Episode #67: (MINI) An Interview with Grace Mitchell

Elsie: You’re listening to the A Beautiful Mess podcast. This week, we’re catching up with HGTV host Grace Mitchell and chatting about her festive holiday decor line. Ok, so I want to talk a little bit about your TV show.

Grace: Yeah.

Elsie: And also your new line for At Home. So tell me a little bit about your TV show and the new Christmas collection.

Grace: My TV show on HGTV is called One of a Kind, and it’s basically about what I do in real life, which is taking people’s memories and stories and experiences and putting it into their homes. I like to think about going beyond just making a pretty room and really making it personal and unique to them, to where they really feel like they’re at home. And so I’ve done two seasons of that that have already aired. And you can watch it on HGTV.com or Amazon or you know, wherever you watch television. And then for At Home, so a really awesome adventure in my life has been working with At Home on this product line which includes Christmas, a really beautiful Christmas collection that I’m really proud of. I actually just put up my Christmas lights yesterday, (laughs) this is the earliest I have ever decorated for Christmas ever. But I just normally when I’m pulling Christmas out, for one thing, my Christmas stuff is not well organized right now, but I’m changing that in 2020!

Elsie: Nice!

Grace: Yes. (laughs) But, so I just kind of dread it, like pulling it out. The boxes are all broken and blah blah blah. But this year I am pumped. I think you know, and I’ve seen a lot of this just looking at social media too, people decorating really early because we are just ready for the cheer and some magic, like let’s get some magic up in here.

Elsie: It’s true. So your collection with At Home is lots of releases and Christmas is just one of them.

Grace: Right. Yes. So this is where the Grace Mitchell for At Home collection is going to be around a long time. And so, yeah, so we’ve worked pretty, pretty far ahead and I just feel like each collection gets better and better. I mean, I’m just so excited about all of them and just the unique things that they bring to a store that you can just walk into, which is great. I know a lot of people online shop and I do some of that too. But it’s sort of like magazines and books, like there’s just nothing like getting a magazine and opening it and feeling the pages and looking at the pictures and dog earing, and tearing out — you can’t, it’s different. It’s just hard to get that feel online. And I feel like it’s the same sort of with home decor. I like to go in there and piece things together in my cart and look at it all. So I love when people send me videos and photos of them going in the store and looking at it and talking about what they like and showing like with what they already have at home and how they’re going to pair it. And then with the holiday collection, I really love sort of a vintage kind of heirloom like special Christmas things. I feel like a lot of Christmas for a number of years was kind of for us was like throwaway stuff (laughs).

Elsie: Boo!

Grace: Yeah, you get these big — you buy like the two hundred ornament box and then it breaks and your kids tear all the tops off and then you throw it away. So I love that this…like every item just feels really special and unique and personal. It’s just like the weight of it, even like some of the weight of the ornaments just feels good. And like some of my favorite ornaments are some from my husband’s grandmother, who I feel like is my own and they’re really old from the thirties and forties. And they’re just like — the details and the hand painting and the magic of them. I really just tried to transfer that to now so that you feel like when you buy it and you find something really special, like something that feels like it sort of has a memory attached to it in a way.

Elsie: Yes. We’ll be showing a lot of pictures of the collection in the show notes. And I’m heading over there right after we chat. And I’m hoping to get some of the varied size wood, Christmas trees. You know what i’m talking about?

Grace: Yeah, yes.

Elsie: And then the light up Christmas trees, those are so pretty, so.

Grace: I actually as soon — thank you! — as soon as I see fresh garland in the store, I bought all different trees, an odd number. So I think I have 11 total for my mantel. And I’m so excited to weave those. Yeah. In there. And it just feels really exciting to decorate for Christmas this year. And I’m so proud of the collection because I feel like it’s just so magical. Like even when I first showed my kids, I took my kids in there and they were like, oh, this is yours?!

Elsie: That’s so special!

Grace: It was really sweet. And it’s been a lot of the collection too, has these sweet little like woodland animals and each animal sort of corresponds to it made me think of one of my children. So it’s — they’re just — you know, kids…like, there are very specific things that I remember from my childhood that my mom would bring out, like we had this little box with a dancing Santa and light up — you know, kids love that stuff. So some of the ornaments light up, the trees light up, some of the things twinkle. They’ve got like a snow globe with a music box. And those are the things that I remember from my childhood at Christmas. So I wanted to put those things in the collection also.

