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Summary
Hey yall, it’s your favorite podcast duo, Dee and Alicja, back with another fascinating episode that you simply CAN’T miss! We kick off the conversation by sharing our special tea gift from one of our favs Darcy of Hotels to Home, – which you can grab on Amazon, by the way!
Journey with us through the world of interior design, where traditional styles, Zen culture, and uncluttered minimalism come together to create an effortlessly chic atmosphere. We’ll guide you, step by step, on how to build your own quiet elegance aesthetic, with essential elements, soothing shades, and top-quality furnishings.
Oh, and don’t worry about your budget! We’ve got your back with tips on where to find exquisite pieces for less – from thrift stores and estate sales to flea markets full of unique finds. Plus, discover the importance of items with stories and the true value of quiet elegance in your home.
So, what are you waiting for? Hit play and indulge in this episode as we explore the world of quiet elegance! And don’t forget, we’ll be back next week with more exciting discussions. See you then!
Don’t forget to check out our website for Ruth’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (https://www.teaoverinteriors.com) for more exciting content and episodes. Stay connected with us on social media! Follow us on Instagram (@teaoverinteriorspod), and like our Facebook Page (Tea Over Interiors). We’d love to hear from you, so feel free to drop us a message at [email protected] or leave a comment on our posts!
Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
From https://jathanandheather.com/2022/10/17/ruth-wakefields-original-toll-house-cookie-recipe/
TOTAL TIME: 45 minutes
HANDS-ON TIME: 30 minutes
INGREDIENTS
- 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (We bring to room temperature for easy mixing.)
- 3/4 cup firmly packed light-brown sugar
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs, beaten
- 1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved into 1 teaspoon hot water
- 2 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon table salt
- 1 cup chopped nuts (optional) (We use chopped walnuts.)
- 12 ounces (2 cups) semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
DIRECTIONS
- Preheat oven to 375° F.
- Cream the butter and sugars. Add the beaten eggs. Add the baking soda dissolved in hot water.
- Sift together the flour and salt and add to the butter mixture. Then stir in the nuts, chocolate chips, and vanilla.
- Chill the dough. (We usually chill for at least an hour and up to overnight.)
- Drop by the tablespoonful onto lightly greased cookie sheets and bake until browned at the edges, 10 to 12 minutes.
J&H’S BAKING TIPS: Skip greasing the cookie sheets and put parchment paper on the baking trays instead. This makes for easy cleanup and also helps keep the cookies from becoming too thin. If you like jumbo-sized cookies like we do, use an ice cream scoop to dollop five big cookies per tray, leaving plenty of room for the cookies to spread. You’ll get about 20 cookies this way rather than the 2 to 3 dozen that Ruth got out of the recipe. We bake for 12 minutes, pull the tray from the oven and tap hard on the stove top to remove air pockets from the cookies. This helps compact the cookies and gives them that crinkly top that we love. Put tray back in oven and bake about 2 minutes more, or until cookies are perfectly browned around the edges. Let cool on trays for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely before storing in a cookie jar.
YIELD: 2 to 3 dozen (Or about 20 large cookies using our method.)
As originally printed in Ruth Wakefield’s Toll House Tried and True Recipes ©1945.
Transcription- Generated By Descript – Errors may occur
I’m Dee
And I’m Alicia.
Welcome back to another exciting episode of Tea Over Interiors today guys, we are talking to you about the quiet luxury, quiet elegance. What do these terms mean? Do you need to keep up with these new trends that are coming out? We are talking about it, right, Alicia?
You got it.
All right, but before we get to that, Alicja girl, you know, I need to know what you’re sipping on.
Singapore Sling. It is from the Raffles Hotel in Singapore. And our girl Darcy hooked us up. She sent us these, cause she was traveling in Singapore and she thought of us because she’s always thinking of her people I gotta tell you.
