Her Home, Her Style: Bohemian Ease in New England

With the release of my book Your Home, Your Style fast approaching (March 20! Get your pre-orders in!), I thought it would be fun to share a bit of backstory on a few of the homes featured within. You see, when  selecting rooms to shoot, photographer Joyelle West and I put our heads together and made a list of people we knew with great personal style, and whose homes reflected their confidence and willingness to express themselves through their decor.

One factor that was REALLY important to me was that none of the owners were trained interior designers—the message of the book, after all, is that anyone can create a home that feels like you want it to, if you approach the process with a little self-awareness and savvy.

First up: Lindsey, a colleague of mine whose home oozes happy vibes. Just look at this place.

Source: @NewEnglandLoom

Lindsey works in public relations, but she also harbors a not-so-secret passion for vintage rugs. That interest blossomed a few years ago when planning her wedding; Lindsey’s dream of setting the reception scene with vintage rugs sent her scouring New England’s flea markets and the Internet to find great pieces and deals. Her hunt ultimately led to three amazing things: one, a picture-perfect wedding featured on Style Me Pretty; two, a side business sourcing and selling unique rugs, New England Loom; and three, a house full of gorgeous, hand-knotted patterns and fringe. 

A post shared by New England Loom (@newenglandloom) on Sep 3, 2017 at 9:50am PDT

Here is a behind-the-scenes pic from our shoot. The cute dog didn’t make it into print, sadly. Arf. 

Read on for a little Q&A about this gal’s home and style. And to see Joyelle’s pro pics of this amazing pad, order your copy of Your Home, Your Style ASAP!

Do you have a decorating philosophy? What is it?

Texture and layering is key! I’m all about making rooms feel cozy, and believe you can never have too many rugs, throw pillows, or knit blankets.

Tell me about your current home. What do you like most about it?

I would describe our interior decorating style as “coastal meets boho”. My style is very influenced by the East Coast, where I grew up, but also pulls in a more modern California aesthetic. Our home is a one-story cottage, and it's shaped like a “U” that wraps around a middle outdoor patio. I love the overall flow that the shape creates. The layout means that almost every single room has 3 exterior facing walls that let in amazing natural light, and each room also has French doors leading outside. In the summer months, we almost treat the patio as a second living room, and we can walk straight out our kitchen across the patio to our bedroom without ever going through the rest of the house.

Joyelle and I had so much fun shooting your space for Your Home, Your Style. What surprised you most about having your home photographed?

Well, you and I have worked together on several celebrity design projects in the past, but it was so fun seeing my own home through the lens of a camera! I think what surprised me most was how much plants/greenery can make or break a shot. We already have several plants throughout our home and you brought a few to play with for the shoot. It was interesting to see how just a little fern or succulent could add so much life to the room and photo.

Anything you’d do differently if you were to start over today?

I would have waited on some of the paint colors. I was in such a rush to get things painted before we moved in that I made paint decisions before I knew what the rooms would look like, from a décor standpoint. Now that we’ve fully furnished each room, some of the paint colors just aren’t right and it bugs me every day! Repainting some of the rooms is definitely on the (long) lists of home to-dos.

What were the biggest challenges in furnishing and decorating your spaces?

Again, choosing the paint colors!! I am fairly decisive when it comes to décor and had a very clear vision of how I wanted our home to look and feel, but for whatever reason my mind doesn’t work the same way with paint. There are just so many options and I have a lot of trouble visualizing how a paint colors will look against a larger design scheme.

 When you’re shopping, what colors, materials, and types of items can you never resist?

I’m a big fan of the color blue, which comes from my coastal New England roots, I think, so most rooms in our home incorporate that color somehow. I also find myself always drawn to natural woods—I love how much texture they bring to a space. We’ve incorporated wood elements into almost every room: DIY floating shelves in our kitchen made from old floor boards, shiplap in our bathroom, a live edge wood coffee table in our living room, custom wood herringbone closet doors in our guest bedroom.. The list goes on!

What’s one purchase you’ve never regretted?

