Patina Style

I've been meaning to write about this book for a while now.  When I first got it in the mail, I pretty much devoured every page & picture.  Patina Style is written by my good friends, Brooke & Steve Giannetti, and is one of the most beautiful, insightful, honest design books I've ever read. 

Patina Style is all about Brooke & Steve's unique design & lifestyle philosophy.  It's about celebrating the imperfect, appreciating the marks that time & age leave on your home & on your things, and juxtaposing masculine & feminine, curvy with straight.  Their look is full of soft muted colors that just sort of surround you rather than call attention to themselves. 

I first discovered Brooke's blog, Velvet & Linen, around the same time I started blogging & reading blogs.  I was seriously drooly over it & all of their work.  Everything the Giannaetti's do is just beautiful & has a soulful quality.  Brooke is a designer and Steve is a renowned architect & together they own Giannetti Home, a shop in LA.  We visited them & their kids last Winter at their home & it is one of the warmest, most personal & "real" feeling homes I've ever visited.  (Of course they are too!  Leila & Nick were so good to Christian and put up with him tirelessly chasing them around with toy cars. ;) ;)  But almost everything I touched just had a solidarity & a history about it. 

In this day & age, it's sometimes hard to get people to see that imperfect is beautiful.  (Read about creating "imperfect" spaces here.)  So many people out there want shiny & new and don't understand how beautiful pieces with history & patina are.  One of the first things I did when I got the book was show it to my dad.  If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember that we butt heads design-wise a LOT.  We're almost finished restoring my grandparents' old cottage and it's been a tug-of-war the entire time.  He watches a lot of HGTV and sees them constantly adding granite countertops, buying new furniture, etc.  and is constantly wanting to go there.  Showing him Patina Style was a breakthrough for us.  He started to get that there is beauty in the imperfect, that floors don't have to be shiny & new, and sratches & dings are okay.  (He is always telling me to get out a table cloth so we won't scratch the kitcen table- gah!)  But after looking through Patina Style with me, I got no more nagging for table cloths on the table and I think it made him a bit more open-minded about what we can & can't do to the house. 

{I love their aged natural pine floors}

Brooke & Steve definitely think outside of the box & love repurposing old things into new ones. One of my favorite examples of this is the dining room light fixture made out of an old industrial metal fram lined with linen:

The book is basically a manual on how to create the Patina Style look & incorporate it into your own home, making it personal.  It's full of real details and specific sources for things like paint, materials, shops and furnishings.  One of the things that has always struck me about Brooke is how willingly she shares information & how she genuinely wants to help others love their homes.  She's been a great friend to me & constantly inspires.

Congratulations to Brooke & Steve on a perfect (-ly imperfect! ;) book.  Love yas!!

To order the book, go here 

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.

Dreaming Big...

Via Pinterest

My Happiest 6...

... Have been with this guy:

Happy anniversary to the person who knows me like no one else.

A New Piece of Art

For our anniversary gift to each other we knew we wanted to buy a piece of art and this time we knew exactly who we wanted the artist to be. In Oxford, MS, where we both went to school there is a restaurant, Ajax, which happens to be one my favorite places in the whole world. It is what you could probably call a dive restaurant but it feel like home to us. Anyhoo, it is filled with folk-type art, several from a Memphis artist named Lamar Sorrento.

I don't know if it is the strong connection to a place I love, but there is something about his primitive paintings that I can't get enough of. When it came to choosing a piece we knew this was the one....especially when we saw this detail....

Bo Diddley, McComb, MS- Patrick's home town. We loved that this painting was about Mississippi but once we saw Bo we knew it was meant to be. Love it. Changing our whole dining room around it, hence the dark paint swatches. I will let you know how it goes, may take a while...

Taste the Rainbow

Quiet Time

VIA

Before & After Master Bedroom

We just finished up with a master bedroom installation so I wanted to share 'before' and 'afters.'  There's  still some art to be hung but you'll get the idea.  My clients' bedroom is pretty large and we loved their tufted headboard.  My clients kept their existing dressers, nightstands and bed, and we added the rest.  Their old room felt a bit dark and didn't seem to fit with my client's personality.  She's so sunny & cheerful and is drawn to warm colors and light so I wanted to create a space that suited her.  She was looking for warm & fresh & relaxing.  Here's the room before:

 And here it is now:

The bedding is by Les Indiennes and I want it. A hand blockprinted quilt overlays a blockprinted duvet cover in a smaller pattern.  I had so much fun making that bed!!!  We replaced the original sconces with iron ones from Pottery Barn and had the walls painted a soft cream.  I topped the nightstands with vintage yellow vases and leaves from outside. 

I love the ruffly linen bench at the end of the bed. It adds just the right amount of femininity to the room.

Here's the window nook before:

And here is is now:

I love the idea of two chairs and an ottoman in a master bedroom.  (The perfect spot to read books and play footsie! ;)  ...Or more likely in real life, the spot to cozy up with the kids or to throw clothes on.  Ah vell!

You might recognize the yellow magnolia linen on the chair pillows from my new fabric line.  (And of course you can catch my repeated vintage vase on the garden stool-  oops! Never said I was a stylist! -  (In real life it's empty for a drink or a book. ;)

I had so much fun with this redo beause I think it shows how much palette & soft goods & lighting can change a room.  The main pieces of furniture like the bed & dressers stayed the same but the room now has a completely different vibe.  It feels like my client now.

Hope you enjoyed!! 

We have 4 more installs in the next month or so and I'll be sure to share before & afters when I get pics.  (I still have a few from this past summer that I need to get pics of- very behind- but I'm trying to catch up!!)

If you'd like help creating a home you absolutely love, contact me about our design services.