Living With Kids: Sara Davis

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

Sara’s home is gorgeous and charming, curated and stylish. Best part? She’s a big DIYer and has done a lot of the work with her handy husband, Steve. They live in a little town outside of Indianapolis, and their home is full of traditional pieces with modern finishes, and gorgeous colors throughout. Sara is also an entrepreneur, a blogger and a former greeting card designer. Her positive attitude and her welcoming digs are going to make you want to pick out some DIY projects to tackle in your own home. Please say hello to Sara!

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

My husband (Steve) and I met here in Indiana at Anderson University where we attended as undergrads. We were both Marketing majors (I also doubled majored in Art & Design), and we met in our “Principals of Selling” class. We saved our textbook from that class and have it in our library — obviously it was the most rewarding class either of us has ever taken! We were married soon after graduation, and Steve went on to law school while I worked at a greeting card company as an art director.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

After law school, we bought our first home in the suburbs of Indianapolis and brought all three babies home to that house. We loved our neighbors and it was the perfect place to raise our young kids. However, as they started getting a little older, we wanted more space and more land. The area where we were living was growing like crazy, and we were worried about how large the schools were becoming.

We moved to our current home a little over 4 years ago after living in the suburbs for almost a decade. My husband took a job outside of Indianapolis, so we knew we wanted to move closer to his job.  We landed on the little town we’re in now because it was closer to Steve’s job, the schools were good, we could still attend our church and we could get SO much more home for our money.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

We live in a small town northeast of Indianapolis called Pendleton. Since I grew up in a small town in southern Illinois, the last thing I ever wanted was to move back to a small town. Now, from my perspective as a mom, I realize how amazing small towns are.  We love the sense of community. You absolutely cannot go anywhere without running into someone you know — but it’s nice. We celebrate everything in Pendleton, and there’s a parade almost every other weekend during the warmer months.

They’ve just recently made the interstate three lanes to our little town’s exit, so unfortunately I know it’s a matter of time before we’re discovered. However, for now, I love our small town life.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

When we looked at our home, I saw it for what it could be. At the time, it was being lived in by a single dad and his three kids and had been on the market for awhile. It originally had a pool table in the dining room and the home really hadn’t been updated since it was built. The outside is what I absolutely fell head over heels for. It’s a French chateau style – sophisticated, with painted brick. I loved how timeless it looked.  Unfortunately it was the only home I wanted in the area, and my husband still teases me today that we lost all bargaining power because I was too in love.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

We’ve done a ton of remodeling. Some of it was a result of big-time home issues and the other was a result of partnerships thanks to my blog. The first major remodel was our master bath. When we first moved in, we knew there was a huge leak in the shower. In fact, our inspector warned us the shower wasn’t useable. But we knew we’d rather wait to fix the leak until we could do the complete remodel. Turns out, it was over three years later that the remodel actually happened.

Before we even thought about remodeling the bath, we had to tackle some of the less visual projects — fix the roof, put in a new a/c and furnace, replace the water heater, replace our pool liner and buy a pool heater. Thankfully we did eventually get to the master bath remodel, and we love it. We hired everything out, so it was done in a little over a month. Although I didn’t love the workers walking through our bedroom all day long, it was worth it.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

Our kitchen was the other room in the house we dreamed about remodeling.  The layout was terrible, and we wanted to open the space more. Last summer at Haven Conference (a DIY home décor blogger conference), I pitched my kitchen remodel to The Home Depot. I won, and as a result we were able to remodel our kitchen. 

Part of the pitch was that my husband and I would DIY the kitchen. What I didn’t tell The Home Depot was that we had never done a DIY project of this size. We had built some wall treatments and small shelving projects, but we definitely didn’t know how to remodel a kitchen.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

We agreed to a 9-week timeline (which looking back was crazy), and we got to work. We called a bunch of friends to helps us demo a kitchen, and a few hours later I was completely panicked as I looked at our demolished space. We had already reached our first unexpected issue in the first two hours: There was a water line behind the wall we wanted to tear down.

We didn’t have the budget or time to deal with moving the water lines, so we ended up building the wall back (but only made it half as long).   

Frankly, I’m surprised my husband and I are still together after that project. We spent late nights and weekends working on that remodel. It was absolutely exhausting, but it is so amazing to look at our kitchen and realize that WE built it!

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

I was created to create. It’s what makes me tick. As a little girl, I was always entering coloring contests and making homemade gifts for our family. I went into college with the intention of just earning a business degree, but felt like I was drowning. I added a second major in art and design and suddenly I felt like I was doing what I was made to do — creating!

After college, I loved working for the greeting card company, but quit my job to stay at home with our firstborn. I was absolutely miserable those first few years. I completely lost myself — which I now know is not unusual for new moms. However, once I began using our home as my canvas, I came alive again.

When my youngest was two, I created Sincerely, Sara D. It began as a custom invitation and card company, but I realized I love decorating and sharing DIY tutorials more than creating stationary. So, my DIY home décor blog, also called Sincerely, Sara D. was born.ƒ

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

I wish someone had told me to be confident in my abilities as a designer, and I wish I had realized it’s okay if not everyone loves my style. When we were selling our first home, it was a roller coaster ride. We had three offers that fell through and close to 100 showings. Although I received so much amazing feedback, all I could remember were the few mean comments. 

I had only been blogging for about a year when we sold our home — I made some crazy décor decisions and was still searching to find my design style. However, I shared my blog with the buyers at closing and a few months later heard they had started their own blog where they were not so kind about my décor projects and choices.

