Happy Friday!  Kriste and I are back with another episode of Design Ramblings.   In our 10th episode (woohoo) we talk about investment pieces for the home.  It took me many years of decorating and redecorating to learn that some things are worth a splurge…   Yep, I’m a little bit passionate about bed frames, in case you didn’t notice!  The bed frame I mention in the video is the Vienne bed from Restoration Hardware… The sofa I have is the Brooklyn leather sofa in Toffee from Pottery Barn… And the “cow paintings” we talk about are by Cindy Austin, who sells prints of the originals in her Etsy shop. What are your favorite investment pieces?  What are you saving your pennies (or gift cards and credit card points) for?

It seems like, for most people, a stepping stone to home ownership is renting.  It’s probably safe to say that most of us started out our adult lives as renters and many are still renters for various reasons.  Living in a rented space was the norm for me as I was growing up, since my dad was in the military.  I also experienced renting for the first six years of our marriage and now I’m experiencing it again as I’m renting the studio space for my business. For those of us who love decorating, renting can be frustrating.  We want the option to customize our space, but usually we’re not allowed or it’s not worth the time and money to make improvements to a space that isn’t ours.  There is a lot you can do in a rented space, though…everything from peel & stick wall paper to starching fabric on

Ceiling fans can be a hot topic, believe it or not.  There are folks who are all about function.  They want air moved in a room and it doesn’t matter how ugly or obtrusive the air-moving-device is as long as it’s doing the job.  Then, there are people who will remove a fan from the hottest, stalest room and replace it with a chandelier…all for the sake of form.  More often than not, males are the former and females are the latter and thus the war rages. I do think that fans have come a long way and there are a lot more out there that can help bridge the gap, straddle the fence and make peace in the form vs. function debate. And that is what Kriste & I are rambling about in this episode… And, for a little fun, I took the snippets from the digital “cutting room floor”