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 I’m always changing my house,” says Connie LaRue. So when she and her husband, Jack, moved into their house
in Olathe, Kansas, about six years ago, she wasn’t entirely sorry that the furniture she already had didn’t go with its tall ceilings and large windows. She rather liked the idea of decorating her new home from scratch. Connie and her husband, Jack, worked together in the engineering firm they own, and since her retirement, she’s become a full-time grandmother, devoted to her children and grandchildren, who all live nearby. But decorating—and helping friends and family to decorate—has always been a hobby of hers. “And I’m always happy to lend my opinions,” she says, with a smile.
 When it came to her own 6,000-square-foot home, which she describes as “a New England house in the Midwest,” she started with only one absolute certainty. “I just knew I wanted it to be really light and bright,” she says. “I’m a real casual person. I love anything that has that English look and I love all the cottagey looking colors and patterns. I like the Shabby Chic look, but when I do it, it comes out sort of comfortable traditional.”
One of the first things you notice about the LaRue house is that there are no curtains. Anywhere. Connie decided she would literally let the sun shine in with “big, wide shutters” in every window, made of polywood that doesn’t warp or crack. “Draperies and curtains just complicate things and shut out the light,” she explains.
Throughout the house, you’ll find details that express Connie’s notions about how to make a home warm and inviting. What she wants is “a house you can live in, that says ‘Sit down, put up your feet and be comfortable.’” To achieve that effect, she uses antiques and replicas, overstuffed armchairs and roomy, inviting sofas with plump cushions. Pillows with flowery designs are scattered everywhere. Walls are generally painted, almost always in pale shades, and fabrics are mostly in the pale, muted colors and faded chintz tones of English country houses. All of her favorites florals, checks and other patterns are mixed together in a way that’s whimsical, but never jarring.
Connie also happily mixes old pieces with new, explaining,
“I love antiques, but I like that clean, shiny look of new things, too.” And anywhere you look there are flowers—cut flowers,
topiaries and potted plants—as well as the floral patterns you’ll find somewhere on the walls, floors or furniture of every room.
 Everywhere, too, there are examples of the vintage blue-and-white china she’s been collecting since she and Jack married 38 years ago. She started with a pattern called “Chatham” by Maruta-Kasugaware. Her made-in-Japan dinnerware cost $19.95 for a complete service for eight, and Connie still has pieces from the original set. Today, they’re proudly displayed, along with more recent purchases, in an antique corner cabinet. (The cabinet was a real find, rescued by Connie and Jack from a building that was about to be demolished. They literally tore it out of the wall, then carted it home and lovingly refinished it.)
If you ask Connie what makes blue-and-white china so attractive to her and so many other people, she answers thoughtfully, “There’s something tranquil about it, a kind of garden feel. I’m not a fine china sort of person—the kind of blue-and-white I like, which is English rather than Oriental patterns, represents a way of life to me, something casual and very calming.”
On the other hand, if you ask her how many pieces of her favorite collectible she has acquired,
she just laughs and admits she hasn’t the faintest idea. “I get teased all the time,” she says. “I don’t even have it all out on display. I just can’t pass a piece up,
especially if it’s a bargain. Let’s just say I have more than the law allows.”
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