In all my years of working with customers who are conscientious about making their house a cozy home I have always found that one of the biggest differences you can make in a room besides the paint is the style and scale of the furniture.  Above I have featured one our our favourite rooms from the Pier-nice hey?  Do you choose items that reflect your personality and your lifestyle?  I find that this is key to putting together a cozy room so that when you are using this room you feel completely at home because it’s you, thru and thru.  Each of us has a style that is uniquely ours and we are constantly refining it to reflect our values.  We are fortunate to own a lakeside cottage that I enjoyed decorating thus my design style for this summer oasis was chosen to reflect the lazy carefree days of summer and with easy care washable slip covers and lots of bare wood floors for shoes and wet feet to easily sneak thru without destroying carpets.  Here’s  peek at a corner of our living room at the lake.  We love this room and we pile all of our guests in here snuggling on the down filled sleeper sofas for movie night or as pull outs for slumber parties.  Do you have a cozy room that you love being in?

At home, upholstered furniture, cozy wool rugs and hall runners, are suitable for our family since the sandy shore is miles away.  However, my little ones can still enjoy playing with ease in a home that allows for “oops and yikes” to happen and no one loses an eye!  Creating your perfect space takes careful consideration and attention to the details of style, scale, size, fabrics and not to forget care & washing instructions especially if you have pets and little ones- even us big people can spill our red wine quite effectively! -don’t you think?

At The House Dressing Company we work hard to offer you our wisdom and expert advice as you choose your new furniture.  We assist our clients by  giving our customers the much needed time with specific information and recommendations to assist them with selecting the perfect fitting pieces reflecting their vision for their home.  We understand that most home owners don’t replace their furnishings very often and that it is a big decision in a household to invest in new furnishings.

We take pride in our customer service so that you can make your decisions for any new furniture with confidence.  Our team will assure that you have the right scale for the room, the correct dimensions to fit the space, and a pleasing style and fabric choice that reflects your personal style.  Previously, Helen McIntyre was our design consultant available to assist you with this.  However, she has recently switched gears and moved into a brand new career in Real Estate- watch for her in Sidney.  We wish her much success and will miss her as will some of you who have worked with her.  Have you met Liz and Ingrid of our store’s team? Both of these gals have worked on our team for a few years now.  Liz has an extensive background in design with formal training in the fashion industry and then years of styling and design in retail.  She is thrilled to be able to assist you in the store Thurs- Sunday for your furniture design needs.   Ingrid also has many years in retail with a sharp eye for style and design and loves our customers (and they love her too) and enjoys assisting them.  Ingrid is available most weekdays in the store.  She is also one of our contributors on this blog and will be writing more frequent content for you-aren’t you glad?- she’s such a good writer!  Both of these gals are valuable members of our team whom our customers have grown to love.  Ingrid and Liz will be ready and waiting for you and your furniture design needs, so pop in when you are ready and they will be happy to help you.

Change is good!  And a change in your surroundings from ordinary to extraordinary makes you feel great!  Life is meant to be lived to the fullest- don’t you think?  Creating the perfect environment plays a big role in living a cozy lifestyle since most of us spend a great part of our lives in our homes.  So be sure you love your home and your furnishings and if not, give us a dingle , we can help and we would love the journey of working with you.

We have all been anticipating some new product in the store! Christmas is packed away for another year…thank goodness! making room for all the new fabulous colours, patterns amd textures. We will be getting our new stock in waves….so it’s important to come in regularly and have a good look!

I’m really excited about the new items. It is so nice to see bright colours and decorative, fun patterns around the store. Spring is definitely coming and I love adding a “spring touch” to my home at this time of year! What I like to do is change my sofa pillows, add a decorative spring textured throw,  swap my vases for some fresh white ones or glass and add some fresh colourful flowers! I also love to start on some new projects around the house! I have started to fill my picture frames that are on my staircase wall. (I mentioned it in an earlier blog) I am super excited…and am having fun choosing the perfect photos to liven the wall! I love magazines and I love to change the pile that sits on my coffee table on a regular basis! Choose a really colourful, fun cover for the top of the stack! This will sure get your creative, spring juices flowing!

