Our "Urban Cottage" Home

Welcome to our "urban cottage" high-rise home in San Diego County, California! Our personal style of creating a home and lifestyle that's right for us includes weekend "jaunts to junque stores" together, (the ultimate M.O. in recycled/green living and marital bonding!), to find just that right piece of "beautiful treasure"-- (a.k.a. trash to some people! :), and combining it with more expensive furnishings, along with mementos we've collected during our many years of travel together. We hope you enjoy our home!

"Decorating is not about making stage sets; it's not about making pretty pictures for the magazines; it's really about creating a quality of life, a beauty that nourishes the soul." --Albert Hadley--

"Every door has its own key." --Swahili Proverb "I believe in plenty of optimism and white paint." --Elsie de Wolfe "I deeply believe that a beautiful decor
can have a beneficial influence on our life."
 --Albert Hadley "Beauty is found in the details." --Sarah Ban Breathnach "Have nothing in your house you do not know to be useful
or believe to be beautiful."
--William Morris My husband and I collect prints when we travel together.

"They say a picture is worth a thousand words. To me, a picture is worth a thousand memories."
--Jeffrey A. Goodman We've recently turned our dining area
and kitchen into our "Bechen Bistro."

"Dining is always a great artistic opportunity." --Frank Lloyd Wright

And God said, "Let there be light!" --The Bible

We like to offer our guests a welcome beverage, so I turned our brand new "Old World" style buffet into a beverage bar. A.k.a. "Cafe Bordeaux," courtesy of this $3 plate I found in a "junque" store. "Offering a cool drink is a gracious act." --Alexandra Stoddard "Entertaining is about giving to people and sharing with them."
--Valentino Couturier
"If you invest in beauty, it will remain with you
all the days of your life." --Frank Lloyd Wright"Kitchens should be designed around what's truly important--fun, food, life."
--Daniel Zoulud "Flowers are God's poetry." --Kathryn Bechen "Anyone who has a library and a garden wants for nothing." --Cicero "Nothing else smells like home." --Janine King "Home is the comforting nest to harbor the soul." --Anonymous"Your home should be a greenhouse where you flourish to your full potential."
 --Vicki Kraft
"It's all about editing one's life--refining, simplifying, constantly editing."
--Bill Blass "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." --Leonardo Da Vinci "To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul." --Cicero "Prayer and housekeeping; they go together." --Gunilla Norris "I wiped away the weeds and foam, I fetched my seaborn treasures home."
--Emerson "When friends enter a home, they sense its personality and character,
the family's style of living."
--Ralph Lauren "We read books to find out who we are." --Ursula LeGuin "The beautiful is as useful as the useful, perhaps more so."
--Victor Hugo "The true spirit of hospitality is about sharing the pleasure you derive from living with beauty."
--Charlotte Moss "The essence of a house resides in its details." --Anonymous "Comfort is a room you love being in without knowing why."
--Ruth Graham Bell "An interior is the natural projection of the soul." --Coco Chanel "Your home is a sacred space; a space with your address."
--Kathryn L. Robyn "Ample make this bed/make this bed with awe." --Emily Dickinson "In the softness of pillows one finds renewed optimism and strength."
 --From the book Victoria: Bedrooms
"Ah, there is nothing like staying home for real comfort."
--Jane Austen "Life is too short to sleep on low threadcount sheets." --Leah Stussy "Beauty does not depend upon magnificence."
--Lucy Abott Thorpe: The Home of Good Taste, 1910 "Why do we love certain houses? Why do they seem to love us?"
--T.H. Robsjohn-Gibbings "The most important things in your home are people."
--Amish Proverb "Little things mean everything." --Samuel Johnson "There is a certain majesty in simplicity." --Alexander Pope I found this picture in a "junque" store recently for $28!
Oh, to me...it's beautiful!

"Work toward assembling a nest that will hold you gently but firmly,
as you might cup a bird in your hand."
 --Sarah Ban Breathnach
"The spa lifestyle is...simply respecting the body and emotions."
--Sunamita Lim in the book Spa Living "In a place for beauty, a woman looks for leisure to her appearance and increases her allure. Such a pleasurable time deserves
surroundings filled with grace."
--Victoria magazine
"Order is the shape upon which beauty depends." --Pearl S. Buck "The house is but the externalized man." --Frank A. Parsons
"To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition,
the end to which every enterprise and labor tends.
--Samuel Johnson "Lucky is the woman who courts the muse at home."
--Victoria magazine
"Why beauty? Because there is a kind of harmony that
allows the spirit to come forth."
 --Natalie Davenport "Home is a communion of the spirit." --Peter Megargee Brown "When your home environment is pleasant, you're more likely to be."
--Emellie Tolley "I am going to make everything around me beautiful; that will be my life."
 --Elsie de Wolfe My hubby Steve and I share a home office and this is his gig!
"You can't have everything, where would you put it?!"
--Steven Wright
Our tiny little urban terrace gives us joy.

"A small house well filled is better than an empty palace."
--Thomas D. Haiburton

"Home should feel like a sweet embrace." --Kathryn Bechen "When at last I took the time to look into the heart of a flower, it opened up a whole new world...as if a window had been opened to let in the sun."
 --Princess Grace of Monaco When you step outside the door of our San Diego County high-rise home,
here are some of the sites you'll see....

"Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate."
--TolkienThere's a FAB bookstore ...with a HUGE section of decorating books!

"By harnessing the power of design, we enrich our lives everyday."
--Joan Kohn
"Keep a green tree in your heart and
perhaps the singing bird will come." --Anonymous
"Where the good things are, there is home." --Euripides
"A flower-less home is a soul-less home." --Vita Sackville-West "Beauty is after all, simplicity." --Einstein "Happy is the house that shelters a friend." --Emerson "I had three chairs in my house: one for solitude, two for friendship,
three for society."
--Thoreau "We shape our dwellings, and afterwards, our dwellings shape us."
 -Winston Churchhill

We hope you enjoyed the tour of our "urban cottage" San Diego County, California home!


"Our house had a heart and soul...it was of us...and we were in its confidence and lived in the grace of its benedictions." --Mark Twain


'Til Next Time!

Kathryn :)