Remember, you can click on ANY photo below to enlarge it!

Welcome to Owasso, Oklahoma, home of Amber and her darling family. Residing in their home for four years, Amber describes her style as both very shabby and very chic. Her home has a vintage focus, where anything old and loved is welcomed.

 

When I asked Amber to describe her home to me, here is her wonderfully vivid description: "It is cozy and fluffy, warm with candlelight, and the air is filled with the smell of something cooking on the stove. Bright with light, puzzles on the floor, glitter in the rugs, and icing and sprinkles covering the kitchen table. We’re not overly concerned with the need for stuff, but we love the stuff we have, and I think the stuff you surround yourself with is important." Sounds wonderfully inviting, Amber!

When it comes to Amber's cottage home decor, she is drawn to anything old and vintage. Chipped paint, scratched surfaces, big pillows, fluffy beds, dreamy-hazy blowy curtains, and not to mention roses, roses, roses! She loves old dishes, and admits "I can’t stop buying them. I literally have boxes of them packed away, have them stacked on display shelves, standing up in plate racks, hanging on the walls." She also enjoys the look of soft muted colors, and mixes it up with a lot of pink and yellow in her home. She is also drawn to dangly crystal light fixtures, doilies and vintage tablecloths. Amber also enjoys adding a personal touch to her decor, "I love for my house to feel like a home, and cover the walls in my kids artwork and spelling tests, while our family pictures stand on every surface."

When looking for ideas and inspiration, Amber is a self-described magazine junkie. She enjoys Romantic Homes, Country Living, Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion, and Better Homes & Gardens, and she peruses the library and book store for home decorating books and publications. She also loves to go look at people’s homes, so much in fact, that she has been known to bake Christmas cookies for neighbors, just so she can deliver them and see inside of their homes. Amber also finds inspiration from her mother, who is also antique obsessed, and often buys things for her that she knows she’ll love.

When it comes to antiquing, Amber lives in a great area for shopping. There are lots of junk stores, antique shops, marketplaces, and fleas. Her favorite place is an antique store called “Antique Peddlers” in Claremore, Oklahoma, about 20 minutes away. She fulfills her dish fetishthere. And she also enjoys collecting jadeite dishes, milk glass, rose dishes, glass cloches, vintage tablecloths and aprons. Also she recently starting collecting old garden statuaries.

When it comes to decorating tricks and creativity, Amber paints almost everything that she buys new and then sands most of it off. And if she does buy it old, she never paints it. She prefers the the paint to be clinging to the surface with all its might. Also, Amber has have been known to hang some pretty odd things on her wall like chairs and tall grasses from the backyard. Once she even hung an old farm implement on the wall, but took that down because she decided it wasn’t “her”. She also had her husband make a headboard for her bed out of a very old back door with a glass panel, and it turned out darling. Amber suggests "Look for ways to use the ordinary for something extraordinary."

When I asked Amber what her favorite room in her house was, she said her little girls room. She describes it as "Very prissy with its little chandelier and pale pink walls (chosen for the name of the paint color “Cotton Candy”). They have beautiful cast iron beds to rest their little blonde heads, covered in Shabby Chic duvets and pink ruffled sheets. Amber says "I love their little framed pictures of their friends, and their pink princess T.V. and phone. I love to just lay in there and wonder if they’ll always love pink and fluff, or if (gasp) they’ll grown up to love modern minimalism!" -JG

(Photographs courtesy of homeowner, article by Jennifer Grey, owner of The Old Painted Cottage)