I wanted to give you a little glimpse of some of the new lines we just got in! Take a look…….

Garden Party

Beach House

Inner Journey

Have a great week!

We both love to decorate!  Helen has been so incredibly busy with decorating the store as well as decorating several customers’ homes, that I don’t know how she managed to find the motivation to do her own!  I love the simplicity of Helen’s Christmas designs.

Her mantle and tree are subtle, yet elegant.  Her eye for detail is very keen and she sets up her vignettes so that they are balanced in both colour and arrangement.  Helen has used lots of  sparkling clear glass and silver, combined with natural elements like fresh greens and pinecones that she collected on her long walks in the woods with Hana her dog.

Helen’s tree is a pre-lit, narrow, perfectly shaped ornamental tree that she dresses up beautifully to complement the mantle.  It’s full of gorgeous baubles – glass, silver and white.  So pretty and sparkling.   Helen said that next year she would love to have two trees – the one she has set up now with her beautiful decorator theme, and one natural tree with ornaments that she and her husband are starting to collect as a young married couple.

My decorating is a bit different – I have a lot of decorations which our family have collected throughout the years since we were married 30 years ago!  Things that my girls have made and collected over the years and very old pieces that belonged to my husband’s grandmother and mother too.  They are not designer pieces, but mean a lot to us and are like little treasures each year as we unpack them from their boxes to hang on the tree.

Our tree this year is a natural tree that was cut down under the power lines on Salt Spring Island for Cannor Nursery, where we bought it.  It’s really funky and has branches going every which way!  It has 3 leaders, so the poor angel is sitting off centre, which just adds to the goofiness of the tree.  It’s a little bit Dr. Seuss-like.  My husband insists on having coloured lights in the tree, as well as plain white, which I have to admit, look pretty nice!  He also came home last year with old-fashioned bubble lights which add more whimsy to our already loopy tree.

I have a small Charlie Brown tree that I’ve set up in our dining room.  It is decorated with white, green and blue baubles and plain white lights.

I have also decorated our family room/kitchen area in mainly green and white coloured baubles and snowflakes.  My Florist friend, Claudia Logan whose business is called Twisted Tulip, made this wonderful arrangement of greens with red roses, called “the Grinch”.  I absolutely love it!

Every year, both Helen and I and the rest of the staff, find it hard to resist the gorgeous Christmas decorations, ornaments, garlands and accessories that come into the store at this time of the year.  There are still many more to choose from, even this close to Christmas!  Hope I can restrain myself!  If you’ve been inspired to do a bit more decorating before the big day, come in and we can certainly help you with ideas.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed seeing what we’ve done in our own homes.  Remember, we have our competition going (see previous blogs for details) and there are still 3 days to enter!

Have a wonderful, joyous Christmas and a happy and creative New Year!  Best wishes from Ingrid, Helen and The House Dressing Team!

ps.  this picture of Helen, me and my dog Tucker, was taken just before our “Polar Bear” run around the neighbourhood to see all the pretty lights!  We came home to a warming bowl of chili and later, a delicious hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps!  Yummmmmm!

Hope you are all getting into the Xmas spirit, busy decorating your homes and have all your shopping done! (wishful thinking I know!)

My last post was all about 2 homes I decorated for Xmas. I wanted to share some more photos of the 2nd house as the ones I posted were from my Blackberry and they didn’t come out as well as I would have hoped!

I also took some photos of the downstairs family room from the same home. These photos are of their hunting and fishing inspired family room! We used owls, bears, ski’s, fish, wood ornaments and small reindeer’s to fill up the wonderful tree! I just love how unique this tree is and it’s so fabulous how much the whole family just loves spending time in this cozy room!

The mantle is also a great part of the room with a wonderful big picture of  a deer in the forest, 3 over sized candlesticks, a lit garland with a snowflakes, little woodsy owls and some really amazing huge rustic stars! I think of course their yellow lab, Duke definitely makes this picture perfect! He is so adorable!

