Beautiful Living by Laurel T Colins

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Beautiful Living by Laurel T Colins

Curated interiors for beautiful living. Feng Shui + vintage style + aligned energy = your dream home, realized. Your Inner World Creates Your Outer World.

I work with my clients to create harmony in home and life. Whether you're doing a renovation to your home or rebranding your business, I will help you create the vision and bring it to life. Creative clarity and the next steps to living your dream lifestyle. Click the button to schedule a quick chat. I would love to know what your big dreams are!

09/02/2026

I thought I was the one who couldn't follow directions. Turns out the directions weren't mine to follow.

Still 2021.

For a long time I genuinely couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Why couldn't I just follow the directions? Why did every simple strategy become something more complicated in my hands? Everyone else in the coaching groups seemed to get it. The strategies worked for them. I'd try the same thing and end up three left turns away from where I started, doing something nobody asked me to do, that I couldn't explain, that felt completely right anyway.

Don't reinvent the wheel, just follow the formula. I heard that a lot. But the formula wasn't working for me.

And then I found Human Design, and for the first time I got an answer that actually made sense. I wasn't difficult. I was just built completely differently from almost everyone in those rooms. Of course I couldn't follow someone else's formula. I wasn't designed to.

That was both a relief and a revelation, and it made me think: if understanding my own design explained so much about why I worked the way I did, imagine what it could do for my clients, especially paired with Feng Shui and interior design, helping women see what their spaces were already trying to tell them about who they actually were.

I was figuring it out. Slowly. I was also posting pictures with my new found Canva skills and calling it a brand strategy, so there's that.

Trying to show up online although I didn't even know how to get a decent photo of myself yet. If I made a reel, it was practically a promotional video for whatever neighbourhood I happen to be in. That was about to change.

2022 is next.

08/29/2026

I thought I was going to be a beautiful business coach with flowers in my hair. I was not.

In 2021, I joined a high-level business coaching group and knew immediately I was different. The very first group activity was everyone going around sharing what they were binge watching on Netflix and what their favourite thing on Amazon was. It was still Covid, people were mostly still indoors, and I had nothing to say. I sat there on that Zoom call feeling what I'd felt in a lot of online spaces by then: like a misfit, politely invisible.

The program itself was wonderful though. There were segments on branding, graphic design, and a virtual portrait session, and I fell completely in love with Canva. I started making collages of myself with flowers on my head and posting them like that was just a completely normal thing to do, which at the time felt completely right, or at least like the version of me I was trying to become.

That virtual portrait session led me somewhere I didn't expect. Straight into a self portrait program with that I'd end up returning to for years.

But here's the thing about 2021. I was taking all the chances, showing up every day, trying every version of myself online. Confident. Inspired. Completely lost.

I genuinely thought I needed to make myself look like someone that people would want to be.

I had no idea yet that the answer was already in the photographs.

2022 is next.

08/27/2026

Two days short of six years ago, I did this photo shoot.

The woman I was going to be ran through fields of flowers. I had the dress, the hat, the incredible coach, and a very clear vision of who I was becoming.

The photos are beautiful. The coach was brilliant.

And I still couldn't figure out why I couldn't follow the directions and the plan laid out for me.

I had the best business coaching. I was doing everything I was told. I just couldn't repeat the model of success, and I had no idea why.

So why wasn't it working?

The deeper truth was going to reveal itself about 8 months later with another expensive coaching investment, and send me on a whole trajectory into Human Design.

More next time 🌸

📷 carmen, kootenay photographer

08/25/2026

I want working with me to feel effortless. That doesn't mean it is.

When I source and shop for a project, I'm not popping into one store and grabbing a few things. I'm driving to Vancouver, visiting several stores, walking the floor with your room photos in my head, making decisions about scale and colour and texture and what will actually work with what you already have. I'm purchasing, loading everything into my car, sometimes staging it in my apartment first, then driving it to you, carrying it in, placing it, and seeing how it lives in the space.

If something doesn't work, I take it back. And taking it back means loading it up again, driving to the store, processing the return in person, and driving home.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty for not knowing. Most people don't know, because making it feel easy for you is actually part of what I do.

But I've just put a proper service agreement in place that outlines exactly what's included, what's an add-on, and what happens with returns and travel, so there are no surprises for either of us.

If you've ever wondered what goes into "just grabbing a few pieces," now you know.

And if you're thinking about working together, I'd love to show you what's possible in your space.

DM me to chat. 💌

08/23/2026

Apparently, I didn’t look like a stylist.

Which was news to me.

I thought I looked cool.

Years ago, I showed up to meet a director and production company for a very hip, very cool party commercial in my Seven jeans, James P***e tee, and my little Miata convertible.

Yes. That Miata.

I thought the meeting went fine.

Then they called and asked for my résumé.

Small problem: I didn’t have one.

I’d never needed one. I was constantly booked, going from job to job almost entirely through word of mouth.

