Crash! Seed to Stem

I'm so excited to be announcing this new series!  Every month I'll be 'crashing' a home, shop, or studio and sharing the awesomeness with you. This first Crash! I happened upon by accident.  Hubby and I were pooped from trying to move a couch into Frankie (and movers we are NOT) and were ravenous for a late lunch.  After parking and making a beeline for a Diner, we passed a shop that made my head turn.  Food?  Who needs food, I see pretty things.

Seed to Stem is hard to describe (even by the owners Virginia and Candace).  Here's my assessment- if a posh botanical shop fell in love with a quirky antique shop, had an affair with a taxidermist and then a love child was born out of this little love triangle, you'd get Seed to Stem.  Confused yet?  It'll all make sense when you check this place out!

It was so nice of these lovely ladies to let my camera and me invade their shop and ask them a few questions!

When did you first open the shop?

"We started Seed to Stem about 3 years ago, and were just setting up booths at craft shows, selling terrariums or other nature-inspired art we had put together. Soon after, we decided we wanted to have some type of a brick and mortar store, and rented a small room in an antique mall, The cider mill, in Sterling Mass. We stayed there about 6 months, quickly outgrew the space, and found our new home on Shrewsbury Street in Worcester."

What inspired you to start your own business?

"We were inspired to start our own business because we truly love nature, design, art, creativity, style..... and we really like working for ourselves. We wanted to open a unique shop that can be an inspiration to people, and connect them with nature. We also love visual merchandising, and have a blast re-arranging the shop to present our products in a unique way."

How would you describe your shop's style?

"We sometimes have trouble describing our shop's style. We often call it a gift, curiosity, and botanical shop. Our clients have called the shop "like walking into Narnia", "a perfect juxtaposition between life and death", a "natural wonder shop" etc. etc.  Our shops style is a mix of old and new, of times gone past...antiques, skulls etc., mixed with living plants, modern hand blown glass, and more stylish home accents, with a nod to the Victorian era.  We also do fresh floral design and staging for weddings and events. Most couples that choose us love our style and want it reflected in the design."

What has been your biggest challenge in regards to the business? "Our biggest challenge in regards to the business is keeping up with non-creative tasks.... bookkeeping, banking, e-mails, cleaning etc. ....all while creating the botanical pieces in the shop, re-doing displays, and doing large scale weddings and events. We feel like for most creative people, the more structured parts of running a business can be quite challenging."

On behalf of other creatives- I agree!  It's so tough to focus on boring numbers when you have shiny and pretty things to distract!

His name is Rufus and he is not for sale.  Came you blame them- look at that face!  Bear hug anyone?

And speaking of adorable faces- meet their shop puppy, Poe.  The little sweetheart has the most piercing blue eyes and almost converted this crazy cat lady into a dog person.

Even if you look away from the curated vignettes and look down to the floor, you won't be lacking for eye candy- those rugs!

Thanks Seed to Stem and Virginia and Candace for letting me share your shop's story!

Musical Chairs (again)

Remember when I said that the dining room was done?

I lied.  Well, not lied, just reevaluated.

Turns out that Hubby wasn't the biggest fan of the wide array of chair styles I had collected for this look.  He liked the more traditional one on the left, but that was about it.  I can convince him into a lot of things design-wise (like a 2-tone kitchen), but apparently my powers were weak with the chairs.

Good thing that I had replacement chairs just hanging around the house... right?  Now that I'm attempting to purge my basement furniture hoard collection, I brought up the entire old chair collection and started to play around.  I made a valiant last attempt to plead my case for keeping the above 4, but Hubby strongly voted for 4 more traditional styles.

Since it's his house too, and I don't hate these chairs by any means (I did buy them after all.... AND they may have actually been the original 4 chosen chairs way back), it looks like I have some more chairs to refinish! (AND maybe one of these days I'll figure out how to photograph the dining room without it looking dark and washed out at the same time.  maybe.)

Only one chair remains from the refinished 4 above, one was refinished for our previous dining room iteration, one is primed but was never painted, and one hasn't been touched at all yet.  They look like kind of a mess today, but once I unify them with paint and fabric like I've done before, they'll all be one big happy family.

There hasn't been a day nice enough to finish them yet (paint spraying is reserved for outside only), so until then, the chairs in my dining room may or may not be actually sittable.

Now all that's left to decide is color.  Do I stick with the yellow/green that actually grew on me?  Do I go for a mid-tone gray?  Or should I be crazy and go for a different green?  I know which way I'm leaning today, but that could change by the time I get to painting.  What do you think?

Bookcase Style: Take 1

Nothing like styling an 8 foot tall bookcase to make you realize how few books you actually have!  Seriously, I grabbed books from my office cubies and hubby's office built-in and maybe had enough to fill a shelf.  Good thing that tag sale season is about to start- I need to go on a (cheap) book buying binge! As you might be able to see if you pay close attention, I painted the back of the shelves a very light gray to add a bit of contrast.

I'm fairly confident that this styling will be evolving greatly over the next few months as I acquire more books and the room grows around it, so consider this Style Take 1.  I'm also still hunting for the perfect baskets and/or bins to live on the bottom shelf.  I wish I had gotten these before they sold out.

I'm practically bouncing out of my socks in anticipation for my newly reupholstered chair to come home this Wednesday after my last upholstery class.  At that point I'll be banishing Clifford the big red chair upstairs to hubby's office (YAY).  The reupholstered chair won't be 100% complete and I'll still have some homework to finish but GUYS, IT'S GOING TO MAKE THIS ROOM!  I'm not excited at all.  nope.  not me.

The other major change in the room will be a sofa.  I'm very very very impatiently trying to wait until we sell Frankie to order it, but Mitchell Gold is making it difficult and having a stellar sale.  I have, however, narrowed my fabric selections down to 2- velvet or microsuede??  I think the velvet would be top if I knew how it would work with the kitties.  Any crazy cat ladies with velvet sofas out there??

Back to the shelves!  In addition to an embarrassingly small collection of books, a little bit of everything made it on there from wedding pictures to IKEA art and quite a few thrift finds.

Now I have to revisit styling throughout the rest of my house since the majority of my small items have now found a home here.  Darn, more styling to do.

So what do you think?

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