Our collection of vintage rugs. They add so much color, history and character to the rooms in our home and really anchor each space. I also incorporated many of them into our wedding before buying our home, which makes them that much more special. They just get better with time, and more beautiful every time I look at them.

What was your most recent home-decor project or purchase?

The most recent project we completed was the little half bath off our kitchen, which literally started as an empty room. We’ve slowly added things like flooring, beadboard, lighting and a vanity over time. The last step was wallpapering the top half of the wall with wallpaper. I fell in love with this bird print from Bob Collins, but couldn’t justify the price tag. When I showed it to my sister she told me she could easily paint it, and while I was skeptical, I let her. I think I love the result even more than the original! This little powder room now makes me so, so happy.

Our most recent purchase was the Article Sven sofa, which was one of the best décor decisions we’ve ever made. The shape and camel color instantly gave our very traditional family room a more modern look, and the leather is so easy keep clean despite our two pups constantly chasing each other all over it. It’s also incredibley comfortable – we’ve already enjoyed many lazy Sundays in front of the fire on this couch!

Anything you want to add or change next?

Our next project will be renovating our guest bathroom. It honestly scares me a bit as it’s the biggest thing my husband and I have ever taken on from a DIY perspective, but I’m so excited for the end result! We will be changing almost everything (tile, vanity, shower, tub lighting etc.) as well as hopefully adding a window to let in some natural light, so I can’t wait to see the transformation.

What’s your go-to source for design inspiration?

I’m an Instagram addict and I definitely get most of my design inspiration through scrolling through my feed each day. I love that you can now save images within Instagram, and my saved folder is admittedly all interiors that I love and reference often.

Your Home, Your Style... and My Book!

It’s been 13 months since I announced my book on this blog, two years since I got the publishing deal, and almost three years since I first got the bug to write a book at all. It’s been both an exhilarating and excruciating process.

Exhilarating: Spending countless hours with interior and lifestyle photographer Joyelle West, who has become not only my go-to collaborator on beautiful imagery, but also a dear friend during this long process.

Also exhilarating: Working with friends, friends-of-friends, and colleagues to capture their spaces and make them shine in print. What’s unique about Your Home, Your Style is that none of the featured rooms was put together by a professional interior designer. For the photo shoots, I added a few choice props and plants and rearranged items a bit, but for the most part, it was about celebrating the homeowners’ individual styles and showing the fun they’ve had decorating. The accompanying text then breaks it all down into actionable tips and ideas that anyone can adopt. It was important to me to show that personal and “imperfect” can be utterly charming and welcoming, and it was unbelievably fun.

Excruciating: Having to keep everything under wraps for this long. But I’m happy to share an update... The book is now at the printer! Holy cow. And the cover design, which I agonized over, is finally here:

Photo credit: Joyelle West; cover design by Laura Palese

I’m in love. The pattern, which I found on a pillow on Joss & Main, will have a textured, faux-cloth finish and will wrap around the spine and across the back cover. It echoes the colors in my parlor (the room featured on the front cover, a space which I’ve already changed—ha). More important, it’s a pattern that I could see working on coffee tables of all styles, from traditional to rustic to shabby-girly to beachy.

Over the next few months, I’ll share some outtakes from the shoots and post updates on fun stuff like advance press, book launch events, giveaways, and more. In the meantime, you can head over to Amazon and pre-order a copy of Your Home, Your Style now.

Happy decorating! XX

Judging Books by Their Covers

Over the last few months, I've spent much of my time outside of work on my book, now titled Your Home, Your Style, which is inching its way toward publication. (Official release date: April 2018). 

One thing my editor, publisher, and I have spent a lot of time working through is the cover design. Because this is a home decor book, it's extremely important to me that the cover is one that people will eagerly display in their spaces. It's not lost on me that the most successful and beloved design books of the last several years all have a striking visual presence and inevitably become part of their owners' decor. I want the book to sit out on people's coffee tables, consoles, and bookshelves, begging to be picked up and flipped through a few pages at a time.

If course, it wouldn't hurt if the book's design landed it in photos that bloggers and stylists share on Pinterest, such as this vignette showcasing designer/blogger Erin Gates's bestseller Elements of Style. I mean, how can you NOT want to take this whole look home?

