I’m so excited about our new dining area for our Atlanta apartment – it will be adjacent to our entry vignette so our console will serve double duty as a buffet table.

The kitchen/dining/living area is an open floor plan which can make devising a compelling layout tricky at times. Enter brillz design guru & fortunately friend, Michelle Adams. After I shared with her a few photos of our new place, she immediately recalled one of her past designs and it was the most perfect inspiration for our layout. Here are some snaps of it:

I highly recommend you take the full tour here and read her clever design tips, they are especially helpful for small space living!

I immediately became obsessed with the idea of an oval Saarinen style dining table. Besides being quite pricey, the real deal leaves water marks (a sad lesson learned with out Saarinen coffee table). So after much research for this unicorn of a Saarinen style marble table of beautiful quality ALSO in my price range, I found Rove Concepts & this gorgeous dining table. They have the most amazing customer service team and a trade program to boot! If you are in the market for beautifully crafted and inspired reproductions, I cannot say enough good things about them.  It’s just arrived and it is simply stunning.

The next step was choosing the perfect chairs to pair with it. I took my new obsession with oval tables to Pinterest and fell in love with this dreamy design by Summer Thorton. As a huge bamboo fan I was delighted to see how beautifully the classic chairs juxtapose the modern shape of the table. 

I’ve had my eye on these babies from Ballard Designs for years so the answer was easy, done & done. 

They recently came and I couldn’t be happier with them, so comfortable, sturdy, and chic. I often use Ballard pieces in our home (here is our Eton sofa below) and in clients’ spaces because their quality is consistently fantastic, especially given their price points. They too have a fantastic trade program, you can even use COM materials!

I’m going to reupholster the chairs with fabric from my new collection – I cannot wait to share them with you!

Stay tuned for more apartment planning, next up, the bedroom!

I’ve been researching the perfect paint color to highlight our dreamy new Wisteria lucite console in our entry and thought I’d share my scheming (mostly pretty pics) with you. 

Whenever I’m working with a new paint hue I like to peruse Pinterest and Google spaces that feature the color I’m contemplating. This method is only to narrow down my options – one cannot assume (especially on a computer monitor) that the color will read the same in your own home. I’ll still purchase sample pints but I have found this method to help me be more efficient in my search.

I really love this color that Caitlin Wilson used for her entry, Benjamin Moore’s Key Largo green. I actually worked for Caitlin at the time and saw this space in person – it’s such a happy hue! It may be just a touch too minty for me though.

After much hunting I thought more of a Tiffany Blue would be pretty and I stumbled upon this beautiful bath by Ann Forkum, the color is Benjamin Moore’s Spirit in the Sky:

I found this playroom via House of Turquoise painted in the shade and really like it (if you are a Turquoise fan you'll love Erin's blog!):

When I look at the color on the swatch it looks considerably more gray to me then it does in the photos and I’m OK with that as I think blues can easily look too youthful or sweet.

I plan on trying both Key Largo and Spirit in the sky this weekend – wish me luck & stay tuned for the adjoining dining area plans next week!

If you are just tuning in – welcome! I’m an interior designer now in Ann Arbor, by way of New York, and my husband and I just got an apartment in Atlanta. You can catch up on additional details here. In a nutshell, I love color, pattern, happy hues, the occasional DIY, and a festive cocktail party.

I’m so excited about our new Atlanta space that I’m breaking down the design details of my planning, starting with the entry space. 

When you enter our apartment, you are walking into our kitchen and dining area. We have a small adjacent “bump out” space that is perfect for creating an entry – this will soften the transition into our apartment.

In this photo, to your right, you’ll see the area I’m describing (and thoroughly contemplating) :

This wall needs to be total eye candy as it will serve dual purposes – an entry vignette as well as buffet table scheme when guests are over.

Enter the dreamy disappearing console from Wisteria Lane. We just set it up and it totally changed my vision for the entry. The apartment was already a nice white so I planned on keeping it as-is, but I quickly started dreaming of colors to back drop the console, I need to showcase its beauty!

Well lucky for my daily Pinterest and Instagram inspirations – happy hues of an aqua walls have been dancing in my head, how dreamy are these designs of Lisa Mende & Brian Patrick Flynn? 

I’m still looking for the perfect paint color & I think I’ll use this porcupine mirror from our Ann Arbor place – so stay tuned to see how it will all come together!

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have heard we’ve gotten an apartment in Atlanta. My husband and I have always planned on moving to a warmer city and we’ve really enjoyed our visits to Atlanta so we are giving it a try! (I’m also quite excited about the vibrant design community in ATL). Until our boys are off to college we’ll be keeping our place in Ann Arbor so I’ll still be sharing updates there.

Our new apartment will be our first home that does not provide us with various design constraints, our NY studio, at 700 sq. feet, limited our functionality of the space. Here’s a look back at it:

I loved it but entertaining company, having a proper place to eat a meal, etc. was tricky at best. 

With our Ann Arbor home, my husband had designed it before we were together so it’s been long process of working with what he had and brightening up the aesthetic. He readily admits he had no idea what he was doing and with the guidance of a friend, everything was very heavy. Here are some prime examples of a few rooms ‘before’ and ‘afters’, take the full tour of these spaces here:

before

after

before

after

So I’m so excited to design our new place, it’s a bright one bedroom with an open floorplan. Here are some terrible iphone photos of it, starting with the bedroom:

Open living/dining area:

We eventually want to downsize to a smaller place in Ann Arbor so we are transitioning a few pieces to ATL. Given that, it will be fun to share with you how I fill these ‘holes’ with other furniture & décor. I’ll very much be working with what we have so see how I master the mix!

In the coming weeks I’ll be sharing my design plans for our new place starting with our entry, I hope you’ll follow along in my scheming! Here’s a peek at paint ideas for the entry space, stay tuned for more: