I want my house to be a sanctuary; a place where you can relax, be comfortable and simply be yourself. I also want my home to be a reflection of us and the memories we’ve shared through the years with family and friends. Of course there are a few exceptions, but most of my decor has sentimental meaning using items purchased during our travels or photos capturing special times.
Here are a couple ways I incorporated fond memories and long-standing traditions into our home:
Love of Travel:
Our family loves to travel and we have been fortunate through both work and pleasure to have experienced our fair share. Though my bucket list is still extensive (and ever-growing), I have loved all the amazing places we have seen and adventures we’ve had thus far. I wanted to somehow capture this wanderlust and also represent our family’s favorites of the beautiful cities and countries we’ve seen.
Large on wall space and small on budget, I came up with the idea to take pictures of maps of the locations we love in the pages of our family atlas. (As I was using the pictures solely for my purposes and not selling them, I’m pretty sure I didn’t mess with any copyright laws.)
I used my digital camera to take close up pictures of different places we’d been: Costa Rica, Greek Islands, Uganda/Rwanda, Cape Cod/Nantucket/Martha’s Vineyard, Brazil/Ecuador, Maui, St. John’s/St. Kitt’s and Laguna Beach/Long Beach (home).
Once the pictures were downloaded onto my computer, I edited the color of the maps with an antique-looking finish. I printed the edited pictures on large 11×14 prints and framed the prints in frames I’d purchased at Michael’s during one of their amazing sales. I arranged the eight frames in two rows, hanging them above my couch in our family room. I love how they turned out and they’re always a conversation starter if someone is new to our home.
Love of Friends and Family…and Christmas:
I truly love having my house full of family and ifriends, and during the holidays it’s on steroids! (My poor husband LOL) It is absolutely my favorite time of year. So, every year I put up the picture Christmas cards we receive on a wall next to our kitchen. Put together like the pieces of a very large puzzle, the cards are displayed literally floor to ceiling and the result is a true labor of love.
Come January, I was always sad when it was time to take down all the pictures from the wall and put them away until next years’ cards arrived. After all, it was a wall of family and friends we loved but in some cases, didn’t often get a chance to see. And then I had an “aha” moment…Why? Why do I have to take them down? Why can’t they stay up all year round so we get to see the faces of people we hold dear? So…they do!
Our tradition for quite a few years now is that our Christmas card wall stays up year-round and the annual ‘changing of the wall’ happens after Christmas. I’ve learned it’s easier to wait until the end of January just in case you get some later New Year’s cards. Painters tape is used to protect the walls and for 3-4 hours I painstakingly take all the pictures down and put the new seasons cards up. The cards are sorted based on the size of the pictures, larger pictures are placed up higher on the wall so they can be easily seen and then work my way down the wall accordingly.
Now we have our friends and family AND a touch of Christmas with us all year long…and people love to look on the wall and see people they know, try and find themselves, see the family or friends they’ve heard about but never met…it really has become quite a tradition and one I absolutely love.
Love of the Beach:
My happy place is the beach, and we are blessed to live just a couple miles from the ocean as the crow flies. So I wanted my house to have a slight beachy feel without it trying to be a “beach house” as we’re not on the sand and I personally prefer understated. Really, it’s just subtle nods to make our house feel like home.
Growing up some of my fondest memories are the summers spent with my family in Laguna Beach in Southern California. We rented the same beach house from age 8-18 and it honestly was the very best of times. In the house we rented, the owners had a huge bowl of glass fishing balls. If you’re unfamiliar, glass fishing balls were once used by fishermen in many parts of the world to keep their fishing nets afloat. While no longer used today, many of them are still afloat in the world’s oceans, primarily in the Pacific.
Photo by Esther Hanten on Unsplash
This bowl was displayed on the living room table where looking out the enormous window was a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean. I never missed a sunset and if you weren’t out on the sand, that was the room with the best view. To recreate this childhood memory and a nod to the ocean, I found a pewter bowl at Pottery Barn and filled it with similarly colored glass fishing balls. The result is on display in our family room and makes me happy every time I look at it.
Thanks for letting me open up my home to you. Would love to hear the ways in which you make your house a home. Do share~