Café Design
Decorating Consultations

New Items in The Collected Home Shop

Good morning, friends! Hope your holiday preparations are going smoothly! In case you need some last minute gift ideas, we have added some beautiful new items to our Chairish shop, The Collected Home. All of the items have been sourced here in New England, and are one of a kind pieces – vintage or antique – that I’ve come across in my travels, at estate sales and antique fairs near or around Amherst and the Cape. Whenever I go shopping for antiques and uniques, I have two rules I follow: One, the item must be something that I fall for right there and then, and that visceral reaction you get when you find something you love in a place where everything competes for your attention is what makes me swipe my card, each and every time. (No lukewarm feelings allowed, it has to be love at first sight 🙂 ) Two, the item must be in great condition relative to its age. If it’s pottery and it’s old, then a few chips are fine, as long as the overall effect is beautiful patina. So, without further ado here are some of the items we’ve recently listed in our shop. Hope you see something you like!

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Client’s Dining Room Progress

The best part about helping others with their decorating dilemmas is getting excited emails and progress shots form clients who are happy to see our design plans come to life. A sweet client from upstate New York with whom I worked on a color consultation recently sent me progress pictures of her dining room, and they are so good I want to share them with you! My client and her husband purchased their new home not so long ago and they’ve been working steadily to update the rooms to better suit their active lifestyle. My client is a working mom with three little boys, has beautiful taste and a great collection of lighting & furniture already in place; she did a wonderful job decorating the other rooms of her house but the dining room was a bit of a dilemma and she reached out for my help. Here is a picture of her beautiful dining room, she sent me when we started working together:

A “before” image my client sent me at the start of our collaboration
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My Collaboration with The Inside

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. As usual, all opinions are honest and my own.

Happy Friday, friends! I hope you had a peaceful observance of Veteran’s Day! Thank you all for your sweet messages after Wednesday’s post, I appreciate your kind words and the encouragement! Today I wanted to share with you a recent project I worked on in collaboration with The Inside. For those of you who are not familiar with the company, The Inside is a creative platform that helps customers design tailored furniture at cookie-cutter prices, and with surprisingly short lead times. ( We all know how hard it’s been to get our furniture delivered during the pandemic so The Inside ‘s relatively short lead times – several weeks instead of several months – could not have come at a better time. )

small ottoman with a tray of fresh flowers and seashell necklace
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Client’s House Exterior Makeover

The best part about helping clients with their decorating dilemmas is making them happy. It is the most rewarding aspect of the job and I am at my happiest with a long-distance consultation when the client sends me excited emails with their progress shots, and they let me share in the joy of seeing our vision come to life, regardless of how near or far we live from one another. Today I want to share that joy with you and show you a wonderful project I worked on recently with the most amazing and trusting client.  Not so long ago my client  and her husband purchased a beautiful shingle-style home in a bucolic New England town and she reached out for advice regarding the exterior color scheme.

The exterior color scheme “before”
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10 Ways to Spruce Up Our Home This Fall

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate I earn a commission on all qualifying purchases, at no additional cost to you.

I don’t know about you but as I grow older, I’ve noticed I start loving fall and winter more and more (although ask me again in a month or two and I may give you a different answer). We’re wrapping up the last of the garden work these weeks (we still need to add compost and manure, and mulch the last of the fallen leaves) but all of a sudden there’s that bit of extra time indoors that we can use to relax, dream and plan next year’s garden, and it’s around this time that I most want my home to feel like a warm hug, be comfortable for all of us and our guests. I also LOVE making lists so I thought I’d share with you my list of 10 ways to prepare our home for the cold season, starting with the big jobs, like cleaning, and decluttering.

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