Interior Decorating

My whole life I have messed around with interior decorating. As a kid I studied every decorating article in every woman's magazine I could find. I looked at Architectural Digest in the Library. I dreamed and wished and fantasized about having my own place to fix up.

In college I lived in a dorm where decorating was limited by budget (I was always flat broke) and by rules, but I got matching bedspreads and made my roommate use one of them, I made a slipcover for the dorm issued "comfortable" chair, and I fussed around with wall art and throw rugs and whatever else I could manage to make it a more homey environment. As I grew older and got my own apartments, I always decorated as much as I could using accessories and usually a lot of second hand furniture. This is true even today. I have a few new pieces of furniture but much is second hand, enabling me to get nicer pieces than I otherwise could afford. Most of the wood is in the teak/fruitwood/medium-brown color range, with the exception of some rehabbed pieces in painted finishes.
	My current apartment is tiny, a one-bedroom condo which I rent from it's owners. It is packed -- but it functions pretty well for me and the cats. (I think responsible pet owners honor the needs of their charges and end up with strange accomodations for them. In my case, there are an odd number of baskets, boxes, and other sleeping spots that would be hard to justify to a hard-core Interior Designer, but the cats love them and so I don't mind them, even though they tend to increase the clutter some.) In the pictures shown you might spot a number of my flea market treasures and art, both mine and that I have collected. The large abstract landscape with the peach colored flower arrangement (which I made) is by Michigan artist Connie Obits. The small darker tree painting is by Michigan painter, Bob Michmerhuizen.
In the office photo, note that I cleverly used the shelves of my teak bookcase, pulled out slightly for added depth and to accomodate cords, for some of my computer peripherals. You might be interested to know that this is in the living room, directly across from and no more than ten feet away from the large painting shown above. (The painting in the office area is by Michigan watercolorist, Noreen Jordan.)