I changed one particular section in the store just a couple of days ago. Christmas “day” is really approaching fast and we all should be thinking about our dining room tables! How should they look? What colours am I going to use? Do I have enough dishes? Serving Platters? Am I going to use napkin rings and maybe place card holders? Do I want a tablecloth or a runner with some place mats? What do I want my centerpiece to be? Candles? a greenery arrangement? Do I have wine glasses? Red and White? maybe some water glasses? or some kind of container to house water in on the table? …….The list goes on! My intention is not to overwhelm you, but simply get you thinking about your own table and how you might want to set it this year! It is also my goal to get you organized so you have everything you need in advance, to prevent panicking on the last day!

I have set up a table for Xmas at the store to get you inspired and to show you lots of different ideas! It doesn’t matter how elaborate or simple you want your table to be……it’s just nice to have all the basics you need! We would be delighted to help you with any “setting the table” questions you have and help you to put together the best table you have ever set!!

Have a great week!

Well, not only do I do that…but I also decorate other people’s homes too! Last Friday, I was out of the store all day decorating two wonderful client’s homes for Christmas!

I had such a great day…….and I am happy to share some of the photos I took of their beautiful trees and mantles!

This first photo you see here is in the more..”modern” of the houses. The tree has a combination of glass, silver and white balls and also some mirrored snowflakes, flocked white snowflake balls, silver feathers and some really great teardrop glass ornaments!. We kept the tree quite simple as the home owner prefers an uncluttered simple look. I absolutely love this tree! It looks fantastic and really lights up the room!

The mantle at this house is also very simple…but definitely  a show stopper! Due to having the fantastic decorative mirror above……it was important to leave the mantle quite simple as not to compete with the busyness of the mirror. We simply strung a whole lot of lights through a garland and placed it across the thick mantle. One large, tall glass hurricane balances the two smaller silver decorative sculptures at the other end! To finish it off we stuck some silvery feathers in the garland and placed a wonderful acrylic NOEL sign at the front! It sure is pretty and sparkles when the lights in the garland are on! You can also see that we placed a set of 3 tall contemporary candlesticks on a large surface stepping up from the living room. To add some interest with the candlesticks, a silver decorative reindeer sits beside them. That’s just about it for this house! Uncomplicated and extremely effective!!!

The next home is just as great, but more traditional and lots more going on! The tree has the same elements as the other with the glass and silver balls…..but we added a lot more! To play up the colours in the room we added some soft sea foam balls and some really light creamy gold balls! This definitely gives the tree some depth and warmth! Also there are silver feathers, mirrored ornaments, large 3d stars, over sized silver bows and some really great mirrored, glittery garlands! This tree looks spectacular!

The mantle sits right beside the tree, so we had to make sure they both worked well together! Of course we had to use a garland with lights! We added a traditional, ornate metal  tree, some mirrored and pewter candle sticks and a lot of snowflake ornaments, balls and feathers! Wow what a sight! It was really fun to do!

The sideboard in the dining room was also part of the decorating and is in the same vicinity as the tree. We simply placed 3 tall candle sticks in a row in the center of the surface that are adorned with wiry silver decorative candle rings! Next we added some green garland, sprays of fabulous burgundy flowers (to match the pillow colour in the living room) and finished off with some sparkly, silver garland for that hit of glamour! The garland arrangement in combination with the two lamps and the silver mirror above really makes a wonderful setting! What shall I call this home……Elegant with lots of personality!

I really enjoyed my day of decorating! It’s not to late to start if you haven’t already! (I haven’t, I am so busy with the store and other people’s homes!…that’s what happens this time of year!)

Don’t forget! If you are feeling overwhelmed, I am here to help!

Cheers till next time! Happy decorating!

Oh…and don’t forget about our wonderful DECORATING CONTEST going on right now! We have had some great entry’s so far! Thanks you.

Hurry in and submit YOUR entry! We look forward to seeing you. Any questions, please call the store for more details or refer to Julie’s “Christmas Decorating” blog post.