How Our Decorating Went From…
My husband Bryan and I met in high school. I should’ve known what a hard worker/overachiever/ambitious guy he was when he told me he started his own lawn business at age 11. He said he used all the money he made that summer to buy the best riding lawn mower out there, which he used to pull his trailer carrying all his lawn equipment around his neighborhood.
I could go on and on about the crazy things Bryan did over the years just to earn a dollar (sell his blood and plasma, wear roller skates to make better tips at Sonic, catch and sell pigeons underneath 8 lane Dallas highway bridges in the middle of the night, until he almost got shot by a homeless man….just to name a few) His ambitious nature is what mostly attracted me to him, along with his dreamy green eyes and captain-of-the-football-team physique 🙂
Bryan is all about work work work. Me? I’m the one who at 16 almost got fired on my first day at my job at the local water park.
I need to be creating, dreaming, designing, imagining, decorating to really get myself excited about something. I’m not always the best organizer and procrastinate is pretty much my middle name, but hey that’s a normal characteristic of us artsy peeps right?
Once Bryan and I got married, we had fun doing home projects together, deciding how to decorate (on a teeny tiny budget), figuring out what we liked/disliked for our first home together. Bryan is the best handyman I know, and pretty much anything I can imagine up, he can bring to life. Even if he thinks I’m crazy while building it!
During our 6 years of marriage, we’ve gone through various decorating “styles” (if you can call college couch hand-me-downs a “style”). When we first got married, we decorated with a Texas-country theme. Neither Bryan or I are particularly that country, but we do live in Texas and seemed to suite us for awhile.
During this time, we took over Bryan’s family antique store, Knick Knacks.
While learning the ropes about owning a furniture and home decor store, Bryan and I experimented a lot with buying/selling/re-purposing furniture and home decor from garage sales, storage auctions, rural downtown shops, and even the kindest old man who’s setup was on I35 in his front lawn. We learned how to take old pieces with a story and give them new life. Bryan is pretty awesome at spotting a rare find in a mountain of mess. When he was going to storage auctions on a daily basis, he would spot things that I never would’ve even noticed!
Then, in our next house we bought more traditional-type furniture. Translation= dark brown EVERYTHING. I guess I thought that being a grown-up married couple, we had to have boring grown-up furniture. I still didn’t feel like my home decorating had a particular “style” it was more of just what I thought was the right thing to buy.
After living in this house for about a year, we opened up a home décor and gift store with my parents. Enter my first run-ins and now addictiveness to Dallas Market, Round Top and Warrengton, craft and trade day shows, Canton, etc, etc, etc! I think my mind was blown the first time I walked into a showroom at Dallas Market. So much STUFF! So many types of decorating styles.
Contemporary
Modern
Retro
Cottage
Country
Shabby Chic
Traditional
Which were we??? While buying products for the store, my mom and I definitely gravitated towards the shabby chic/distressed/vintage looks with some modern things thrown in here and there. I started designing my house with sample sale items and leftover clearance items from our store. I felt I was finally finding my style, what I truly liked and what spoke to me.
I started learning more about home decorating and applied things I learned online, walking countless of showrooms, my awe-inspiring trip to Round Top and their amazing displays to our own home. I’m such a visual person, and seeing how others were able to mix and match different eras and genres really spoke to me! It was almost like I was given permission to explore new ways of decorating, for my own store and for myself, and that not everyone has to stick to one particular design category for it to look good.
Through our store, we were able to put our vintage-inspired furniture and home decor to use by decorating and staging houses. I LOVE to stage an empty house that’s about to go up for sale! Staging is such an important part of selling a house, and it’s so fun for me to get to come into a home and display the furniture and decor in a way that compliment it best.
Now that we are building our own house, I CAN. NOT. WAIT to get started on decorating our new home! We’ve already picked out all our bamboo flooring, paint colors, counter tops, back splash, etc at the design center and I was shocked how much Bryan and I actually agreed on the decisions! (Hint: not dark, brown traditional everything anymore!) It’s crazy to see where we’ve come from and where we are now with our decorating choices.
What I’ve come to learn about designing and decorating a home is this: It’s not about ONE particular style. It’s not about following any design “rules” or home decorating “etiquette”. It’s all about what makes YOU feel like home. So my one design rule is there are no rules! Pick pieces that are personal, that touch your soul, and make your house feel like a home.
I have ALL these ideas and wish lists and decorating day-dreaming for our new house. I thought, what better way to keep all my ideas organized (And, let’s face it – keeping me from not following through with it!) than to start a blog and share my tips and tutorials for others to see. I’m so excited to get started and share with you our Jones Nest! 🙂
