jennifer

Decor Makeover: Introduction


I love our little home.  I love its coziness.  I love its comfort.  I love how it’s decorated.  Until I am at my Mom’s house or my sister’s house.  Then I wonder how I completely missed out on the home decorating gene.  They are SO good at it.  They each have completely different aesthetics, but I love both of them.  My mom can lay out a tablescape like it’s nobody’s business.  And my sister can combine colors like Henri Matisse.
So, after a visit to my sister’s place in Dallas in October, she and I started brainstorming.  We thought it would be fun to start a regular piece for the blog in which she redecorates a space in our home.  And maybe after my mom retires in May, we’ll add her in to jazz up the dining room table or fireplace mantel.  I’m totally the one benefiting here–I get blog material and a redecorated space.
My sister is a graphic designer and she is SO good at it.  My senior year of college, I took a couple of summer classes before starting my internship in the fall.  Ashley had just graduated high school and moved in with me for the summer.  We ended up taking two college courses together–her very first to get her bachelors degree and my very last to get my bachelors degree.  One of the classes was a computer class–this was the year 2002 ya’ll, so there were required classes on how to use Microsoft Office.  I’m serious.  So, one day in class we were given a step by step assignment on creating a Powerpoint slideshow.  It was supposed to be about ourselves and had like 15 requirements: must include twenty slides, must include your name in WordArt, must use a two second transition between the fourth and fifth slides, and so on.  It was a 50 minute class and being the seasoned post-secondary student that I was, I whipped my presentation out, saved that baby, and turned it in with ten minutes to spare.  I was ready to go so I swung by my sister’s computer so we could leave together.  I kid you not, she was still on her first slide.  She had gotten her name up there in WordArt, but she had spent about 25 minutes perfecting the color combinations, proportions, and balancing out the white space.  Although I wasn’t sure how she was going to make it through four years of college classes, I was definitely sure that she had chosen the right major.  In those last ten minutes of class, even the professor told her just to turn it in and he’d consider it done.
She has done graphic design for the same Kansas City based company for the past ten years and has freelanced on the side some.  And she is always so nice to design by request for our family and me.
You can follow her and her house projects and design skills on Instagram: @ashvclark
These mini makeovers will be broken down into multiple posts.  Stay tuned for part one of our first makeover.
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