NEUTRAL ZONE

A couple of months ago I received the privilege to do a couple of Virtual Design Boards for some of my favorite people…The Smiths!  I have known Scott since high school and feel like I have known his wife, Kelly, for the same amount of time.

We have shared so many great times together, including a trip to Hawaii for our wedding, so when Kelly reached out to me to help with their newly built home I was honored to do so.  Since they live outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth area a Virtual Design Board was the perfect option for them!  Quite a bit of furniture (sofa, chairs, coffee table, dining table and chairs) had already been purchased but they wanted some assistance in the final details for their Family Room and Dining Room.  The larger, substantial pieces of furniture are crucial but it doesn’t quite feel like home until you have accent tables, rugs, pillows, draperies, and all of the other accessories.  So my job was to gather all of those items for them!

I had so much fun working on this project for them as we have a very similar style when it comes to design…loving the neutrals with some contrasts of charcoal gray!

I know things are on order and I can’t wait to see how the rooms turn out!  And of course I will share the pictures with you once I get them.  Thanks again Scott and Kelly for letting me be a part of this.

If you are interested in having me complete a Virtual Design Board for any rooms in your home please contact me at tessa@interiorsbytessa.com.

OUR GALLERY WALL

Hi everyone!  It’s been a couple of weeks since my last post…life has been so crazy!  We have had snow and ice several times here in hot and sunny Texas over the last couple of weeks, which has had me staying inside with the kiddos! 

Knowing that this was our “forever” home I have been so afraid to make any mistakes in this house so I put off hanging anything on our walls for a long time…a year and a half to be exact!  My husband came to me one day and told me that we needed to make our house finally feel like a home.  

My design philosophy for this house is less is more.  I love simple, classic style when it comes to our space.  Plus…having two boys means the more I have, the more there is to be broken!  I have been giving you insight about our Breakfast Room and the final piece to the puzzle being complete was personalizing it.  Above our coffee bar, which I showed you here, is a beautiful, white, straight from the 90’s intercom system. Since I don’t have a lot of places for picture frames and I wanted to detract from the intercom I decided this would be the perfect place to put up a gallery wall. 

I looked through tons of magazines and all over the web to find some inspiration pictures of what I would want.  I got a lot of great ideas but this is the one photo that really spoke to me.

So I started shopping. I found the mirrored frames first from West Elm and selected a variety of sizes.  You can find them here.  They were more than I wanted to pay so I asked Santa to bring them to me for a Christmas present!  I also added some decorative mirrors and monograms, which are just wood letters I painted.  The other frames I got from Hobby Lobby…for half off of course!  I bought several sizes of the same white and silver frames and a few shadow boxes along with some simple white mat board and linen fabric.  The linen fabric was used as the backing for the white frames and the white mat board was for the simple white frames.   This totally transformed what could have been boring picture frames!

Now it was time to decide what to put in them.  Mostly, I used pictures but I snuck in a few quotes that spoke to me as well.

Preparing to put the gallery wall together and get it all hung was definitely a chore!  I laid it all out on the Family Room floor first…after Oliver was in bed of course!

And then it went up on the wall…and I absolutely LOVE how it turned out!

Also, I am so glad I decided to put it in our Breakfast Room.  It’s a space we use every day so I get to really enjoy it.  And I think it takes away from the intercom as much as possible.  Tell me what you think about it!  Do you have a special place that you display your family photos?