I have been decorating rooms in my head my entire life.
Long before I could articulate what I loved or why, I could walk into a space and feel what it was missing.That instinct got its education at Neiman Marcus, my first job, where I learned that quality is never accidental, that beauty has intention behind it, and that the way something feels in your hands matters as much as the way it looks. I was young. I was paying attention. I have never forgotten what I learned there.
I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, met my husband in Texas, and followed his career to Colorado, where we spent fifteen years building something from nothing — a marriage, a family, a community, a life. We raised two daughters in that season. My parents eventually moved an hour away to be close to us. My siblings were nearby. I had found my people and put down roots so deep I thought they were permanent.
Then we made a decision that changed everything.
My husband wanted our daughters to have what he had growing up — the Texas Hill Country, the family ranch, wide open land, that particular kind of freedom that only comes from knowing exactly where you belong. So we left. We left Colorado, left fifteen years of community I had built from scratch, left my parents and my siblings and the life I thought was mine forever.
We came home to Texas. And we bought a house.
It was vacant when we found it. Two acres set back from the road. Soaring ceilings. Arched doorways. More natural light than I knew what to do with. And at the center of it all — a courtyard, empty and waiting, full of possibility I could see so clearly it almost hurt.
I did not see an empty house. I saw a reason for people to come.
That is who I am. That is what this blog is about.
What You Will Find Here
The Home
I design spaces using AI tools — Claude, ChatGPT — alongside my own instincts and a clear aesthetic vision I call Refined Southwest Hacienda. Texas Hill Country grit meets Santa Fe luxury, grounded in handcrafted artisan spirit and lived-in warmth. Three words: Hacienda. Collected. Soulful.
I love Jan Barboglio iron pieces, cognac leather, limestone, linen, hammered copper, and natural materials that tell a story. I do not love trends, matching furniture sets, or anything that looks like it came from a catalog. I believe your home should look like you collected it over a lifetime — because the best ones do.
For years I could see the room clearly in my head but couldn’t translate it into purchases or explain it to anyone — including my husband. AI gave me the language for what I already knew. That changed everything.
I write for the woman who has a vision for her home that she can see clearly in her mind but has never been able to fully execute. You do not need an interior designer. You need a framework, a point of view, and permission to trust yourself. That is what I hope to give you here.
The Recipes
My mother spent thirty years as a Home Economics teacher in Arizona, sharing her love of cooking with hundreds of students in her classroom. We call her Mimi. Her recipes are the kind that get requested at every gathering, written on index cards passed between friends, and made on ordinary Tuesday nights because something sweet after dinner is not a luxury — it is a love language.
My great-grandmother, who passed away last October, was another thread in this same fabric. Her influence runs through every recipe I make, every kitchen I stand in, every moment I reach for an apron and feel her beside me.
These recipes deserve to be written down. They deserve to be remembered. They deserve to be made over and over again by the next generation of women in our family — and maybe by yours too.
This blog is where we keep them safe.
The Life
I am a full-time working mother of two daughters, rebuilding a life in a new city in midlife — making a home from scratch, finding community from scratch, figuring out who I am when everything familiar has been taken away and replaced with two acres of Hill Country and a courtyard full of potential.
I also document memory keeping — using AI tools to create photo books, preserve family history, and make sure the stories that matter do not get lost in the busyness of living.
I write about all of it honestly. The beautiful parts and the hard parts. The rooms that came together and the ones that are still in progress. The recipes that worked and the ones that remind me why we need Mimi in the kitchen. The grief of leaving and the grace of arriving somewhere new.
A Note on Why
The HomeMaker’s Daughter is not about perfection. It is not about a flawlessly decorated house or restaurant-quality food or a life that looks better in photos than it does in person.
It is about the women who shaped me — a great-grandmother whose hands knew how to make something from nothing, a mother who spent three decades teaching young people that a kitchen is a place of care and creativity, and the daughter they made, who is doing her best to carry all of that forward.
It is about a house with a courtyard that was empty when I found it and full of life because I refused to see it any other way.
It is about you, too — if you are also building something. A home. A community. A sense of self that feels like yours again.
Pull up a chair. This is a table worth sitting at.
And there is always something good in the kitchen.
— The HomeMaker’s Daughter