The Sense of Place
  • Blog

Bentwood Love

3/2/2011

0 Comments

 
I am absolutly in love with bentwood furniture right now and I am on a misson to find the perfect one for the end of my bed or for an entryway.
Picture
This one found on 1st Dibs is gorgeous.
Picture
From Bauhaus 2 Your House
0 Comments

It's done (knock on wood)

3/1/2011

0 Comments

 
So yet again life has been a bit crazy here.  First, it feels like it has been snowing nonstop since the beginning of January.  In all this snow we managed to get our house on the market and under contract and we managed to find a house to buy and get that under contract. So yes, big changes afoot. We finished up all the little projects and it is so nice to live in a house that is DONE. Now, I get to enjoy it for a few more weeks before we have to start packing.
The new house is going to be another big project and believe it or not there were snowshoes involved in the home inspection. My brilliant husband brought two pairs and he and our broker easily manoeuvred through the 3 feet of snow, while I got stuck in snow up to my thigh and had to be carried back to the house. I haven't even started to think about where to start with the new house, I think I am in denial about all the work ahead.
I have instead turned my thoughts and attention to warmer weather and my cape house projects! So I am busily sewing away, making quilts for the kids bedrooms and thinking about which rooms will get my attention this year (the rule is 2 per summer).
I have also been busy working on my project up in Maine and it is so exciting starting to see it coming together. 
I thought I would share with you some finished pictures of the house:
Picture
The Master Bedroom
Picture
The Kitchen
Picture
The Master Bathroom
Picture
The Front Entry
0 Comments

Thinking Pink

1/5/2011

0 Comments

 
Picture
I love my pink chair- I have nick-named it "mommy's time-out chair"
I find that I move in color phases, my last home was yellow and red, when we moved in to this house, four years ago, I was in a grey and blue phase, lately I have been thinking pink.  I guess this all started as I was looking for a bold fun fabric to finish the last piece in my living room, which is grey-blue, navy-blue, and turquoise.  I decided that I needed a statement fabric for the wing chair in the back corner and I looked long and hard for the right blue fabric.  I never found it, but I did find bubble-gum pink velvet! 
The chair was delivered last week and it is so perfect, just what I needed, a bright, bold, pop of color. Now I am obsessively looking pink accessories of all types, and they are not easy to find, to tie the chair into the rest of the room, and I need a pretty soft grey or blue pillow to tie my pink chair back to the room.

​
0 Comments

Reflections on 2010

12/31/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
It is the last day of 2010 and seems like a natural time to reflect on all the hard work, challenges and blessings of the past year. So many wonderful things have happened in the past year, a friend urged me to start my own business and I am loving the sense of accomplishment that I have from working again. Our house is so close to being finished. We have all met wonderful new friends, and enjoyed amazing times with family and friends, old and new. My children are happy and healthy and love their schools, and they are another year older which is an adventure in itself! Life has been busy, and unfortunately I have not always stopped to appreciate all the wonderful things that have happened, but I am going to try and be better at that!
What will 2011 bring? We are planning on putting the house on the market in the next few weeks and while we are hoping for a speedy sale we are prepared for it not to sell. We will then just enjoy our finished house for a little longer. We are hoping to move closer to our children's schools and all ours and their friends. I am hoping that the new house will have a nice big space for me to carve out an office/studio, so that I can continue to build my business. Part of me also hopes that the house itself will be a nice big project that we can work to make our own and can grow into over the next 10-15 years. I hope that I can continue to spend amazing a special time with my children, who are getting big way too fast, and enjoy all the wonderful time we spend together as a family. I also resolve to be better about sharing all the wonderful projects I get to works on, the beautiful things I see in the world, and the interesting things that inspire me.
I hope 2011 brings interesting and wonderful people into all your lives, beautiful things for you to see, and lovely spaces for you to enjoy!
0 Comments

Lovely Sofa

12/30/2010

0 Comments

 
On Christmas-Eve I was out to lunch with M and just happened to be down the street from one of my favorite mid-century modern decor stores.  Of course I had to pop in and I have fallen in love with this beautiful sofa, of course I need another sofa like I need a hole in my head. However, I can still be inspired by it's beautiful clean lines and small scale and can picture it in the living room at the cape house!
Picture
0 Comments

My husband loves me...how do I know?

