- Found interiors Friday
Here’s a kitchen from Country Living’s book 500 Kitchen Ideas: Style, Function, & Charm. John and I are planning to move into his parents’ condo in the coming months, and I’ve so been looking forward to sprucing it up and turning it into my dream home. Having lived in countless apartments these past seven years and having visited countless of our friends’ apartments, I’ve noticed that we all tend to decorate very contemporary. While it could very much be a matter of personal taste, personally speaking, I had previously opted for the contemporary look due to: 1. Seeing overwhelming amounts of cloud couches and curved glass coffee tables on Pinterest, 2. Not wanting to spend the money on the “good furniture” while in a rental, and 3. Believing the interior of apartments had to match the exterior.
our marvelous airbnb kitchen A few years back, a girlfriend and I stayed at a guest suite in Carmel-by-the-Sea. It was a little second-story studio detached from the owner’s home, definitely no more than 400 square feet. It had a little dining nook for two by the door, a quaint living area with a working fireplace, the most comfortable bed, and a tiny kitchen with black-and-white tiled countertops styled with blue and red decor. Out on the terrace, there was a lovely view of their rose garden and the sounds of birds chirping in the height of spring.
I still reminisce about how cozy, warm, and, dare I say, luxurious being in that studio felt. I’ve since had an awakening–a craving for warmth, brightness, hominess in whatever space I had to work with. I started pulling inspiration from movie sets–think Nancy Meyers films, whose interiors are notably having a moment–old shows from the ’50s and ’60s whose kitchens were small but lovingly decorated, and books, novels, anything I could get a hold of featuring cottages, farmhouses, cabins, lakehouses, and beachhouses.
I recently bought this copy of 500 Kitchen Ideas: Style, Function, & Charm off Thriftbooks.com (99.9% of my books are secondhand), and I’m not exaggerating when I say I gasped the second I flipped it open. Five hundred of the most beautiful kitchens I have ever seen. So, I thought I would scan and upload one every Friday so that others can appreciate them, and let them occupy some space online, and maybe slowly crowd out the cloud couches.
- The gift of a painting and poetry
The last couple weeks of wedding planning are quickly approaching, and I found myself indulgently flipping through Kennedy Weddings: A Family Album. I had borrowed it to give myself some inspiration outside of Pinterest. Note: if you want any semblance of originality in anything at all ever, get off Pinterest and head to a library. Centuries of inspiration laid out before you will make anything trendy and social media-worthy seem dull and incredibly overdone.
Actually, what inspired me the most was not the weddings at all, but this painting Ted Kennedy painted for his wife to celebrate their new marriage. Under his painting of daffodils (my favorite flower), he quoted William Wordsworth’s “And then my heart with pleasure fills and dances with the daffodils.” The couple had the painting reprinted and added to the covers of their wedding programs. What a lovely and meaningful personal touch.
While I don’t see myself becoming quite an impressive painter in the next few weeks, the homemade present of a painting and a specially chosen poem is such a heartwarming idea. I’m inspired to do something similar for one of my girlfriends whose birthday is coming up. I’m thinking: her birth flower and a poem about said flower. These little touches are incredibly charming, and I find the most memorable, sustainable gifts are always the soulful ones.