So wonderful. It’s got this like kinda a pinkish, I wonder if it’s the flowers in there that give it that pink, but it’s a tropical pineapple and cherry. Oh, it’s probably the cherries with a sweet, tart, citrusy flavor. Do you love it? I love it.
I love it. Yes, the citrusy notes really come through, and I love the pink color of it.
Oh, and it smells really good. Mm-hmm. So, thank you so much, Darcy, from Hotels to Home. If you don’t know who we’re talking about, you need to go back to episode 71 and 72, Darcy wrote a book called Hotels to Home, and it’s all about bringing that hotel experience to your home. We had so much fun with her, so make sure you check out her book. You can get it on Amazon. All right, so let’s move on to deeeee’s randomness.
What you got for us today, Dee
Alicia? Because you were having a bake athon. Just kidding. It’s true. It’s true. Alicia, this randomness is for you. Do you know that chocolate chips were created by mistake?
Mm. How’d that happen?
So it’s funny that you ask in 1930, Ruth Graves Wakefield and her husband Kenneth, were running the Toll House Inn on Route 18 near Whitman, Massachusetts.
Hmm. Okay. So Ruth, she’s a dietician, she’s a food expert. She holds degrees in household arts, and she gave lectures on the subject. Anyway, she always was renowned for serving lovely desserts to the guests of the end. So one day Ruth was trying to make a chocolate butter dropped dew cookie, which was a very popular biscuit at the time, but she realized she ran outta baking chocolate.
So since it was already nighttime, she couldn’t get anybody to go to the store to send more. She decided to chop up her Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate that was given to her by Andrew Nestle himself. So back then there were chocolate bars, right? So she chops it up. Throws it in a cookie and she thinks, oh, it’ll melt.
To her surprise, she pulls out the cookies from the oven and realized that the chocolate did not melt. Oh, what I’m gonna do? Well, I’m gonna try ’em. So, wow. So she tried them and the chunks retain their. Form text. Yeah. While turning soft and gooey in the center and so.
Chocolate chip cookies were born. She decided that they tasted good and she served them to her guests. They loved them, so she made the Chocolate Crunch cookie, she called it at first, and she put the recipe on magazines and Nestle, since she knows him so well, decided that they would put it on their packages and then eventually he decided that he would just go ahead and make chocolate morsels in 1936.
Wonderful. I’m excited to know about that little bit of history since Im a huge chocolate chip cookie fan and I’ve been made them in a long time. Now you got me thinking I wanna do cookies. I’ve been on a, a muffin mission, but yeah, I wanna use them. I use them in my muffins all the time.
So, yeah. That’s exciting.
So, you know what, I think what I’ll do today is on our blog from this episode, I’m gonna put. Ruth Wakefield’s iconic chocolate chip cookie recipe on our website. You know, it’s also in a total house cookies package as well. That’s her recipe from 1930. Can you believe it?
And it was all, by mistake, right?
Mm-hmm. But that’s, well, some of the best inventions were mistakes, you know? Yeah. That’s exciting. I’ve used it a million times. Very, that’s like the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever.
I’m sure those that bake probably will agree with me, but they come out amazing. Every time I was attributing it to the chocolate chips, I was like, it’s the chips that make them so amazing. Cause they’re just perfect. They’re like a little gooey and a little bit like they’ve got a little snap to it.
Perfect, perfect. Perfection.
Okay, let’s dig in.
Yeah. So let’s dig in. So Alicia, you know, there’s been a lot of talk about, well, so many trends, right?
You know, you have dark academia, you have. You have the soft life, you have all these different terms people are throwing around, but what do they really mean? Why ever so often we keep getting these new terms and how much attention do we need to pay to these things? Hmm. So first let’s discuss what exactly is quiet Elegance.
Mm-hmm. So Quiet Elegance is basically understated, timeless design, right? Mm. Mm-hmm. Where the items in your home they don’t scream luxury, rather they whisper it. Right? You can tell that the materials that are used from the furnishings to the linens, that they’re all made of great quality.
