418 // How to Create a Cozy Home All Year Long (Not Just in Fall)

Dani Watson (0:07)

We grew up with the phrase home is where the heart is. But our culture has shifted, and now the message is, our home should be Pinterest perfect. But I'm calling BS on that message. Home, it's not about the stuff, it's about the story. And whether you know it or not, your home right now is already saying something. So what is it you want your home to say? Hey, I'm Dani, a former first grade teacher and home decorator. Going from a dual income to a single income so I could stay home with my baby's mint budget, like ramen eating, goodwill shopping budget. And I learned a few things along the way, like how to bring big style to your home without breaking the bank. And I'm sharing it all with you here. Tips, tricks, decor, and design advice so you can start telling your story with your style. Welcome to Fig and Farm at Home where it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

Hey friend, before we get into today's episode, I want to tell you about something. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know my story. I taught myself to decorate on a ramen budget, striping a wall with leftover paint because we couldn't afford to paint the whole thing. I've made the expensive mistakes. I've stood in the store holding something, texting a blurry photo to someone saying, thoughts? I get it. I've been there. Here's the thing nobody tells you about decorating. It's not a taste problem. It's not a Pinterest problem. It's a process problem. You don't need more inspiration, friend. You've got plenty. What you need is a plan and someone in your corner while you figure it out. That's exactly why I built the Cozy Home Reset. It's six months inside the Cozy Home Collective plus a private room reset call with me one on one, so you get the community and the personal guidance. Real coaching, real support, a real process, not another list of things to buy. Are you ready? Let's make your home feel like you and especially cozy. Head to figandfarmathome.com/cozyhomereset.

Grab your spot and I'll see you inside, friend. I saw an ad on Instagram yesterday in my local area advertising for porch decorators to come around to your home and decorate your porch, which is fantastic, especially since it's fall time. We all know we love a good pumpkin and a mom. But here's the thing. We don't need hundreds of pumpkins to make our homes feel cozy, and that's just on the outside. What we don't need is hundreds of tchotchkes to make it feel cozy either. That's what we're talking about today. We are talking about how to make cozy, something that is evergreen, something that is a natural extension of your decorating, who you are, your story, and just the overall welcome of your home. Cozy. It's a dial. It's a dial that we turn up or we turn down, and that's what we're diving into today. Now, fair warning, you are going to want to get a notebook because I am going to have you write something down. We're going to do a little art project, if you will. So get out that notebook, get out that pen, paper, and I want you to draw. Okay, wait for it. You're going to draw a candy corn. We all know what they look like. I had one yesterday. Greg brought some home, and of course, I couldn't not have one. Don't color it in. The point really is to draw a triangle with three sections. The base of the triangle is going to have the biggest foundation, and then it's going to have a middle section and a teeny tiny tip. That is what I want you guys to draw, and I want you to label it first, and then we're going to talk about how cozy is a dial, what cozy isn't, what cozy is, and why fall is so reminiscent of, well, A, needing to bring in all the pumpkins, but B, why we want to feel so cozy in the first place. So at the base of your triangle, I want you to write design style. You know, if you've been around here for a while, I don't want you to have a generalized global design style. I'm not going to get into it today, but there's a difference between that and your nuanced aesthetic. That is really what I want. So you can choose, write design style or aesthetic you choose. In the middle section, I want you to write cohesive, and then at the very top, I want you to write styling. Now here's the thing. You can't have a cohesive style, a cohesive home until you know your design style. You just can't. It is one of those, you can't have a square peg in a round hole. It's just not going to work. This is the exact same thing. You can't have a cohesive looking home if that is your desire, if you don't know your design style. Well, let me back up. You could, if you guess and you guess correctly, if you are instinctually good at recognizing what it is you love, you can, but it's more accidental. And the way I teach what I teach, we know it's not accidental. We know that sometimes we think we're terrible at decorating. We know sometimes we make mistakes and we go to the store and we buy the wrong thing and we miss return dates. And then we're stuck in the cycle of crap, I can't do it. Okay, this is how you get out of it. We have to know our design style first. That is the foundation. Once we know that, then we can understand the fundamentals of cohesiveness. You can't have a cohesive home without knowing your style. And then at the very tippy top of that candy corn, the triangle, whatever you want to call it, is the styling. This is the part that we all rush to. This is the buying part, the fun where we are like, I need a new pillow and we go and we put the pillow on our couch and we think, gag, what happened? Or we think, oh, I'm going to stay on my bookshelf, like what I saw in the picture, and we put it out on the shelf and it looks like, oh, no, it looks like I just threw things on my shelf.