Dreaming in the Woods

A true dreamers chair...

Everyone needs a place to sit and twirl a lock of hair while pondering the next big dream.  

Bleu Marine Louise Crusoe bergere and canopy.  

Where I Want To Be

Comfy!!

What could be more inviting than this comfy rustic chair and side table?  Just bring on an Arnold Palmer and a good cookbook to thumb through.  My idea of the perfect afternoon at the cabin!

The fabric is AM Glory by Andrew Martin.  I've used it in the past in a Tahoe bunk room.  It makes a fabulous cheerful statement.

I also love this little Double Cross side table from Genesee River Trading Company. Everything this company makes is utterly charming.

I love whimsical for cabin living!  What about you...are you modern rustic or cabin camp style?

   

Western Goes Modern

Here's some gorgeous stuff from Pacific Green for your modern mountain home:

Navajo Arm Chair

Navajo Sofa

Verite Armchair

Luxor Chaise

Eclipse Capsule

Lake-Side Sleeping

I'm crazy for this wave bed for lake-front bedrooms. Does everything have to be brown in the mountains?  Why not brighten cabin life up with a little color. Blue is a wonderful color for mountain houses, and often overlooked.  I can't get enough of it!

Somerset Bay Northshore Bed

There are some other great items in the Somerset Bay line.  Here's another one of their beds which I've used in the past:

Somerset Bay Catalina Poster

Here's a photo of the same bed in one of my client's houses:

I also like this Somerset Bay coffee table:

Somerset Bay Catskill Coffee Table

And finally, the Bald Head Console Table would be very charming in a funky cabin, don't you think?

Somerset Bay Bald Head Console Table

All Somerset Bay furnishings can be custom ordered through Dragonfly Designs.  For information call (530) 583-6076 or email dragonflytahoe@att.net.

Some Cute Stuff

My friend Pam Wilson has a gorgeous house and a real knack for decorating. If you know Tahoe City, you may have met her. She was the original owner of Tippy Canoe. Anyway, I snapped these photos of a couple of pieces in her downstairs basement. A couple of pieces like this will make any cabin sing!

This is such a charming piece from Genessee Rivers Trading Co.  Leave it to Pam to style it perfectly with a Black Forest carved squirrel made into a lamp and a charming log cabin model. 
The piece below is one of my favorites.  I was with her when she bought it at the Round Top Texas Antique Fair.

It's an old wing chair that has been reupholstered in navy flannel woolen with vintage college insignias covering the entire chair.  I just love it.  It's so welcoming and camp.  Again, the perfect cabin chair.
Here's a picture of the basement I think is so charming, with its old Pickwick pine walls and Maine Cottage rattan furniture. 

 

Pam is staging weddings and parties these days with her sister Jan. Their company is California Vintage Rentals,  http://californiavintagerentals.com/ . They both have the same knack for whimsy and charm.  Jan worked for years searching out antiques and vintage cabin pieces for Camps and Cottages, a wonderful resource for camp style in Southern California.  Here are a few photos of parties they've been staging:

Their style is rustic, simple and whimsical. 

This is just so lovely!

Like everything they do, this place setting, above, is perfectly rustic and perfectly stylish.

Pam and Jan have assembled collections of all kinds of vintage objects and furnishings that would make any event, unique and chic.  They have a large collection of antique hickory, old camp blankets, unusual serving pieces and charming vintage items. 
I'm hoping to use them someday for weddings for my girls.  Fingers crossed!!

Painted Willow

A lot of mountain cabin owners enjoy bent willow furniture.  I see it in many of the cabins I'm in and out of.  We used to have a big old dusty truck that would drive around Lake Tahoe, all summer long, packed to the high heavens with every form of willow furnishings imaginable.  It would pull to the side of the road and folks would buy the stuff right off the truck.
 
I think willow furniture can be very charming, especially when the cushions are comfortable and carefully attended to, such as in the chaise below:

Chaise from Willows at Home

But I like it even more when willow furniture is painted a bright color like this adorable red willow settee:

Aren't the vine and leaf details on the front boards of the settee winning?  There's something so lovely about the rustic furnishings, flooring and wood trim in this room contrasting with the finished details of the wallpaper, trimmed out curtains and bench cushions and toss pillows.  I love this rustic vs. refined cabin look.

Nothing like a can of red paint in the perfect shade!

Wow--Mimi London Rustic Furniture!

Not everybody has the budget for this, but lucky you if you do!  Mimi London's line of modern rustic mountain furniture is a flat-out knock-out.  The scale is large (perfect for today's mountain great-rooms).  The materials are both plush and rustic.  The lines and colors are sophisticated, contemporary and yet manage to be natural and rugged, too. 

