooking is done It is bigger than it looks I have had six other girlfriends in here And we have cooked an elaborate meal But what I love about this Is that it is a really contained Creative, beautiful space I mean the views are amazing And it's really bright And it is my like creative My creative space in the house I love to cook And this is I don't know I feel like It gives me a place to do that That is often away from the You know the chaos of family life The people in my neighborhood What my signature dish would be I would say It's a pork wellington And the only reason why Is I had to make it for a photo shoot And I made like three of them And they all came over and ate them Because I was like practicing But I think yeah I think I'm just sort of known For throwing together a spread It's usually Bold with flavor And what did I make What did I make last week I made this really great Sweet potato soup With what I had left in my fridge It had like apples in it And fresh ginger And cumin and turmeric And it was just sort of An amalgamation of what I had And I blended it all together And it was really lovely and smooth So yeah I would say that It's kind of always It's always an adventure This space is really special to me Because it was design wise A really big departure From the rest of the house All of this woodwork Was originally here It was a very I don't know it felt Almost Japanese inspired The way that this kitchen Was put together In the original footprint of the house And I wanted to keep that But I don't make it more me And also kind of bridge the gap Between the rest of the house And this space So how I did that was find Materials that felt Pretty traditional And that felt really bold That worked really well With the modern warmth Of the oak wood And I did that really through A big design element Which is this This marble It's leathered Which means it has This really great texture It's a Rosa Calcutta So it's got all of these Beautiful shades of violet But it also has salmon Coming through There's actually A little bit of aqua here And this lab itself Just really reminded me Of the expression Of the house itself So the stone was the way That I connected the two Different vibes of these spaces And tried to make them feel like us The layout is really interesting The kitchen is in an L shape And so this is really Like the creation space We have the range And you know the running water And all of my utensils And cooking equipment Along with our fridge And then when you come this way Our coffee bar Wine fridge Pantry And I delineated those two spaces With different color cabinetry That felt like they Were both unique But also kind of fit together nicely And so yeah the space was a challenge To design around We also knew And still I still have a question mark Around what the footprint Of the house will look like When we tackle Bedrooms and bathrooms Which are areas That we haven't renovated yet And there's this thought that The layout of the kitchen Could eventually change in five years So this space was really about How can we make the space usable And enjoyable to cook in And feel like us without You know blowing the budget On a brand new kitchen And so this is what we came up with This is like one of those moments In the house where it's like All of my favorite things I think my kids would say like This is like the one area Not to mess around with I have my favorite things here So this is a swan tureen that I love This is a It's like a super magnum Wine from a dinner party That I hosted at Friendsgiving last year One of my favorite ceramic artists Is Jenny Sims She's local and I have A picture from her And a number of teacups Or they're not teacups They're just massive mugs That I adore We do have a lot of tea And coffee in our house So this is really where it all happens And I love to have variety I just want to be able to pick What I want So that's what this space Is really all about So light fixtures are where I like to amp up the modernity Or like the juxtaposition That we talked about in The sitting room This light fixture right over here Is the dancing light pendant And it's made out of felt And I love the idea of Doing something really large in scale But also brings some warmth Into the space It is great for acoustics And it also just is like Really visually beautiful And so that was one of the things That I picked up first Other people have lovingly called it The coffee filter light Which I can see But it's huge I mean I would say it's probably This is a foot It's probably two and a half feet wide And there are moments I think In houses where scale really You need it when it comes to lighting And this was one of those moments When you move into an older home And you're not gutting the whole thing Sometimes you end up with spaces like this This is like a little sunroom On the floor plan when we moved in And it's you know Three feet wide But sitting here is lovely So there's a chair there now And I would say that My daughter sits there every morning I sit there and have coffee And it's just sort of this like Odd little spot And it's right next to where We do all of our homework And breakfast and coloring And this is our workshop table kind of And it's I usually have to sand it down To get it clean Because there's all sorts of Crayons and markers And things on it But that's just you know Part of life Where I look for inspiration Is really I think it's been places That I've traveled in my life It's also been Spaces and experiences I think where I have had Sort of like all of my senses Enveloped So it's usually been like I mean I like to think of like Hotels and restaurants Are really good example Of feeling inspired Because all of your senses Are really immersed in those experiences You know I recently took A trip to the French Alps With my husband You know I think it's a Kind of about being around The architecture And also the sense of place And sort of seeing how those things combine I think is the greatest source of inspiration What I love about that Is it really teaches you to Look at what you have And where your home is located And maybe make Design decisions and choices Where your personal style And your home intersect And personal style to me Isn't really formulaic I think there are It's more about a set of values And knowing who you are And letting whatever Period you are in your life Whatever your budget is Wherever your home is Those are the conditions That bring about a unique expression Of your personal style And so I think I've been really drawn You know I've been really drawn to places that Are unique expression of a place You know going to hotels In Chamonix And that felt just so true to the place A type of authenticity I think really inspired me to come home And look at I think my own home And think about what is you know My unique expression of a home in Minnesota Look like The other thing I feel like Really inspires me I think to understand My own personal style too Is just watching films that Are really visually beautiful The last one I watched It's kind of a It's a thriller from the early 2000s But it's called Birth And it's with Nicole Kidman It's a very you know kind of Strange sci-fi thriller movie But the apartment inside And the clothing I mean it all Just sort of to me those things Really just jump out at me As much as the stories do Here we are in my office I love books This is where I have my