Our home’s basic décor is… Who am I kidding?  There is no basic décor in our house.  We like what we like, or we keep what we had.  Maybe that is shabby-chic-practical. Daydream I do in Pottery Barn catalogs and other magazines with highly-stylized photos – where there is never a power cord displayed.  Odds are they snip off cords before snapping the photo.

I’m lulled into the magic of interior decorating when I go into Pottery Barn.  The simplicity of layers: a dazzling flat glass bowl, filled with beautiful sienna green glass marbles and three breezy papa bear/mama bear/baby bear sienna candles rightfully anchored in the middle.  And do you know what I do?  I buy the papa bear sienna candle.

At home, I set that big cool green candle on my counter, and it’s then I realize my kitchen counter and living room walls are warm colors.  I have made the biggest element of that Pottery Barn centerpiece mine.  And there it sits.  No glass bowl and no green marbles.  No mama bear/baby bear companions.  It's no longer Pottery Barn.  It's an awkward candle sitting on a gold counter.

I could add it to the fireplace mantel, but I already have three candles grouped together.  This won’t work because of that funny but true rule about grouping sets of odd numbers, not evens.  And, it's too chunky to join the mantel decor.

I glance to the corner of the kitchen where a wire basket holds some of my favorite heart-shaped beach rocks, an unbroken bottleneck from the beach, broken chocolate agates from the boys, rose quartz and gypsum from South Dakota.  Plus, my oh-so-smooth white rock from Greece.  And the heart rock my mom gave me one Mother’s Day.  The basket is nestled between the ceramic lantern and cork trivet I found in Portugal.  And anchored on either end by empty Ball jars that held canned tomatoes two days prior.  Liking the candle just as much as all this other stuff, I plunk it in the middle as a focal point.

Oh, alright… I couldn’t leave Sienna in the middle of my working counter space; I needed a quick place for it -- just as I did for the jars.  The candle doesn’t have the home it had in the store, but it is on a stage with much more character.  Welcome, Sienna, to shabby-chic-practical-nostalgic.

(Throwing practicality to the wind, I combined chocolate, cream, and the ocean in my Bedroom Decor.)