Home Decorating

Finding a Muse

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In my previous post I shared with you my Living and Dining Room, just as it is if you were to walk into my house.  My Mom didn’t recognize it and wanted to know what I did with the recliners that were in this room!  It looked so different from what it used to look like and the answer has as much to do with that as anything.  The simple answer is the recliners are currently in our Den/Family room.  As I’ve been on this tear to re-do this room Jim has indulged me quite a bit over the last few months by helping me move furniture around.  I’m a visual person so I have to see things in their ‘places’ and visualize how it will look.

But that is very difficult to do, besides being very hard on the back!

I know it looks like a disordered mess but just stay with me.  I’ve been working hard trying to come up with a plan.  As I mentioned in my last post I needed to find some professional interior decorating advice, a ‘How To Do It’ reference book I can use.  I went to the Library and checked out MANY books but I did not find a ‘HOW TO’ so to speak until I found this one at Barnes And Noble…Meghan Method

I flipped through the pages and loved the fact that she (Meghan) was explaining the process in a step by step fashion.  Practically the first half of the book is an in-depth analysis phase to find your own style and learning how to trust your own instincts/gut.  Whoa!  That was a new one on me.  Just exactly what IS my style?  Do I even HAVE a style?  Good grief…just one look at my room and you can see it is just all over the place.

So I bought the book without even a second thought and have been studying it for a week now.  Here is a blog website (from Meghan’s website links) called Decorology which reviews the book and has some further insight…and of course there is always Meghan’s website at www.meghancarter.com to download her worksheets and read her own blog.

One of the exercises she has you do is to find a muse.  Oh, this is not as easy as it looks, for me anyway.  Maybe I’m just over thinking this!  I’ve looked around my room…do I have a muse here in this room?  What about my barn painting?                             DSCF4075

I love my barn painting, but what does it say to me?  Meghan wants our muses to FEEL what we want to feel in our rooms.  Does this painting make me FEEL good?  The answer for me is, well yes.  When I look at this painting I feel a sense of CALM (the blues, greens and earth colors), a sense of FREEDOM (the open space), a sense of NOSTALGIA for a simpler life (the old barn) and I get a sense of PLACE (the barn is not 10 miles away from here, I know the artist and this location), it feels like this is my HOME.

So putting my feelings on paper when I see this painting…
CALM
FREEDOM
NOSTALGIA
PLACE
HOME

So I guess I could use this painting as my muse but is there something else?  Meghan encourages us to keep looking, test out many things.  So what about my cat Chloe?  Could she be a muse?  I love this photo of her…Chloe as muse

When I look at this photo I love the colors…the blue sky, the straw, Chloe’s calico coat (black, tabby brownish red, creamy white, her green eyes and pink nose) and I get a sense that she’s being a little MISCHIEVOUS!  She just looks like she’s up to something and has her mind-set on it.  So would Chloe make a good muse?

I keep looking around and start browsing the internet.  What about where I live on a broader scale, such as the Illinois Prairie or the city of Chicago?the_gold_coast_of_chicago_illinois-normal-001

This is a photo from a Google search, I’m sorry I don’t know who took this photo…it is beautiful.  Do you see a trend in my photos I’ve just posted?  It dawned on me after this last one.  I am completely attracted to the colors BLUE and GREEN!  I must subconsciously look for them, no matter what the subject is.  Do you see…the barn painting…Blues, greens…Chloe my cat…the blue sky, green eyes accented with earth tones…this skyline view of Chicago…once again the Blue Sky, the blue-green lake, the green grass with grays, blacks, browns in the buildings.

I am so done in!  Urggh!

So I go back to my original style board…DSCF4050

Blues, Greens, with earth tone colors (Browns, Beige, Linens, Taupe, Grays).

This was a good exercise to do that is for sure and in a way I’ve discovered that part of my MUSE is going to be these colors, so odd don’t you think?  Now I just have to settle on picking one.  Which one of these would you pick?  (not that it matters because this whole process is about finding our OWN style but it would be interesting to hear anyway!).

~Happy Decorating…and Muse Finding!

Cathy

2 thoughts on “Finding a Muse”

  1. You are so right! The colors of nature do make us happy. I like the blues and browns and you can see that in the two pictures you posted. A pleasing shade of green for accent (!). We just painted our living room wall the same khaki color we have in the family room… I chose that because it is so neutral but still COLOR. The color changes with the way the light comes in at different times of the day so it doesn’t feel so bland. If I had chosen a tan instead of khaki it wouldn’t have gone because the brown shade in my sofa is definitely khaki. (actually I would have gone with the tan and deep browns if I were to go with a color that appeals to me more, but it is amazing how nice this looks.) I will email you a picture.
    PS Lynette Jennings also published a book on how to go about decorating. It might be in your library. I will bet Meghan’s book is very similar.
    Tearing up that carpet was genious… now you have to do something to fix it!

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    1. I will look up her book at the library to see if they have it, I do remember her video was really good. yes, email me a photo!!! I can just picture it and sure it looks much better than the cream that was there.

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