Here is the link to the collection again, I will continue to update it as the new sales come up! LINKED HERE

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Comment your city below for next week, and at the bottom for paid subscribers I will be sharing some INSANE vintage mid century light fixtures.

New Orleans

Washington DC

Dallas

Now for the insane light fixtures I found

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As always, comment your city for next week and at the bottom I will have shippable vintage rugs!

Denver

Raleigh

Portland Maine

Seattle

Now, vintage wool rugs that can be shipped anywhere!

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Divorce.

Every single relationship in my life has ended in divorce. Parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. I genuinely have no idea what a successful relationship looks like. I viewed that as a challenge. If I don’t know what that looks like, I will create it. Because of this I have ended relationships that on paper were really good. Ended them because I knew I would have to sacrifice pieces of me to stay. And while I might not have the perfect reference, I know that surely wouldn’t lead to a successful relationship. This same concept applies to friends, jobs, and even opportunities. Maybe the thing I actually learned from all of the divorce is, if you’re not happy, leave.

Ask, and then pay attention.

I’m not sure of your religion, but I like to think there’s some higher power, I like to blame the planets when I wake up in a weird mood, and I like to believe in angels when I see 5:55 on a clock. And I really, truly, wholeheartedly believe in signs. There have been more occasions than not where I have felt confused, unsure, stuck, alone. When I’m in those scenarios I wonder what the next step is, how to move forward, what to do. When you’re in this space, you REALLY need to pay attention. Because in my experience, your questions will be answered.

I  had closed down my vintage stores, was feeling utterly lost on next steps with my career, completely burnt out, and super fucking defeated. I could not think of a single thing I wanted to do or apply myself to. I had spent so much time on job boards, meeting with friends of friends, and research to try and figure out my next step.  My friend had just moved to San Diego and I went out to visit her. She was living in the carriage house attached to her boyfriend’s mom’s house. When I got there she gave me a tour and I was completely blown away. The mom was an interior designer and I had never experienced a house put together with so much intention. I didn’t know homes could feel like that. That they could tell stories of the family, the people that lived there, feel like you were seeing into someone’s soul. That was my sign. I felt this complete sense of assurance that I was supposed to be a designer. If you’re going to ask for guidance, make sure you listen for the answer. Because it will show up.

That job you hated gave you a tool.

I worked in restaurants from 15 to my early 20’s. My last restaurant job was at a ramen shop. I had been making these really cool 3D candles for my friends as a holiday gift and one of the girls at the ramen shop encouraged me to start selling them. She was doing pop up markets and making a killing. I took her advice and started doing markets. I was making a killing. This then turned into me selling vintage which then took a series of twists and turns which lead me to where I am now. All that to say every turn taught me something that prepared me for where I am now. The ramen shop taught me to put myself out there and how when you have people that support you and really show up for you, you can do anything. Making candles taught me how to pivot and how to do it quick (hello sculptural candles melting at an outside market in the 100 degree summers). Selling vintage and having the stores taught me about sacrifice, time management, business logistics, and how to build a community. Now with design I have learned SO much, but that’s a whole different post. Every tool I learned from every single job (even the menial ones) I have used in my current job. Everything has a purpose and a teaching.

If you made it this far. You’re on the right path. If you’re not happy, leave. If you ask for guidance, listen. And know that everything is shaping you to be exactly where you’re supposed to be.

Why open concepts feel off (it isn’t the flow)

Most people assume flow is the reason open concepts feel funky, it isn’t. You can walk through open concept plans super easily.

The issue is theres no definition. There are no spaces to signal where one room ends and the other begins. Because of this, your eye has nowhere to rest. As you look across all of the spaces your eyes and brain read them as one giant zone, which often makes it feel more chaotic rather than less. What was supposed to feel like a bigger and better space now feels unfinished and overwhelming.

What to steal from hotel lobbies

I mean the tips. Don’t literally steal from them. Unless there’s matchbooks. Definitely steal those.