Right? Right. And there’s a lot of elements to feel nature inspired, right? It’s like a mixture of that, it’s a little bit returned to traditional furnishings, but not to ornate, you know? So that’s pretty much like quiet elegance and understated elegance and quiet luxury . I’m not gonna say new trend because Alicia invented quiet elegance and quiet luxury Alicia’s style. She’s so funny. Everything in her home is so timeless. There are modern pieces mixed with traditional pieces and. It’s just done so perfectly. And even if you look of our staging photos, right, Alicia, we kind of still use that because we use your aesthetic a lot. That’s pretty much like our signature. And we just didn’t realize it because in our mind it was timeless. Right. We care about timeless design cuz we don’t want things to look trendy when we look back and we don’t want things to be like, oh yeah, that was done in 2000 and, you know.
Right. You can tell sometimes that things have been done with time period. So, Alicia, I’d like to expound upon that.
You know, I find myself a little bit challenged with the conversation about this because , I have a strong belief that this has a lot to do with exposure.
And I probably say this a lot and you’re gonna say to me, okay, Alicia, here we go again. I’ve been in this business for over oh, very close to 40 years. It’s 38 years this year. And I feel like it’s, the aesthetic that we’re speaking of right now has a lot to do with layering and the exposure to different, not trends, but different genres and eras and.
Just being able to go and see a lot of wonderful and creative expressions , in interior design. So I’ve been exposed, and I think a lot of designers have been exposed to the traditional, classic architectural styles. If you were trained in a formal. Traditional design education, then you’re gonna learn about all of those traditional furniture styles, traditional architectural styles.
And since I’m also an educator, I believe that some of that information gets deeply embedded into your psyche, so that your design aesthetic, your visual aesthetic, Just seems to be attracted to those things. I love things that have a traditional line. The, shape of the furniture is traditional.
Even my modern pieces are spinoffs on the traditional. So , I think for any of our listeners who are desiring this, and I don’t wanna get into, you know, what’s better or worse or, cuz I’ve seen this particular quiet elegance expressed in so many different ways. I don’t want them to be burdened in any way.
And feel that they have to try to, and I say this a lot and so do you de they have to try to mirror what they’re seeing when they Google. Cause many people will probably go Google, well, what is quiet elegance? And they wanna see what it looks like.
But what I really want all of our listeners to understand and appreciate is that it does take time to create. This aesthetic, which starts visually in your mind, so that you are drawn to and attracted to the items that create this look. What do you feel about that,
Dee? So what I wanna say is that when it comes to your aesthetic design, In your home, the elements are usually already there, right?
When it comes to this style, the first thing is that you already have to be a person that is attracted to Zen culture or having your home have a certain feeling,
now what does that mean?
Zen culture? Maybe I’m too old, but what does that mean? You know, Zen
means. Yeah, so like, you know, this is kind of zen as well, you know, the color is not being too loud. Everything being soft, elements that go back to nature and creating that calming quiet in your home, that’s zen, you know?
The homes are uncluttered. It’s minimal, but the pieces that you use, they’re substantial in a way that they make a statement, they stand out on their own, and when they come together, they create this atmosphere of one elegance to a feeling that feels inspiring, and it feels comforting, and it feels very effortless and relaxed.
Right? If this is not your style, if you are like a person who loves maximalism, Then this style is not for you and you’re not gonna gravitate toward it anyway. You know what I’m saying?
I just want you to know that when you see these styles, you don’t have to try to adapt to everything.
But you can adapt your style to what feels good to you. So like if you look at some of these pictures and you’re like, oh, I’m halfway there. How can I make it look more refined? Make it look more pulled together? Do you know what I mean?
Alicia,
You and I have said different things, but I think they’re both. Helpful. You’re trying to make sure that they understand that there’s a, a feeling associated with the aesthetic.
