Bri Emery’s house designed by Emily Henderson

Has there ever been a home you wished you could just move into with your two suitcases and a great big smile? Well Bri Emery’s (she’s the creative masterming and curator of the blog Design Love Fest ) home is just that to me. A Mid Century revival with teak & brass accents, mixed in with fresh colours, greenery ( I L.O.V.E. fig trees), a cool Flokati diamond rug. Textures & colour accents are key to keeping otherwise neutral rooms lively and this fluffy wool rug grounds the room beautifully.

Happy Monday lovelies!

xox

v.

source: Design Love Fest

Family and friends get together are one of life’s small pleasures. Whether they are new acquaintances or parents, the way you will put a room together will influence your guests behaviours and how comfortable they feel in your home.

One of the key indicator of the comfort level of your guests is for sure the ease with which they can chat with each other. Visual contact and physical proximity should be at the forefront of your thought process when planning the layout of your living room. I personally always start by placing the sofas and chairs (whether on paper or in the room itself) as they are the anchors to the room and the largest pieces.

Flexible seating

Facilitate conversations by creating clusters of seats… space permitting. This will have the effect to create different focal points in the room to enjoy different point of view, and will allow guests to participate in various conversations! Be sure to include, with cluster, small side tables for drinks and books, as well as proper lighting with either floor or table lamps.

 Think Textures

If the kitchen is the heart of the home, then the living room is it’s stylish wardrobe! Although a great place to show your sense of style, I like to keep the bright colours and intricate patterns to accessories and drapes. The sofa, being a more expensive and larger piece will have a longer life in your home with more neutral colours. Invest instead on its comfort, quality of craftsmanship and shape rather that on a crazy fabric that will run its course much faster. These days, I am all over velvet especially when applied to a Chesterfield sofa… hummmm!!!

Activity Zones & Storage

Finally, think of what will happen in the room. With walls coming down (literally) in our homes, the main living area often serves more than one purpose. From paying a few bills at a small home office desk to playing board or video games, to watching television or reading a book, it is important to determine the zones in which the activities will take place and give the users (and their gadgets) the proper storage they will need to hide away the clutter.

sources: 1. The Brick House 2. Lonny Magazine 3. The Aestate 4. La Dolce Vita 5. Amber Interiors

Hello hello virtual lovelies!

What a week it has been… I mean WHAT a week! I feel like it has been months since I last wrote and yet it all happened in the last 4 days. Ouf. After the “great escape to Toronto” last weekend, I came back with a trunk full or vintage finds and my head filled to the brim with ideas for what was about to begin.

Monday morning, bright eye and not so bushy tail (we had driven over 7 hours to come back due to traffic on the 401), I embarked on what is already becoming an adventure of magnificent proportions… I started to film the first show of 26 to come of “Sauvez les Meubles” (Save the Furniture). Yup, the wheel is officially in motion after a year and a half of planning. Woot woot!

Let me tell you a little more about what this show will be all about and why I am doing it… not that I need to justify myself (it’s more like sharing my overflowing joy)! So the concept is all about literally saving the furniture in people’s homes which they’ve inherited from family members, found in garage sales, or simply always had them and which they don’t know what to do with anymore. We’ll paint, repurpose, recycle & refurbish, hammer, and sew pieces back together to give them a new beginning and create, in the process, decors that are truly one of a kind.

You know how I feel about our current day and age where we can no longer afford to simply buy and buy some more, whether for financial or environmental reasons. It is not about consuming less it is about consuming better! Cool no? And in the process I hope to bring to the audience DIY ideas to try on their own but also to make them discover some of the great artisans and retailers that I have come to know and love on Damask & Dentelle.

Doesn’t it seem to be made for me? I’d say so!! (Happy Dance) One small hurdle though… every week, I’ll have to bring vintage pieces back to life and in the current century while spending no more than 500$. Yup 500 loonies! So, more than ever, I will be raking my brains for ideas and inspirations that have that little “je ne sais quoi”. (This home right here is definitely source for much inspiration don’t you think?) 

Let me finish by reming you that today is the LAST day to enter the Home Depot Dream Kitchen contest!! A 2500$ gift card is up for grabs to remodel your current kitchen. So if you live in Québec, check it out and be sure to send in your pics.

Source: The Style Files

Act 1:

Sitting at her desk, our intrepid design groupie suddenly stands, opens the window and leaps… to the balcony screaming:

D.G.: “I LOVE WALLPAPER!!!!!!!!”

Act 2: 

After being yelled at by the neighbouring suites, our design groupie got some sense into her to get back inside and sit back down at her desk and declare her love for all things wall related to her loyal readers instead.

D.G.: ” I love wallpaper, really I always have. I remember the wallpaper that was in my nursery (from photographs seen in recent years of course) and it was off white with large green and red apples all over it. Very Scandinavian in essence. When I was 3, I hit my ballerina phase and had an all pink bedroom with Laura Ashley wallpaper to match the curtains and duvet cover (again as attested by photographs seen in more recent years). When I was 8 I renounced all associations to my princess years and entered my blue phase… with again a off white Laura Ashley wallpaper with tiny lavender blue flowers all over it. To my mother’s best design advice, I also had the matching bedspread and curtains in contrasting blue and tiny white flowers fabric.”

Act 3:

All this reminiscing has given our design groupie a massive thirst so she gets up and fetches a glass of green juice (aka: Pond Scum) that is supposed to be great for you but that really looks awful. Hey… the lengths at which she is willing to go to for bikini season.

(not a very exciting act… it is an author’s movie, you know)

Act 4: 

As she sits again…

D.G.: ” After the childhood years came the experimental teenage years…during that phase I changed the decor of my bedroom every year for 6 straight years. The thickness of the paint on the walls must have been quite impressive. I painted sunflowers as a headboard once (my peace & love phase), then it was a mural of a surfer on a huge blue wave (my Point Break phase), then I had 4 walls of 4 different colours (I hesitate between my confused or my Lego phase)…During what seems today like forever, I left wallpaper aside for 6 full years.”

Act 5: 

Fast forward on the College years, the innumerable apartment changes and the hummm suspicious boyfriends.

Act 6: 

Our design groupie is now a mother of 3 lovely munchkins, always well dressed and never dirty, with good manners and excellent dental hygiene (again… let’s focus on the fact that this is a movie and that I should not let the facts spoil a good story!)

D.G.: “As time have passed, and my disgust for green pond scum juice has not, I have rekindled with my love for wallpaper. From the powder room to the bedroom and all rooms in between, it still fills me with joy to see the effect a repetitive pattern has on the dynamism of a room’s decor. ”

And they lived happily ever after.

The End…

sources: The Style Files, Norske Interior