The PNW

The PNW was the first home I ever purchased on my own and the place where my love for design, gathering, and hospitality truly came alive.

Born and raised in the suburbs of Seattle, Washington, I slowly transformed the property room by room, from interiors and landscaping to outdoor living and entertaining spaces, with one intention at the center of it all: creating a home that brought people together.

Over the years, it became the backdrop for family holidays, annual Friendsgivings, neighborhood parties, long dinners, and countless memories shared with the people I loved most.

The home also became my earliest design laboratory. It was where I learned to experiment with color, mood, space planning, lighting, furnishings, landscaping, and the relationship between indoor and outdoor living. Each project gave me the freedom to trust my instincts and discover how dramatically an environment could influence the way a home felt and was experienced.

When I eventually began splitting my time between Seattle and Phoenix, I transformed the property into a short term rental. Hosting guests in a home that had already been designed around gathering reinforced something I had intuitively understood for years: thoughtful spaces can shape connection, experience, and memory.

The decision to eventually leave Seattle carried deep personal meaning. My late sister Marilou encouraged me to follow the sunshine and embrace a new chapter in Arizona after watching me come alive while creating and launching our family's vacation rental there.

Selling the PNW meant letting go of a home, community, and chapter of life I deeply loved, but it also created space for what came next.

The PNW became the bridge between my personal love of creating meaningful spaces and the work I do today through Maximize Studio & Design.

It was where I discovered the emotional power of home, learned to trust my creative point of view, and began to understand a philosophy that continues to shape my work:

The spaces we create become the settings for the lives we live within them.