Incorporate people and places you love into your home.

This room is known as “the grandparents’ sitting room” because the dogs aren’t allowed in here and so they can’t jump on the grandparents, and the seating is a bit higher and better for older people. One grandparent is no longer living, and that’s a bust of him behind the Stray Dog Designs penguin lamp. His collection of lapel pins is also framed and hanging throughout this room and the larger home, and the oil painting on the right was also his. His love and presence is still felt in the space.

Frame postcards from loved ones or special trips, and look to your favorite places when thinking about or buying art for your walls, whether it’s a photograph of the restaurant you grew up eating in or a painting from your family’s favorite vacation spot. A friend of mine framed the sugar packet on which her now-husband-of-twenty-years first gave her his phone number.

I’m a big believer in incorporating into your space the people, places, and happy memories that are special to you. It doesn’t have to be a photo; all sorts of items can be framed or hung on the walls. The fin from my surfboard from when we lived in Hawaii is framed and hangs in my own home.