Inspired to Finally Get Transforming a Piece or Two of the Home

     Lately, inspiration has been everywhere.  It started at the Designed for a Cure event for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.  There a panel of Williams & Sherrill design experts, including Kevin Malone, shared their design viewpoints.   Then through Annie Selke‘s luncheon presentation, I learned that my design style is “Everyday Exuberance”.  This perfectly apt and succinct description can now guide me and give me confidence in my color choices.

     The next week one of my design blogger heroines, Tobi Fairley, delighted an IFDA luncheon crowd as she showed how her design aesthetic and her design projects have evolved over the last decade of her very successful career.  She shared a lot of advice with the audience of mostly local designers, but I am going to take some of it as well, starting with taking pictures of the rooms of my house to locate decor problems.  Following the IFDA luncheon where Tobi spoke, our posse toured the Richmond Symphony Designer House, which was filled with amazing rooms produced by local talent like Malone and Kat Liebschwager of Ruth & Ollie (I hear Kat’s fabulous dinner room there was photographed for a future issue of Traditional Home).

     The following week, I had the great pleasure to have coffee with one of my other design blogger heroines, Laura Trevey of Bright Bold & Beautiful.  Introduced through a mutual friend after I won a BB&B Bliss giveaway, Laura truly lives up to the name of her blog.  By the end of our coffee, she felt like an old friend.  Laura has got such exciting things happening on her blog (you really should subscribe here to find out), and she left me completely energized.

Energetic and enthusiastic, Laura Trevey takes her own advise and gets in the picture with her kids and the dog.

     Finally, over the past month I have had the pleasure of a couple of day trips to the Rivah with friends.  While their fabulous homes demanded attention, on both trips we stopped by the delightfully French design shop, Brocante, in Irvington, as well as browse the local antique and consignment stores.  Brocante carries the Annie Sloan chalk paint line and is filled with examples of furniture that Brocante’s helpful owner, Rachel Pugliese, has transformed with the AS paint.  Each time I visit Brocante, I have to buy some Annie Sloan thing, which ends up in a closet while I fantasize about what boring brown piece of furniture in our house can be spiced up with the magic contained in one of her cans.

     Not this time, though.  With all of this inspiration and the realization that I could not buy another orphan piece of furniture until I made progress on what we already have, I have finally gotten out the sandpaper, wood-putty and paint brushes and started making a few transformations of my own.  I can’t wait to show you the results of my inspiration to transformation pieces.  In the meantime, maybe these inspirations will nudge you to transform your home fantasies into reality.