Understated and Muted Home Decor in Browns and Creams

Decorating an empty home from the baseboards on up is a grand opportunity to use your purchases to make your own world and the world at large beautiful all at once.

Shopping through fair trade and ethically minded global home goods companies provides elegant and unique home items, and a do-good-glow for you. Dia Living Handcraft sources textiles from Morocco, India and Turkey and Ten Thousand Villages provides international exposure for third world artisans to sell their handmade goods. Not only do these sites provide an economical option for you (items are generally direct from artisans to your door) they also make it possible to fill your home with handmade, gorgeous, unique items that can be as of-the-moment or classic as you please.

Moroccan woven wool rugs and linen pillows from Dia Living.

From Ten Thousand Villages...

Handmade silk pillow from India.

Wooden handmade candle holders from Pakistan.

Woven table from Bangladesh.

Decorating with Restoration Hardware: Lavender, Cream and Brown

If you are decorating an area of your home in cream, brown and subtle lavender like I am, but have an unlimited budget, unlike me, then I suggest you head straight to Restoration Hardware where that very color scheme is currently being pushed in a big way. They make it look real good too.

If the Mr. and I had our design druthers, our home would be a heady distressed wood and leather mix of RH, Pottery Barn and antiques. This cream and lavender linen couch, while highly impractical especially if anyone under the age of 10 resides in your home, is insanely cozy and would make the perfect beach cottage living room complete.


Jonathon and I both fell in love with this Buster leather chair and recliner set. I think they may be a bit dark to go with the above mention color scheme but they would be dreamy in a little alcove/corner library in my imaginary beach cottage.

Much of Restoration Hardware's grey-lavender and cream items are in the store's "outdoor living room" area. Which, if you think about it, would be just lovely surrounded by a white-picket fence with a snug sprinkling of real wild lavender all encompassing an expanse of bright green grass with the ocean just beyond it.


Sigh, this really made me want a beach cottage on the dunes...

Springtime in Paris

My mother has the great fortune to travel for her work to far flung exotic locations at least once a year and as her very lucky daughter, I have accompanied her on some of these travels in the past.

Currently she is living it up in the city of lights; gay Paris! What a life! And, being the amazing mother that she is, she sent me a picture of her lovely Parisian hotel room all decorated in brown, cream and lavender. I never knew my tastes were so European!

Does your town shrubbery take your breath away like this?

She's a lucky girl, eh? Sigh...

Lavender and Brown Living Room Furniture Shopping

First things first, HAPPY MOTHERS DAY to my mom, step-mom, mother-in-law, and all my friends who are moms, moms to be, moms of pets, or moms to their husbands (doesn't that count???). I love you and hope you had a beautiful day! You truly make our world go round.

On to the design! Sticking with the lavender, brown and cream living room color scheme that we have been mooning over, Jonathon and I went out shopping last week to see what the stores have to offer and if these colors truly work in real life or only in pretty magazine pictures.

Our only successful stop (by successful I mean furniture that we can afford AND also happen to like) was at World Market. I am in love with this place. Three years ago we bought our first bedroom furniture set there during one of their half-yearly clearance event thingers... Sigh. We had the most gorgeous four-poster bed and matching black-brown wood dresser, etc. I drool... Anyhow, we moved and lightened our load and thus our bed is currently bed-frame-less and of course they discontinued our set and we will never have it again. FOCUS, I know we're doing living room not bedroom. Sorry.

So, we did find a couple of couches that we liked a lot. This first chocolate brown one pretty much fits the bill. It is not too mushy but not too hard, it is a nice soft fabric and it is a neutral color. The only real issue is the color though, I'm thinking the chocolate is too dark. I really think the lavender works best if everything is muted and romantically soft, therefore a cream colored couch would be the best option. But then you have a cream couch. That's just a disaster waiting to happen... especially with yours truly, the clumsiest person you've ever met. I do think this couch comes in a "sand" version so maybe that is our best bet.

