Woman in Real Life

I am excited to bring you another "Blogger Style" post. This time I'm sharing a look at the lovely home of Taby, the clever blogger behind The Closet Intellectual. Taby shares her home with husband Jeremy, their three children, three dogs and two cats.

Tabetha was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area of California. Her earliest memories are of macrame and orange walls in the family living room and hippies singing "Puff the Magic Dragon" around the fountains of the city. In her late teens she moved to North Carolina. "No grand reasoning or exciting circumstance," she says. "North Carolina was there, so we went - it's just how my family rolls."


Taby finished college and on a whim decided to go to grad school. That's where she met her husband, who was born and raised in Tennessee. "We fell in love and got married, and the rest is history," she says. "Literally. We are both historians - I do American history, with a focus on civil disobedience, and he specializes in European history with a focus on national identity." Taby is a professor at a local college, while Jeremy works as an adjunct professor and a research librarian.

The couple's oldest child, Bayley, (named after the San Francisco Bay), just turned 21 and is a English major focusing on British literature. Son Tucker, 17, is a junior in high school, playing football and running track in his off hours. Harper Ann is "a 16-year-old dynamo who plays soccer and makes mischief like a pro," says her mom. Dogs Doctor, Alice and Poosh and cats Boromir and Mac round out the group.

In her own words...Taby's design philosophy

I've always been drawn to color. I blame my mother's orange walls - two bright orange walls and two yellow in my childhood living room. We have no intention of ever leaving our house - we've put far too much of ourselves in her to sell - so I enjoy redoing and rethinking and viciously rearranging the environment from time to time. Right now I am going for a version of a 30's bungalow meets Alice in Wonderland...which makes a lot of sense in my head, but looks odd on paper.

Since the house is small, I try to keep everything coordinated with the same colors running throughout, though each room has a different colour emphasized to give it a sense of division of space. Both Jeremy and I like independent artists and supporting folks trying to make a go of it, so we have a bunch of different goodies from both local artists and etsy crafters. We also enjoy attending auctions with my parents, who still live in North Carolina, and have a bunch of oddities from hither and yon.

I do some painting and crafting - in my younger days I painted murals and did faux finishes for a living, which I loved as a process, but I'm not great working with clients so it wasn't a good fit for my personality. I still enjoy crafting and painting as hobbies. It's a nice creative respite from a job that requires a lot of thinking. I find tons of inspiration from websites and other bloggers. I love seeing how other people incorporate their own unique ideas into their homes. I am also endlessly inspired by my mother, who has wonderful taste and a similar penchant for redecoration. Fortunately my husband is always game for change so long as he has his office to retreat to! All kidding aside, we do a great deal of hunting and gathering together, so the house really is a blend of both our interests. The bottom line is, we all love Cecilia madly. She is home!