Living Small in Stockholm

July 14, 2016

I have such an affinity for small spaces! Having lived in what can be considered a small space since my dorm room in college, I love the idea of a well designed small space, free of clutter and chaos. When we were house hunting, the idea of anything over 1,500 square feet really freaked me out. As the primary caretaker of any home we’ve ever lived in together, how the heck was I going to take care of that much space on my own, coming from a 600 square foot apartment? Our little 950-ish square foot bungalow that we now call home, while small, is just the right, cozy size for us and I love ~~almost~~ every little inch of it.

Minimalist, Scandinavian design is my ultimate favorite so when we had a 4 hour layover in Copenhagen last year on our way back home to the states, I was crushed that we weren’t staying in Denmark for at least a few days. I’ve been dying to get back to Scandinavia since so when I came across this tiny Swedish abode online, it solidified my need to get back there AND my love for small spaces. How darling is this one room apartment, flooded with light, a neutral palette and pretty finishes? Steel doors and windows get me every time and this space is proof that splurging on a few key design elements will always pay off in the long run. Take a look at some of my favorite images below.

All images via HusmanHagberg.

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A Personal Update

May 4, 2016

Hey there! If you’re a close personal friend or follow me on Instagram, I’m sure you already know that we’ve had some BIG life changes over the course of the past few months that have kept me away from my little home on the web. We bought a house and moved to Napa! I still can’t believe we’re finally in Northern California (a move that we’ve been talking about making for the past 5 or so years) and how much our lives have changed in 2016!

I’ll spare you the full ONEHOPE history, but Jake started the company in 2007 with a team that had followed him from Gallo. They were all based in Southern California at the time, so while the wine was being produced in Napa and Sonoma, our headquarters have always been in Orange County. At the beginning of 2015, as we started developing an estate/winery project for ONEHOPE in Napa, it became pretty clear pretty fast that we needed to have a bigger presence up here and that we really needed a few people closely managing a project of this scale. Jake’s dad has been a construction manager at Stanford for many years and was the perfect candidate for managing the build, but to not have full-time teammates in wine country as a wine brand of our size was starting to seem silly. Since I’m doing the interior design on the project, making materials selections and designing the home from Southern California was becoming difficult. On a personal level, we’ve both spent the last 7-10 years away from family and wanted to be closer to Jake’s parents and sisters. My best friend Carla, who is basically family, also lives in the Bay Area – finally being close to someone from home made me SO excited to move north! We decided we’d save as much as possible for the remainder of the year and try to buy at the end of 2015 or beginning of 2016.

When the cutest house came on the market in November, I instantly had a gut feeling about it and knew I had to fly up to check it out. Jake was in China at the time on business so his parents picked me up from the airport and we drove to Napa where I fell head over heels for this house. I KNEW it was the one that we were going to celebrate holidays in together and build a family over the years. We scrambled to get pre-approved, made an offer and then waited. Jake had written the most wonderful, heartfelt letter to the sellers, our offer was strong and we were positive we had gotten the house…

And then we didn’t. I was absolutely crushed.

Everyone kept saying “it was for a reason” and “the right house will come along” which I truly believed in my heart, but I was too devastated to even continue looking for the right one. I kept waiting for their deal to fall through so we could scoop up our house and get on with our lives – still envisioning us in that cute little house that never was.

For Christmas, Jake and I traveled home to Michigan to visit my family. Every year, Jake and my dad get into their token political “discussion” that is inevitably heated and teeters on being a full blown argument. Trying to drown out their seemingly endless banter, I hopped on Zillow and a new listing popped up. It was so cute, smaller than the house we’d loved, but also with a smaller price tag and still in our favorite neighborhood. We decided to put in an offer sight-unseen and to our surprise, our offer was accepted! We traveled to Napa just after the new year to see it in person and confirm we actually liked it before moving forward and it was perfect! It was built in the 1930’s, had a lot of charm and a big back yard – we were sold! We closed at the end of January, packed up our tiny home in Hermosa Beach and moved at the very end of February.

{ signing our lives away! }

At this point, we’re almost completely settled in with the exception of some wall art and window treatment updates that need to happen. There are of course a million long-term changes we want to make to this place that we need to save for, but we’re comfortable for now. And most importantly, even with the changes I’d like to make, I still get butterflies when I pull up to our cozy little house.