Hotel lobbies are one big open concept space and they do a great job at separating all of their different zones and here’s how they do it.

1. Rugs. Rugs are the borders that tell your eye where one space ends and another begins. The edge of the rug is basically an imaginary wall. Make sure your rug is BIG to achieve this. You want everything in that zone to be fully on it.

2. Lighting. Each zone needs its own lighting. A big chandelier over the dining table. Lamps, flush mounts, or sconces in the living. Pendants in the kitchen. Again, we can size up here, these are helping define each zone.

3. Floating furniture. Pull your pieces off of the walls and face them towards each other. If everything is pushed up against the walls it will be too far apart and feel stretched. Pulling everything in creates the feeling of intimacy and closeness.

   

Why you don’t need to match (and you shouldn’t)

Someone somewhere along the line said that once you had the zones, everything needed to match. I feel like HGTV is the culprit and yes, I'm firing shots at HGTV. If everything across all of our zones matches we just destroyed all of our hard work making them feel separate. Now we are back to one giant, big, bland room.

The rule: repeat finishes, but make them sisters not twins

Repeat a few colors, materials, textures, or woods across the spaces. Not the same ones EXACTLY, but similar.

For a bad example: You have the exact same wood or even shop the same collection for your bar stools, dining table, and coffee table. That is a no-go.

For a good example: a brass pendant in the kitchen, a brass frame on your artwork in the dining, and brass sculptures on the shelves in the living. See, sisters, not twins.

The common open concept questions I get:

• How do I match my rugs? Well hopefully you read the last section because, well, you don’t. Pick one rug for one of the spaces (usually the living) that has a pattern with multiple colors in it. I often go for a vintage wool ornate rug. Pick one of the colors out of that rug and use it for the dining room. Pick a different color and use it for the runner in the kitchen. Again, sisters, not twins.

• How the hell do I paint? For open concepts I often choose a soft muted color and paint it on ALL of the walls. Because most open concepts don’t have any walls to separate the spaces, there is no good starting or stopping point for the paint. Some good colors are a super muted yellow, muted blue, taupe, beige, lavender, dusty rose, or a really creamy white. If you’re bold and want to go with a dark and moody color, do it! I like the subtle colors as a good neutral base to build off of.

• How do I make this space feel cozy? Warm colors, thick drapery over roman shades or cafe curtains, using antique woods, a wood ceiling if your ceiling allows it, and thick textures in every single area. Oh, and soft lighting. Nothing above 3000 Kelvins.

Personally, I would love if we just brought walls back. But the moral of the story is you don’t need walls to have rooms, you need definition. Decide the purpose of each zone, define it, and banish the scary, liminal, giant space. Hotels figured this out eons ago, you can too.

If you need more help with space planning, lighting, paint, colors, and purpose I give details space by space in my design guides. I have Living Room, Bedroom, and Office guides and you can use the code DIGEST for a discount as a little reader thank you.

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San Francisco

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Now for some funky vintage rugs, mirrors, and art.

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All that being said here are the things that wowed me in July.

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1. Natural Stone. I always love natural stone but in July I was working on two projects where the design is fully dictated by the stone. Stone first, decisions second. The ones I have been drawn to are:

   

2. The Pierce & Ward x West Elm collab. I have truly never been this obsessed with a collection before. This line hits the collected, effortless, fun, funky, bold, but classic notes that most others don’t. I am eyeing quite a few pieces for my own home and I did a round-up of some of my favorites HERE and will share some below as well.

3. Burl wood. The movement, the character, the texture. It adds the perfect amount of personality while still being a neutral. Ive been thinking about it as a vanity in a bathroom, wall paneling (even though that would be incredibly bold), I actually would love it as a phone case, as a frame for art, literally for anything. I am super into it right now.

