Smurfs, Pineapples and Plaid

Every now and then, I'll pull out the old photo albums and look through our family pictures.  Do people still do that?  Or has that become another "Remember when..." activity?  Well, I still enjoy it and it can be pretty funny.  Was my hair really THAT big?  (Yes dear, it was the 80's.  Everybody's hair was big.)  How awful was that living room love seat?  (And there were two of them, for twice the hideousness.) 

Looking back, my decor experience  in the 70's seemed to be all about plaid, eagles and nautical type stuff.  Milk cans, they seemed to be big too. It wasn't until I became interested in mid century furnishings that I realized we had had some cool pieces in amongst the plaid.  The round coffee table with the hairpin legs.  The teak lamp with simplistic curves.  And apparently, when I was really little, we had a very sleek Draperesque sofa.  Which sadly, left to make room for the plaid love seats.  Did I mention they were red and black? With lines of blue and yellow?  I have to find that picture.....We later followed up with a black, brown and white plaid couch.  Better, but still not great.



The only picture I could find of the red love seat.(Never mind my brother's feet!)

 That's me on the right.  I told you it was big!

When I was about 12, my mom decided I could choose what the next phase of my room would be.  It had been done in red and white since birth and she was actually going to let me pick out what I wanted.  I was 12, what did I know?  My choice - baby blue walls, with blue and white gingham curtains and bedspread.  It was like a Smurf, or maybe Dorothy, had exploded in my room.    That lasted a couple of years.  Then came the "country" phase, which was repeated in a few different incarnations over the next couple of years.  EVERYTHING  was mauve and wedge wood blue.  This was followed by the famous heart, house, pineapple border that I hand painted on the walls.  Pineapple?  Yeah, I wasn't thinking....

By the time I met my husband (early 90s)  I had been swayed by country music and Southwestern decor.  Not that there's anything wrong that.   But we ended up choosing a beautiful, and now very obscure, song as our wedding song - "Made for Loving You" by Doug Stone.  Never heard of it?  Neither did the COUNTRY station when I called to request it be played on our first anniversary.  So we changed our song to "In My Life" by the Beatles.  Why?  Because it's what we should have picked.  It's beautiful and classic.

It took a long time, and exposure to many other design styles for me to learn this lesson. When decorating, I try to look for items that are well designed - beautiful, or at least interesting.  Timeless and classic, they never go out of style and make looking back that much easier.  Now, about my hair....