A Chat with Amber Zakahi
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Amber with her Franciscan ware in Green Ivy
Friends I’m so happy to welcome Amber Zakahi to the Chalet for a chat. welcome - please share a bit about yourself.
Hi, I’m Amber, the creator behind @collected_on_chronicle. I live in Washington State with my husband Micah, our two kids, and a house full of animals and secondhand treasures. Our home is a 90s house that I’ve been slowly transforming room by room into what I like to call a collected home. It’s a space filled with character, history, and pieces that have lived other lives before finding their way here.
My love vintage, antiques and secondhand pieces and creating really started when I was young. I had many collections including porcelain dolls. I designed my own outfits I would have my mom sew for me. Before the age of ten my family didn’t have much money, so thrifting and secondhand shopping were not trends for us. That was just how we lived. When my stepfather joined the military we began moving all over the United States, and eventually we lived in Europe for several years. Being surrounded by so much history, architecture, and antiques planted the seeds for my love of old things and the stories they carry.
Young Amber with her doll collection
My grandma was also a huge influence. She loved antiques and was always going to estate sales. She even sold vintage and antiques on eBay long before that was common. It was just her thing. I had the privilege of tagging along to many estate sales while growing up. When I moved out on my own she gave me several pieces, and that is really where I began leaning into my interest for interior decorating.
After I married my husband Micah at 25, life moved quickly for us. Because of my health we needed to have our kids sooner than we originally planned. Around that same time I was dealing with significant health challenges that brought a lot of medical bills. Decorating a home the traditional way was not realistic for us financially, so I leaned into what I already knew. I started thrifting, going to estate sales and garage sales, and searching Craigslist.
What began as a way to furnish our home affordably slowly turned into a small business. I started finding vintage and antique pieces, repairing, painting and refinishing furniture, taking custom clients, and doing design work on the side. For a period of time I was also an antique and vintage dealer at a well known antique marketplace in Seattle. That chapter was incredibly fun and gave me the chance to work closely with antiques every day.
A Set of Chairs Amber refinished
That small business lasted several years and helped us pay off many of those medical bills and eventually buy a home.
I no longer run that business, but I have kept much of the collection I built over the years. One thing people often find interesting is that I have a dedicated decor storage room where I keep many of the vintage and antique pieces I have collected. I call it my decor library. It can be a little controversial online, but for me it is an organized collection that allows me to rotate pieces through our home over time. What I have discovered is that many people quietly do the same thing. They have just been afraid of being judged for it.
Amber’s Decor Library
I have had some health challenges over the years which means I spend more time at home than I expected. In many ways it has been a gift. It allowed me to slow down and tap into the creative side of myself. Decorating, collecting, and sharing the process online has become a way for me to connect with others who love antique, vintage pieces, secondhand finds, and homes that evolve slowly over time.
I’ve never believed a home should come together all at once. The best spaces grow over time, piece by piece, as life happens inside them.
What motivates you? I think at the core I have a deep need to create and transform things. In many ways it mirrors parts of my life. Growing up I had a tumultuous childhood, and creativity was something I turned to during difficult times. Making things, collecting, rearranging spaces, and imagining possibilities helped me process a lot when I was young.
I do feel like I lost that creative part of myself for several years in adulthood, but I eventually found my way back to it. Now what motivates me most is that feeling of creating something, even if it’s small. Whether it’s rearranging a room, bringing home a secondhand piece, or styling a corner of the house, the act of creating brings me a lot of joy and peace.
I’ve learned that creativity is something I truly need in my life. It keeps me grounded and reminds me that transformation is always possible.
Who or what has been the biggest influence on you? One of the biggest influences on my life was living in Europe when I was a young adult. My family lived in a small town in Germany called Kitzingen, which was just outside a larger military base. It was a small post-war town with an incredible amount of history, and living there completely changed the way I saw the world.
During that time I was dating the mayor’s son, and through his family I was introduced to parts of the town and its history that I probably would not have experienced otherwise. Seeing that deeper layer of local history opened my eyes in a way that really stayed with me.
One memory that stands out clearly was visiting the Palace of Versailles for the first time at 18 years old. Walking through the palace and seeing the scale, the art, the colors, and the history all around me left a huge impression. I remember feeling completely in awe of it. I think that moment really sparked my love for French antiques and historic interiors.
While we were living in Europe, I also traveled whenever I had the chance. I traveled with friends and sometimes on my own, visiting places like Italy, the UK, Russia, the Netherlands, and several other countries across Europe. I even had the opportunity to travel to Africa. Being able to experience so many different cultures, architecture, and histories outside of the United States had a huge impact on me.
Looking back, I think those years shaped the way I see homes and objects today. Being surrounded by places that had evolved over hundreds of years taught me that homes do not have to be perfect or brand new to be beautiful. The layers, the history, and the stories are often what make them meaningful.
