Favorite Spaces — by Guest Mom Hailey Meyer Liechty

I tidied up my generally messy house so you can have a peek. (My friend Nancy the Wonderful has a sign in her neat & tidy studio that says, "This mess is a Place." Amen to that.) If I have a design philosophy it is: make it functional, fun, beautiful and hopefully open and friendly for our family and guests. Easy on the eyes, ears, feet, mind. Here are three of my favorite places in our house.


1| the Pantry. It is a separate closet within the kitchen. Everything is at hand. It is great for cozy cookie making too. The containers are Tupperware Modular Mates. They work beautifully, look great, clean up well. They meet the criteria. I recently added the 4 on the counter.


I also like the new Ball "Collection Elite" canning jars for everyday doo-dads and smaller bulk purchases. (An aside: while preparing this post I heard a great story about Men loving/selling Tupperware on Marketplace/Public Radio, check it out.)


High tech recipe system.


2| This is our mantle in the family room, which is off the kitchen. At the start of the building process (the foundation had been poured), I realized that the room was crazy small for the many jobs it needed to fulfill. We stopped the process, worked with our architect and added 10 feet. It has turned out to be a smart move. The portrait on the mantle is of Julian (9) by Lee Udall Bennion.


Lee has painted our two older children's portraits, each at age 8. If we have to evacuate, I'm grabbing these paintings first. Well, after the children and Ginger. . .


3| My Studio. My Brain. Gabby remembers a fun cooking class at my house and I remember buying these faux-grain insect specimen drawers from her as she was preparing to move to New York. We had a great conversation and then had to figure out a way to get them out of her house, onto a truck and into a storage unit — waiting to build a room for them! They are fabulous.

Right now I use my studio space for my lovely itty-bitty laptop. I draw some, journal some, sew some (love notes to my darlings), read and eventually hope to get all my children's photos/mementos out of here. I recently purged my studio of all toys that I was "keeping out of reach" from the children they belong to. Now they are kept out of reach someplace else.

My goal is to have my studio clean and available for work all the time.