decor – Page 2 – Designing Goldilocks

My design blog is for you

Are you a Mom with no juice left at the end of the busy day to create a soothing space for yourself?

This blog’s for you.

Are you a career woman who doesn’t want to spend the weekend making more decisions, especially on trivial matters like flowers and succulents?

This blog’s for you.

Are you just design inept?

This blog’s for you. And for anyone you know who may have said yes to any of these questions.

I get it. Decorating your house is stressful. It’s time consuming. There are so many choices, and you don’t know where to begin.

Wallpaper or paint? And if paint, what color paint? And what about the finishes? Flat. Satin. Gloss. High-Gloss.

The decisions are seemingly endless. The process is so tedious, it can make you want to throw in the towel. But are they monogrammed towels? And what about thread count? And I haven’t even mentioned the cost.

I’ve had no formal interior design training. Nor have I worked in the design world. But I’ve owned homes, new and used, and know a thing or two about picking out furniture, settling on colors, choosing artwork, and organizing spaces.

And I have done all of this on a budget. Because I believe interior design and home decor do not have to be expensive to make your home pretty and comfortable.

Don’t get me wrong. If you want to spend one-grand on a club chair, be my guest. My house holds a few pricier items, too. But only because I wanted to spend that kind of money, not because I thought I had to spend that kind of money.

On my blog, you will learn the reasoning behind the design choices I’ve made for my home that you can replicate in yours. I share budget friendly decor options and explain why I splurged on pieces to round out a look.

If the posts don’t address the design challenges you’re facing, reach out to me on my contact page or leave a question in the comments section. You might find your dilemma is the topic of my next design post.

My blog is for the busy, exhausted or uninspired, so send me a design question. Photo by John Hooks

Design with an open mind

Sometimes the house dictates the decor.

Take color, for instance.

Blue is my favorite color, and dominated my design choices in terms of color for years at my condo.

Dinnerware: Dansk Blue Mesa.

Master bathroom accessories: Tommy Hilfiger Elizabeth Anne.

Kitchen motif: Sunflowers with a blue backdrop.

But blue does not work well in the new house. The color that does work?

Green, which comes as a big surprise to me because green is my least favorite color behind pink. But I like it.

It could be that green complements the brown walls and cabinetry. Think tree trunks and leaves. It could be that the house has tons of natural light. Think sunshine and vegetation.

I could have gone with blue if I wanted to. The living room and master bedroom suites are grey and silver, both of which are cool colors. The blue would have fallen in line on the color palette.

But that’s just it. The silver, grey and blue do not provide a colorful range. Once I opened my mind to green, and saw the life it breathed into the decor, my love for the color grew like ivy. Now it’s the color I gravitate to.

Fortunately, the interior decor world is ruled by indoor trees, succulents and fig leaves.

Green is the perfect accent color in this sea of grey and silver. Photo by Cindy Hernandez

Summer vibes

One of the features that sold me on the new house was the front porch. I had the perfect furniture for it: two acacia wood chairs and matching table that I picked up at World Market years ago.

I also had two black-and-white striped lumbar cushions from Target that went perfectly on the chairs. The porch was one of the first spaces I set up after moving in. I loved it. I still do.

But now that we were entering our second summer in the house, I thought the porch needed a refresh. Not a completely different ensemble. But just a few pieces to make the space look new again.

Over the past few weeks I had seen black-and-white striped outdoor rugs on social media. I wasn’t completely sold on outdoor rugs. This town is dusty, especially in the summertime. How would I keep them clean?

But the more I saw the rugs, the more I realized I needed one for the porch. I found the perfect one online at Target.

I am still blown away by the difference. The rug makes a statement. It pops. It draws attention to the ensemble. The rug was the missing piece I didn’t know was missing until I had it.

What do you think?

*The black-and-white striped* outdoor rug makes the ensemble pop. Photo by Cindy Hernandez

Statement pieces

You won’t find clutter in my house.

No bric-a-brac on shelves.

No knickknacks.

No trinkets.

This is mostly because I hate to dust. So the fewer items on display, the fewer items to get dusty.

Instead I go for statement pieces. A vase. A plant. A votive.

The pieces are grand. They speak for themselves. They encapsulate my decor. They don’t take center stage, they take the whole stage.

If you’re in the process of organizing your house and want to de-clutter, take these steps to maximize your space without forgoing style:

Pick a cluttered tabletop.

Choose a favorite object that represents your decor. Be sure it is large enough to pack a punch without overtaking the table.

Place it in the center or the corner, wherever it makes sense.

Stand back and evaluate. The piece should be eye-catching. A conversation-starter. It should cause someone to do a double-take and say, “This piece looks like you.”

Here are 3 examples of statement pieces in my house

This pineapple piece takes the stage on the buffet, all from Pier 1 Imports. Photos by Cindy Hernandez

*This artificial* plant from Target adds greenery to this mirrored accent table from Pier 1 Imports. It’s okay to leave the bottom shelf empty.

