La Maison Home - Christmas 2011

I had the great privilege of spending some time with my friend - designer, innovator, shop owner, and one of the most beautifully generous people I know, Pat Celii - at her Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania store: La Maison Home. (Click to like them on Facebook!)

As you all know from my posts about La Maison Home, and Pat and her daughter Stephanie, I'm in awe of their beautiful and thoughtful approach to having a Home Decor, and Antiques store. Not only do Pat and Stephanie make it a point to fill their store with well crafted, handmade, and unique treasures - some with years of patina and a significant history - but they also create stunning and unrivaled vignettes that capture a true sense of the beautiful, and genius creative spirit they have in mass supply.

Located on busy Route 1, in Chadds Ford, PA - just minutes from stores like Terrain at Styers, Anthropologie, and Whole Foods, sits a charming old house - the location for La Maison Home. Decorated for the Holidays with an old sleigh and lots of fresh greens and assorted branches - La Maison Home looks like a chateau in France dressed up for a post card all of your relatives can drool over back in the states, doesn't it?  

La Maison Home is open Wednesday - Saturday 10AM - 5PM, and Sundays from NOON - 5PM.  If you're living in the Brandywine Valley, you absolutely have to make La Maison Home a weekly stop, and if you're planning on travelling that direction - make a point to add it to your itinerary. You won't be disappointed. For those of you who live across the country and can't possibly make it to Pennsylvania anytime soon - this tour should whet the appetite. Remember that if you see anything in these photos that strikes your fancy, you might be able to call it yours. Give La Maison a Home a call at 610-388-1229, and let them know you found something on Color Outside the Lines you'd like to discuss shipping. Without further ado:

Again, La Maison Home is set up in an old house, and Pat and Stephanie have taken the rooms on each of the two floors and clad them full of the finest of home decor and furniture in the Brandywine. The first room you see when you enter through the front door of La Maison Home, is the stunning room above. Set up with a dining, and living vignette, I can't get over the way Pat and Stephanie have incorporated gray and still managed to make the space so warm.

La Maison Home specializes in neutral interiors, and items with a certain French flair that fit into just about any existing decor. However, if your existing decor is just not cutting it for you anymore, La Maison Home can help you build a room from the ground up, resulting in a room that is beautifully collected, and will have all of your friends in awe.

I know, it's hard to leave a room filled with such beauty - but I promise it goes on and on and ...

Wrap it up! All of it! This room, maybe my favorite in the shop (as if I could choose!!), is filled with absolutely stunning finds. A french trumeau mirror, trendy french lime washed oak daybed covered in the most beautiful heathered gray linen, and upholstered dining room chairs in the fairest of blue and metallic gold all pull at my heartstrings. I tell you - it was incredibly hard to leave the shop without that mirror, but because I did - it's still there for one of you ... LUCKY LUCKY LUCKY you!

When I talked to Pat at lunch, she told me that having the shop this past year or so has really been a dream come true for her. Having to put together different vignettes weekly after lots of different things move out and around the store, has her thinking outside the box, coloring outside the lines if you will, and she now thinks of rooms (and how they function) in a new and fun way. This comes in handy, as Pat also has an interior design business called Keepsake Interiors. Her rooms are timeless, able to flow in and out of trendy phases, and with her even more creative experience owning the store, you can bet her clients rooms reflect that education. If you're interested in collaborating with Pat as an interior designer, contact the store to discuss your project. How great to have a store filled with wonderful inspiration - and then also be able to have the creator come over and set you up? Oh how I wish I lived closer to Chadds Ford. Alright - enough of my babble ... on with the tour:

Yes, that's another fabulous trumeau mirror - this time without the Swedish gray/blue paint. This room, complete with a full dining experience for 6, and a corner fireplace, is yet another gorgeous space filled with inspiration at every turn. Pat and Stephanie are really at the top of their game.

It's not just furniture and decor accessories though - you can find wine glasses, napkin rings, place card holders, candles, candle holders, just about anything you need to make a house a home.

Even the smallest room of La Maison Home is filled with beautiful and inspiring vignettes, and some of the most exquisite furniture hand picked for the shop by Pat and Stephanie. This room is what you might see first, if you use the side entrance of the shop. La Maison Home carries a variety of specialty candles for your home, one of which has CDLV smelling fabulous. If you get into the shop, check out Pat and Stephanie's collection of Zodax candles. I have the Lemon Verbena, and can't tell you how much I love it!

This year, Pat and Stephanie opened up the shop's "back room" to me and to those of you who may have been able to make their Holiday Open House. Filled with some of the things that have yet to be rotated into the shop, the back room is a great place to snoop. Since it's not always open for view, here's your chance to be a voyeur:

One thing you'll see repeated in Pat and Stephanie's vignettes at the shop are the antique paned windows backed with mirror. I confess I have never seen that before first visiting La Maison Home last year. It's an amazing way to bring in the refined and rustic in one piece.

Chairs covered in french grain sacks, antique armoires finished in the most beautiful of dutch blue paint, antique copper jugs made into lamps, and baskets of beauty ... all will eventually get to see their day in the main rooms of La Maison Home, but you saw it here, first!!! Heading upstairs:

It had been far too long since my last visit, and this room had changed so much, I could hardly take it all in. What was once a beautiful room of red and toile, is now a blue and white plaid dream! A set of 4 antique chairs are covered in custom slipcovers made from white linen. What's even better, is the upholstery underneath, a beautiful orange velvet, would work beautiful for the Fall and Winter holidays. Can't you see these at your house?

Next door, the "red room" has a few of the red accessories you might remember from prior posts, but has changed quite a bit itself. I adore the painting in the doorway, and that beautiful apothecary cabinet, don't you? I told you there was inspiration for every one at La Maison Home!

We finish up our tour in the third bedroom of the second floor ...

Breathtaking isn't it? And did you catch the almost full wall of antique paned windows backed in mirror? So beautiful. It's been my goal to work that into CDLV somehow, and if I lived closer to Pat, I'm sure she'd show me how. Just like she'd be willing to show all of you!

I know this was a picture heavy post, but (if you can believe) I really did narrow them down! (Over 100 pictures to these 41). La Maison Home is incredibly inspirational, and every single surface is a photo waiting to be taken. I hope you all enjoyed the tour, and if you're close, feel inspired to jump in the car and do a little last minute shopping for you and yours.

Thank you Pat and Stephanie for letting me once again photograph your store.

La Maison Home

810 Baltimore Pike, Chadds Ford, PA 19317

610-388-1229

http://www.lamaisonhome.net/

Wed - Sat: 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Sun: 12:00 pm - 5:00 pm