Beautiful Living

(This is a quote by Kimberly Merritt of www.beautifullivingstyle.com . Check out her blog. I love it! It says so much about design, but so much more about life.)


Photo courtesy of www.citycottagestore.com


Living beautifully is not about perfection.

Just as life is meant to be enjoyed, our homes are meant to be lived in. Life is messy, but you don’t have to clean it up on my watch. The beautiful part happens when the counters are completely covered in flour because the kids are helping you make cookies. (Not because those counters are granite.) It’s when newspapers, magazines and books are strewn all over every single surface because you’re learning about something new. It’s when you’ve scored a great find at a tag sale, and then repainted it and placed it in your dining room. It’s framing your children’s art in inexpensive frames – proudly. (And right alongside “real” art.)

So if you read posts about finding the perfect color palette or how to work with pattern, I hope you learn something. That’s something else I do – I teach. But please understand that decorating your home happens over time… gradually. It’s in the mundane everyday decisions of pairing things together – the good, the bad and the ugly. Only I hope you’re doing something about the ugly part. My own home is far from perfect. It will continue to evolve over time, and whenever life gets thrown into the mix. Yours should too.