Hi! I’m Wanda. So glad you stopped by!

Have you ever been at someone’s house or invited to a party where as soon as you walked in, you immediately felt welcomed and comfortable? Some of it was probably due to the host or hostess, but some of those feelings were created by the warm and relaxing surroundings, an environment that makes you feel as if you are always welcome and “at home”. That’s the way I think everyone’s home should feel…both to the people that live there and their friends who come to visit. And I think that comes from living in a home that’s “you”, that has your style and makes you happy just to be there. Happiness is contagious…if you’re happy in your home, everyone else around you will be happy there, too. So that’s our goal, to share ideas on how to make our homes welcoming, warm, and happy places to be.

As for me…I love pretty much anything blue and things that sparkle. The sparkly obsession is a relatively new thing, but blue has been favorite color for a long time (people usually guess that as soon as they walk in my house).

I also love to design things…rooms, gardens, DIY projects, party themes, computer programs (oh, wait…that’s my day job, not what this is about!)…anyhow you get the picture. What that means is I end up re-doing rooms that everyone else thinks are perfectly fine because I’m bored with it and want to design something. It also means that I’m doing most of this decorating on a budget…partly because of my “fix it yourself” upbringing (more about that later) and partly because I can’t justify spending a lot of money to re-do something that doesn’t really need re-doing.

My design style? I firmly believe in the “if you love it, it will go” philosophy of decorating, so I don’t subscribe to necessarily following one particular decorating style (which sometimes means my rooms change dramatically from one makeover to the next!). But whatever I do, it has to be comfortable, work well for a crowd (I entertain a lot!), and stand up to Winston (my cocker spaniel), and Coco and Chanel (my 2 ragdoll cats that shed long white fur like crazy). In other words, no “really expensive”, “afraid to sit on it”, “can’t spill anything on it” sofas for me! And it still has to look good 🙂

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Winston
Winston

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Coco (with cat hair on the sofa)
Coco (with cat hair on the sofa)

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Chanel
Chanel

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I also love to entertain. And some of my parties are over the top, especially for Halloween…my favorite holiday! (Probably has something to do with those awesome homemade Halloween costumes my Mom made when I was growing up 🙂 I know that not everyone is going to want to spend the time or money it takes to put on those big celebrations, but I hope you can take away some ideas that can be done on a smaller scale.

And lastly I’m a transplanted Canadian…from Toronto originally but now an American citizen living in South Carolina…so I have gardening experience from two very different climates. And I can tell you…no matter where you live, there are gardening challenges…in some cases, the types of challenges are just very different!

About My Mother

The “we” part of this site is me and my mother. My mother, Flora, is the one who got me started on pretty much everything that this site is about…decorating and DIY projects, gardening, entertaining and cooking. She was always getting me to help with her latest decorating or gardening projects (which I was not very enthusiastic about until I got my own house). And when I was a kid we always had the best birthday cakes and home-made Halloween costumes. Since she grew up on the farm, cooking from scratch and fixing things yourself were just part of life…and that got passed down to me.

My Mother's Purple House
My Mother’s Purple House

My mother loves purple and gardening. We give directions to her house by telling people to look for the purple house that has no grass in the front (the whole front yard is a cottage garden). Having said that, she loves color in general and she still always has a project of some sort on the go.

If You’re New To Our Blog…

You might be wondering where to start…our latest posts are always the rotating images on the home page.

All other content can be found under the Decorate, Garden, Entertain, Cook and Organize categories at the top of the page. You can always look for any content in the search bar on the right side of the screen, by searching for keywords, selecting a category, or browsing by month/year that the post was published.

We hope you can find some inspiration and we would love to hear from you! You can leave comments at the bottom of any post, or use the Contact Us link at the top of the page to send an email.

Thanks for visiting and I hope you come back soon!

Wanda.

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