I'm always thinking...and usually talking. In this photo, who knows what I was sharing with my Sister, Linda. It might have been about the time we decided to surprise my Mom by painting the outhouse. My Dad was building our family home and built an outhouse until the plumbing was done. As the oldest, (about 6 at the time) I gathered my 4 siblings and we set off to find every can of paint we could find and dumped them into a big bucket, resulting in a bright purple. After completion, we proudly went to find Mom. Now our Mom kept us neat as a pin, and here we stood, 5 kids covered in paint, with big smiles on our faces. She was nowhere as excited as we were...and there might have even been a spanking involved. But it ignited my desire to "make things look pretty." Who would have thought that the little girl who painted an outhouse purple, would end up on HGTV & ABC.

Over the years, there was more than one mistake...but each one was a building block as I realized creating a fabulous space was much more than gathering a bunch of pretty things. I knew I had to understand the "whys" of the process. Bottom line, I have been at this decorating thing professionally over 40 years, and I still get excited looking at paint chips, rearranging a space, and specifying the perfect solutions for missing pieces. But what matters for you is the fact that I know my stuff and I'm going to share it with you in my Decorating Clubs.