Embraceliving

Archive for the ‘general’ Category

Many women have literally never had time to look around at the home-furnishings market to see what they would like if they could redo their own houses. Harried young mothers and ambitious career women fall into this category. They work so hard and focus so narrowly on one aspect of their lives that they forget they deserve a beautifully decorated home. I remember Leslie, an intelligent and bubbly young woman with a demanding job and two small boys, who presented herself at our studio. “I want to redo my living room,” she announced happily. “I’ve saved my salary for two years.”
“What style do you like?” I asked, and she exploded with laughter. “I’ve been so busy making the money to do it, I haven’t even thought about what I want.” We had to spend several weeks going through design magazines and furniture catalogs and many afternoons going through the showrooms until she got an idea of what her taste really was. Suddenly one day the phone rang.
“I want a dramatic, modern living room in antique ivory and black, with lacquer red accents. I want a clean-lined black lacquer hanging unit on the fireplace wall, and I want to cover the fireplace mantel with ivory travertine and brass trim. I want an ivory sofa and a big French chair, maybe done in red. Accents of brass and glass. Maybe a brass and glass coffee table and Japanese screens behind the sofa. Just big, simple calligraphy scrolls.” And after two months of looking, talking, thinking, and experimenting, it all came tumbling out: Leslie’s MAGIC ROOM. After this breakthrough we put the room together very quickly. It was a knockout—sophisticated with black marble tiles in the entry and a stunning color scheme. The heavy contrasts of black and ivory made a fabulous background for art and flowers.
So take heart, too-busy mother you can develop your own taste rapidly once you direct your energy toward design appreciation.

There was an interesting study done not long ago of the ratio between the number of decorative objects a person had and the number and quality of her personal connections to other people. In other word who would have more friends: the Spartan type had few decorative objects and toys around and e fewer that she really prized or the free spirit living pounds of clutter? The people with the fewest object the fewest knickknacks, toys, artworks, and collection maintained that they prized people
not things. They were not materialist, they said, and that’s why they didn’t like a lot of junk around. However, the study found that the cluttered souls, up
to their necks in bric-a-brac, had many more friends, more family connections, and more active social and civic ties than the other group.
This is good news for mother, of course, and it confirms one of our favorite secret beliefs—that mother are nicer than other people. But it’s really true in my professional experience that the potential clients who had the most clutter were the easiest to work with, provided that they liked the clutter. One of the tests my associate and I use on our initial interview at the client’s home to determine if we want to take the job is to ask, “What object in this room is your favorite?” If the person is hard put to identify anything as her favorite or to show any love at all for anything she has, we always decline the job. We always suspect a person who says, “Oh, I don’t really like any of it,” will be a difficult client.

Finding your personal style. This is important—a leopard can’t change her spots, apparently as far as interior decorating is concerned. The furniture we choose, the rug we fancy, the colors we crave—all have their roots in specific personality traits. To go against the grain of your personal taste creates a lot of psychological strain. We all have said, “I just couldn’t live with that.” We mean it—we really couldn’t live with some things, and we shouldn’t try.
A test I use for deciding if a certain piece looks good or whether I even like it, is to put the piece in an unexpected place—an antique Chinese vase on the kitchen counter, for instance, and then try to forget I put it there. In the middle of the night, coming down for a peanut butter sandwich, I switch on the light, and in that instant of surprise, I see the object truly. In a flash, I react emotionally to the piece rather than intellectually, and I flash instant love or indifference or hate. It is on this level—of the immediate subconscious reaction that you have to like something. It is a reaction so fast, it doesn’t even seem to be connected to thought I call it the “happy eye.” If something doesn’t give you the happy eye, don’t talk yourself into thinking you like it. I bring up the happy eye because I suspect many mother don’t want to clean up the house because they don’t have anything that they feel strongly enough about to if to see clean.

The MAGIC ROOM is the room we all deserve. Look at the rooms in the home fashion magazines—these are MAGIC ROOMS. We can imagine living some kind of wonderful life in each of them. One room says, “I am glamour, I am fun, I am all white satin and cream for rugs and clear Lucite tables and a single orchid.” Or a
family room says, “I am all masculine leisure—stone fireplace, bear rug, antiqued leather sofas, and oak-paneled walls.” Another room breathes, “I am the nursery, I am innocence and lace and lullabies, a soft tinkle of Brahms on an antique music box. I am love and pink fuzzy blankets and little pillowcases embroidered with ‘Now I lay me down to sleep’.” We’ve all admired rooms like these, so why not have one of your own? Anybody can. Believe me, it’s just a matter of reading on and tackling the problem step by step.

My three year old son, insists that my younger brother must me older than I because he is taller. Young children, especially preschooler, tend  to confuse age with height. This is one  of te perceptions of children between ages 2-8 years old, also known a the “preoperative” stage.

The preoperative child sees things differently from an adult. A classic book which illustrates this thought process is Exupery’s Little Prince, where flowers talks and drawing include a hat, which is after all a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant

The most common characteristics of young children is their “egocentric” wy of thinking. Children see things from their own  perspective and are not concerned with logical justifications or other points of view. They cannot imagine, for example, that other people live the way they do. And this is when they start asking ” why” questions.

Yong children think that everything they see is theirs which is why we often see young children quarreling over the same toy and shouting ” This is mine!” at the top of their lungs. With  time and some coaxing, they will learn to share with others.

A second characteristics of this stage is “animism”. very young children think that anything that moves must be alive, have feelings and have reactions. Have you ever wondered why your little girl clung to you when she saw the life sized mannequin in the department store?

The moon holds the wonders for the young at heart-many fairy tales and stories are woven around its shining beauty. Children often think someone is moving the moon around and they ask why the moon is following them.

Children are often anxious about unfamiliar places and things but this fear and anxiety disappear in time, as the child discovers the physical properties od such objects the mannequin made of plaster and the moon  which moves around the earth on its axis.

Young children also think that when two events occur in succession, the first one causes the second. Putting on his pajamas makes it night time. Putting on pajamas midday makes him ask, ” Is it night time already?” they later understand that two things occurring together may not be casually related.