mystory
I grew up in Pennsylvania, the eldest of three children. I went to Connecticut College for Women in New London and graduated with a BA in art history from Connecticut College in 1970... its first year accepting men! I taught art to K-5th grade children for a few years and then retired to be a full-time mom. In 1977, my husband and I moved with our two sons to California.

Arts and crafts in many forms were always part of my life, but never professionally until 1994 when I started my own interior design business. In April of that year I founded HomeStyle and focused primarily on staging and re-arranging. I appeared on the Home and Garden TV network show "Decorating Cents," and for several years I contributed to a local newspaper column answering peoples' decorating questions. It was occasionally picked up by other national papers, including the Chicago Tribune.

Along the way I became "Grams" to two terrific grandchildren, Gabe and Jalyn, and to five crazy granddogs. Over the years, the breadth of my business has expanded to what it is today: full scale interior design for both residential and commercial clients. I enjoy working to ensure that those spaces reflect the people who occupy them. I love to come home at the end of the day and that is the feeling I want each of my residential clients to have as well.

My jewelry making became too prolific to be called a hobby anymore, and serendipityjewels was launched in 2009. I love the immediacy of the creative process here compared with the length of time it may take to achieve a result in interior design. Some projects, like my flipflops, are a combination of my two business interests... trims from interior embellishment meet jewels! Who knows where it will all lead? karin