Back in the Saddle

Six years ago, right here in this same spot, I told you I was starting this blog with my fingers crossed and no long-term promises attached. I meant it then, and honestly, it feels like a pretty good place to pick things back up now.

A lot happened in between. Some of it was the same story a lot of us were living. The pandemic came along just as I thought life might finally be turning a corner, and reshuffled just about everything. Work slowed, housing changed, and entire seasons of life got improvised on the fly. Some of it was way more personal. I got bucked off more than once. Not once, not twice—a handful of times. The kind of falls that make you lie there in the dirt for a minute before you even start thinking about standing back up.

I’m not going to walk you through the whole rodeo here; all of you have had your own. That isn’t really the point of this post, and some stories aren’t mine alone to tell in full. What matters is that I got back on. More than once, actually, because that’s mostly what riding is. Falling, getting up, finding the stirrup again, and figuring out where the hell you were headed in the first place.

So here I am, dusting off my hat and coming back to the same campfire I lit in August of 2020. And yes, that first post is still here. I went back and forth about keeping it, but in the end I decided the beginning deserved to stay, even if the road after it came with a few busted bones. The Creative Cowboy is still very much alive—a little older, a little sharper, considerably more grounded, and probably a lot clearer about what belongs under this hat and what doesn’t.

Design is still at the center of it all: spaces, objects, experiences, and that instinctive little voice that tells you when something belongs and when it absolutely does not. Back in 2020, I was already talking about design as something built on intention instead of price tags. Six years later, I believe that even more. Trends come and go. New tools show up. Everybody suddenly decides beige is dead, and then beige comes back wearing a better sweater. Whatever. The things I care about haven’t changed much: things made well, rooms that feel considered instead of assembled, objects with some life in them, and spaces that actually work for the people living there.

Because a home was never supposed to be about impressing the neighbors. It’s supposed to be about you and your family—how you live, how the place feels when you walk through the door, whether the rooms support the life you’re actually living instead of the one somebody photographed for a magazine. Looking beautiful is wonderful. Of course I want it to look beautiful. It just isn’t the whole job.

And neither is any of this a one-man operation. Truthfully, it never was. The best work I’ve ever done has depended on talented people working alongside me—makers, tradespeople, florists, fabricators, artisans, installers, and other creative people who care about getting it right. There’s simply too much involved in good creative work for one person to do everything, and I’m not particularly interested in pretending otherwise. Part of this next chapter is bringing more of those people together and creating a network I can call on as projects require it. Call it the Creative Cowboy posse. If that sounds like you, or somebody you know, I’d like to hear from you.

And if you’re finding The Creative Cowboy for the first time, grab a marshmallow and pop a squat. You’re invited too. Because where I really want to take this next chapter is toward making good design accessible to more kinds of people with more kinds of needs. Sometimes that may mean a room. Sometimes it may mean throwing a party, developing a garden, helping with a wedding, downsizing into a smaller home, or simply standing in the middle of a room you’ve lived with for ten years and finally admitting that none of it feels quite right anymore. It doesn’t necessarily matter to me how big the project is. What interests me is figuring out what it could be and seeing you benefit from both the process and the experience.

That’s really where I come in. I bring experience, judgment, and an eye that doesn’t miss much, but I’m not interested in imposing some Creative Cowboy formula on everybody who walks through the door. Your home should still look like your home when we’re finished. Your party should feel like something you would actually throw. Your brand should sound like you. My job is to help uncover what’s already there, figure out what’s missing, get rid of what’s getting in the way, and, when necessary, tell you that the thing you’re absolutely convinced belongs in the room really, really doesn’t.

None of this is about chasing a magazine cover. Sure, we all want things to look beautiful eventually, but good design is a process, and it takes real time and real work. Ask anyone who’s ever worked through a room with me. You try things, you edit, you hunt, you change your mind. Sometimes you find exactly what you thought you wanted and realize it was wrong all along. Sometimes the thing that makes the whole room is sitting in a thrift store, buried on Craigslist, or hiding under the basement steps.

That’s part of the fun of it. You don’t always know exactly where you’re going when you start, and occasionally you get bucked off along the way. You get back on, adjust the saddle, and keep riding until the thing finally feels right.

Six years later, that seems like as good a philosophy for life as it is for design.

Giddy up. Let’s ride.

— Edward Lee

The Creative Cowboy