As a kid, I couldn’t understand why adults were content to live in boring houses. I knew that when I was old enough to have my own place, I would decorate every room in a completely different style.

A six-foot tall aluminum Christmas tree stood in my friends’ front window. Strung with sparkling white lights it shimmered like a distorted disco ball. It was meant to be ironic, I figured, crass commercialism as a beacon of hip.

When I don’t have time to travel, I time travel.  The buildings of architect A.E. Doyle are like portals to Portland’s past. The architect’s classical-inspired buildings, including the Multnomah Public Library, the Benson Hotel, Reed College, the former Meier & Frank now Macy’s, and dozens of others built during the early 1900s, helped shape the City of Roses.

A man built a house in Wales entirely by hand.  His low-impact Woodland Home might have inspired a blog about being good and green and resourceful but instead I’m way too excited about the fact that the place he created looks like a house for hobbit Bilbo Baggins. Theme decorating is my weakness. This obsession interest stems from a troubled childhood, troubled because I was sharing an orange and yellow bedroom with my sister while  my little brothers’ room was outfitted with Charlie Brown and Snoopy bedspreads. The boys had a Peanuts theme. The girls had only a vague reference to citrus fruit.

The built-in bookshelves in the home-office-formerly-known-as-den have become battle grounds for a bloodless conflict I’ve come to think of as “Treasured Tomes Verses Titles Powells Won’t Buy.” In a family of four avid readers, the books come in, the books go out. Some are borrowed from libraries, others from friends, but most are bought, read, held onto a few years and then sold back to secondhand books stores, passed along to friends, or donated. 

Popsicle sticks make fine birdhouses. Just don’t expect to see any at the Portland Bazaar. Grace Bonney, founder of the Design*Sponge website and author of Design*Sponge at Home, is co-hosting the December event, and Bonney is an astute observer (and absorber) of good design. Spongelike, you might say.

The Williams-Sonoma Homestore in Portland inspires the ideal hostess in my head. She’s the one who graciously welcomes guests with drinks in Baccarat crystal chilled with chic and smart stainless steel “ice” cubes, serves hors d’oeuvres from the little wood-topped kitchen island, before settling back in an adorable little Parisian flea market chair to raise a glass and say “Cheers!”

On my umpteenth day of hacking and coughing — don’t worry, the computer screen doubles as a sneeze guard  —  my thoughts naturally turned to creating a stylish recovery room.