For The Home: Beautiful & Useful

As we get closer to purchasing a home and knowing a bit more of what it will look like, I have been thinking more and more about our determination to not simply fill it up. Know that “sciency” term that says we will fill the time that we have to do a project?? I think we will also fill the square feet we have.

Tyler and I have been very conscious of wanting to keep our living quarters simple and uncluttered and have done a pretty good job so far. We’ve gone from a 600 square foot, 1 bedroom home that housed, me, Tyler and Southern Fete + Southern Fete Creative. Now we are sprawled out in an 850 square foot, two bedroom apartment that is home to me, Tyler, Vivi and Val Marie Paper (read mountains of journals, envelopes, packaging, etc).

We are moving into a modest home size of 1700 square foot home which is just enormous to me. My mom (who is conveniently a realtor) was showing me how great the storage was everywhere opening cabinets and closets and all I could think was we will never be able to fill this. But that’s the current 800 square foot talking. I’m determined to keep this thought process though!!

One quote that I’ve am using as our mantra as we design our home is William Morris’ words:

“HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSE THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL, OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL.”

I’m going to take this one step further and aim for things that are both useful and beautiful. Since we aren’t knick-knacky people, the character will need to come from everyday necessities like rugs, lamps, furniture and a few wall hangings.

I am currently reading The Nesting Place and have loved what Myquillyn Smith has to say! She talked about how a lot of us are so afraid to do something bold because we are afraid we won’t like it. We take things too seriously.

I can totally be that girl who doesn’t pick colorful or crazy things because I’m afraid I won’t like it! But then we settle for boring and don’t too much love that either. I’ve been pinning a crazy amount of wallpaper pictures and realized I wasn’t really sure I could pull it off. I’m going to go for it on our bedroom wall! ; )

I shared some of our inspiration for finding a home last year. Today I wanted to share a few more things now that we have a better vision of where we will be!

I’d love to hear what inspires you for designing your home!