Our final Tastemaker introduction of the 2020 holiday season is interior designer and HGTV host Grace Mitchell. Grace began her blog, A Storied Style, in 2012 when her four children were young and then began practicing interior design outside the home a few years later. Known for her eclectic and imaginative spaces, Grace has put her creative stamp on numerous renovation and design projects, major brand collaborations, magazine features, and as host of HGTV’s One of a Kind television series. Continue scrolling to see some of our favorite Grace Mitchell spaces!
Grace dreamed up a collection filled with seersucker stripes, vine trellises, and baskets of kumquats to achieve an elegant holiday feel for her tastemaker cards. Dogwood Hill artist Inslee Fariss went right to work painting all of these concepts. The result? The loveliest combination of citrus vines, mint green, and stripes, along with whimsical bows pulled together for a beautiful holiday collection! Continue scrolling to see the collection, and you can shop it all here. We have also included our Q&A with Grace at the bottom of this post.
What is your favorite holiday tradition?
We chop down our own Christmas tree in the piney woods of East Texas every year at my husband’s grandparents farm. Walking through the woods, the careful choice of a holly tree, a pine, or a cedar, and the triumphant return is such a happy experience for us every year. Our tree always looks more like a big bush than a traditional cone-shaped tree, but we love its imperfectness.
What is your most memorable holiday and why?
The year we had our first son, Ellis, is one of our favorite family memories. He was born close to the holidays. After a series of late miscarriages, we were elated to have a baby. We holed up at home, ate a to-go holiday dinner out of styrofoam containers from a local cafe, and snuggled our new baby. It was a sleepy, blissful kind of magic.
Which cards from your Tastemaker Suite will you be sending out to family and friends this holiday?
How do I choose?! It will be a mix between the Seersucker Citrus Landscape, and the Seersucker Citrus Floral, plus gift tags, thank you notes, etc. Inslee did a beautiful job! Thank you, Dogwood Hill, for including me in this all-star Tastemaker line-up, I’m honored!
For Holiday cards, how do you compile your list?
I break it into categories – Family, Friends, Business for Me, and Business for my Husband. I always order extra for the people I leave off at first! I try not to worry about the list too much. I always make a little note of people to add to next year’s Christmas card list.
Do you have a consistent go-to gift for family? Friends? Work acquaintances?
We love to gift experiences! Zoo passes, museum trips, date night gift cards, we even gifted a helicopter ride one year!
What is your go-to holiday hostess gift?
A tabletop calendar from Kelly Kay Paper!
What is your favorite last-minute holiday gift idea?
A beautiful bouquet of flowers in a pretty container. (I have several special ones in my collection for atHome!) I find flowers to be something people love getting but often don’t want to spend the money on for themselves.
What keeps you inspired during the busy holiday season?
Each week after Thanksgiving and up to Christmas, we think of something special we can do to help a friend or a neighbor. We accomplish each idea over the weekend, and it really helps keep us focused on the reason for the season.
What is your favorite holiday dessert?
My Mom’s rum pie!! A secret family recipe!
What is your go-to favorite holiday scent?
Thymes Frasier Fir candles. The best!
Where are you daydreaming of traveling to in 2021?
France! I went a few years ago, and I would love to go back with my husband and kiddos.
What are you most thankful for this year? And what are you most looking forward to in the New Year?
Seems like a token answer, but after the year we have had as a country and a world, my husband, our children, and my faith. I feel so grateful that I have my family to go through this life – that I get to love them and be loved by them. More than ever, I pray that my work, words, and actions reflect the greatest and most important commandment ever given – love one another.