Mm-hmm. This is a feeling for
sure.
Yes, and I agree with that. I agree with that. I want them to understand that there are elements that help to build. The aesthetic?
Yes. Let’s talk about the elements.
The first thing is color. You’re going to use soothing shades. Alicia loves ecru. I love linen. Right. Any of those soft, warm tones that are not stark white, but just off white. Yeah, like a little shade below stark, right, Alicia? Right. Few shades below
stark. I think it, it’s, it’s tone because that’s a whole nother description, but the warmth of the colors, although they have a clean, very crisp feeling.
You wanna have some undertones of warm hues if you were to ask, well, what color is that? You would probably say white, but you know that it’s not white or cream. Right? Yeah. That’s another, another color that people will use and then you layer the creams. That’s the other thing.
Cause Cause you vary the, you vary the saturations. That’s correct. The tone, that’s correct. Yeah. It’s, it’s monochromatic basically. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But a lot of people don’t understand that when you use cream, brown is part of that mono chromatic, it’s just different colors within that color spectrum. Mm-hmm. A lot of people when they come to me and they want certain things, they’re like, yeah, but I need white. I need it to be white and white and white. And I’m like, but you’re going for a monochromatic look.
We have to break up. Some of these colors, trust me, cuz we’ve got, we’ve gotta layer it. You know, you can’t have the white couch, the white accent chair, , the slightly cream ottoman. And, you know, think that you, you’re doing something, it’s too much. You know, you’re gonna walk in a room and it’s gonna be overwhelmed by this one color.
We’re gonna vary the colors and we want them to look like you’re using three different colors. Or two different colors, or as many colors as you want, but they all have to stay within that color. Family. Yeah. can use accent color is not usually like bright, you know, it’s not a pop.
It’s more, like I said earlier, it’s more saturated, which means that it’s gonna be a deeper tone of a color. So like, let’s say you like red, it’s not gonna be. Real true red. It’s gonna be maybe like a burgundy, you know, something within that tone. Mm.
The second thing, minimal interiors. You know, minimal within the color scheme, minimal within the amount of objects in the space, everything that’s in the space is necessary. It’s on purpose. It doesn’t mean you can’t have things you love, like artifacts and artwork, but it’s just not going to be overwhelming.
Mm-hmm. Your eyes are gonna be able to roam around the room, very restfully. It’s gonna know where the focal point is. It’s gonna have the rhythm, so that your mind’s not too busy. Like, where am I supposed to look? Oh, there, there, it’s, oh, the flow. Mm-hmm. The flow. Exactly. That’s why it’s quiet. It’s an approachable look to luxury, these pieces have to really say something you just can’t buy.
I’m not trying to down Ikea, but you know, you’re not gonna buy inexpensive objects and think that you can make them look elevated. I know you’ve seen hacks and things like that, but you haven’t seen these things in person and a lot of times they don’t look as elevated as you think They look, they look nice, but they don’t always look as elevated.
So it’s really about. Know, buying those pieces that matter and that actually have, quality. Number three is to, have a tactile quality, meaning from the materials.
So matte velvet, we’ve talked about this before, IL’s, soft silk linens. Bouquet fabrics. Although I don’t really like bootle fabrics because they don’t feel good on my skin because I’m allergic to one of the elements that. Make up the bouquet fabric, but you want the furnishings to just feel very opulent, very elegant, so you’re going to go with higher end quality furniture.
Doesn’t mean you have to spend a fortune. Alicia knows how to find quality while saving thousands. Yeah,
from dollars. Yeah. So you wanna visit a lot of thrift stores or places that upcycle or recycle Yeah. Antique. If you antique stores. Mm-hmm. They don’t have to be antique. I, that’s, you know, I caution people against those because, there’s a price tag associated with that, that
Oh, that’s true.
That’s true.
