Signature Style…?

I found a fun quiz thanks to a link from the How About Orange blog.  It is a quiz to determine your signature style.  I ran across it once before, but don't remember what my results were.

According to Ethan Allen, my signature lifestyle is now… elegance

“We’ve analyzed your selections – your Signature Lifestyle is Elegance. Elegance is the essence of timeless sophistication. A seamless composition of quintessentially classic design elements, reinterpreted through streamlined scale and shape. Luxurious yet beautifully livable. A cosmopolitan mix of clean woods paired with chic, enduring fabrics.”



Hmmmm… this makes me laugh because you could take a look around our house and definitely realize that is not the case. 



I look at the pictures they have under my “style” and I do have to admit that my breath catches ever-so-slightly at the sight of them.  Maybe it is wishful thinking?    I mean, look at this… I would love to stay here for a few days.  But I can’t quite imagine living like this.  We have real dust bunnies, crayon marks on the hardwood floor, and nothing is ever quite level and looks a little off-kilter as a result.  But I guess I could try to live in this elegant lifestyle if it were an option. 

So I decided I would retake the test.  This time, I had different options to choose from, and got totally different results.  Different, but probably more likely. 

my signature lifestyle is… vintage

“The results are in – your Signature Lifestyle is Vintage. Vintage is a visually engaging mix of color and texture. A masterful display of the art of juxtaposition. Its thoughtful, collected vibe springs from a peaceful coexistence of seemingly unrelated elements. An eye-catching interplay of sunwashed fabrics, distressed finishes, and bold and graphic patterns add an element of surprise to any room.”

I think this is probably more appropos for our real lifestyle.  We live in a house built in the 1800s.  It was an old farmhouse at one point, and it has the “character” and “attitude” to prove it.  Because of this, unless we were to gut everything and start from scratch, the house will always have a certain vibe to it and you can’t really force elegance onto it.  But I am trying to give it a little facelift every so often.  We’re in the midst of painting the dining room and living room, putting a new floor in upstairs and the office (and have stacks of flooring to prove it), and we’re redoing the upstairs bathroom as well.  I’ll be posting pics of our progress and hopefully, some day, we might actually touch upon a small piece of elegance even if the rest of the house rebels. 

I love quizzes like these because they always get me thinking.  I also think they are great for writers.  If you want to get inside of the head of your characters and decide how they live or what they like, it could be fun to take a quiz like this and choose the options based on your character.  Or even just to use a resulting picture in your character notes so you can go back and describe one of their rooms or a room of some other character where a scene might be set.  It can really make the details come to life.

What about you?  What is your style?  Does your home reflect your idea of style, or do you live differently than you'd like?