Second Stories

As a stay at home there was a time when my life started becoming all about my family. Taking care of all of their needs and wants and without being aware of it, I started losing myself.  I loved going to watch Marc and the kids surf even though I didn’t surf myself. I would just hang back and take pictures and videos of them. All four of our kids were involved in sports and dance and driving them to practices, watching their events and games became the center of our lives. Besides that, I volunteered in their school classrooms, drove to fieldtrips and was available to them when they got home, for help with homework and listening to them about their day. Then, there were the responsibilities of taking care of the house, cleaning, laundry, shopping, cooking, etc. You get it. I really did love all of it but for some reason I found myself starting to get down, not really depressed, but something was wrong. Marc was noticing, so one weekend he suggested that I go out and do something just for me, something that I wanted to do on my own. That’s when I became aware that I had no idea what I wanted to do, I didn’t even know what I liked. The realization hit hard that I needed to find something that made me happy outside the home and begin finding out who I was besides being a wife and a mother. It took a while for me to learn what things I really found joy in doing. One of the things I decided that I really liked to do was to spend time at flea markets, antique, second hand or thrift stores. I had a doctor tell me once that a good way to reduce stress is to get involved in an activity where you lose track of time. I found that happening when I browsed through these places. Regular shopping could be stressful for me, we were living on a single income and I always tried not to spend too much money, but this was different. I could hunt for treasures at bargain prices, and get great ideas about how I could make things I already had look better.

I still, if given a choice, would choose second hand shopping over regular store shopping. Now going to flea markets has become something Marc and I really love to do together. He’s got a great eye and he has the patience, that I do NOT have, to look through everything! Because of that he almost always finds something really unique and special.

 It’s fun when I find items that reveal a little bit about their story

Like this sculpture, Miss Mia here.  She came with a certificate with her name and the original owners name written on it

I love this piece of pottery. It has the date and the initials of the maker inscribed on the bottom 

Oil paintings or water colors with the artist signature make me wonder about who painted them and how they came to be sold in a thrift store or flea market? 

I always keep my eye out for special pieces of furniture, rugs and vintage fabrics too

This love of vintage shopping for our home is what really inspired me to become an interior designer. I realized that finding beautiful things to bring home, and getting inspired with ideas to beautify our house really brought me joy.  

Once a week now I volunteer at a second hand store called Second Story. It is a non-profit that raises money to fight against human trafficking. The founder came up with the name because with the money raised we could have a small part in not only rescuing the victims but giving them a ‘Second Story’. One of redemption. To be loved, valued, treasured and to restore some of what was lost when they felt used and discarded. 

I have had a wonderful life of knowing that I am loved and valued, but I do have some second stories of my own. Stories of forgiveness, second chances, things I have overcome and am overcoming, navigating this next chapter of life with the kids all moved out, and so many more.  If there is any wisdom I have learned so far, is that we all need love and a little restoration. This is Grace. 

My Office

The first room in our home that we wanted to give a ‘revamp’ to was my son Donovan’s bedroom. After he left for college his room looked a little worse for the wear and needed some freshening up. 

We decided to convert his room into an office for me, that could also function as a guestroom. 

It is charming little room that has its own bathroom and its own entrance from the backyard, which makes it ideal for meeting with clients.

The simple renovation started with a little demo, tearing out the closet to give the room a bit more space, removing and replacing the French doors with a new slider, and replacing the window. Marc added some shiplap to the ceiling to give the room a little more character, which I love! Then we brightened up the room by giving it a fresh coat of white paint. I found this wallpaper from Anthropologie and I am absolutely crazy about it! Seriously, every time I walk by this room and see this wallpaper it makes me happy. It’s funny how certain things can do that. 

Each piece of furniture that we placed in the room has its own unique story. 

For the desk I knew I wanted something vintage. The room was so small so it was hard for me to find something that I liked that would fit. Then we had the idea of using our old dining room table. It is a drop leaf table and we tried just taking the leafs off. The size was right and it works perfectly! 

The bookcase is a piece that we moved from the entry of our home into the office.  Marc built it for me when we first bought our house 25 years ago. I had seen one just like it in a Pottery Barn catalogue. At the time we couldn’t afford to buy it, so instead he made it and surprised me. He’s the best, he’s always doing things like that. 

The cognac leather swivel chair I purchased with money that I made from my first paying design job. 

The art is a sweet gift from my parents. 

 Everything in the room is meaningful and special to me. When I am in the space I get a sense of well-being.  Definitely consider this when decorating your home, each piece matters. We don’t need to have our homes full of stuff for the sake of décor. It’s important to surround ourselves only with the things that make our hearts happy. 

It’s fitting that our first renovation would be for my office, being that it is the first step into my career <3

Home Tour

 I want to share with you a little about us, our home, how we came to be in it and where we are with it now!

Marc and I were looking to move from our small condominium into a house with a yard in 1995 when our oldest daughter, Amanda, was just two years old. I must admit, I was reluctant when Marc said that he wanted to buy this house because it was such a fixer upper. It was an older home built in 1962, the ‘popcorn’ ceilings were stained with cigarette smoke, there was teal blue carpeting in every room, torn up linoleum on the kitchen and bathroom floors, overgrown ivy growing pretty much all over outside, you get the picture! HGTV or home improvement shows were nonexistent at that time and I didn’t have any design experience yet, so I really couldn’t see the potential in it. Marc convinced me though that with a lot of love and hard work, it could be a wonderful home to raise our family in so I put my trust in his vision and we purchased it.  

It is located in a sweet little rural neighborhood where no two houses are the same and I began to feel encouraged that we could create something really unique and special for us. 

Within just a couple of months of moving in, we found out we were pregnant with our second child, our son Donovan, and then very shortly after he was born, we had our two younger daughters, Olivia and Gabriella, back to back. So, within three short years of living here we went from having one child to having four children! Life with four children was extremely busy so, needless to say, the fixing up is taking us much longer than we originally anticipated!

So, here we are, 24 years later, kids grown and moved out and we still aren’t finished and now we are even wanting to redo some things that we finished years ago. 

The process is slow and not always so steady, but Marc was right, it has been a wonderful home to raise our family in and it really has been so fun to work on fixing it up together. 

 Welcome inside and follow along as we change things up!