My heart was crushed and I was ready to quit my blog. Luckily my husband encouraged me to not quit, and I’m so thankful I kept going. (Happily, their blog fizzled out pretty quickly.)

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

I believe my mom superpower is creating a pretty home — both with décor and by keeping it clean and organized. I can’t rest until the home is picked up. 

Now that I think about it, I’m not sure it’s really a mom superpower, because my kids have to deal with my need for cleanliness and organization. When they were younger, I would have to work really hard to allow them to be creative. I would only allow myself to pick up before naptime and bedtime — which was SO hard for me!

I am a terrible cook, so I hope my kids appreciate a pretty home and all the effort it requires.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design MomLiving With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

I hope my kids look back on their childhood and have happy memories. We entertain a lot and want our home to be open and inviting for our guests. I hope my kids remember how much we value our family and friendships. I do worry that my kids will only remember me working. They see me building and painting and assume most moms do that.

I hope they see me working hard, but I do worry I don’t take enough time to just be. I’m not one to sit and watch tv with them and I really don’t love games. I worry I get too wrapped up in accomplishing something. I can’t handle a pile of laundry or a messy kitchen.

Living With Kids: Sara Davis featured by popular lifestyle blogger, Design Mom

My absolute favorite things about living with kids is the laughter they fill our home with. I love their happy and carefree nature. They don’t worry about a to-do list. They just live for the moment.

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Thank you Sara! There are so many lovely details in this home that it is hard to choose just one. But the color choices and the light fixtures throughout are spot on! So stylish and yet so classic and simple. I also love the dreamy library with a ladder for the book shelves.

When I read about Sara’s path from graphic designer to stay-at-home-mom to entrepreneur stationary maker to DIY blogger and designer, it made me wonder: When you achieve a goal, do you ever find it hard to change directions and focus on something else? Like you think: But this is what I wanted for so long, I need to stick with it a bit. Even though once you achieved the goal, you realized maybe it’s not exactly what you wanted? It can take real guts to change and modify your dreams into something different and bigger, but I love when people are brave enough to do it.

Are there goals you have worked towards that once you achieved them, you no longer wanted them? Do you have trouble letting things go and moving on to the next set of goals? Are you the kind of person who can change directions midstream, or do you like to sit with things a while before you change and evolve?

LIVING WITH KIDS SOURCES

Sara’s gorgeous kitchen cabinets came ready to assemble in that amazing color

Living Room Rug

Dreamy Master Bathtub


Photos credit for many of the photos pictured here: Carpenter Photo. See more of Sara’s beautiful work on her website or on Instagram. Living With Kids is edited by Josh Bingham — you can follow him on Instagram. Would you like to share your home in our Living With Kids series? It’s lots of fun, I promise! (And we are always looking for more diversity in the families we feature here. Single parents, non-traditional parents, families of color, LGBT parents, multi-generational families. Reach out! We’d love to hear your stories!!) Email us at features@designmom.com.

26 thoughts on “Living With Kids: Sara Davis”

  1. Great home and design. And I usuallly don’t like golden stuff :)
    Good wake up call for all the busy mums to find time to some “dolce fare niente” with their kids.
    I include myself in this category…

  2. I really love your children’s bedrooms, especially the boys. Beautiful home – I hope you have many happy and healthy years in your home!

    1. Thank you Brittany! The shoe cabinet was an old mail sorter I stumbled on at an antique store. My husband thought I was crazy for buying it, but he loves it now!

  3. I don’t think I’ve ever been so drawn to the design in a Living with Kids tour, and I love the warmth that came through in her words. Obviously bookmarking her website stat, but I need to immediately add the shoe cabinet, graphic poster and library ladder to my life. So aspirational but still warm and accessible.

  4. Beautiful home. I love the chandelier in the breakfast nook next to the kitchen. Would you mind giving a source for it?

  5. I am so struck by the navy paneled wall! So impressive, and that rich, navy blue color is just beautiful. Your library/piano room has also given me some inspiration for an oddly shaped room in our home. Thanks so much for sharing!

  6. This was one of my favorite homes ever — the beautiful shades of blue, the lovely fixtures, the wood accents — it seems calm but lived in, organized but warm.

    And I also have self-imposed clean-up times in my house with young children (otherwise I’d be tidying all day!)

    Adding Sara’s blog to my list ASAP.

  7. Your style is so feminine and elegant and fresh. I always think it is ridiculous when other people ridicule different decor styles- the truth is, if the home is clean and organized, and has been styled with authenticity and love, it will be beautiful. It doesn’t matter how far the decor may be from my personal taste- if it is loved and tidy, the beauty will be apparent! So good on you for keeping to your path. You have an excellent eye.

    1. Thank you Megan! I agree – I see beauty in so many styles that are different from my personal taste. Have a great week and thanks for taking the time to comment.

  8. Beautiful home! What is the piece of artwork with th navy background over the mantle in the LR? Is that a print?

  9. Just beautiful. Can you share the colors of the blue wall, the whites, and the doors? I was interested in painting my interior doors an onyx color, but I’d be interested to learn what color those are because they look great and I’m committed to blues.

  10. Beautiful home! I especially love the kitchen and the bathroom. That bathtub with the shower area and natural lighting is to die for!
    Would you mind sharing where you got the hanging clock by the kitchen wall? It’s adorable!

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