Sarah Doherty
Always thinking. Always dreaming.
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Living Room Repainted
I’ve been muddling over the idea to change the living room color for the last year. We’ve had a red accent wall since we moved into Clearview Farms in Scottsville, NY in 2005 and it has followed us from San Jose and then to Campbell. We picked a mocha/coffee color, which I honestly don’t think the pictures do it enough justice. Anyways, a wonderful change before the start of the holiday season.
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Interior Decorating, Apartment Therapy and How it Changed My Life
For anyone that knows me even a little bit, interior decorating has become a huge hobby of mine over the past few years. I’ve always enjoyed the layout and aesthetic of things from an early age – I was much more interested as a child about building and putting the furniture in my dollhouse than actually playing with it.
A few years ago I found out about Apartment Therapy, which is a wonderful collection of websites on interior decorating based on geographic location and specialized sites for the kitchen, home tech, etc.
Last year for my 24th birthday, Ryan saw I had added Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure
to my Amazon wishlist. Not realizing what he was getting himself into, he purchased it and so began our whirlwind into trashing/donating/eBaying/Craiglisting a good portion of everything we owned and didn’t use. The book also gave us a sense of style, and allowed us to form new decorating opinions as a couple. More than anything it set us on the right track – how to truly keep our lives decluttered. I can say that we are still on this path.
For Christmas this year, Ryan purchased me the new Apartment Therapy book, Apartment Therapy Presents: Real Homes, Real People, Hundreds of Design Solutions
. Although I have barely scratched the surface of this book it has already inspired me in one of the first paragraphs:
“At its essence, Apartment Therapy offers real design solutions or real people. High-end interior designers are inaccessible to the average person, and television makeover shows whet the appetite but are unrealistic in their reliance on a team of carpenters and designers to turn around a space. Design magazines are also a tease. Most are not about comfort or beauty, but about showing off expensive design statements that often have little relation to the people who live in the homes. Most of us benefit not from seeing how celebrities and the ultrawealthy live, but from seeing how real people create real homes.”
If you live someplace- an apartment, house, dorm room, tiny sublet or even in your parent’s house I encourage you take on these books. They are easy reads and inspire you to look at your life in a different way. You emerge from these books with a new outlook on life, a helluva lot less clutter and a sense of style. It’s a pretty good 2009 resolution, don’t you think?
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Eve of Christmas Eve
Christmas has always been one of my favorite holidays, more because of the traditions than anything else. Christmas Eve in my family has always been a tribute to my Slovak heritage and the good food that has been passed down to share with family and friends. Ryan and I started the majority of our Christmas Eve dinner prep today by going to Los Gatos Meats & Smokehouse, Whole Foods, Trader Joes, Safeway and finally Bed Bath & Beyond.
We did some food prep this evening – some of the appetizers, tiramisu and homemade eggnog. I’ve also found that it’s a lot easier to set the formal table the night before so I can concentrate on cooking the next day. Ryan snapped some pictures of the table setup which I’m pretty impressed with.
You can take a look at more of them here.
Happy holidays!
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Christmas Tree & Decorations Are Up
We took Aidan to pick out our tree tonight and spent the rest of the evening decorating the apartment. I definitely feel more in the Christmas spirit now!
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Landing Strip Redesign
For anyone that knows me really well I am a huge Apartment Therapy fan. I was first introduced to them a few years back on their blog and then last year for my birthday Ryan bought me the book, Apartment Therapy: The Eight Step Home Cure which led to us purging more things in our apartment than I ever knew possible (great book by the way).
A few weeks ago I got into my head that I really wanted a shoe cubby so our shoes weren’t piled up and all unattractive looking. Finding a small shoe cubby is pretty impossible and we don’t have much space to work with. We fell in love with Crate and Barrel’s Windham storage bench and though it would look great in the space.
Of course if you know me well enough I don’t stop at one little thing. I also realized that our picture frame looked a little bit too small for the space so we purchased a black RIBBA frame to show off some of our wedding Trash the Dress photos.
I always tend to forget to take before and after pictures, but for some reason this time I remembered. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Apartment Therapy preaches about the importance of having a landing strip in a home/apartment and I truly agree. Between our chalk board/key hanger and now the storage bench I think this area looks great and pretty homey to boot!
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