Hello and welcome to my first blog!
I would like to start by saying I am not a writer and the idea of writing a blog might be fun for a lot of people but it was scary for me. However, I love helping and sharing design ideas and tips with my clients and friends and what a better place to keep track of all of that is in a blog. So here it goes…
“Realistic Decorator”
Hi, my name is Lacie Vail and I am a “Realistic Decorator”. I am sure you are like what is that? Well lets me share a little bit about myself. My first and favorite job is wife to Scott and mom to Greyson James, Ryeder Brooks, Weston Calvert and our baby girl Karter Rose. Yes, we are those crazies with 4 kids and life is never boring. In 2020 I started to put my love of Home Design back to work and started M4 Designs, my second favorite job. I am also turning into a “Plant Lady” but I still need to learn a lot. I love color and patterns, anything sweet or made from carbs, photos of my family everywhere, hosting gatherings, decorating for holidays and all different types of style. I believe that your home should be your favorite place to be!
I grew up loving architecture and interior design. I redecorated my Barbie House with new furniture every year. I decorated my miniature doll house and added two rooms because the floor plan did not make sense. I had notebooks full of floor plans I designed since I was 10 and my favorite thing to do when I visited my grandparents in Florida was walk through model homes. Even at a young age I would see these spaces and say what I would have done differently.
After I graduated high school, I moved to SW Florida for two reasons. First, I love the beaches and sunshine, not the cold and gray of PA. Second, I felt like if I really wanted to work in the interior design industry, I needed to live in a place where I could use those skills. Oh, and I had family in this area and I was not brave enough to move completely away from everyone I knew and loved. I received a degree in interior design and got a job as a design assistant. Little did I know that on this job something would happen and make the biggest impact on my life. No, it wasn’t that I learned a big “Design Do’s or Dont’s” or how to handle challenging clients, I met my future husband my first week on the job.
Here I was a 22-year-old design assistant my first week on the job and I met this handsome “painter guy” (that’s what I told my friends). I thought he flirted but he’s just an overly nice guy. A few months after working with Scott (and found out it is his painting company) he asked me out on a date and 17 years, a wedding, 3 houses and 4 kids later here we are. Because I “knew a guy” and have an eye for color I have been the color consultant for Scott J Vail Painting for the last 16+ years. During those years I have also worked for a small construction firm, custom closet company, and been a mostly stay-at-home mom. Over the last few years I started M4 Designs (and extra points if you know what M4 stands for) because I love helping others make their homes come together. Also, I needed a way to help pay for all my great design ideas at home.
And that brings us to me being a “Realistic Decorator”. Over the years I have worked with high-end clients with large budgets to friends that just need to figure out how to work with what they already have. During this time, I realized what I love most is helping others not only make their homes beautiful, functional but realistic and work for their everyday lives.
I would love to say that my house looks like an Instagram post but believe me it does not. I am not super handy and cannot build furniture and remodel a bathroom on my own, I have 100 half-done projects, I have toys, laundry and shoes everywhere, I have those spaces that “just don’t feel right” and things undone because I need to save up and budget for them. I also believe in making your space about “You” (that’s for another blog post). I do not believe that everything in your home needs to cost $$$ or that if you love the color orange (that’s my favorite color) you can not use it. I do not believe that everything needs to match, but it does need to coordinate. I do not care if it is “trendy” or “no longer trendy” if you love it, use it. Your home should be a reflection of you and when you walk into your home it should make you smile not make you want to run away. That’s what I mean when I say that I am a “Realistic Decorator”.
So, I hope that some of you are like me and just need a realistic (and still beautiful) way to make your home come alive and feel complete. I am looking forward to sharing projects from our own home design journey. You can follow us on social media as we take our cookie-cutter home and making it our own. I hope to help inspire you with design tips, tricks, inspirations and easy DIY projects. For those who took the time to read this, thank you because honestly I know I would have just skimmed through it.