We’re going to have RT’s office Christmas party at our house in three weeks. We had last year’s party here, as well. This year, though, we made a plan to have the house “decorated” for the party. Not decorated for the holidays necessarily – although we’ll do that, too – but decorated as in “looking like someone actually put a little thought into how things are arranged and planned.

We started over two months ago. We’ve got some new rugs throughout throughout the house. We are going to sell or give away the area rugs we’ve had for years – some for over 20 years! They’re good rugs, but the look is outdated. We have some new furniture, new wall art, new plants. Our final furniture delivery will be Monday morning – a sofa for the great room, and a chair and ottoman for the library. Also in that delivery will be shelves for the library – beautiful floor-almost-to-the-ceiling shelves with beaded glass doors that will cover most of one wall.

Sharon, our “stager/decorator” will come over one day before the party, and will spend the morning with her assistant (while RT and I are NOT there) and arrange everything. She will place the books and pictures and doodads on the shelves, make sure the furniture is placed just right, and that candles and art work look just right. I’ve seen her work, and I’m excited about seeing what she does with our stuff. I know it will look fantastic and that I’ll look at what she’s done and wonder why I never thought of doing whatever she did.

Here’s an example of why she is so good for me. One day a few weeks ago she had me stand in the hallway between the master bedroom and the master bath.

“Look into the bedroom. What colors do you see?”

“Dark red and khaki.”

“Now look into the bathroom. Do you see any of those colors in there?

I hadn’t even thought of it before. There was khaki in the bathroom but it didn’t stand out. I had matched the bathroom TILE when I bought towels and rugs for the bathroom. It never crossed my mind that I needed to bring the dark red from the bedroom into the bathroom. So now we have a picture over the jacuzzi that has a touch of red in it, and I’ve ordered some dark red towels to mix in with the khaki ones on the shelves, and the rug in front of the jacuzzi will be dark red. Not much – but enough to brighten the bathroom and to tie the two rooms together. It’s amazing what a difference that one suggestion made.

That’s just one example of what I’m learning. Sharon is totally against getting matching furniture or matching anything. She wants “complementary” furnishings – Complementary colors. The chair in the library will be a fabric print. The ottomon that goes with it will be brown leather. When we ordered the sofa, we didn’t get pillows made from the same fabric as the sofa. Instead we ordered pillows with a different pattern but with complementary colors.

I will take some photos to post when everything is completed.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 11:31 pm and is filed under New House. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.