Elsie: That’s such a good inspiration to draw from. I love thinking of my childhood Christmases as well.

Grace: Yeah. And just what spoke to you like what you remember about it.

Elsie: Hmm. Yeah. My grandma had one of the villages, the light up villages the old-timey ones. So I think that’s why now I can never pass by a little light up house without buying it because I just think it has that nostalgia attached to it. So, that’s so special. So tell me a little bit about your design process when you’re designing the collections for At Home.

Grace: All design and creating is solving problems, right. You have a problem in your house. You have a hole here. Not a problem, a real problem. But, you know, like a design problem.

Elsie: Design problem. Yes. The best kind of problem.

Grace: (laughs) Totally! If there’s a problem that I want to have in 2020, that is it. And so I was just thinking about what I want to find and that I can’t. You know, what I want to be able to go in a store and get. And that really fashioned a lot of the collection because you’ll see, you know, the trends kind of come and go, but I wanted things that felt like they were modern and fresh but were grounded in timeless appeal, like very classic. But you know this — the patterns some of these chinoiserie patterns are very traditional, but we enlarge the scale and made this background a really beautiful blue or green that feels very fresh of the moment. And all of a sudden it’s like this really beautiful piece of art that you want to have in your house. So that was really the whole plot behind the collection is what can I do to create pieces that feel very designer? They feel like something you’d see in a magazine, feel like something you would see on television even, but that you can get at an amazing price point. And that has been so fun to create and put together. And I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to create together because I really feel like there’s just nothing else like it out there as far as collections go, and that a lot of collections will sort of have one tone, right? But I really wanted to create this for every home. I feel like every person, no matter what your style, can go in there and find something that is unique and speaks to them. And I — that’s been so fun to put together is just a very varied, looks like you’ve collected over time.

Elsie: Yes. You did a beautiful job. OK, so can you give us one tip for making your, like, decorating your home for the holidays in a personal way?

Grace: When I’m thinking about decorating my home in a personal way, I think when especially when it comes to Christmas or the holidays or really whatever holiday you celebrate, I think to me that’s just attached to either a special memory that I have and just connecting to that, like I said, something I loved in my mom pulling out from Christmas, going out and getting something that makes me think about that, reminds me of that instantly makes my house feel personal. I also think too, not everyone has great holiday memories.

Elsie: Mm. That’s true.

Grace: And that’s something that I think about too. So I’m a big believer in creating your own magic and creating what you want your home to feel like during the holidays. And if that means, oh, I want to take the pine cones from my yard and string them up with garland and hang these beautiful snowflake ornaments from them intermingled and just make that like your thing. I think that just connecting it to a special memory for you or who you want to be is is really great. And I think that’s such a beautiful thing about design, is that you can project your memories, but you can also project what you hope for yourself.

Elsie: That’s beautiful. Oh, my gosh. I love the idea of making your own magic. I think that’s so special.

Grace: Well, I think to in just reflecting on the year that we’ve all had too, I think that’s so needed. I think that we need we all need to think about what we can do to just create some cheer and make some — make things feel light and magical. After Thanksgiving leading up to Christmas, we drive around the neighborhood and we, like if someone needs their leaves raked or if like just like little things that we see. Oh, that pot is empty. Let’s surprise them and put a plant in it or flowers.

Elsie: Oh my gosh, that’s so sweet.

Grace: Yeah. It’s like our little we call it Christmas — being Christmas fairies (laughs) and…

Elsie: Oh my gosh, that is adorable.

Grace: It’s really fun and it’s a fun tradition for a family. We never — I try to do it when people aren’t home because it’s more fun for them not to know. But that’s what we do every year. And that has really been any tradition for us. And I think it’s great for kids, too, because as a parent, you’re always trying to think, what can I do to take the focus off of presents?

Elsie: Yes, that’s so true.

Grace: Kids should be excited about presents. That is cool. That is a really fun part of Christmas. Like we’re never going to change that. Who doesn’t like getting a present? It’s great, but I really try to think of ways to make it as outward focused as possible.

