This Home Will Make You Want to Try Millennial Pink

Blogger at A Beautiful Mess
Lives in: Nashville, Tennessee
From: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Signature style: rock ’n’ roll meets Palm Springs

How she became a blogger: Sometimes simply doing what you love, without any ulterior motive, can bring great rewards. Laura has had her own blog for some time, documenting her life as a “band wife,” her husband being one of the members of the band Mutemath. during one of his tours on the road, she renovated their entire house on her own, and her close friend Elsie, the founder of A Beautiful Mess, took notice of Laura’s incredible self-motivation and artistic skills, and she invited Laura to join the Beautiful Mess crew. Laura contributes there, among many things, some of the best DIY projects across the web. I guarantee that a ton of the DIYs you have pinned to your Pinterest boards were created by her!

What she loves: plants (duh!), particularly cactuses, palms, and tropical plants; stark white walls; pops of pastels like pink accent walls; pop-art murals and neon signs in small but impactful doses; eclectic DIY plant containers; natural elements like fur and hides; midcentury modern accents; artwork that celebrates summer and the outdoors

Laura and her husband recently moved to Nashville and bought a sixties ranch-style house that allows her to indulge her love of a retro Palm Springs aesthetic and to play around with her quirky, truly one-of-a-kind knack for blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors. While she painted her patio to look like black-and-white tiles reminiscent of something you might more commonly and in a kitchen, inside her house is full of greenery, from towering cactuses taking center stage to smaller arrangements grouped intimately together on shelves, next to a piano, tucked between soap dispensers, even displayed in the hollowed-out center of a vintage telephone. “There’s not a spot that’s off-limits!” she says. “I’ll put them on my bar cart...I can’t really think of where I wouldn’t put one. You just kind of get this feeling...that there’s a dead zone when plants aren’t there.”

Besides plants, she also brings the outdoors in via leaf-patterned wallpaper, a sun-shaped ceiling fixture, big, bold photographs of cactuses and beach scenes, nature-inspired colors like ocean-toned teal, and furry rugs and pillows.

This all works especially well with her beachy yet sophisticated California vibe that, ironically, doesn’t come from actually having spent much time there. Instead, she credits the influence of popular culture. “I grew up on sixties movies, so I’ve always loved that mod vibe in general, but the cheerful sunny California twist on the whole thing is right up my alley. I like to give the Palm Springs nod in my home décor through the desert-inspired plants and artwork, and most of the furniture is a replica or inspired by the sleek midcentury designs as well.

We also have lots of globe and Sputnik-type lighting textures all over the house that complement the feel of that era. Our house is a sixties ranch, so it all goes together nicely from the outside in and I actually just planted prickly pear and fan palms in the front yard, and I can’t wait to watch them grow! I even made a Palm Springs cat house for our kitties.

Since I don’t want the house to look like a total time capsule, I’ve also added in a few other details to modernize the feel. Lots of gold accents, pastels, neon signs, and a few other quirky items to make the space feel more unique. I like to think that if Nasty Gal had a house in Palm Springs, it would look sort of like mine!”


© 2017 by Moorea Seal. All rights reserved. Excerpted from Make Yourself at Home by permission of Sasquatch Books.