The Beginning of We’re the Joneses

[April 1, 2105] My very first introduction blog post on We’re the Joneses ⤵️

How it all started…

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 used all the money he made that summer to buy a brand new riding lawn mower in preparation for the next season. I can just picture that cute little boy driving his lawn mower around the neighborhood, pulling his lawn equipment-filled trailer and all…

Bryan has always had an amazing drive and work ethic. I could go on and on about the crazy things he 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 🙂

And for me? My happy place is creating. I live for designing, imagining, decorating, writing, dreaming up new ideas. All these things are what motivate me and get me so excited! Now carrying out all these ideas in my head is a little different story…I’m not really 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 like the easiest way to decorate!

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/repurposing furniture and home decor from garage sales, storage auctions, rural downtown shops, and even the kindest old man who’s old unique finds were spread out all over front lawn off the I 35 service road. 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 decor and gift store with my parents. This is when our decorating really expanded! We got to browse all the beautiful showrooms at Dallas Market, took countless trips to local flea markets, and one amazing and eye-opening trip Round Top, the biggest flea market in the country.

 I think my mind was blown the first time I walked into a showroom at Dallas Market. So much decor! So much inspiration! So much creativity! So many types of decorating styles!

Contemporary

Modern

Retro

Cottage

Country

Shabby Chic

Traditional

Which were we??? While buying products for our boutique, 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 had learned from all these experience 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.

While we had our home decor boutique, we were also able to put our 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 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 daydreaming 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! 🙂

 

{UPDATED 2017} When this was written, my intention was to start this blog to write about our experiences with building our dream home and our journey through decorating and designing our new space. During this time though, we started going through IVF and my blog and personal life took a turn and I focused on writing more about our infertility struggles and infertility awareness. I’m soooo excited to now pick up where I left off and share my passion with decorating our home with you!!