Finding Flora & Found
I've been collecting things for as long as I can remember.
Not in a precious way with spreadsheets or storage units full of bubble wrap, but more in the way that happens when you walk into a thrift store in Kelowna and find a mauve ceramic dish with a painted sparrow on the rim sitting in a bin, and you just know.
You pick it up, turn it over in your hands, and feel the weight of it.
Something in you says: this one still has more life in it yet.
I've been saying yes to that feeling for decades.
It’s taken me through estate sales and antique shops from Nelson to Spokane to East Vancouver. Through flea markets, charity bins, and the occasional roadside find. Along the way, my home filled up with pieces carrying history and patina, objects I could already imagine living a completely different life than the one they were originally made for.
A soup tureen becoming a seasonal planter, a cake stand holding succulents and hydrangeas cut straight from the garden, locker baskets becoming bathroom storage long before anyone had a name for that kind of styling.
Years ago, Canadian Home & Country sent a photographer to my home and featured it across three issues because of the way I layered these pieces together. Since then, I’ve styled tablescape shoots for cookbooks on the shores of Kootenay Lake using vintage vessels and whatever was blooming that week. I’ve also spent years helping clients understand their spaces through Feng Shui, Human Design, and interior decorating.
And what I keep coming back to is this:
The objects in your home tell a story. The question is whether that story still belongs to you.
Flora & Found is where all of that lives now.
You might have heard people talking about “dopamine decor” lately, surrounding yourself with colour, pattern, and objects that make you happy. There’s a little of that here, sure. But what I’m really drawn to is something more personal than trend forecasting.
I love unique pieces that are reasonably priced, repurposed, and slightly unexpected. A found object placed somewhere it was never intended to be. Contrast that somehow makes a room feel more like itself.
To me, the best interiors are built from objects with emotional afterlife, pieces that carry history, memory, wear, imperfection, and the quiet beauty of having already lived a life before finding their way to you.
That’s what I mean when I talk about elevating the basic to the curated.
It doesn’t require a massive budget or perfectly matching sets. It requires a particular way of seeing.
That’s the eye I bring to Flora & Found.
The studio itself is taking shape slowly, which feels exactly right.
I move between Nelson and East Vancouver alongside a busy interior styling business and a life that doesn’t pause neatly for launches. Flora & Found is unfolding in the gaps, in quiet mornings, studio visits, and boxes I’m still unpacking years after sourcing them.
Some of these pieces haven’t seen daylight since 2019.
There’s something lovely about that slow reveal. About opening a box and not entirely knowing what version of yourself you’re about to rediscover inside it.
The space itself is a 10-by-12 room at Powell Street Studios in East Vancouver, with curtains for walls, two vintage cabinets sourced from Urban Repurpose in North Vancouver, and a little French desk tucked into the corner.
And I share it with my daughters, which might be my favourite part of this whole story.
My eldest daughter, Lillea, is a designer with an incredibly beautiful eye for interiors. She’s developing soft furnishings and drapery with a warm, layered aesthetic that sits naturally alongside mine.
My youngest daughter, Jewal, is a ceramicist whose hand-painted pottery carries a whimsical, shabby pink sweetness that somehow makes your heart soften a little when you see it. She has her own studio in the same building.
Three women across three disciplines with one shared creative sensibility under one roof.
The longer vision is an interior design studio that Lillea and I are slowly building toward together. Flora & Found feels like the first piece of that future, the seed planted, the stake in the ground, the boxes being opened one by one.
Some pieces will be available to rent for styling shoots, events, and creative projects. Some will eventually find new homes.
All of it will be loved first.
And all of it will be shared here as it unfolds.
If this sounds like your kind of thing, you can find us on Instagram at @floraandfound.ca. I’ll be sharing vintage finds, seasonal plantings, styling ideas, studio progress, and the occasional treasure fresh from the sourcing trail.
I’d love to have you along for the journey.
