Café Design

Decorating Consultations

Catching Up (Is Hard to Do)

It feels like lately I’ve been on a constant race trying to catch up with my exploding calendar, and my calendar is winning. I know it’s the end of the year and I’m sure everyone’s schedule just got busier than ever, but I can’t remember a time I’ve been this busy. But then again I can’t remember what I had for breakfast! For us, this past week included many highs and lows – a ballet recital for our littlest one (who’s not so little any more) preceded by intense dress rehearsals (she did beautifully and we couldn’t be more proud of her!); our front screen door breaking off with a sizable chunk of our exterior trim destroyed,  followed by desperate calls to our handyman; picking up my mom from Boston Logan for her much anticipated (by all of us) annual visit…and that’s just a fraction of it all.  It is all good now, but it has been one of those weeks where you find yourself lying in bed in the middle of the night going over your to-do lists and praying you’ve got everything covered! Obviously I hadn’t, because I missed Friday’s post 🙂

Carolina Irving’s Portugal home from Lisa Fine’s fabulous new book – Near & Far | Photography by Miguel Flores-Vianna
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Mantel Trouble & Updates

I realized the other day that it’s been a while since I shared updates on our home renovation. In the past many of you have expressed an interest in seeing “construction” and behind-the-scenes images of the process (thank you!), so I thought it would be fun to talk about some of our latest projects. As a warning, these are not pretty images, nothing is finished yet as we’ve been pacing ourselves time-wise and budget-wise to make sure we’re up-to-date with our financial goals and we’re not investing too much too soon into a house that is already at the higher end of prices for the neighborhood we’re in. But we do want to change things here and there, seeing that the house, as pretty as it is on the outside, is literally a 1960s time capsule on the inside, warts and all. The bones are good but the interior architecture is lacking the kind of interest that suits cute cottages like this one so we postponed purchasing the more expensive pieces of furniture until we’ve gotten the envelope, the architectural elements of the house right. 

Our new mantel
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Instagram Crush – Sean Anthony Pritchard

What happens when everything you own (and I do mean everything – your house, china, textiles, books, art, furniture, pillows, rugs) is pretty darn gorgeous, fabulous? For one, you make people like me, living without living room electricity for nearly a month because you took too long to decide on a paint color and now your contractor has forgotten all about you, green with envy haha. Another thing that happens is you have enough material to create one of the most inspiring Instagram accounts Anglophiles have seen in ages, that’s what. I’m talking about Sean Anthony Pritchard and his IG handle @sean_anthony_pritchard which has me obsessed right now. I dare you to scroll through his images, if you haven’t done so already, and see if you don’t develop a strong case of the staries, for lack of a better word 🙂 Happy Friday!

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It’s The Little Things

A fresh bouquet of flowers, the right picture frame, a pretty pillow, or a lamp shade – interior design is all about the little things, those very details that make rooms original and beautiful, don’t you think? I find that designing a home is a lot like baking …you gather the right ingredients, you try to keep out the wrong ingredients and do your best to combine them in a way that tastes good, ahem, is harmonious, beautiful, and hopefully functional. There is a recipe, of course, but whether you follow it to a T, tweak it or ignore it completely is up to you. But more than the big picture, design recipes and rules (they do exist, and for good reason) it’s about the little things that I’d like to talk to you today. The right clay pot and saucer, the right paint color, the right sconces, a great shopping find…they all collided to make my week a little bit prettier, a little bit different, and a lot more exciting.

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Scribble-Scrabble

I hope you had a lovely holiday weekend! Despite clear skies, friendly temps and a ton of yard work that needed to be done, we deliberately set a slower pace this weekend and it felt good. For a couple of hours we forgot about to-do lists (or at least we tried to 🙂 ) and hunkered down in front of the fireplace. Instead of fussing around the house like we always do, we spent Saturday afternoon like never before, watching a movie and serving copious amounts of apple cider and apple pie. Unholy amounts!

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