Love Will Keep Us Together

So what if Valentine's Day is a 'greeting card' holiday! V-Day is an excuse to celebrate love and enjoy the easy romantic things that brought you together in the first place. Go ahead, fill your bedroom with hearts and flowers today!

Of course, you can also celebrate love year 'round with a room design inspired by your favorite pastimes and best memories. Sounds corny writing this, but why not decorate your home with, well, love?

That's pretty much what I did when DIY Network asked me to create a painted stair project to produce and host for a 'how-to' video series. Here's how I designed this amorous room:

First, I shopped around for vintage objects that remind me of fun dates and early memories of falling in love...

From bowling pins and Ferris wheels to this vintage art piece created from the side of an old pinball machine, I looked for souvenirs of the old fashioned things couples enjoy together.

Next, I looked through my own paintings and chose this pink and yellow piece I painted that recounts my memories of going to the circus and writing letters to my grandma when I was young. Love comes in so many forms. Celebrate all of them!

I also grabbed one of my early pillow designs created with a print of my painting, "Ode to Rockstar" which tells the story of a blind date and falling head over heels in love. What a night!

Then I looked through my color deck for paints you might see at a county fair or an old candy shop. I came up with colors like these: a firecracker bright red, slightly faded black, and a nostalgic white.

  

The vintage finds dictated these colors along with the circus style XO font I used to stamp the risers.

Pulling it all together is like telling your love story. You start moving things around, fuss with it a bit, then step back and smile as it all starts to fall into place.

Re-ignite your partnership by creating the plan with your sweetheart, or get the whole gang involved. It's not always pretty but it can always be more fun.

Happy Valentine's Day to my sweet Ray and his amazing family, to DIY Network for one of my favorite projects ever, and to all of you who make my work and life so much fun.