So I sat down and made a résumé from scratch.

Once they saw my experience, I got the job.

And it went great.

Looking back, I know what happened.

They had an image in their heads of what the stylist for this job should look like. I walked in, and I didn’t match it.

So they wanted proof that I could actually do the work.

They were judging my aesthetic.

What they couldn’t see yet was my eye.

And there’s a difference.

Some people hire a designer specifically because they want that designer’s signature look. There are designers who are brilliant at that.

But that’s not why my clients hire me.

They’re not hiring me to make their project look like me.

They’re hiring my eye - my ability to understand what they’re trying to create, find the visual language for it, and bring it to life.

And then push it a little further.

Sometimes that means suggesting something they never would have considered. Sometimes it means talking them into colour when they were convinced they wanted everything neutral.

Not because I want to put my stamp on it.

Because I can see where their idea could go.

My aesthetic isn’t the product. My eye is.

And maybe that’s the funny part about this photo all these years later.

They were looking for someone who looked like their idea of cool.

What they actually needed was someone who could understand their idea of cool and bring it to life.

Turns out, those are two very different things.

Have you ever had someone underestimate what you could do because you didn’t look the way they expected?

📷 Trevor Holbrook

08/22/2026

Lessons on a Friday afternoon 🌊

My mom and I were both dealing with contract situations this week. Different circumstances, same lesson.
Read every word. Ask every question. Don't sign anything you don't fully understand, and don't assume the other person understood it the same way you did.
This week I realized that someone described my role on a project in a couple different ways that didn't reflect what I felt I actually did. No malice, just no written agreement defining it from the start. And without that piece of paper, I had nothing to point to.
I recently told a client I include shipping. She heard shopping. One word. Completely different expectation, and suddenly we're having a conversation nobody wanted to have.
Vague is expensive.
Written agreements aren't about distrust, they're about everyone being able to relax and do beautiful work together without the awkward conversation after.
What's your Friday lesson? 👇

08/20/2026

A lawyer I dated in my 20s once told me I was like a duck.

Calm and collected on the surface. Paddling like crazy underneath just to stay afloat.

I laughed it off at the time (kinda) But it stuck with me and I've been thinking about that image a lot lately, because I see it everywhere. In my business, in my relationships, in the generous women around me who look like they have it all together and are absolutely exhausted from the effort of making it look that way.

And so much of that exhaustion comes from one thing: not asking for what you need.

Not because you don't know what you need. But because somewhere along the way you learned that asking makes you difficult. That wanting more makes you ungrateful. That renegotiating an arrangement you agreed to when life looked different makes you unkind.

So you stay in the deep end, treading water, not wanting to make waves.

The fear isn't really about the ask. It's about what we believe the ask says about us.

But the person on the other end of your ask is also a grown adult who can say no. You asking doesn't make you mean. It makes you honest. And honest is actually the kindest thing you can be in any arrangement, business or otherwise.

I'm learning to ask earlier, clearer, and without the paragraph of apology before it.

It's a work in progress. But so is everything worth doing.

What's something you've been needing to ask for but haven't yet? 👇

08/18/2026

One Minute Feng Shui: why I chose this print for this exact spot.

There's a river below this room in real life, and that Canada Air France poster, mountains, depth, a plane crossing the sky, acts like a third window on that wall. It draws you in and makes the room feel bigger than it is.

That's intentional. Some walls want to stop you, a bold graphic, a piece that demands your attention right here. And some walls want to pull you through, into depth, into distance, into somewhere. This wall wanted to pull you through.

To the left hangs a Corazón we brought back from Mexico. Sacred heart, travel dream, and a symbol of love and relationship all held in one ornate brass piece. It didn't go there because it matched. It went there because of what it holds, and because that corner of the room is asking for exactly that energy, where you're going and who you love.

A gold frame on a travel poster. Living green pouring in from the window beside it. A Corazón keeping watch.

Your art is always saying something. The question is whether you're the one choosing what it says.

Vintage Air France poster from HOME DECOR | Details by Mr K

08/17/2026

Mirror selfie in an antique shop felt very on-brand for what I want to say today.

Sometimes confusion is actually doing its job. I've learned that when I genuinely can't decide, whether it's about a piece I'm looking at in a shop, a client project, or something bigger in my own life, the wisest thing I can do is nothing.

Here's the exercise I give people when they're stuck: imagine you've made the decision and notice how your body feels. Now imagine you walked away from it and notice how that feels instead. If walking away brings a wave of disappointment, that's useful information. But if you still don't know, you're not ready, and that's okay.

Clarity comes without you having to force it.

P.S. This mirror selfie was taken while sending photos of a citrine necklace with the most beautiful clasp to my daughter because I couldn't decide, and guess what, I bought it 😊

💕 Laurel

Let me know if you want to see a close-up of it!!

Address

Nelson, BC

Website

https://www.laureltcolins.com/

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