12/28/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
He built me amazing shelves for my office!
So last spring (maybe earlier) I fell in love with these shelves that were making the blog circuit. I decided that I had to build them.  I measures, designed, and even went out and bought the wood and the pipe.  Then like so many other good intentions, they got lost in a pile of to-do's behind a long list of must-do's.  The beautiful wood sat under the living room sofa all summer and the pipes sat in the garage, waiting just waiting!  Then came fall and I decided that alas there wasn't time and maybe it wasn't a resale friendly decision to , so the wood and pipe all went back to Home Depot.  
In September I was at Brimfield with friends/clients and kept seeing all this really cool industrial shelving made out of reclaimed material! By this time I was in dire need of accessible storage as I had started my business and reclaimed my office, so I thought hey maybe I should just buy something.  I found some at Restoration Hardware that I loved, but were too tall, and some at Wisteria that were way too wide for my space.  Then my hero came to the rescue...
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
He found these amazing 2.5" thick boards on craigslist, bought chunky black pipe at Home Depot, and scoured e-bay for the casters that I specified! Then he spent 3 days cutting, sanding, staining, poly-ing, and assembling my shelving.  He even went so far as to spray-paint the screws black to match the pipe flanges. Now I have the perfect size, height, depth shelves that hold anything and everything that I can throw at them, and the best part is that when we move they can come with us!
Yes, I did say move. More on that later! 
0 Comments

Color Theory

12/26/2010

0 Comments

 
Busy, busy, busy... that is the one word that can describe my fall. Now the snow is falling, Christmas is over, classes are finished, we don't have to be anywhere or do anything and I am sitting at my, finally, clean desk watching the snow fall.  
On the 13th I finished up my Color Theory class, and I am finished with classes until the end of January when I start Intro Interior Design Studio.  If you have never taken a color theory class, I highly recommend taking one. I finally learned what saturated really means and I learned to see color in a whole new way.  It has also emboldened me to take more risks with color in my own home and my bubble gum (yes, bubble gum) velvet arrived for my wingback on the 23rd!  I cannot wait to get that beautiful bright pink fabric on my wingback for the back corner of my otherwise blue living room.
To show y'all how much fun it is to play with color, I wanted to share some of the color projects that I worked on in color theory.
For our mid-term project we had to pick a room from a black and white set of photographs that our teacher gave us an we had to create two color schemes based around one key color.  My key color was the primary cyan (that's blue) and I did an analogous scheme and a tetrad scheme.
Picture
This is the analogous. I used yellow-green, blue-green, blue and cyan.
Picture
This is the tetrad. I used orange, yellow-green, cyan, and red-violet.
For our final project we were all given a description of the same client and black and white pictures of five rooms in that clients home.  We were asked to choose a key color, and design a color scheme for three of the rooms.  The final project needed to look cohesive, reflect the clients likes and desires, and we had to have samples of the materials we were proposing to use as well as colored renderings of each of the three rooms. 
I choose to use green as my key color as I wanted to bring the outdoors inside and I choose the living room, music room, and bedroom.  
Picture
Living Room- Cream and yellow patterned grass-cloth, red-violet velvet on the arm chairs, grey green wool on the sofa and daybed, and accents of fuchsia.
Picture
Music Room- Champaign Silk wallpaper, moss green indoor outdoor fabric on the armchairs, chocolate woven cotton rug, deep purple ultra-suede seat cushion, accents of yellow and fuchsia.
Picture
Bedroom- luminescent faux shagreen sage green wall paper, sage green linen curtains, rich leather upholstered bed, with embroidered floral red-violet, crimson, and coral flower vines on duvet, and accent pillows of pink and magenta.
We each presented our projects at our final class and it was so interesting to see how 9 different designers could take the same rooms and the same family and create such amazingly different and beautiful designs and interpretations.
0 Comments

Yes, it has been a long time...

