your home is beautiful

We live in a crazy world. Just a few years ago you had to pick up a physical magazine in your hand to get decor inspiration. We could look at gorgeous space after gorgeous space and feel good about taking a few items of inspiration to our own homes, but not getting too stressed out because hello, only the people in magazines live like that! I even remember going to the real library at check out actual books for my Interior Design classes! 

Remember those days? Then blogs started catching on and we all felt empowered to get our hands dirty and become DIY queens and life was good. We could still take pride in accent walls and spray painting a thrift store find for the perfect whatever we needed. 

But then those DIYers basically became pros (but we still love you, Young House Love) and Pinterest gave us ALL THE THINGS at our fingertips then layer in Instagram and suddenly, I don’t need magazines, I can see millions of beautiful spaces right here on my phone! It was good and wonderful until that feeling set it.

That feeling starts with confusion. I don’t know if I like Farmhouse, Minimalism, Cottage, Scandinavian or Mid-Century Mod! And it can too easily become “my home does’t look like that, so what am I doing wrong?” if we’re not careful. Too much of a good thing can be paralyzing. I scroll through Pinterest and suddenly I have 47 projects going on in my head at one time. I want that look now…. 

Listen to me. Your home is beautiful. It’s that simple. You make it that way. It’s not the stuff or the perfect paint color or the systems and color coding. It’s the people and what happens when you’re there. 

It’s the conversation that happens around the kitchen island.

It’s that first sip of coffee before the sun shows up.

It’s the laughter when something accidentally launches down the stairs. 

It’s the full bellies and hearts around the table after a good meal shared. 

It’s the sounds and smells that tell you this is home.

I’ll be the first to admit that I want my home to be beautiful in all the ways. It it is my canvas and what I love to do and that will never stop. But my house will never look like yours and yours never like mine. Mine will also never look that that perfect instagramer or that magazine spread or Joanna Gaines and I hope yours doesn’t either. I hope your home looks like you. 

Let’s go back to the days of taking pieces of inspiration and patching them together to make our style. Let’s enjoy where we are and what things look like now. Let’s keep looking for how to make our systems work and our homes feel like us but let’s let go of the impossible standards or measuring our home’s beauty by others. 

I think design “rules” apply and it’s important to make your spaces the best they can be… and we’ll keep working toward that and learning but that doesn’t mean your space has to look like anyone other than yours. You home is beautiful. Love it as it is, but make it all you want it be for you and your family.