Genevieve Carter has deep roots and a fresh perspective. Moving back to Long Island from California, she has over twenty years of design experience, and works with her husband at Carter Design.

Since we’re all spending more time in our homes these days, we invited Genevieve to join us on Lenard Team Connections. She shares some of her DIY projects, renovating on a budget, and how to revamp your outdoor living space. 

Keep reading for some highlights, or listen to the full conversation here. 

How do you think home design will change?

I think there will be more of an evaluation of what function or what joy things bring into your life. My house, though we lived here for four years, was really a pass-through environment between raising children and the various commitments we had and love doing. 

Now our home serves as where we exercise, where we gather as our small family, where we eat -  it's everything. And so I think it will change the dynamic of our home.

How do you curate experiences in the home?

Home is a place to collect and hold memories, but also take trips. I am always an experience seeker. 

As a culture and a tribe, we were on this fast wagon to seek out, and I think those experiences are going to come home.

Some areas of the home are more relaxed, and then other areas are more meditative, or a place to connect with people. Right now when we're not getting to see the people we love in so many places. So I picked photos and I’m framing their photos. Making sure that we can see them is much more important than has been for us in the past.

What are some of your DIY projects?

We have an old frame collection that we have always had to possibly frame clients’ art or things. Every year our Christmas card has always just been a photo strip of our children, we've just that's been our thing. So my husband put the photo strips in the frames and created little installations. These are just photo strips that would live in a box. 

No matter what size home we live in, what are some considerations we should take into account when designing a space?

It's funny, you could almost do this with a phone. Because to really see a space you have to take a step back from it. So it's almost taking a picture of space and looking at it like ‘What is adding to this space? What is subtracting?’ 

Just give spaces their best chance. Decluttering is one thing to consider, color is another. And knowing the purpose of the room. If one room is going to have a dramatically different use for you, like an exercise room, take that into consideration.

For the people who want to revamp but have a tight budget, what are some tips you have for them?

Let yourself gather thoughts first before action - Pinterest is an incredible tool for this. Gather thought and you know, paint a room, but pay the $20 more to get paint samples. Put time into the equation. We all have time right now. Make yourself a little mood board whether it's on Pinterest, or actually gathering the materials. Sometimes just gathering materials and layering them together tells you a lot. 

Let yourself kind of dream because you'll feel a lot that way.

Since the weather is warm, let's talk about outdoor living space. How can we spruce up our outdoor living areas?

Maximize enjoyment. I think again, look at the environment. We all have mosquitoes here. We have some older oil lamps that have citronella. Is there a pretty way to these utilitarian bits? 

I think outdoor lighting is so fun. There are solar string lights now that are like the glow cafe lights. An outdoor set of string lights, even if you have a tiny patio, there's just something about it that is almost like candlelight at night.

What is your outdoor furniture? Does it just need to be cleaned or does it need to be painted? Would a few new pillows really make it cheery out there? We moved a lot of our indoor plants out which is nice. 

If you have kids, think about the play areas.  We have these straps that our kids can walk from tree to tree. In the backyard, the more fun anyone can have, the better. We say we want a dizzying amount of fun so that the kids don’t come back in to watch a screen.