   

4. Wood stains from Linolie & Pigment. I have not used these personally but I have been DYING to. I think it is such a fun take on a wood stain and again, a perfect way to inject personality to a space. I will link their instagram because their website is in a different language and honestly, I don’t know how to change it haha.

5. A fun bevvie. I don’t know about you, but 3pm hits, my motivation crashes, and I need a cold, crisp, fun beverage. My go-to’s have been the Dr. Death Liquid Death (basically a soda water that tastes EXACTLY like Dr. Pepper (in my opinion)) and Olipop or Bloom Shirley Temples. For some reason I can’t stand Poppi so I will absolutely not recommend the one they do but the other ones are the perfect summer treat.

Hope you all had a great July and share your favs from the month below! I want to hear what you are loving!

Denver

Now, 5 Vintage wool rugs that are available to be shipped!

Okay, that as all for now! Comment your city below for next week and let me know what shippable finds you’d like to see!

We have been living in our current beautiful mid century rental home for a year now. In March we resigned the lease to go until next July. Our current home is great but the house itself needs a lot of love and a hell of a lot of maintenance. The neighborhood is amazing, the neighbors have all welcomed us in with open arms, and we even reached out to the owner to try to buy it. The owner was not even remotely prepared to sell it to us. I have loved doing small touches to this home and navigating making a space feel yours while renting, but once we heard she wasn’t willing to sell it to us I realized I was craving something bigger. So I started looking at Zillow.

I won’t go through all the details on the homes we looked at since I already wrote about that in the post linked here.

But we kept searching. And we found this funky post modern home with some mountain mid century details and a whole lot of carpet. The location was exactly where we wanted it to be, it has a little bit of land, and so so so much potential. We put an offer in and it got accepted.

Now I have no idea if you’re familiar with the home buying process, but it is an absolute doozy. We did a 30 day close because we thought that was the norm, but I would not recommend that. We have had to drive to the house every single day last week to have inspections done, meet tradespeople, get quotes, figure out the loan situation, and a bunch of other things that I’m probably forgetting due to the sheer sense of overwhelm. It is a lot. But as I write this our inspection objections have been submitted and our deadline to hear back from them on this is Wednesday. Our close date is August 14th.

I flicker between moments of absolute panic, and pure excitement. Moments of, “holy shit, are we actually doing this” and moments of, “holy shit, we are actually doing this”. This house needs a lot of work but it is exactly what I wanted. I didn’t want to pay a premium for a house that someone else had renovated. This is a 1980’s time capsule with the colored plumbing to tell the story.

As the days pass, things start to feel more real and I come to terms of what that means for us. Trying to figure out how to break our lease, moving logistics, renovation timeline, where our furniture will go in the house, and so much more on top of all of the other projects and clients I am working with. This is about to be a chaotic few months.

The first thing that needs to happen is the carpet HAS to go. It is so gross. The thing about redoing the floors is, when they are up that is the best time to do just about everything. That one choice impacts so many other ones. What should be a simple, “let’s replace the carpet with hardwood floors” is now, “well if the floors are up we should probably redo the kitchen” and “should we install forced air” and “well, we were already going to redo the primary bath so we should just do that too”. And now we have easily racked up 300k in renovations immediately and thats absolutely absurd (and not financially possible). We decided the solution is, we will install hardwood in all of the main spaces, and some sort of super, super cheap LVP equivalent in all of the temporary spaces such as the kitchen, bathrooms, and laundry rooms. Because I am not emotionally prepared to renovate those spaces yet and I don’t have the brain power to design those to the level I would want to.

I keep getting torn between is a hell of a lot of things. The desire to download my 3D scans of the house and start designing out every single detail and really let my creativity free, not get too ahead of myself and be smart and wait for the septic inspection to be done (our inspector couldn’t access it so we are asking the sellers to have it scoped because if this isn’t up to standards we will walk), to get a jump start on flooring and paint and wallpaper and all of the fun things we could do immediately upon moving in, to be present and enjoy the time we have in our current house because it really is so special, and also to run away and avoid all of this completely because it is a lot an my nervous system is begging for me to avoid it all and be calm.

