Author: Catherine Herrera

There’s a small, lumpy ceramic frog sitting on my kitchen windowsill. He’s glazed the color of over-steeped tea, and one of his eyes is slightly bigger than the other. I found him at a church rummage sale for a quarter, tucked between a stack of chipped saucers and a fondue pot missing its cord. He’s…

First, Forget the Rulebook I picked up a chipped ceramic pelican at a yard sale three blocks from the sea. It cost me fifty cents and a quizzical look from the seller, who probably thought I’d lost my mind. That pelican now lives on my kitchen windowsill, wedged between a jar of sea glass and…

What Coastal Decorating on a Budget Really Means Coastal decorating on a budget isn’t about copying a catalog. It’s shaping a home that breathes with the shoreline’s rhythm, using whatever the tide brings in—thrifted wicker, sun-bleached cotton, a handful of sea glass in a mason jar. This is the art of living in a salt-worn…

I have a green spiral notebook with a water stain on the cover and sand pressed into the binding. It lives on the kitchen counter between the salt shaker and a jar of dried rosemary, and it is where I have been keeping the real record of this house for three years. Not the Instagram…

Coastal decorating isn’t about starfish motifs or pillows that scream “beach.” It’s about letting the light, the salt air, and the slow rhythm of the tides shape your space. For first-time cottage owners and renters, the real trick is creating that breathable, washed-ashore feeling without draining your bank account. This is a guide to budget…

There’s a particular quiet that settles over a beach cottage when the decor finally gets out of the way. It’s not about cramming a room with anchors and starfish until it hollers “ocean.” It’s about the way light drifts across a bare pine floor, the soft thump of a canvas curtain in a salt breeze,…

The Notebook That Knows More About This House Than I Do There’s a spiral-bound notebook on my kitchen counter right now, held together with a rubber band and a strip of duct tape that’s been there so long it’s basically part of the cover now. The pages are warped from humidity. There’s joint compound dust…

Wall painting is the great equalizer in a beach cottage. It’s the one task that promises transformation for the price of a gallon and a Saturday, yet it’s also the task that can freeze you in place, roller in hand, terrified of a single drip. I’m Coralee Whitmore, and I’ve spent the last three years…

Thrift-store furnishing is the slow, satisfying practice of building a home from pre-owned pieces—furniture, lamps, art, and odd little objects—found in charity shops, consignment stores, and estate sales. It’s the opposite of walking into a big-box store and pointing at a showroom display. Instead, you gather things over time, letting each find nudge the next,…

I bought the notebook at the dollar store in town the same week I replaced the third porch step. Ninety-nine cents. Black-and-white marbled cover, the kind every kid has owned at least once, and the spine already cracking. Inside, in my worst handwriting — the handwriting of someone holding a pencil with sawdust still on…