It started when I was searching old posts for a link and stumbled across a long-forgotten mood board I made about a month before we moved into our second house in 2010. The board included the note, “we have no idea what our future living room will actually look like, but today this is what I’m loving.”
I laughed when I realized that about 20 months later—after I had completely forgotten I even made the board—many of the elements I’d pinned ended up in our living room. We wound up with a lot of gray and green: a large gray sectional, a green rug, and even the same zebra pillows (which I later found on clearance at West Elm about a year after making the board, having forgotten them entirely).
Of course there are differences: our old media cabinet is still waiting for an update (we’re hoping to find a thrift-store dresser to repurpose), and instead of two wicker tables we chose a padded ottoman for the coffee table area.
Our curtains also turned out to be a subtle white-and-gray print rather than green, which is probably for the best—pairing big green curtains with a large green rug would have been a little too much green for our taste.
A reader pointed out an even stranger coincidence from an older post. Back in 2008 we made some homemade art by enlarging color copies from a magazine ad featuring graphic green rugs, snipping them into strips, and framing them. I never connected that project to our later rug purchase until someone mentioned it.
It’s wild: I photocopied pages from a rug ad, blew them up at Kinko’s, and framed them in 2008—then four years later bought a rug that looked almost identical to that forgotten art. I wouldn’t have connected the dots without the reminder, so thanks to the reader who did!
The deer head from the mood board also turned up in our home. It reminded us of “Ramsey,” who once hung in our bedroom until an unfortunate accident ended his tenure during book photoshoots. A fond, if slightly tragic, memory.
We also have a faux-horned piece I picked up from Hobby Lobby and hung in the kitchen during a renovation, which left some scratched paint but added character.
It even doubles as a whimsical fascinator in a pinch.
A different planning post, written just four days after we moved into our current house in 2010, included an inspiration image from House Beautiful. That page featured a quatrefoil mirror that looked oddly similar to one we later found at a home improvement store and hung above the sink in our main bedroom.
A reader pointed out the similarity, and when we revisited the image we realized the mirror match wasn’t a coincidence—it was subconscious inspiration. The same House Beautiful page also showed a dark teal accent wall, which influenced the dark teal we used on the back of our dining room built-ins (Benjamin Moore’s Dragonfly) and a similar tone we chose for our guest room (Martha Stewart’s Plumage).
Another amusing discovery was that two oak trees that grew in the left-front quadrant of our first house ended up in almost the same spot at our current house. When we first moved in the yard was overgrown and it wasn’t obvious, but after we cleared things out the placement became clear—though we do also have a large magnolia out front now.
So what do you think? Can mood boards, tear sheets, and framed inspiration you make long before moving subconsciously shape your decor choices years later? You could argue that you simply keep gravitating toward the things you like, and that’s true—what pulls you toward cutting something out of a magazine might eventually pull you toward buying something similar. But it was fun and surprising to rediscover an old mood board, homemade art, and tear sheet and realize they quietly influenced parts of our home.
Have you noticed similarities between your first and second homes that only became obvious later? Some people seem to buy the same layout again and again—my friend and her husband, for example, bought very similar three-story townhouses twice, complete with large media rooms in the basement. We tend to favor mid-century ranchers, so we ended up in another one with familiar oak tree placement. Maybe we’re creatures of habit, or maybe some people seek out the opposite when they move. Either way, it’s interesting to see patterns repeat.