There is was in all its glory—that perfect room. Everything was clean, in its place, and decorated tastefully. Unfortunately that room exists somewhere other than my home. I have kids so nothing is clean even if you were a clean freak working around the clock. Finding a place for everything and everything in its place? How many people really live like that?
I am one of those women who look wistfully at make-believe mock rooms in Ikea or Pottery Barn. Why does admitting that feel as if I need to go to some ten-step program for the decorative-challenged among us? Seriously ... I want those rooms. I want every single one of them. Obviously you’d think I am a marketing person’s celebratory achievement but I am not. I am too frugal to spend money on matching photo frames when I already have an eclectic collection of mismatched ones.
My sister came to visit from out of state and walked through our new home looking but not saying much. Finally she could not keep it to herself anymore. She announced that I had to be one of the most decorative-blind people she had ever met. I asked her what she based this opinion on and without a pause asked me what the heck I was thinking when painting the rooms in my home yellow, teal, sky blue, ice lavender, and even one very red wall in my kitchen. I guess she had been shocked by our red front doors and it went downhill from there.
Okay, I know what you are thinking. How the heck did I come up with such a bizarre group of colors? The kitchen wall was red when we moved in. It is a deep purplish red and I loved the boldness of it. My silly collection of plates looks very cool on that wall. Alright I have a confession ... those plates ... they look like old pattern ware until you get up close. They have whimsical images you’d miss if you didn’t take a closer look. I guess you can say this represents my since of style. Whimsical.
My house is 3000 square feet of whimsy. I call it whimsy but others could call it “cast off.” My sister calls it “cast away.” I am the queen of repurposing things. My custom couches shaped like kidney beans are the color of eggplant. They were custom white couches someone else had decided they were finished with. I simply had them redone.
Consignment stores are my giddy little guilty pleasure and apparently my sister feels I am guilty of something else ... the lack of ability to stick to a color scheme and some sort of decorating theme. I on the other hand feel that my home is full of themes everywhere. Why does a whole house have to have only one theme? She proudly showed me pictures of brown and white graphic prints all over her home, all the way down to the flooring in the kitchen. It looked like a model home. Everything matched. It was beautiful and her crowning accomplishment. She had a lot to be proud of.
Perhaps I am simply allergic to the whole “theme home” or “matching everything” mindset. My teal circular stairway with golden oak trim looks like a proud piece of artwork. It is bold. It is the center of our home. It reminds me of our honeymoon in Belize ... the color of the sea. I love it. My husband made stained glass inserts for our front door with that color of blue glass. For us, it all seems to be exactly the color it is supposed to be.
We all are handed situations that we must work around. My home was designed by an idiot. It is almost like they were given a list of items to place in the house somehow even if it was illogical. There is one window in our main room which is half a yard across but eight and a half feet high. Ikea had the only window covering on earth that would fit that window without being a special order for an insane price. Remember I am frugal. This window covering happened to be the same color as my purple couches. I call this serendipity.