Then there's couch #2 which is more of a true neutral in an oat-mealy beige color. Only problem here, I absolutely hate microfiber. Sorry to everyone who has it, don't hate me. I think it looks beautiful and is durable and I know it seems to be everywhere you look right now, BUT I have a mild case of OCD and the way the pattern mushes like soap residue just does not work in my world. Por ejemplo:

SO who knows what to do with the couch thing. Maybe we will go with the chocolate for durability's sake. What do you think? If we DON'T get a chocolate couch (mmm chocolate couch, now I'm hungry) and we go with the softer "sand" color, then we could get this AWESOME velvet brown wing back chair from World Market. Apparently, I have this animal thing for wing backs. Doesn't it look like Pee-Wee Herman's Chairy the Chair that is just dying to be your best friend, read to you at night and tell you the word of the day? We should probably own it.

And then there's chaise lounges. Jeez shopping for furniture really makes you wish you were filthy rich money bags so you could just go for it and buy the eggplant velvet chaise for your second home because really, its only you who will be summering in your Lake Como villa anyhow so who cares if its a loud color.

We are thinking of rounding out the more contemporary World Market furniture with some antique pieces. We have been scouring the local shops and one of the pieces I really fell in love with is this dusty-rose velvet and wood wing back chair. I almost made Jonathon pack it in the car the second I saw it. I know with antiques it may not be there the next day, but seeing as how we are still trying to decide on this color scheme in the first place, I figured it may be a tad hasty to have an empty living room save for this one pink chair...

But the pink would really add something wouldn't it? The amethysty pink-lavender is so romantic. Then I could decorate around the room with accents like this amazing bowl.

In addition to that awesome pinkurple chair, I also fell madly in love with this antique record player console. I want it. Am I crazy or do the speakers have a mellow lavender glow to them? I think it is calling to me, and I think it would look perfect with...

The pièce de résistance, this purple and cream rug from Target. In person, it's actually a lot more lavender and a lot less purple. But I am still a little scared of it. It's so aggressively purple. And purple is REALLY not my color of choice. This decorating thing is seriously not as comfortable for me as personal style... Shouldn't it be the same? Maybe it is and I am just second-guessing myself. Maybe we will buy it and see how it actually looks.

PURPLE! I know that is an awfully purple room I have shopped out for you, and I know it is in dire need of brown and cream, but so far these were the exciting pieces that I fell in love with. More on our antiquing tomorrow...

Decorating Inspiration: Living Room

Now that we have a lovely new home with nothing in it save for a full kitchen and a mattress in our bedroom, I smell a project coming on... Namely, decorating our extremely empty living room. I've never had a real grown-up home to decorate with anything fancier than a hand-me-down couch with a giant hole in the middle and a chewed up coffee-table. I'm feeling rather overwhelmed at the prospect of being adult about this.

If I were left to my own "first choice, best choice" method of piece-mealing our home together, the entire place would be green. Not because I think that would be pretty and welcoming, but because when looking at furniture, rugs, pillows, etc I am insanely drawn to everything green much like a magpie to shiny objects.

I do, however, have a "feeling" about where I want to go rather than green. As much as purple isn't really my thing, I am thinking a brown and cream color palette with soft lavender accents could be very pretty for a relaxing living room. Or maybe I just know too much about the sub-characters in Harry Potter (Lavender Brown?).

For more inspiration and with my color scheme firmly in mind, I turn to the decorating websites. Turns out, lavender and brown can be pretty sexy if done in a tasteful manner.

What say ye? I feel like this works and isn't overly she-she with all soft muted colors and where the lavender isn't so intense. It's much girlier than I would usually go for and I'm still thinking it may be too feminine for our tastes but for now, I'm going with it.

Whenever I am in need of color inspiration I turn to Snippet&Ink where I found this lavender and cream mood board that is really doing the trick for me.

It's beachy and relaxed but still sexy in an old-fashioned way. Now to find the furniture that can sing that same tune!