So what does that mean for the blog? I’ve had this little site for over 5 years now, but my consistency has definitely lacked – especially when life gets crazy. But through all the years, posting here still feels like home to me and now that we’re settled into our real home, my goal is to use this as a place to document this great big Estate8 project and our new house, as well as some recipes, styling projects and events I’ve been working on for ONEHOPE. And, let’s face it – when you’re living, working and building a company together with your partner, sometimes a girl needs a little “me” time. I guess that’s how I’ll look at this little site from here on out 🙂 Cheers!

{ the most beautiful welcome home basket from new neighbors }

{ exploring the new neighborhood – favorite spot for brunch! }

{ love the morning light in our kitchen nook }

{ working from home – something new for me and something I’ll be chatting about one the blog }

{ visiting ONEHOPE’s vineyard in Rutherford on the first sunny day in spring }

Home in a Box

September 26, 2011

There comes a point when all (or most) of our parents must move away from our childhood home. I think the initial reaction is usually selfish… “But why?”, “But that’s where I grew up”, “Where am I going to go ‘home’ to this Christmas?” For me, this news has been a long time coming and while it was expected at some point, the emptiness that followed the news was much tougher than I’d imagined. As a child of the automotive industry, I’ve watched my parents dreams crumble with the economy under the wrath of corporate restructuring, downsizing and government bail outs. I know we’ve all felt the economy slap us in the face a few times over the course of the last few years, but no one has felt it like Michigan. I’ve watched good people lose their homes and family friends struggle to pay for college because the keys to their educations were wrapped up in bad investment portfolios that shattered in 2008. For those of us who stepped out from under the roofs of our parents these past few years, our reality checks were quite a bit different than I presume they were 10-15 years ago. “Our parents’ notion that we’d get out of college and make $80K a year was the biggest fallacy of the 1990s,” a friend of mine recently told me. But who could have predicted? We were all prepared for the best – not the worst.

My parents are moving into their new home this week and while I’m happy for their sake that they’re finally downsizing to a much more manageable house and yard both in terms of physical effort and finances, I’ve been quite determined up until this point to just not think about it. Our family home is where I listened to countless life lessons from my dad, learned to cook, buried our family dog, gardened in the summer with my mom, basked in the sun by the pool and shoveled snow in the winter. That home is where I played with Barbies for hours, decorated our log cabin (playhouse), learned to drive and constantly broke curfew. It’s where I tried on my first pair of toe shoes with pride and practiced my barre work in the basement in front of the mirrored closet doors my dad installed. I remember walking into that house for the first time in 3rd grade knowing my parents had found our home. I couldn’t wait to paint my room pink with my grandpa and play in my two dormer windows that felt enormous as a little girl.

But what’s really effecting me emotionally about their move this week is the countless lessons of design and homemaking that I learned from my mom in that house. It’s where she taught me the art of picking out materials, space planning a room and effortlessly mixing prints. It’s where she and my grandma taught me to sew and where she made all of our pillows and (absolutely pristine) window treatments by hand. There really is no place like home and the feeling of home that my mom created for our family over the years is something I struggle to recreate in my own little home daily. How did she always make it look so easy?

I received a box while I was in Austin of a few things my mom came across while packing and decided to pass along to me… a set of her gorgeous wedding glasses with silver rims, my great grandmother Ida’s cordial glasses, her set of watercolors, a colorful cigar box that used to hold my jewelry as a teenager, a tasty sangria mix and a pair of earrings since I can’t ever seem to find mine. While the box of ‘home’ brought a smile to my face, it also forced me to finally think about it… something I’ve been avoiding for weeks. Soon the family home that I grew up in will just be a memory and it will be up to someone else to truly make it theirs.

In the interim, I’ll focus on how to help my parents re-do their new place. The kitchen needs updating, the floors are outdated and there is a hideous purple staircase (to be ripped out) that I haven’t stopped hearing about. There are new window treatments to be made, old wall coverings to tear down and paint to replace. I’m excited for the two of us to finally collaborate on our first real project with her wisdom and my new design education… and I have a feeling it’ll be a smashing success.

Cheers to learning to embrace change and to cherishing the memories.

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