Sometimes It Really Is All About Me

Hmmm, where to start? Well, I guess I'll start with me, not original, but it seems like a good jumping off point. I've heard of interior design blogs, looked and perused design blogs, and even have a friend or two who have written interior design blogs, but never thought I would be writing one of my own. As with many things in my life, there was a time when interior design wasn't a part of my every day vernacular. I have an art background, and I can draw a "purdy" picture, but I have found that I also know "where to put the ottoman". I think I have known where to put the ottoman for most of my life, and have always been training for a career in the home interior field without consciously knowing it. I'll start at the beginning; as a child my Mom would leave the house for whatever reasons Mothers leave for the day, probably to get a little distance from their bratty kids. Being older than my sister, I would be in charge. I would look at these times as an opportunity to turn our house into "home beautiful". After letting my younger sibling know who was the boss, we would tackle the rearrangement the living room or the dining room or maybe a bedroom, it depended on the mood I was in. We would spend laborious hours hauling furniture back and forth from one part of the room to the other, moving pictures, taking toss pillows from the living room to use on the backs of dining room chairs etc... all under my watchful eye and direction. Looking back I was quite a taskmaster, usually ending with my poor little sister Amy curled up in the fetal position under an end table fast asleep. Regardless, my masterpiece would be complete, and I would wait with just a little smug anticipation for my Mother to come home. I would drape my self across the sofa with a well rehearsed casualness, waiting for her to walk through the doorway and then faint dramatically from the sheer beauty of what I managed to create out of a few sticks of furniture and a throw rug. Needless to say, my fantasy wasn't quite the reality of what would usually be the outcome. My Mother who always had quite a flair for design herself, would walk in and sweep across the "redo" with a critical eye, tell me to get my sister out from under the table, then go to the kitchen to start dinner. Is this woman blind? Couldn't she see the mastery of my ingenious work? Note to self: find a new and much more savvy Maternal figure. Dinner would come finding me sullen and unappreciated. My Mom not known for her culinary skills, would put the charred meat, overcooked vegetables and wilted salad on the table. While we sat there scrapping the blackened and burnt skin off the chicken breast, she would tell me truthfully all the parts of the redesign that she liked, and what she thought could use some work. After dinner would find me moving the sofa from the kitchen back into the living room, (it seemed like a good idea at the time)and removing the afghan from the wall and folding it back onto the chair (I read somewhere that handicrafts made unique wall art). These minor setbacks did not squelch my appreciation of a well appointed home, and I would spend the rest of my formative years randomly honing my interior design skills. We got many magazine subscriptions at my house, amongst them were quite a selection of interior design mags: Better Homes and Gardens, Architectural Digest, Country home etc... and I would read them all from cover to cover, soaking in all the beautiful lamps, hooked rugs, mid century chairs, and art deco drawing rooms. If my Mother was missing her Southern living magazine, she knew where to find it; My room. I loved everything about it, to me it was art, and I devoured all I could of it. Life, as it seems to do, went on; and as I got older, I focused more on the fine arts, seeming to forget all about my adolescent love affair with home decoration. It wasn't until I sewed most my wild oats, and moved into my first home that my old flame home design came back into my life. As we all know, wild oat sewing is expensive, so by the time I had a place of my own, I had precious little money to bankroll my castle. I was pretty much over the "poor college kid" school of design: beach chairs in the living room, milk crates holding my clothes, a microwave missing its glass turntable, and a mishmash of plastic fast food cups, and pilfered cutlery from the local diner. Topping all this grandeur off with the dreaded Tye Dye wall hanging, hung with thumb tacks over the mattress on the bedroom floor. After taking inventory of my sad assortment of home fittings and furnishings I decided being a sophisticated adult of 22, these tawdry, pathetic items had to go. My lofty ambitions about home far outweighed my wallet. I had to come up with a plan. Being moderately intelligent and more than just a little thrifty; I set out to make a proverbial silk purse out of a sows ear. I rose with the sun to go to yard and tag sales, picking up as many treasures as $10.00 would buy, giddy with the hunt. I scoured the papers for estate sales, beating the early birds by camping out on doorsteps hours before the sale began. I was like a rock band groupie determined to get the first and best tickets to the concert. I haunted thrift stores, goodwill's and salvation army's like some hyperactive ghost searching for the holy grail of credenzas in a sea of wicker, paintings on velvet, and mismatched veneer bookshelves. I found myself sneaking out on trash nights, stealthily coasting down darkened streets stopping at curbside trash heaps, searching for anything that resembled a table, chair or lamp. I searched every nook and cranny of my family attic and my grandmothers basement. At parties