collection of Design books All of my cookbooks The books that I love I feel like they are I love to be around them And so to be able to have an office With built-in bookshelves like this Is you know again One of the reasons when we Walked through this house We knew it was the right one for us These were here when we moved in We painted them They were a bright pink color I love the offset knobs They're just quirky and fun I have a record player right here Which I'll put on sometimes This is my reading chair And yeah there's nothing about This space that's like Finished or designed I think I like a tidy office But I also like places where It's like you can be creative And the fluidity of this space Is that it's about You know just kind of sinking into work And so there's usually books Piled up and work everywhere My desk is never this clean But this is really where I get creative Most mornings I do writing from here I like to read in this chair This is where I spend most of my time I love this wallpaper It is like being wrapped in a field of flowers It's on the ceiling I love the texture I love that it feels just you know like you're It almost feels like there's a lot of movement Coming from these and Yeah it was one of the first The first select we made for the house Was this wallpaper And I remember when I was selecting it I was going to go with something A little bit more traditional There was like a toile that was here before And what I liked about this Is that it felt like it had like the Texture and the richness and the layering And the depth that this house needed But it also felt decidedly modern too And that's why we picked it I haven't decided what to do with it Again this is just like A little bit of my collection I had thought that I would put it up And I got a little commitment phobic There's also a hallway into the bedrooms That is right now empty And I thought maybe I would do A gallery wall there But yeah this is just kind of in a Like things that I've collected over time Some of these are my artwork Some of these are my daughter's antiques And they all together they work So I don't know where they're going to go yet I have just like in this corner over here You know little things that my kids have made I love rocks and so do my kids So I've got some crystals here My daughter made valentines And I just I thought this was just hilarious So I kept this one It looks like a Comme des Garcons Like it's just hilarious to me So anything that really like is delightful to me This is from our trip to Switzerland You know little clay things That my kids have created I was a graphic designer for a long time in my life And so when I find packaging that I love I still often will buy it That's an example here I also love to take up hobbies That I have like no time for And like you know kind of half-heartedly attempt And that's why I have this guitar I started like right before the pandemic And really intend to get back into it I have to cut my nails in order to do that So now it's sitting there just to remind me That I need to get back into it Yeah and then just like my cookbooks They're like well loved And you know there's all sorts of All sorts of things that have come out of these I think my favorite thing to do in here Is just like I love to read cookbooks Like in bed I'll just sort of I read them like books Yeah and so the new one that I got That I'm absolutely obsessed with is Julius Roberts He's this British chef That moved to the countryside And is you know tending his own animals And this is just about that experience And what he cooks there And I just it's Yeah I just was like curled up Reading this over the weekend What I love most about our home Is the location And probably the views It's just a one story house But we live right on the Mississippi River And there's a bluff outside the front And a walking trail And we've got a beautiful backyard And to me there's this beauty of like What's happening on the inside and the outside It's always changing In the summer it's very lush You know in the winter when there's snow on the ground All the colors on the inside really pop And that's what I love the most about it The way that the inside and the outside Really relate to one another So here we are in the primary bedroom I love this space so much The green color was here when we moved in But they had sponge painted the walls With this like drab brown color And one of my favorite wallpapers That I had collected from years Before we moved into this house Happened to be the perfect match to the molding That already existed in this space So we just went with it and put it up I did not ask my husband If he was okay with pink birds He's not complained But I think it's again like You just feel really relaxed When you come in here We have huge windows That look out onto the walking path And in the winter you can see the Mississippi River And it's just lovely and relaxing And that's what bedroom should be I love these They were here We decided not to paint them Instead of deeper wood And they've got this great locking system That you know allow for The floor to ceiling windows To be pretty safe and secure I love a graphic shape And just the way that Oftentimes modern pieces Can bring in like visual interest to a space And so when I saw this bed frame I instantly really loved it I also loved the idea of bringing in A mustard color To bring out some of the colors And the birds in this space And so that's really What the whole scheme was for this Is really bringing out Those golden elements in the bed frame And in the bedding And yeah It's just like a great place To rest your head at night I love this light fixture I found this at front gate And I had my eyes set on this Sloan like shell fixture That was it cost probably As much as like all of the furniture And like multiple rooms combined So I found I basically felt like I found the look of that for this And my kids like to throw things in it I think I found like a football And multiple Easter eggs in here When I was dusting the other time The other day But I love the texture that it adds The natural elements in a space So our bedside tables I found them from the same vendor That I found the Victorian dresser In the green room And I had a dresser like this Growing up with these black knobs Like one of my childhood memories Was like twirling and playing With these as a kid So when I saw them I had sort of this visceral reaction to them And I just really think that Old pieces of furniture That are made out of wood just I don't know why you would buy them new I mean you absolutely can And in this case I have like a very old dresser With a very new dresser And I love the way that they look together But there's something about These like old antiques And the knobs that I just They're so nostalgic for me I really love them in these spaces The word home to me Means that I can be fully myself In all of the ways I can be here and feel totally held When things are not going okay And I can have the most joyous Celebratory dinner party for my friends When things are amazing And to have a place that you feel held And fully expressed You know we are all whole people But often times the world Kind of doesn't feel like that always And when we're home You know that's one place Where we can really come back to ourselves And feel like it's really okay to be Fully human And that's what home means to me