I am so pleased to share our dining room, which I decorated as part of the SCHUMACHER Blue and White Design Challenge! 

A little background – I was still in the hospital only a day or two after Kit was born, when I received a message from Tori Mellott, the Style Director at Schumacher, inviting me to participate in this challenge. I had to ask Andrew to re-read the message to confirm I wasn’t imagining things in my postpartum state! 

Schumacher is an Establishment in the interior design world, the leading American textile and wallpaper house, and it was a huge honor to be on their radar at all. I definitely felt the pressure to execute here. We had no immediate plans t0 fully decorate any more rooms in our house since initially moving in — we had finished our planned projects for the year and had a newborn. But how could I not say yes?!

The challenge was this: to choose wallpaper and/or fabrics from Schumacher’s Blue Rhapsody Collection to decorate a room of my choice. We hadn’t done anything in our dining room and I thought it would be perfect for this project. We already had a beautiful antique dining table and buffet that we were lucky enough to receive second-hand from my parents when they redecorated a few years ago. They are very traditional and I adore them. We had already installed the sisal rug from Fibreworks (Siskiyou in color linen — most similar I can find is color natural available here for retail via Pottery Barn). Otherwise, the room was completely bare and kind of sad and stark looking. This was the perfect excuse to decorate it and make it a special space for all of our little family’s special occasions!

By the time we were given all the details for the challenge, we had two months to complete the room! I did not know who the other participants were from the get-go, but quickly figured out that Nicola Bathie McLaughlin, a social media friend of mine, was also designing a room for this challenge! It was once again such an honor to learn I was in her company, as I have admired her style and interior design talents for years. We had so much fun running ideas past each other and anticipating the big reveal. See the beautiful bedroom she designed here! And then I learned during the big reveal that Julia Dzafic from Lemon Stripes was the third participant. The children’s room she decorated is just perfect!