I have no idea what is about to happen but I will absolutely be taking you along for the ride. Because lord knows it’s about to be a wild one.

Much easier said than done.

I felt so inspired when I came back from Mexico, to slow down, be present, enjoy. Then life happened. I said yes, I added on more tasks, more responsibilities, more, more, more.

I wanted to take this moment to come up with some ideas to ACTUALLY stay present and some things I am going to start do to bring back joy. I used to be so whimsical, so playful, so fun. Now once 8pm hits I am absolutely done. Nothing left to give. I curl up into a ball on the sofa and read my kindle. (To make matters worse I bought an obnoxious stand so that I can lay down and I don’t have to hold it to read. It’s literally so embarrassing). Austin calls me a grandma, and he’s not wrong. My cup feels so empty and I don’t feel like myself. So here’s what I am going to do to reclaim my whimsy. If you’re a mom, a business owner, an employee at a grueling job, or just someone who needs to get back in touch with themselves, here’s what I am going to do and I invite you to join me.

I am going to set little alarms throughout the day. Starting with 11:11 because I always made a wish then as a kid and I think thats such a special little moment of gratitude or presence. I think before, after, or during my wish I am also going to try to get outside. Even for one minute. A little breather right in the middle of the day. For me 11 is the point in the day where I really lock in and don’t emerge until 2 or 3. A moment of touching the earth and making a wish will help center me for the rest of the day (I hope). To start I will be doing this on Monday’s. That feels more accessible than every day. If you want to join me I will post a reminder on Monday at 11:11 next week but feel free to do it whenever you want.

Another thing I have been doing during the week is I do not scroll social media. TikTok and Instagram are for posting only. I have found this does absolute wonders for my mental health, my focus, and my energy. This one doesn’t need too much explaining. Give it a try even for one day, I promise your brain cells will thank you. (Side note, if you commit to the week day three is usually the hardest. I would say get a magazine, a book, or something easy to look at while your brain is craving those dopamine hits.)

The third thing I am going to start adding is a post dinner lap around the block. Not a long walk, a super quick one. Or if I really really don’t want to, I will take my bike. Movement after eating is something that genuinely makes me feel so good. My digestion feels better and with the sun setting so late it feels like an easy addition. Plus I can drag my partner outside and that feels like a cute little moment.

Im going to leave it at three to start. I don’t want to overwhelm you or myself and jump to deep. Baby steps to presence. Let me know if you have any little practices you do!

Starting with the mood-board. It’s the middle of July and nothing screams summer like the beach to me. I am finding myself drawn to all things nautical. I would say that’s pretty normal to me and isn’t seasonally dependent, but it feels more appropriate in July. I grew up on the east coast so to me summers feel like the Carolinas, Delaware, and small little quirky beach tchotchkes. The board feels like movement, texture, fun, expression, bold, and soft at the same time.

Now to the Marketplace finds. I’m not going to lie. these are just things I found this weekend that I thought were cool near me.

Denver

As you might be able to tell from the finds, I would say this week I am feeling more funky and playful rather than literal. More creative. I wonder if something is happening astrologically because I feel ready to play.

If you are feeling the same I encourage you to make a random moldboard. No pressure. Just the things that call to you. And if you do, please share it. I would love to get a peek into your brain.

Hope you have a stellar week. xoxo.

Starting with this rug from Nordic Knots. And any rug from this brand for that matter. It’s made with 100% New Zealand Wool and is so plush and soft. I keep coming back to this one specifically because I love the notches on the edges, the contrasting colors, and how the design is still subtle in its own right.

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Denver

Raleigh

Today I rounded up some stunning vintage finds that can be shipped under $500 (yes, including furniture)

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Baltimore

Melbourne

Comment your city below for next week!

