Conspicuous Style Blog Home Tour

My name is Stacy Curran, and I’ve always loved decorating — anything and everything.  However, instead of making a career out of that passion after college, I went to law school. “Why?” you might ask (and I ask myself).  I really have no idea, other than that my father thought it would be a good thing for me to do.  I guess I didn’t know yet that I could make a living at interior design.  I did practice law for several years, and was actually pretty good at it (so thank you, Dad, for the advice. It was a very good start to my professional life).  But I finally decided that I needed more creativity in my life to be truly happy.  When my son was very young, I left the law, studied design and decorating, and opened my own business — South Shore Decorating.  It is the best thing I’ve ever done (career-wise), and I love every second of it.  But during down-times, or late at night when I couldn’t sleep because visions of lovely rooms were running through my head, I wanted to do more.  And since I truly, madly, deeply love decorating blogs, I decided to start my own.  Hence the creation of Conspicuous Style (oh, I had at least five other names before this one, and no less than 10 site designs, but I think I am finally settled on those issues).

 

My home has also undergone serious changes since we bought it in 2003.  Some of them were really necessary, as we bought the house new, never occupied, after seeing it only once for about 15 minutes.  Other changes were the result of my constant redecorating.  Here are images of our home throughout the last eight years.  I hope you enjoy it!

The builder chose these cabinets, below, and I love them.   I had the kitchen this way for years, although I always hated the particular shade of white paint that the builder chose — it was much too white and very startling to look at.  I also cringe at the fake flowers — what was I thinking?

Last year, I repainted the cabinets in Benjamin Moore’s Cloud White, changed the chandelier, removed the pot rack, and added the lanterns from Home Goods over the island (and cut fresh greenery from the garden), shown below:

I love table settings….more on them later, but here is my kitchen table:

I also very recently added this picture frame paneling (so not fun to do, but worth it, I think):

The living room is off the kitchen, and hasn’t changed much:

I did change some of the accents from beige to green, and added the grass cloth to the back of the bookcases:

The dining room, also off the kitchen, is very similar to when we first bought the house.  I got the table and server on eBay (can you believe it)!

 

I recently painted this old desk with chalk paint and put it in the dining room:

The family room is the last room on the first floor.  It was extremely tricky to have it look the way I wanted and still have it function as a television viewing area.  The television is now in the back right corner (you can see the armoir that houses it reflected in the mirror).  You can really only see the television from three seats, but we’re fine with that:

Here is a view looking from the family room back into the kitchen, before I did the kitchen paneling:

This is the master bedroom.  I designed this from 600 miles away, before we moved in, with a Pottery Barn rug and Smith & Noble bedding and curtains: 

 

 This year, I really, really wanted a zebra rug, but wasn’t sure I could make it work on the first floor, so I re-did the bedroom.  Doesn’t everyone?  Ha ha!  My husband was not pleased, but I must say, I’m in love with it:

 

 

This is the room I did for my daughter when she was first born. I love love loved this room and would never have changed a thing:

But, alas, she got older and just had to have pink.  For her birthday last year, I gave in.  Here it is now.  I like it, but I adored it before.  She loves it though, and that’s what matters:

This is my son’s first room in this house … unfortunately, it was before digital cameras were the norm (at least for me), so I only have this mediocre scanned image:

When he was old enough to be embarrassed by that room, I changed it to this:

Here is the powder room … really the only bathroom that I am happy with right now.  It’s another room my husband doesn’t “get,” but I love the metallic gold wavy wallpaper:

The bottom floor of the house is the basement, housing a media area, pool table, and exercise room:

One of my favorite things to do in terms of decorating is table settings.  So I want to share a few of my favorites that I’ve done in my own home.  First, here is the table last Thanksgiving:

And here are a few Christmas table settings:

 

 One of our traditions is to let each of our two children choose a snow globe to purchase each year.  I label them with the year and the child’s initials on the bottom.  Here is the collection so far:

 Finally, last but not least, this is our backyard, and my sweet little girl several years ago, way over near the deck:

Again, thank you so much Cassity and Justin and Remodelaholic – I am so thrilled to be here to show you my blog home tour!  Stacy Curran of Conspicuous Style