This beautiful chair is stream-lined in shape but heavy, solid and large in scale. I love the mohair seat cushions.  By the way, this chair is very comfortable!

Mimi's Favorite Bar Stool  This may be the best looking mountain bar stool I know of!

This coffee table is the epidemy of modern mountain style.  Sooooo gorgeous but rugged enough to work in the most rustic of mountain lodges. 

Mimi London's pieces work beautifully in rustic environments but are also  stunning in clean contemporary spaces.

Logan Night or Side Table.  Love this!

Cozy meets today's version of mountain Arts and Crafts.  I love that they upholstered this whole sofa in sheep skin.

Don't you just love the contrast of the natural wood slabs with the polished and blackened steel?  I do.

I can just picture Franklin Roosevelt sitting in this chair on a fabulous lodge porch wearing linen slacks, a Panama hat,and, of course, smoking a cigarette.

Designing for Comfort... Three: Put a Few Cubes in the Great Room

Ways to make mountain rooms more comfortable for living.

Saffavieh Maison Cube

Cubes are the single most practical item you can add to your great room or living room. In fact, I use them in almost every project I work on. A cube is a little ottoman or stool that is upholstered on four sides and the top. It is usually 18-20” by 18-20” and about that tall, also.

Custom Kravet Cube in Ralph Lauren Fabric

I like to tuck cubes in between the fireplace and the coffee table where they can be used for extra seating or perching by the warm fire.  If your room simply won't accommodate lounge chairs with matching ottomans, try cubes.   They are great for pulling up to use as a foot stool, and take up much less room than ottomans.  Or try putting several together to create a coffee table (see photo above).  

Cubes are especially handy for large crowds. They can be pulled into the room and placed wherever they are the most useful for extra seating. Or, If you are serving a big buffet dinner, people can pull them up to the coffee table and use them for dinner seating.

One of the best things about cubes is that they can be slipped into most rooms without taking up significant floor space. Then you can move then around when you have a crowd.  I find that the most likely place to place them is in that often dead space between the coffee table and the fireplace. However, you can also try tucking them under the coffee table if you have 18" of clearance underneath. Alternatively, if you have a console table behind your sofa, you may be able to place two cubes side by side underneath it. You can even use a pair to flank a chest or desk against one of the walls.

Claire Ottoman from Barclay Butera

I love this cube by Barclay Butera, above and have used pairs of them in several client projects. The top flips up for extra storage…fill it up with the kids toys. Isn’t it handsome?

Custom Cube by Dragonfly Designs

The photo above shows one of a pair of cubes I had custom-made for a client. She has a huge gorgeous old turn-of-the-century stone fireplace and likes to pull the cubes up close when it's in use. Otherwise, she has placed them next to the sofa where they are often topped with a tray to hold a drink or magazine. This is a perfect example of how cubes perform dual roles.

Designing for Comfort...Figure Out the Perfect Furnishing Plan BEFORE You Shop

Ways to make mountain rooms more comfortable for living.

Think seriously before you set up the furniture in the great room. Select upholstered seating that is inviting, accommodating and comfortable. Always, always, always, measure your room, and draw the furnishings on graph paper before you go shopping. Mistakes are very expensive, especially since most people don’t correct mistakes, and just end up living with them.

Here’s a secret I use that works perfectly in setting up a happy room. When you draw in an 8 foot sofa, imagine it has three people sitting on it. Each lounge chair has one person and a love seat has 2 people. Put a person on each cube, or ottoman, too. Now, arrange your sofas and chairs where you think they work best on graph paper and then ask yourself whether these people can converse comfortably. Try to imagine whether they feel cozy? Can they hear each other? Is this intimate?

Now find a place to put the TV. If you can place a TV so that it can be viewed comfortably and your room still works for groups to congregate and relax together, you have a successful floor plan. Keep rearranging until you find the best furniture plan possible.

This is a room I worked on for a client. Here are only a few of the furniture plans I looked at. These were drawn on Autocad, but graph paper works just as well.

I always play around with a half a dozen floor plans before I make up my mind. Sometimes I end up at the first one that came to mind, but other times I come up with something way better. Regardless, because I've drawn it on paper, I know for sure that the furniture will fit in the room correctly and the room will function well.

This is the final selected floor plan of the room sketched above.

Here are two photos that show how that room eventually turned out. We added a couple of cube ottomans between the sofas and the fireplace that get used for extra seating when the room is full of guests.