Hello again – I hope this letter finds everyone well! It’s great to be back in touch and I’m so glad you found me! I’ve had a few wonderful months off to reassess all the things that are important to me and what I’ve learned over the years and I’m excited to share my new on-line home with you and tell you what I’ve come up with – a whole new concept built around my personal style and spirit called cobi.
Now I finally know why my mother gave me such an unusual name! Going through adolescence as a 6 foot redhead with a weird handle, wasn’t always easy, in fact I longed to be a ‘5 foot blond Cathy’ for years. But life has moved on and I now see the advantages to being different. Not only that, it’s often provided me with a good back up conversation at awkward cocktail parties.
But why use cobi now? Well to be honest (and give mom her due) – it’s perfect. It’s unusual enough that if you didn’t know me, you wouldn’t even really know what it is – a name? a place? a thing? It comes with few pre-conceived ideas which means the possibilities are endless. If you do know me, it’s quickly recognizable and brings to mind all the things I believe to be true, and have written about for years, regarding life and home.
It’s amazing to me that through the process of developing my own brand, how easily we figured out what cobi stands for... a collection of beautiful ideas.
How that collection forms over the next little while – products, words, pictures – only the future knows. Some might say I’m naive to try starting something – anything – in this economy. But the fact is, the ideas I have in mind, aren’t about having a lot of money. In fact, they can be the bright side that gets you through not having a lot of money.
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cobi is an attitude about home and lifestyle. It’s about finding a way to personalize our most precious place and enjoy the process of doing it. It’s about classics rather than trends. It’s about consciousness of products whenever possible. It’s about finding beauty – which we all know really is in the eye of the beholder. It’s about being unique. It’s about rediscovering pretty! It’s about finding joy in the art of decoration which has been going on for thousands of years for only one reason – pleasure.
Call me crazy but I think people should love their home. It should make them feel happy when they walk in the door – comfortable and safe – and when they invite others in, it should act as an expression of their unique journey through life. My vision for cobi is to help you create a comfortable, beautiful and happy life at home that shows your true colours and gives you joy while creating it.
The strange thing is, today we have more access to good design than ever before and yet many people tell me their house is boring. Or worse than that, that decorating it stresses them out. It also feels like everything we see in stores, model homes, pages of magazines and tv looks the same. Somehow we’ve lost our way in the array of choices and taken the fall back position of choosing safety in sameness. Well there’s not much fun in that now is there?
Who needs to be the same when you can celebrate your uniqueness every day? Oh boy, now I’m really sounding like my mother! I’m hoping that you will be able to find my ‘collection of beautiful ideas’ in all kinds of ways in the days and years ahead (stay tuned as things develop) but for now you can find me here – writing, chatting and generally causing havoc.
Please have a look around and let me know what you think of the site – there’s lots of room for everyone and I’d love to hear all of your beautiful ideas!
Enjoy, Cobi