There’s, yeah. If you’re looking for something that’s of quality for less. Then visit My favorite Habitat for Humanity or any of your local thrift stores, you’ll get items that someone else, what’s the old saying? Someone’s trash is another one’s
treasure. Exactly. Or estate sales. You may not have the funds, or even if you do have the funds, you don’t have to spend them because there are great quality pieces out there that you can get for less that someone hardly used.
It might have been a, custom piece that was made by mistake. And it was an error, and instead of throwing it away, they’re just like, you know what? We’ll just sell it and somebody else will like it. ,
I’m reminded of how much we have in this country. All of the items, we just have a lot of things.
I can’t tell you how many things, the human being in a lifetime accumulates and throws out. Like how many times we have the same thing or similar thing. It’s just, it’s a, it’s an astonishing amount if you’re looking for it, you can find something of great value.
That someone else felt at one point in time was wonderful. They spent their money on it and then they fell outta love with it. Or you know, not necessarily just giving it away. I’ve given away so much stuff because I know that more will come, but some of the little flea, oh, flea markets, that’s another great way.
And this is the season for flea markets. You know, so you can get out and about and you never know what you’re gonna stumble across. So you have to kinda have the thrill of the hunt. You gotta be willing to just go out and look. Sometimes I go to places, it used to be once a week, or at least once every two weeks because I know they’re always going to get something new.
So I just go to appreciate the rotation and figure out, you know, what do they have this week. It’s totally the
thrill of the hunt. Yes. And a lot of times people are pass things down from, you know, generation, A generation. , one thing that someone showed me the other day is that they were given a grandfather clock these clocks back in the day is they were specially made and stuff like that.
Beautiful clock. Mm-hmm. And it’s brown, you know? Mm-hmm. Cause it’s brown wood and they wanted to paint it because they had a friend that painted theirs like a deep navy blue. So, And they thought, oh, it looks nice, it makes it look more modern. And I was like you know, I mean, you know, it depends. But the sofa that they turned out to like actually would work with the clock and they wouldn’t even have to paint it.
You know, I spoke to ’em about the style and everything like that, and it’s always nice to have like an antique piece, especially when you’re doing this style. The fourth thing when you are choosing your furniture, You wanna make sure that you’re using softer lines Because we want it to feel inviting. You don’t have to go for the harsh angles.
. And so curved sofas and things like that and curved chairs. And interesting lines. This helps make things feel a little less edgy, coffee tables, et cetera.
The last thing it’s all about the details. That’s what I wanna say. Make sure that down to the handles, down to the, the fixtures, every little detail is taken care of and every little detail is thought about and upgraded. Yeah. So it looks more customized.
mm-hmm I’ve had many clients, and Dee I’m sure you have as well, they wanted all right away.
And I’ve never felt, even when I was in design school so many years ago, that it can’t just come together automatically like that. You can’t just have today a concept or an idea, and then three months from now, everything gets delivered. All of the items come into the house, everything gets staged and dressed, and it looks like you’ve been working on this for 30 years.
It doesn’t work like that If, if somebody thinks it does, God bless them. I don’t know what kind of money that costs them. They must have spent a small fortune, but I personally forget about the money part. I personally think it has so much more value. To the person living in the home to procure those things.
Over time, if you’re able to find them and they have a story behind it and they have an experience attached to it, it has that much more value. So it’s not important to me that the items in the house are antiques and they’re worth $20,000. That’s not important to me. It doesn’t matter if there’s a, a nick or a ding or a scratch, or you know, a gouge, it doesn’t matter.
What matters is that it is aesthetically pleasing. It has wonderful form. It’s got character and presence. Those are the things that I think add to this aesthetic or add to this look of quiet elegance.
Agreed. So thanks so much for listening guys. We will see you all next week. Have a good one. Have a good one.
Ciao.
Tea Over Interiors 
One response to “090 Building the Quiet Elegance Aesthetic: Tactile Quality and Opulent Furnishings”
Another great podcast! Thank you.
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