10/19/2010

0 Comments

 
So as you can see I took some time off from the blogging, life got a little more busy about the beginning of August when I was hired to work on a huge interior decoration project.  I am loving working again and am having so much fun.  I am still working on my own projects and the kitchen is still coming along, we should be finished by the end of this upcoming weekend.  I am still taking upholstery classes and am working on a special project for M. I have been doing all the finishing touches around the house and vow that it will be done by the end of November.  I have even been cleaning out! I went through my closet on Sunday and unearthed all my fun Armani suit jackets (from my day's at Armani), I have been wearing them with cords and jeans and it's like I have a whole new wardrobe!  Chris has been hard at work as well, he built me some shelves (you'll get the details later) and he just started a new job and is no longer working at home, yay for him and for me.  Lately I have been spending a lot of time at the Boston Design Center and pulling fabrics for my client, we are working with the most amazing carpet, everytime I bring it out  to look at fabrics against it people compliment it and ask where it is from.  So I'll share:
Picture
It is from Angela Adams and it is called Flora Malachite, the colors in it are rich and earthy and beautiful.  I am having so much fun playing with fabric to use on the furniture!  More later, I'll fill you in on all we have done here!
0 Comments

A Real New England Clambake

8/11/2010

0 Comments

 
I know, I know I have been a very bad blogger this past week.  I was away for a few days, then had my good friend Jaime down for a few days, and have been busy with kids and work.  It's all really good stuff but has been keeping me on my toes!
So I wanted to share the photos from our club clambake, we have it every other summer and even though it was less than 2 weeks ago I am already planning what we will pt in our pillow case for the next one.  The clam bake is a great community activity, held on the beach of one of our members. It takes about a week to execute and a few weeks or months to plan!  There is a mountain of rocks delivered:
Picture
Then the fire is started at about 8am:
Picture
The rock get so hot they split in half, by this point it is about 5pm and everyone has arrived and is watching, socializing, and enjoying themselves.  The wood is removed:
Picture
Then the rockweed (seaweed) is tossed on:
Picture
It really takes a lot of seaweed to feed about 200 people!
Picture
When there is a good layer of seaweed all the food is tossed on, everyone packs what they want in a pillowcase with their name on it. One note, it has to be all cotton!
Picture
then more seaweed:
Picture
Then the tarp goes on and the air is filled with salty, briny, steam:
Picture
Well then my camera battery quit! So I didn't get a picture of the finished food, but a picture cannot describe the amazing flavor of the lobster, shrimp, corn, and potatoes that come off those stones! It is really an loved summer activity!
0 Comments

Headed Out

7/31/2010

0 Comments

 
As I write this I have not yet packed for a little trip I am taking with M tomorrow.  I spent all day at the beach cooking, really yummy food. Today was the bi-anuall club clambake and we had a scrumptious dinner cooked on rocks and steamed with seaweed. I will follow up with pictures and more when I return on Thursday!
0 Comments
<<Previous
Forward>>
    Picture

    About Vallery...

    I live outside of Boston with my husband, two children, and dog. For the past 8 years I have been working with clients to help them make their home dreams a reality. From helping to build homes from the ground up to helping round out already finished spaces, I listen to my clinets and let their vision guide our process. I have always been a creative person planning spaces and working to make them function better. After completing the Residential Interiors program at Boston Architectural College I learned how to combine my love for funcion and flow with my eye for color, scale, and balance. As a graduate of New York University's Stern School of Business, I understand project planning and budget management. My experience working with clients, contractors, and architects helps to coordinate and streamline the home building and renovation process, helping my clients to have the home they dream of with less of the stress that comes with building and decision making.

    Archives

    April 2018
    June 2013
    January 2012
    April 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    October 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009

    Categories

    All
    Art
    Cooking
    DIY
    Interior Design
    Kids
    Pets
    Sewing

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Blog