Now, for my rug and tapestry vintage finds

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The day of the tour rolls around and I get a text from our agent saying that the seller is considering taking it off the market and putting some more money into it in hopes of getting more money in the future. This obviously is my worst nightmare. I want to be the one to put money into it. My agent tells him we were thinking about putting in an offer and the seller says they will only accept listing price (which was already too high). During these few hours where we are getting this info the tour gets cancelled, I’m making calls to my agent, the lender, my mom, and Austin. I’m stressed.

The listing gets taken off the market.

I realize if we don’t get this house thats fine, there will be another one. The universe has better plans for me. However, I know myself and if I didn’t do everything I could do on my end I know I will have regrets.

So here we are. Submitting an offer on a house where the owner decided to take it off the market. A house where we haven’t even seen the garage. A house where there are a lot of questionable things happening. (Granted, all of these concerns will be addressed in the inspection periods). A house where the seller might not even respond.

This is a huge step for me. One I truly was not prepared for.

I started mood boarding this morning. A bit premature, I know. Especially since now I am feeling 20% more attached. This is a big deal. I have no idea whats going to happen. I am leaving it up to the universe and hoping for the best.

As always, everything is hyperlinked, comment your city for next week, and at the bottom I pulled some INSANE vintage rugs off Etsy!

NY

Portland

Now for my roundup of vintage rugs that can be shipped.

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It comes down to one thing. Sightlines.

The sightline rule

I think this is the secret. Whenever you can see two rooms at the same time, there needs to be a through line between them. Pull a color from one space into the next.

Let me show you what I mean with my own house. When you walk in my front door I have a dark brown and pink floral wallpaper in the entryway. And from where you’re standing in that entryway you can see my pink sofa in the next room. I did that on purpose. The pink in the wallpaper and the pink of the sofa are talking to each other. They tie the two spaces together even though the rooms are completely different.

You do not need your rooms to match. Please do not make your rooms match. You just need to repeat something, a color, a tone, a material, whenever two or more spaces are visible at once. That’s what makes a home feel intentional instead of disjointed.

And if you genuinely cannot see two rooms at the same time, do whatever you want. Go wild. They don’t need to relate to each other at all. The through line only matters where the eye can connect the spaces.

Find your connective tissue

In my home the through line is wood. I have wood paneling and it runs throughout the house and it’s the warm thread that ties all of my different colored rooms together. It’s very mid century and I love it and it brings a warmth that connects everything.

Not every home needs a single material running through it like mine does. But I do think this applies to bigger wall treatments specifically. If you’re going to do beadboard or shiplap or paneling somewhere, you can’t just do it in one room. That kind of treatment needs to carry through the house or it feels random. The big architectural moves are your through line. Treat them that way.

Transition spaces deserve breathing room

This is the part thats easy to skip but it matters so much.

I have a hallway that every room opens off of. And rather than make that hallway its own bold color, which would have been completely overwhelming with all of those different colored rooms branching off it, I paint matched the wood paneling and painted the hallway brown. I think of it as a transition space. A breath between all the color.

Your transition color doesn’t have to be brown. It doesn’t have to be white. It can be something subtle. And my definition of subtle is any color that’s abundant in nature doesn’t really read as a color to me. A green for example. Green is everywhere in nature so it doesn’t feel loud. Now if you went bright bold emerald, sure, that’s a color. But a dusty green or a woody green? That’s subtle enough to be a transition. It gives the eye somewhere to rest.

Hallways, stairwells, entryways, these are your transition spaces. Although honestly there’s an exception worth naming. A stairwell or an entryway is also a place you can do something completely insane if you want. I love a wild wallpaper in an entryway or a stairwell. It depends on your layout. If that space is the hub of your home, if everything ties back to it, then it becomes the through line itself and all the other rooms relate to it. But if it’s purely connective, let it breathe.

