6 Things about… Kelly

OK, here I go… not sure I’m interesting enough to come up with 6 things, but I’ll give it a try!!

1. According to my dad (who never exaggerates when he tells a story *wink*), my great-grandfather was next-in-line to be the Duke of Shrewsbury. He didn’t want to be “royal”, so he married a cigar-smoking alcoholic bar wench and got himself disowned.

That part of the story is questionable, the rest is true… my great-grandfather was a very successful writer. Most of his books are about technology. He also wrote some books about Canadian geography. In 1910, he traveled the proposed route for the Grand Trunk Railway to scope out the potential of the land. He died of pneumonia when he was quite young (around 45, I think), and great-grandma proceeded to drink away their fortune and sold all his books for booze. She somehow managed to live to a ripe old age of 90-something.

There’s a mountain on the Alberta/BC border named after my great-grandfather, and today many of his books are only found in the Archives in Ottawa. I’m pretty sure this is where my love of writing comes from :-) Luckily, I didn’t inherit great-grandma’s love of cigars and booze ;-)

2. I LOVE PIZZA. I’ll eat pretty much any kind of pizza with anything on top. I especially love Hawaiian pizza. I also really like Thai pizza. Mmmmm, peanut sauce!! I make homemade pizza from scratch every couple of weeks. I have a great whole wheat crust recipe and a great tomato sauce recipe.

I could eat pizza every day for every meal. And really, it’s the perfect food – I mean, it covers all the food groups, right?? Grain, meat, veggie, dairy… genius!!!

3. I love NCAA college basketball. I keep saying I’m going to ditch Duke as my favourite team every time they choke, but I just can’t!! They’ve been my team since 1991. My most favourite college basketball moment ever was during the NCAA tournament in 1992. Duke was playing Kentucky. The game went into overtime. Kentucky was ahead with about 2 seconds left in overtime. Grant Hill inbounded the ball all the way down the court to Christian Laettner. And then…

4. I don’t have a middle name. My parents didn’t see any point in middle names, so my brother and I didn’t get them. I always feel gypped when I’m filling out form and have to leave the “middle name” line blank. Although a lady I worked with years ago insisted that I did have a middle name and it was Ann. I told her no, I don’t have a middle name. She told me yes you do, and it’s Ann. OK, what-ev-er!!

5. I think the 1993-1998 Mazda MX6 is the sexiest car ever. I love the lines and the fact that it’s sporty without being in-your-face. I bought an MX6 second-hand from my cousin in 1997 and had it for about 5 years. My now-hubby also had an MX6 when I met him. My creative pick-up line was “So, I hear you have an MX6…” :-) Last September, we bought a totally modded and super-sexy 1994 MX6 – SO sweet!!! We named him Sparky :-)

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6. And of course, I have to include something décor-related… :-) My living room was an inspiration room on an episode of Rate My Space!!

Now it’s Victoria’s turn – and I’m giving her the responsibility of tagging 6 more bloggers!! :-)

Whose Design Is It Anyway?

Kelly @ JAX Decor & Design

Is there such a thing as a truly original design? Can one person “own” a design?

I was just browsing the Rate My Space web site. I saw four rooms with colour-blocked walls. They were all similar – blocks of various colours with white “grid” lines in between. A few years ago, a member of the House & Home forums painted the a similar colour block & grid wall in her daughter’s bedroom. Who came up with the idea first? Did they all copy each other? Can one of them lay claim to the design?

When you think about it, every design is based on another design. We take a design that we see and like, and then create our own interpretation of it, putting our own spin on it and giving it our own personal touches. For example – these are two of the walls in my home office (it still needs some furniture!!)



It was inspired by this nursery on Rate My Space (unfortunately, I can’t find the original post on RMS, so I can’t give proper credit to the creator of this room):



The inspiration for the letters on the nursery wall came from this bedding from DwellStudio:



And this bedding was inspired by… well, I guess the alphabet. The history of the alphabet started in ancient Egypt over 4,700 years ago. So does that mean the ancient Egyptians get credit for these three alphabet-inspired designs?

Here's another example. This is our bed:



My husband and I came up for the plans for it and built it. We based it on an upholstered bed from Restoration Hardware and a bed that Sarah Richardson designed for a bedroom on Sarah’s House:




There are obvious similarities between the three beds, but differences as well. All three have a nailhead trim detail. The headboard corner cut-outs and legs on our bed are based on Sarah’s bed. But Sarah used a bold patterned fabric on her bed and we used a solid brown velvet.

So who owns this design? I say all of us – and none us. The beds I used as inspiration for our bed were likely inspired by other beds. In fact, Sarah had to change her original headboard design because the original wouldn’t fit up the stairs to the bedroom. Which is an example of how a design evolves as you move through a project.

Nobody can say that a design is 100% (or even 99%) theirs. Every design is a collaboration of people and ideas – from pictures in books and magazines, TV shows, Internet forums, a friend’s house, stores, hotels, nature… design inspiration is all around us and in all of us.