Elsie: That’s really good. I put three presents under our tree and my kids ask me every day if they can open them, and it’s still only mid-November.

Grace: I’m so impressed that you have presents under your tree.

Elsie: I go a little hard for the holidays. It’s like my guilty pleasure. OK, so I want to ask you a guilty pleasure. Do you — what is your ultimate 20 20 like a TV show or like a podcast or something that’s been getting you through that’s just like total guilty pleasure?

Grace: Ok, I’ll tell you, I totally watched. Love is Blind.

Elsie: Oh, nice. Did you love it?!

Grace: It’s so fascinating to me. It is not something that I would normally watch. I actually — so I have what are what I like to call laundry folding shows. And these are shows that I don’t feel like — I am not a big like sit down and watch TV person because I feel like I should be doing something. I don’t have a ton of free time, but I am OK with turning on some ridiculous show when I’m folding laundry.

Elsie: Nice.

Grace: My very favorite laundry folding show is Married at First Sight.

Elsie: Ooh, I haven’t seen that.

Grace: Everyone, if you have not watched the latest season of Married at First Sight, it was the best one ever. The people are just — there are a couple of couples that are just so delightful to watch and I just loved it.

Elsie: Oh, OK. I’m going to add it to my list. That’s so fun.

Grace: Have you never watched it?

Elsie: No, I’ve never seen it!

Grace: Oh, it’s so good. People literally get married at first sight. There’s three experts. One of them is a fellow Texan, Dr. Viviana, shout out — and they match these people based on their magic science (laughs) and then they get married. And there is one couple on there that they are so delightfully quirky and individualistic and wonderful. And you just think like: Elsie. It will make you believe there is someone for everyone like these two people could not be more perfectly matched. I can’t believe that they are created and that they ended up together.

Elsie: Oh, that’s so cute.

Grace: I could talk about this a long time, but yeah, I love married at first sight.

Elsie: Oh, I love it. OK, I can’t wait to watch. OK, I had one more question. I was curious if you could tell us a little bit about what’s coming from your at home collections like in the upcoming seasons. Like what are you on that you’re excited about?

Grace: Yeah. So we will debut a new collection, the Spring Collection in January.

Elsie: Oooh!

Grace: Yeah. Which I just did the photo shoots for a couple of weeks ago in my front yard. (laughs).

Elsie: That’s good that you live in Texas then, because our front yard would have been covered with leaves. (laughs)

Grace: Yeah, no, it was awesome. Yeah. And the weather here is so great right now, but it was hilarious because we had this photo shoot and tables and all of these things set up and people kept stopping because they thought it was a garage sale. (laughs)

Elsie: Oh, no!

Grace: Because they see like the tables with all their product on it. So they had to put a sign up that said photoshoot, not yard sale. (laughs) But I’m going to have a really awesome outdoor furniture collection and all sorts of beautiful outdoor dishes that you look at and you think, surely that is not something that I could take outdoors…

Elsie: No way!

Grace: …and that my kids can use.

Elsie: I can’t wait to see it.

Grace: I love that people feel like they can get something that is very design-oriented like that in a budget store.

Elsie: Yes. That will really appeal to our audience. I can tell that their heart eyes are probably going off right now because, like, a budget-friendly version of a designer thing is like our whole thing. So that is wonderful. I’m so excited. So our show notes are going to be filled with items from your holiday collection that people can shop now. Where else can people find you?

Grace: Oh, you can find me on Instagram, I’m @astoriedstyle

Elsie: Nice. OK, we will put a link to your Instagram. And are there any other links — a link to your show?

Grace: Yeah, a link to the show would be great. And you can link to my website, too, if you’d like.

Elsie: Thank you so much for joining us today. And we are so excited to decorate with your collection.

Grace: Yeah. I can’t wait to see what you what you guys find. So please send me pictures and photos and videos. I love seeing that and I love to repost them because it’s so fun.

Elsie: Thanks so much for listening. Be sure to check out our show notes at abeautifulmess.com/podcast to see how I decorated my home using Grace’s product line from At Home. The snow globe trees are pretty amazing. I can’t wait for you to see them. All right. Have a good week.