or dinners at friends homes, I could usually be found in their garage, inquiring about what they were going to do with the buffet that was missing a leg. Looking back I was ruthless, and probably more than a little obnoxious. I was on a mission, and no stone was left to be unturned. After all my collecting, It was time to transform all my (ahem) gently used, vintage and lovingly discarded home goods into gold. Okay, okay, it was trash, but it was trash picked with a discerning eye, burning feverishly with what it could become. I sanded, painted, changed knobs, faux finished, framed, gutted and re stuffed, reupholstered myself into the next winter of the second year in my "new" home, and when it was done it was astonishingly, jaw dropping, eye popping, heart racing beautiful. Alright, your heart didn't really race, but it was damn good! With blistered hands and a lower back pain that wouldn't go away, I finally settled into my newly refurbished haven. Satisfied at the mark I made in my home, now it was time to go out and make my mark in the world. Sad to say it was much harder finding my "special purpose" in the career world than it was to make my home special. I became a "jack of all trades" as my Grandmother would say. I waited on tables, which I was good at, but it bored me to death. I tried my hand at teaching, some people are born to teach: I wasn't. I sold real estate, enough said. I worked at a casino, that's lofty. I managed a restaurant, can you say burn out? The list goes on and on. While casting my net into many career waters throughout the years, there was one distinct and quietly powerful constant: Design. It was subtle, almost like a whisper, in the background just patiently sitting there, waiting for me to pull it out and use it whenever necessary. It was so unconscious, and so threaded into the tapestry of who I am that I didn't even recognize that is was softly and continuously talking to me as I was crashing and banging through life, trying to find my way. In all my fumbling and tripping down my myriad of "career" paths, people would seek me out about design problems and solutions. My friends would call me ask me what color to paint their bathrooms. Neighbors would plead me to come by and tell them where to hang their art. Strangers would come into my house and ask me who my designer was. My newly married friends would invite me to dinner as a ruse to help them place their furniture. Of course I would always comply, I would turn friends, neighbors and strangers hovels into comfortable attractive homes, without really thinking much about it. To me it came as natural as breathing, and they would gobble up my advice faster than I could dish it out. They were literally starving for direction, for reassurance, for a place they could love. I never thought past that, to me it was about the same as if I asked a friend that had car knowledge to come over and show me where to pour the anti freeze. (my car expertise is a sad affair) I did this as a friend, and in a very nonchalant manner for many years. Never turning down the volume of the rest of my life to listen to what was really being said to me. It wasn't until I managed a restaurant that an epiphany was given to me. I had worked there for a few years, feeling increasingly disillusioned and feeling more and more like I had once again ended up in a career that had become stagnant, dead end and completely boring to me. In the process of working there I became friends with the owner of the restaurant, she is still my dear friend today. She knew that I had this uncanny design knack, and she herself would always come to me for design advice for the restaurant or her home. She also knew that even though I was competent as a manager, my heart was just no longer in it. Being the friend that she is, she pulled me aside and told me quite plainly, to get on with and become an interior designer. She stated that a talent left to waste away was her idea of the ultimate sin, and it was time for me to give up my "sinning" ways and follow my passion. Whoa!!! Eureka, the little light bulb lit up instantly and burned brightly right over my big thick skull. There it was, with me the whole time, right below the surface, bubbling quietly just waiting for the moment to erupt like a volcano that has been dormant too long. I felt like the blinders had been ripped from my eyes. This tiny woman speaking to me honestly and with quiet conviction, and thankfully I got it, I finally knew what my career was to be, it was already written. I have been studying for this my whole life. To me she was Santa Claus, Jesus, The Easter Bunny and Buddha all rolled into one that day. I was grasshopper snatching the pebble from her hand (you have to be of a certain age to know that reference, we all have a computer, google it) I gathered up my courage, took a leap of faith, hung out my design shingle, and here I am six years later doing what I love, doing what I am passionate about. It has been a roller coaster of a ride, but I never even thought about getting off of the ride. I've learned many things about myself on my quest of enlightenment through design. I'm not curing cancer, and I haven't found the solution for world peace, but I have learned that in my own small way, I too am changing the world. There is no price tag you can put on happiness, when you are in harmony with your environment, when your home is the place you most want to be, when you walk in the door to your own personal and unique sanctuary, that's a little piece of nirvana that brings us all closer to enlightenment. Here it is, my first blog. I hope you join me regularly, enjoy the ride with me, and let me help you "know where to put the ottoman" too.