I have a lampshade with dangly beads on a table lamp I bought at Pottery barn around 2012 or so. I I love it!.. The base is dark bronze and the shade is a pale gold patterned silk. The beads are short and elegant (IMO) lol.

I also have a small table lamp in a spare bedroom with a shade with small short beads. The bedroom is the only room in our home with several old family pieces, an antique table and some antique silver sitting around so it seemed to fit and I like it. Sounds similar to the one Seagrass describes but I have had this one around 15 years.

Your brother’s home sounds lovely. Why shouldn’t we enjoy things we love?

“None of that diminished my enjoyment of their house one”

Because their house is a real home. You felt the love within the walls.

Totally agree with you cawaps. What matters most is how your brother and SIL enjoy it. And from your comments, it’s clear that it’s warm, cozy and feels like home. What more can you ask for?!

Absolutely!

I hope I didn't offend any owners of beaded shades (or any of the other items) by parroting snarky comments from the other side. I view your beaded shades with the same affection I have for my SIL's. (You all seem to have taken my comment in the spirit it was offered, but I realized on reading the comment that some people might not).

My home will never grace the pages of House Beautiful or any other trendy magazine.

But it is my home, and we love it.** And I hope that my family & friends feel welcome and comfortable.

**disclaimer-- hubby would love it more if we had his "dead pets" (deer heads) hanging in the family room.

ain't happening.

LOL "Dangly Beads"--I too purchased a new lamp shade in 2012 or later. Beads were the "latest" fad so I added just a touch--how soon we forget the home decor fads!!!

Cawaps, not offended at all! For me anyway, it just reminded me of the lamp in a seldom-used room guest and why I like it.

You said it right IdaClaire, I was just reading an article that read "older items like Tiffany lamps should be removed from home" WHAT??? I will never remove my authentic Tiffany lamp given to me by my grandmother. The nerve of them!!!! lol

I have realized recently that my desire for a perfect or eviable magazine worthy home stemmed from subconsciously wanting to be happier. Rather than focus my energies on addressing underlying trauma and my physical and mental health I poured my focus on the silly idea that if I had a bigger kitchen, a perfect paint color, found that perfect sofa, etc than my life would be perfect. That clean house a clean mind idea I guess but it translated in my subconscious as a perfect house a perfect life.

Now I realize it is a happy life first which will create a happy home not the other way around. I now focus my attention on surrounding my self with joy not perfection and it turns out a lot of things I love are considered dated or wrong for my house etc. but I no longer care. Ease, inviting and good enough are my new home decorating goals.

Beautifully put, Laura.

Sometimes it depends on the scale. My late aunt and uncle had a cottage upstate NY decorated with 100% mish mash of cast offs, flea market finds and antiques that came with the house. The house itself was weathered and worn with a mix of paints and wallpapers and old and new plumbing. Fabulous old windows with restful views. Huge kitchen with fabulous food coming out of it. Taken in totality, it was a style, it was organic, and it totally worked to immediately make me feel at home. If you were an anti-clutter everything has to be lined up person, not so much. If you had purposely tried to create it all at once from scratch, with fake antiques and knock off stuff, it would have looked contrived. If only a few pieces had fit that aesthetic, then they would have looked "off" and out of place.

I visited the home of a friend of theirs with them, and it was totally color coordinated, carefully curated, high end mostly. It also was lovely. To insist on only one style being appropriate is to, (in my opinion) take away what is greatest about being human, our diversity and creativity. But it is a great marketing ploy for the insecure. And a thrift store boon for the rest of us. I certainly get the industrial, minimal aesthetic and why it might appeal to people, but if you're not one of them, don't strive for it. The purpose of decorating should be to make your home feel welcoming to you, and then others you might share it with. I've often had visitors remark about my home being "cosy" and comfortable looking. That's my style and I'm sticking with it.

Also, good design principles apply to many styles. It's like saying collage isn't a good art form but Calder is, and only Calder. Or back when non-representational art was looked down upon. I have a friend who is rockin' her own mix of the two, as a successful oil painter.

The hardest thing for me is people who turn their noses up at history. They don't want anything to remind them of the past, even their own childhood, let alone their family history. And yet they remark about all they learned on "Ancestry.com" or "23 and Me." Why prefer the impersonal to oral family tradition? The hegemony of the machine!

I'm not really into decorating all that much like some of you are and I certainly don't have your talent for it. I'm only here because I ran out of things to talk about on the kitchen forum years back and this off-topic group sounded like a fun and interesting bunch so I migrated here.

So that being the case my decor has never been magazine perfection. After many years of traveling for business I often felt like magazine perfection homes reminded me of upscale hotels which was the last thing I wanted to come home to. So I have an eclectic mix of things that appeal to me - things I inherited, everything hanging on our walls came from some place we have visited, a few other items we've collected that have personal meaning, functional and comfortable pieces of furniture that are cat friendly (still look okay with cats making use on a regular basis). I don't care for "clutter" and I learned many years ago that cats just get into that stuff if it's within reach and destroy it if it can be destroyed.

So overall what we have is casual, comfortable, meaningful and hopefully inviting to all who enter. I am a regular real estate listing surfer and I see so many higher end homes that make me wonder - where do the residents actually live in this house. Who could actually live in the perfection - not me or my pets.

Our old farmhouse was a bunch of clutter!

We have moved into a 1914 craftsman bungalow in which each room has no less than 2 colors (big reason it sat on the market for so long!)

Some rooms still have a crazy mix of furniture, but we've also replaced furniture in the living room and dining room with older and older looking furniture, lamps and art.

We're much pickier at thrift stores and flea markets these days and love going on "the hunt" for early century stuff!