*This centerpiece says it all, ‘centerpiece.’*

The story of an accent table

I love accent tables.

You can put them anywhere. They’re small. They’re cute. They can match your decor. Or not, because they are so functional, they can stand on their own. No pun intended.

The accent tables in my house run the gamut from pricier ones from furniture stores to the ones that belonged to John’s Mom, Diane. And the ones that belonged to John’s Mom are my favorite.

The one in the water closet came all the way from Michigan in the 1970s when John and his family moved to Arizona. It has short wooden legs and a tile tabletop reminiscent of the Southwest.

It’s not exactly the table you would picture in Michigan, so it’s almost fitting that it would end up in the Southwest.

The table is small and perfect in the master bathroom water closet where it holds the tissue box and – if I am being honest – my coffee cup and cell phone during morning visits.

The other accent table from Diane sits next to John’s chair in the living room. He uses it to place his coffee on weekend mornings. It’s a newer piece Diane picked up here in Arizona. It too does not match my decor but I love it all the same.

But what makes these pieces so special is how I came to acquire them.

Diane spent the last 15 months of her life in a nursing home. When it came time to collect her belongings, John let me pick the items I wanted before donating the rest. The tables were among her belongings. I grabbed them immediately.

From there, the tables went from the nursing home to my condo, to my storage unit while the new house was being built, to the new house.

Actually, the table from Michigan had a layover at my parents’ own water closet between the condo and the new house. My Dad needed a place for his own coffee cup during morning visits. So I brought the table over from storage on the condition I would take it back once the new house was ready.

Dad loved that table. Almost to the point of threatening to hide it from me so that I would never take it away.

Who would have thought that an accent table would make its way into so many lives and bring function into so many houses?

This accent table belonged to John’s Mom who brought it down to Arizona from Michigan in the 1970s. Today it sits in the master bathroom water closet. Photos by Cindy Hernandez

Organizing tips

It seems everyone is organizing these days. They’re passing their quarantine time getting their house in order.

Closets. Pantries. Garages.

I’ve been organizing my house since the day we moved in 10.5 months ago.

It helps that I had a clean slate. The house was brand new, it came with plenty of storage space, and all of my belongings were boxed up. All I had to do was find spots for items I wanted to keep, donate the items I no longer wanted but were still in good condition, and throw away the rest.

If you’re unmotivated to organize your house, allow yourself to buy storage bins that add style and functionality to your home.

Choose bins in the same color or pattern for a cohesive look behind your closet doors and cabinets.

Settle on bins that come in a variety of shapes and sizes for large and small items and spaces.

If you have to clean out a space before you can organize it, set out three empty boxes – 1 for items to keep, 1 for donating, and 1 for throwing away.

To make organizing less daunting, tackle one space at a time. For example, take on the linen closet and only the linen closet before moving onto a new space.

For larger tasks, set aside a block of time. For example, allow four hours on a Tuesday afternoon to make a dent in the master closet. When those four hours are up, stop. Then set aside another block of time the following week.

If you’ve organized a space in the past year or so, give it another scan. You’ll likely find more items to purge that didn’t make the cut last time. On the flip-side, if you’re undecided on an item, keep it. It just might make the cut next time around.

*These storage bins from Target come in different colors and sizes for style and functionality.*
*Photos by Cindy Hernandez*

Wherefore art thou Curio

The curio cabinet in the living room wasn’t supposed to go in the living room. It was meant for the bar room to hold small bottles of booze. We bought the curio about a year before the house was ready and stashed it in storage.

When the house was done, and the bar pieces and curio were in the bar room, we realized there was too much furniture and the space felt cramped.

We also realized the Guinness collection deserved to take center stage in that room. The plan was to position the bar at an angle and hang the mirror on the same wall as the window.

But after we moved in, and my parents were over for a visit and a tour, my Dad said the mirror deserved to be on a wall of its own. This was the same wall that the curio was supposed to go against.

A week later, my Dad mentioned again that the room would look better with the bar and mirror as the main components in the space. (Yes, my Dad giving decorating advice.)

John and I agreed. But that meant the curio would have to go. Fortunately, the curio matched the pieces in the living room. It now holds crystal pieces from Waterford and Tiffany & Co instead of Jim Beam and Maker’s Mark.

But I am not completely sold on having it in the living room. Not that it looks bad. I just doesn’t look like the plan I had for the space.

For starters, there is only one spot in the living room that I can put the curio- against the pony walls that divide the bar room and living room. But that means it blocks the sight lines that should have run through the area.

I’m also not a fan of displaying crystal. The look is too 1980s. But you can’t have a curio and nothing on the shelves.

I’m sure it looks nice. It provides another piece of the Hayworth Collection to the space. But the curio is an example of not being 100 percent happy with the outcome. Then again, are designers every 100 percent happy with the outcome?