Source: Swoon Worthy

Then there's this lovely vignette I spotted on the blog Waiting on Martha, featuring Carolyne Roehm's A Passion for Blue & White. I love the book, the flowers, the collected objects, everything.

Source: Waiting on Martha

I adore how books fit into this space by designer/blogger Paloma Contreras at the New Orleans Showhouse:

Source: Paloma Contreras

Here, designer and blogger Justina Blakeney shows how colorful books, including her own bestseller The New Bohemians, can be objects of layered beauty:

Source: The Jungalow

What if my cover was so good that it would just pop up in magazines or catalogs as a prop from time to time? OMGIWOULDDIE.

Source: William-Sonoma

But creating a book that lots of people will want to display is not as simple as choosing a pretty color or picking a nice photo to put on the front. I also want my book's jacket to reflect the contents, and because the homes I feature inside don't share the same aesthetic, there's no one image that represents everything within. I also want the book to be able to fit into every style of home, from traditional townhouses to breezy beach houses, modern lofts, eclectic bungalows, and more.

It's a tall order, but we're making progress. My uber-talented book designer is Laura Palese, who has designed books for Gwyneth Paltrow, Chrissy Teigen, Laura Prepon, and more. She's a rockstar. We've landed on a tentative cover look, and while I won't be able to share images until September, one element that we're currently planning to incorporate is this embroidered linen pattern I first spotted on a pillow on Joss & Main:

It wasn't easy finding a print or texture that could cohabitate with traditional, modern, coastal, bohemian, and other decor styles equally well, but I think this one's pretty versatile, don't you?. If you look closely, the fabric has a great linen weave, and I'm hoping we can recreate some of tactile effect with slight embossing. We'll see.  

What do you think? Do you have any coffee table books on display, and what made you choose them? Have you ever purchased a book based on looks alone, and where did you put it? Comment below...

Coming Soon: Self Styled, the Book!

I have waited SO LONG to share this news, but it's official: I'm making a book!

I say "making" because this project has been, and will continue to be, so much more than writing. This process has been an all-encompassing, occasionally interminable-seeming endeavor, from my first email to an agent to the months I spent crafting just the right proposal. There were trips to Manhattan, publisher meetings, and anguished calls with my agent, followed by a million contract revisions. (I don't think I reviewed terms this closely when I bought my house.)  

But it's finally real, and that has me feeling all:

Had to swing by my publisher's (squee!) famed bookstore while in NYC. 

Signed, sealed, delivered. 

What can readers expect from SS in book form? Put simply, it'll be a sort of self-help book for the home: A lively guide to finding your style strengths, overcoming your weaknesses, and filling your home with the furniture, decor, and details you love. 

This is not a guide to decorating the "right" way. Sure, I'll offer some rules of thumb that can make a space feel more or less functional or balanced, and point out ways to work through some common decorating challenges. But this will be an enthusiast's guide, and if you read it, my hope is that you'll end up more inspired, less intimidated by design, and having learned a little bit about your yourself by making your home your own. 

My amazing photographer is Joyelle West (check out her incredible interiors work!), and the two of us have spent days and days invading other people's homes to zuszh and tweak and photograph their stuff. None of the homes we're shooting are the work of professional interior designers; instead, they're spaces that reflect the real lives and personal style of the people who live there, and who found the confidence to make it theirs. We've done about half of the shoots so far, and will continue shooting into the fall.

This lady has this incredible ability to make herself FLAT against the wall in order to get the widest shot. She's like Gumby.

A cute and quirky little guest room.

"Katie, can you just get a little farther under the sink with that reflector?" 

I'll also be working with an incredible graphic designer, Laura Palese, on the layout. She recently worked on gorgeous books by Chrissy Teigen, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Laura Prepon, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she turns my humble text into coffee table-worthy magic.

Source: Laura Palese Design

I'll be posting updates as the book progresses. My manuscript is due December 1, which in reality means I'll have to finish it before Thanksgiving. Wish me luck...