I’m going dark…with a house color that is. It’s no secret that I love white. My Santa Barbara home is white inside and out. But white just won’t cut it here in Big Sur…at least not for the outside of a house. It’s all about the majestic setting and blending in. When we bought the house back in March it was painted a brown, which had faded noticeably on the South side of the house. The trim was an off…
This week I (Kelsey, Elizabeth’s daughter) have taken over my mom’s blog post, while she has been crazy busy getting the new East Coast abode together. She’s been kind (and crazy?) enough to trust me and a few girlfriends to take a little weekend getaway to The Little Glass House. Santa Barbara is the perfect place to go and recharge. It’s a short drive from Los Angeles (about an hour and a half) but feels like planets away. An hour and a half in LA gets you…
I didn’t dare share this until we closed on the house. I was sure that I would jinx the whole thing. On my last visit to Connecticut in June, it came to our attention that a few homes had become available in a small coastal area near our rented townhouse. This is a community that rarely sees houses come on the market and so we decided to check a few of them out.…
I almost didn’t post this piece today. It seems that every time I turn on the news, another horrific attack has happened and everything else seems trivial in comparison. But I think in my own way, by creating beautiful, comfortable places to call home, it makes me feel safer. Our homes are our sanctuaries away from all the atrocities happening in the world. And isn’t it nice to have an oasis if even for a little while? So here is…
I was thrilled to be asked by the lovely ladies at Holl and Lane magazine to write an Interiors post for their online blog. Holl and Lane’s motto is: We are more than a magazine; we are a community of women that share our hearts with boldness. We believe in telling stories boldly and vulnerably, to cultivate honest community and authentically inspire home and add flavor to everyday life. They were looking for me to fulfill the authentically inspire home niche!…
I’m a bit of a pillow hoarder. There, I’ve admitted it. Does it mean I’m going to change my hoarding ways? Not anytime soon! I’ve had this problem for quite sometime and it became even worse once I discovered Etsy. I have pillows and their assorted covers in every closet in our smallish home. They make it so easy to change your decor in a snap! One day about a year ago I was scrolling through Instagram and I came…
If you’ve been following me on Instagram , you know that I recently was in Vermont helping my parents who have been working nonstop on building their dream farmhouse. While there is still much to be done, the kitchen is nearly complete and I am blown away! I think it just may be my favorite kitchen ever. Here are 5 things I absolutely love about it…I lied…how about 7? There are more than that but I don’t want this post to turn into…
When my hubby and I moved to Santa Barbara and bought a house six years ago, we knew we wanted to embrace the California outdoor lifestyle. This meant adding things like a hot tub, an outdoor shower, and a place to gather…a fire pit. While my husband has incredible faith in my ability to design gardens (as I did in Connecticut), I knew that with irrigation, electric, gas lines, and poured concrete hardscaping, I was in way over my head!…
For those of you who follow me, you know I moved to California from a traditional home in New England… a 1917 stone and stucco Connecticut cottage to be exact. I grew up in older homes with lots of character and even lived in a historic brownstone building in NYC when I was first married. “Modern” just wasn’t part of my vocabulary. When we decided to buy a house in Santa Barbara, I was at first drawn to the older Spanish homes that…