Why this matters

A home where every single room is its own bold color with no through line and no transition spaces is genuinely overstimulating. It feels like the inside of an ADHD brain. It feels like a museum. It’s missing that cozy layer that makes a house feel like a home instead of a series of display rooms.

If you want a loose tool to keep yourself in check there’s something called the 60/30/10 rule. The idea is that a room is roughly 60 percent a dominant color, usually your walls and largest pieces, 30 percent a secondary color, and 10 percent an accent. It keeps a space balanced without being matchy. I don’t think you need to follow it like law, but it’s a helpful gut check if you ever feel like a room is fighting itself. Pick colors you know work well together and let that lead you.

Okay so to recap

You don’t have to choose between a home that flows and rooms that each have their own personality. You get both. Let every room tell its own story, just make sure that wherever two stories are visible at once, they are at least talking in the same language.

That’s the secret sauce. Sightlines and breathing room. Everything else is yours to go crazy with.

If you want a more specific breakdown, I go deep on color and how to use it in all three of my design guides- the living room, the bedroom, and the office. LINKED HERE. Use code DIGEST for a discount.

I will link the collection here if you don’t want to read.

Here is the link to the whole collection and I hope y’all have a great weekend!

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Now for paid subscribers, my shippable secondhand art finds

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Sofas

If you have kids, pets, or honestly just exist as a human being, get a sofa with a washable cover. A lot of companies will tell you their covers aren’t washable. They are. You just have to be SUPER careful with them. But when you’re shopping, especially if you’re going into a store, sit on it, make sure you love it, and then look at the back. Is there a zipper? Can you remove the cover? This is huge and easy to forget.

If a full slipcover feels like too much of a commitment there are also these elevated throw blanket style covers that go over your entire sofa. You can have two in rotation, throw one on, throw one in the wash, your sofa is never without protection. It’s not as finished looking as a proper slipcover but it is so much easier to live with. This is the brand . Not affiliated, nor have I purchased, but they look legit.

And on fabric, if you have kids or pets, a woven fabric with a little texture and visual variation is always going to hold up better to stains and life than a completely flat linen. Linen is beautiful but it shows everything. A little texture goes a long way in hiding the evidence of actually living there.

Rugs

You know I preach wool rugs from the mountain tops. I stand by that. But I also understand that dogs have tummy issues and kids have issues and sometimes a wool rug is just not realistic for where you are in life right now.

If you have a messy household I LOVE a flor tile. They’re basically adhesive rug squares, roughly twelve by twelve, and you just slap them on the ground where you want your rug. They stick, they’re customizable, fully removable, and if one piece gets completely destroyed you just pull it up and replace that one “tile”. You’re not throwing out an entire rug. I wish this was sponsored but it is not. It’s just genuinely a kick ass product. I have used these in client projects and they love them.

Furniture

This is where I want you to actually think about how you live before you buy anything.

If you don’t need a coffee table, don’t get a coffee table. If you don’t need an accent chair, don’t get an accent chair. I am such a big proponent of not buying pieces just to fill a space. Buy what you actually need. If you need storage, get storage, armoires, credenzas, whatever works. If you don’t need storage maybe you put a chair somewhere instead. There are so many solutions and we get so caught up in what we think we’re supposed to have that we forget to think about how we actually live.

Maybe you need an ottoman over a coffee table. Do that. Maybe your TV has to go above the fireplace because there is genuinely nowhere else for it. That’s fine. I’m not going to yell at you. Circumstances shape everything. How you live shapes everything.

A bonus point because this is important

If you have a cat, please be careful with drapery that has chains or cords. It is genuinely dangerous. Same with kids. There are so many little safety things that never come up in design conversations and they absolutely should. If you want me to do a whole post on safety in houses I will. Ask and you shall receive.

So that’s part one. There is so much more to cover like designing for entertaining, for working from home, for all of the different seasons of life you move through in a home.

Hope you’re having a great week!