YOUR Home.

PHEW. Looking back on the last 3 months, we sure have come a long way here in our humble abode. We have been very busy scratching things off our astronomically long list of projects we would like to putter on. Long nights and full weekends of tinkering and shopping and repurposing and painting and NOT sleeping.

Sometimes we (is it just me?) get in the mind set of wanting to do it ALL right.now. Right NOW. Not later, now. Never mind the fact that we plan on being here a couple handful of years. We just get to thinking that we have to complete the entire property ASAP. Well. That just isn't realistic or even ideal, is it?

Ideally your home has a well thought out, well collected look. You don't want it to look like you just went out and purchased everything out of catalog XYZ and called it a day. You want it to look like YOURS. Lived in. Loved. A mish-mash of all the things you hunted for and uncovered, that were perfectly suited for YOUR home. Not the cute, adorable family next door, or the swanky people down the street. Yours. Ideally, it's not cookie cutter. Because if you're like me, you tried that. Then you wondered why it didn't feel right.

So. Let's slow things down a bit and remember that your home is YOUR HOME. Take it easy people. I like to think of decorating your home like a treasure hunt. You keep your eyes out for the "treasures" and then slowly and mindfully put the pieces together to form YOUR HOME.

But you know, not every idea is or has to be original to be YOURS. If we were all capable of producing gorgeous, perfectly put together spaces without help from anyone else, well, we'd all be designers. Honestly, even designers pull their inspiration from other designers. Pick and choose the pieces/elements you are drawn to from others, and collect them together to form YOUR space. Your uniqueness can come from the way you creatively combine the legwork that others have already done. Add in touches of your family throughout the space, and shoot, there you go. YOUR home.

So how do you direct your search? Pinterest is great for collecting images you gravitate towards, to help you "pin"-point your style. Same idea with decorating magazines. Sometimes I'm not so sure of the direction I want to head in for a space. I head to Pinterest or my file of magazine pages I've ripped out, and take a peek at the rooms I've gathered. What is it about each photo that attracted me? Are the paint colors aLL similar? Furniture the same tones? Are the rooms classic? Modern?

When I was trying to plan our bedroom, I just couldn't decide on bedding. I must have purchased and returned five sets. So I took a minute and carefully studied the images I had collected of master bedrooms. WHY had I been drawn to them? I noticed right away that every single one of the rooms used white bedding. HUH. Isn't that a coincidence. Well, maybe I should try out white bedding. Lo and behold, I found a $12 clearance duvet, stuck our down comforter in that baby, and BAM. There it is. There is the feel I was trying so hard to achieve and was so miserably failing at capturing. Why couldn't I figure that out before!

Same thing goes for furniture. Need a new sofa and don't know exactly what you want? Browse through the rooms you were drawn to. I have had 4 sets of sofas in the last 8 years (thank you Craigslist for feeding my problem, by giving me a way out of a bad choice). I finally feel like I've reached the point where for the first time, I made a good investment on our furniture choice. I used the same technique as with our master.

I think we don't cut ourselves enough slack. We want it all and we want it all NOW. If we don't have that, then we get angry and sulk. We think we aren't as good as so-and-so. We most certainly couldn't have a home like that. Our home could never be as nice as that. I could never do that. Take it easy folks. Creating your home isn't about comparing your space to everyone else's. It is about loving the space your in. You CAN have a home that feels like that but is your own. Just take it one piece at a time. One element at a time. Soon enough, at a reasonable pace, you'll be on your way.

Let's not compare ourselves in this process of building our homes, but maybe encourage one another.  It's just decorating for goodness sake. There are so many more important issues to deal with. Let's keep the decorating stuff fun and light and collaborative.

See you soon friends!