Hey there! With everything going on lately and with how much time we’re all spending at home these days, I thought now would be the perfect time to share how to create a home you never want to leave, even when you’re allowed to! Here are our five tips to getting a space you love.

Tip 1: Surround yourself with the best

And by that, I don’t mean the most expensive boujee pieces you can find. I mean pieces that bring back the best memories in your life. The ones that make you smile. Or laugh. Or (happy) cry. The ones that feel like a big warm hug (if you’re the hugging type). If hugging’s not for you, go with something else that brings you joy, like that feeling you get when staring at someone from a safe and comfortable distance … (I don’t know – I’m a hugger).

This could be something like a quote from a childhood story, an important date, a collection of wrenches from a family barn, or an original bleacher seat from your alma mater’s football stadium. (Yes – we have all of those in our house!) Anything that brings you back to happy memory when you look at it.

Tip 2: Frame the things you love

Okay, so this kind of overlaps with tip 1 if your best memory-things happen to be photos or other frame-able things. If not, add ‘em in too! Here we’re talking about photos of vacations you’ve taken, vintage photos of your college or hometown, photos (and even drawings) of family members and pets, historical family documents, photos of your friends, photos of your wedding day, etc.

While this is a long list of things for us, one of my absolute favorites is the swim team photo I had enlarged and framed years ago (in a “copper” frame) for our 7th “copper” anniversary. The photo was taken back in 1996, long before Nick and I met. After we started dating, we realized we both swam on a local swim team growing up, and after rummaging through boxes of photos we found the old original panoramic of the one year I swam at my childhood home. Amazingly, Nick also swam that year, we were both in the photo, and sitting right next to one another on the front row – 7 years before we’d ever met! It’s one of those weird serendipitous things that makes my heart smile every time I look at it and I love that it’s something I get to wake up to every morning.

Tip 3: layer in your hobbies

This could be a 3D model of the vintage camper you’re currently renovating, magazines, travel books, art books, books of any kind really, and even those fun wooden sculptural figures (if, say, you have an art background, like me, or just enjoy drawing, or just find them interesting).

Tip 4: Mix in Cozy, lived-in pieces

Lived in doesn’t have to mean ugly, messy or sloppy. For us it means those touchable, warm and most importantly not sterile-feeling items. While I can appreciate a beautifully tailored, sleek modern space, I know that just doesn’t suit our lifestyle. We need a space and style where we can get a little messy when we cook, where the dogs can play with their toys and shed (boy, do they shed) and where we can curl up on the couch to watch Netflix with a beer and a glass of wine at the end of a long day.

This one I’ll also call the designing with the senses tip. Around here it’s us using our essential oil diffusers, which really can help set a number of different vibes depending on what oils we use, layers of cushy pillows and our soft and snuggly blankets draped over the couch, as well as other materials we choose to fill our home with – wood furniture, woven baskets for storage, plush rugs to soften the hard tile floor, fresh flowers + greens, realistic flickering faux candles in the main living area and a bowl of (usually) fresh lemons or clementines in the kitchen.

My favorite diffuser blends right now are:

• Living room:

  • Productive daytime blend: 2 drops lavender + 2 drops lemon + 1 drop eucalyptus

  • Spa-at-home blend: 1 drop peppermint + 1 drop lavender + 1 drop eucalyptus

• Master bedroom:

  • Sleep blend: 3 drops lavender + 2 drops bergamot

(We add more drops for a stronger fragrance, but keep the proportions above)

Tip 5: grow your collection over time

I know this is easier said than done. We’ve done it both ways – where we’ve newly bought our house and just started buying all the pretty things to fill all the spaces because it’s all so new and exciting. And it is pretty. But after a while I found it was just more “stuff” we had to dust and though interesting or colorful, it didn’t really bring a whole lot of joy.

While we do still have some pretty, non-sentimental stuff (which is totally fine, by the way), for us the good curated stuff includes a mix of things we’ve inherited or that have been given to us by our family and friends – homemade quilts made generations ago from old clothes, old Czech canisters, vintage hurricane lamps, old seed dealer signs, burlap feed bags and tools found in family barns. They each tie to places we’ve been and the people we know that have touched our lives in one way or another.

What are some of your most favorite items to display that makes your house feel like home? (And what are some of the things you’ve been doing to stay busy inside these days?)

We hope you’re all doing well and enjoying your time at home in a space you love with people you love, and that we’ve helped spark some ideas to help you create a space you never want to leave.