Hi, I'm Amy.
I came to this work through architecture, motherhood, and the gradual art of slowing down.
If you've ever felt like your home should feel better than it does. More alive. More like you. More like the life you're actually trying to live. You're in the right place.
Your home is not a backdrop to your life. It is where your life actually happens.
You already know this. You feel it when the kitchen table is cluttered and the morning feels harder than it should. You feel it when a room finally comes together and something in you settles.
You don't need a bigger budget or a better eye. You need a framework. One that starts with who your family actually is. Not who you think you should be.
That's what I built. And it took me seven years to get here.
The long way around.
I grew up obsessed with homes. Not the showroom kind. The kind that hold stories. As a kid I clipped pages from my mom's decorating magazines and saved them: a compass rose inlaid in a hardwood floor, a hidden door to a secret room. I was drawn to the details that surprised you. The ones that told a story.
I followed that pull into graduate school for architecture. I studied buildings meant for thousands of people. Hospitals. Government centers. I learned to love the discipline of it, but I quietly missed the private realm. The homes that shaped daily life, that rose from the needs and materials of a specific place and culture.
When I had my first child, something shifted. I cut back my hours, then eventually left the firm. Not because I stopped caring about design. Because I started caring about something else more.
The slowdown that changed everything.
Early motherhood slowed me down in ways I hadn't expected. I began to actually see our home. Not evaluate it. See it. The cozy couch we actually sat on. The warm lamp we actually needed. The shelf of art supplies that meant we all made things together. The binoculars by the back door that turned our small urban yard into a world.
I started noticing the seasons in a new way too. The inward pull of winter. The burst of possibility in spring. The way summer invited fullness, and fall asked me to let things go. I began shaping my own work and energy around these rhythms, and I felt, for the first time, like I was working with something instead of against it.
Then, I stepped outside.
One day I found a passage in Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own, where he learns a feng shui technique to "read" his land before building a small writing cabin. That one paragraph sent me down a path I'm still on.
Feng shui was the first door. A way of reading a space that went far beyond furniture placement — it asked how a home was supporting the people in it.
I immersed myself in other practices rooted in nature and the deep relationship between people and their spaces. What struck me about all of them was this: they gave ordinary people agency. Timeless principles that anyone could learn to apply.
Permaculture shifted how I saw design. Nature's cycles were also a design methodology. Work with the patterns. Observe before you act. Build slowly. Tend what you've made.
And biophilic design gave me the language my clients could actually use. Not trends. Not taste. Biology.
The Cultivate Framework
Over seven years of working with families, studying these disciplines and testing ideas in my own home, I developed the Cultivate Framework. A five-phase design process that mirrors the seasonal cycles of the natural world.
It's not about starting over or spending more. It starts with deep observation of what you already have. It asks what your family actually needs. It builds a plan shaped by your real boundaries. And it ends not with a finished room, but with a practice. One that evolves with your family, season after season.
A five-phase seasonal process that takes you from overwhelmed and reacting to clear, confident, and designing with intention.
PREPARE
slow down and truly see your space
GROW
function, flow and fresh possibility
BLOOM
layer in what nature offers
GROUND
implement without overwhelm
TEND
finish well and build practices that last
Who I am here for.
You're the kind of person who thinks about how you want to live. You're already practicing some version of mindfulness: in your mornings, in how you feed your family, in how you try to show up. But your home hasn't caught up yet.
You don't need a decorator. You need someone to help you see what's already there, clarify what you actually want, and give you the tools to get there. Confidently, on your own terms.
I'm not here to sell you a style. I'm here to help you build a home that holds your family.
More about me.
I'm a designer with a master's in architecture, a certified permaculturist, and a mom living near the Pacific Ocean in Southern California. This summer, I'm running my own spaces through the Cultivate Framework room by room.
If this resonates, I'd love to hear where you are with your home and what you're hoping for.