Inspiration

Due east of Commonwealth Avenue in the Del Ray neighborhood of Alexandria is a funky little main street peppered with little shops and restaurants.  Mount Vernon Avenue is a little slice of any-town USA, but with an edgy vibe that bursts with originality.  This hodge-podge little town with mismatched architecture and homegrown businesses is imperfect in many ways, which makes it, well, perfect.

We bought a home in this area a year and a half ago and my creative juices have been boiling over ever since.  Yes, it is true that as a homeowner I am in a better position to design a house than when I rented - I can paint walls any color I want, or knock one out; I can change the blinds, install new light fixtures, and garden however I want - with my husband's permission, of course (most of the time).  But, I can't help but think that my design style has been inspired by this little neighborhood.

I am a decorator by hobby, not by trade.  I like to spend weekends exploring new places, driving around town looking at houses for inspiration, and finding fun treasures to add to our home.  Sometimes I leave our house for hours in search of cool stuff.  My husband just sighs when I come home with something weird, inquires what in the world I am going to do with that, and then shrugs as I scuttle off to "pitsy" around the house, rearranging trinkets, organizing closets, maybe moving furniture.  I buy what I love and always make it work.

This apple does not fall far from the tree.  I was dragged to antique, fabric, and furniture stores as a child by an energetic and oober-creative mother who taught me some important things:

1. Good, quality curtains should always be lined in white (I broke the rule with my bathroom swag curtain, but you can't really tell);

2. You can never go wrong with quality linens - new or antique - the uses for them are endless;

3. Always look beyond the common use for almost everything.  I mean, a couch is a couch, but a buffet does not have to be used in the dining room - it could be your TV stand.  I once used my grandmother's old wooden ironing board as a table behind my couch.  An antique wardrobe that was in my nursery as a baby is now in our kitchen for extra storage.  My mother's old secretary has become the "china closet," storing our crystal glasses and trinkets;

4. Most importantly, buy what you love, not just what is practical.  The things that you love will become your stories and somehow there will always be a place for them in every home that you have.  The practical, I have found, will inevitably be delivered to Goodwill.

I often flip through decorating magazines and catalogues with big dreams of having the perfectly decorated home - kissed with a deliberate "messy" look that often grace the pages of Pottery Barn or Coastal Living.  But, alas, our budget doesn't allow for a $4,000 couch or a $200/hour interior designer.  And, I am not sure I would want that even if I could afford it - well, maybe the couch if it was really amazing.

Instead, my style has become like the town where we live - perfectly imperfect.  You may not be able to rip a picture of our living room out of a magazine page, but for this amateur decorator, you can tell our house has character.  That character is deliberate and all part of the adventure of making our first house a true home.