Your happy place – where is it? My happy place is honestly at home. After everything life has brought my way over the years, creating a home that feels peaceful, layered, and personal means a lot to me.
There’s something really special about those moments when my husband, my kids, and all of our pets are here and we’re just living life together in this space that I’ve created for our family.
I love the quiet moments when the sunlight is coming through the windows and the house feels calm. Sometimes I’ll sit in the living room with a cup of tea and just look around at the things that make our home feel beautiful and meaningful to me. It might be flipping through a book, or going down to my decor storage room and moving things around and bringing different pieces into the house.
Home is where I can slow down, be creative, and be surrounded by the people and things I love most. That feeling of comfort, creativity, and family all in one place is what makes it my happy place
The Primary Suite
What’s your personal style? My personal style is really a mix of many different things because I genuinely love so many different styles. I’m drawn to chinoiserie, French pieces, French country, English influences, antiques, vintage objects. I love art and own an overflowing collection of it. It’s less about fitting into one category and more about how pieces make me feel when I bring them into a space.
That’s why I often describe my style as eclectic. It changes depending on what I’m inspired by at the moment or what pieces I’m excited about decorating with. But even though it evolves, there are still common threads throughout my home that make it feel cohesive and unmistakably mine.
One of those threads is color. I tend to gravitate toward colors that feel connected to nature. Shades that remind me of the sky, trees, and the earth. Those tones repeat throughout my home and help everything feel calm and grounded.
I also love creating visual references and repetition within a space. You’ll notice similar textures, materials, and objects appearing in different rooms. That layering is what gives the house depth and character.
Overall my style is very collected, layered, and textured. It’s not loud or overwhelming, but I love when a space makes you pause for a moment, notice the details, and maybe even feel a little curious about the stories behind the pieces.
Out on the Hunt
What is your home aesthetic? I would describe my home aesthetic as collected, layered, and very personal. Most of the pieces in my home are vintage, antique, or secondhand, and they’ve been gathered over many years from estate sales, thrift stores, antique shops, and places I’ve traveled.
One interesting thing about collecting this way is that many of the pieces carry very specific memories for me. I can often remember exactly where I found something, the moment I spotted it, and sometimes even what I paid for it. It’s almost like a visual memory tied to the object. Because of that, the pieces in my home feel connected to different moments in my life.
I love mixing influences - like French, English, and chinoiserie pieces, but I don’t approach decorating with strict rules. I focus more on how things feel together. My home has a lot of texture, layers, and objects with history, but the overall feeling is still calm and grounded.
Color also plays a big role. I tend to gravitate toward colors that feel connected to nature. Shades that remind me of the sky, trees, and earth. Those tones repeat throughout the house and help everything feel cohesive even though there are many different styles mixed together.
At the end of the day, my goal is for the house to feel warm, lived in, and full of stories.
The Livingroom
What space are you most comfortable in? The space I’m most comfortable in is my living room. It’s probably the most evolved space in our home and the one that continues to change the most. I often think of it as a kind of ongoing art project.
It’s the room where I experiment the most with decorating. Sometimes the changes are small, like moving a chair, rearranging pillows, or bringing in a different piece from my decor storage room. Other times the space shifts more noticeably. It can evolve daily or weekly depending on what I’m inspired by.
Because of that, the living room always feels alive to me. It’s a place where I can play with creativity, layer different pieces together, and watch the space transform over time.
What is something you try to do every day? One thing I try to do every day is spend a little time taking care of my home. I genuinely enjoy tidying up, vacuuming, and putting things back in order. It’s not in an obsessive way, but more because I like how it makes the house feel.
There’s something calming about resetting a space. When things are clean and organized, it allows me to really appreciate the home we’ve created and the pieces I’ve collected over the years.
For me it’s a small daily ritual that helps the house feel peaceful and lived in.
What’s your guilty pleasure? My guilty pleasure is probably a good sweet treat and a podcast or documentary. It might be something simple like candy, a pastry, banana bread, or anything sweet, and then settling in to listen to something interesting.
I’ve always been really fascinated by psychology and have studied it quite a bit over the years. Because of that, I tend to gravitate toward crime podcasts and documentaries, especially the ones that really break down human behavior and the psychology behind why people do the things they do.
Amber gifted me the large delft tile from her Decor Library!
A lot of the time I’ll listen to those while I’m cleaning or tidying up around the house. Something about having a good story playing in the background while I’m doing something productive is oddly relaxing to me.
Amber my sweet friend - Thank YOU! I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. I feel so fortunate to have connected through the world that is Instagram. I love seeing your posts, learning about your newest thrifted finds and seeing how you style them in your beautiful home! You never fail to inspire me!
Please Follow Amber -
Instagram: @collected_on_chronicle
Linktree: linktr.ee/collectedonchronicle
Threads: collected_on_chronicle
Til next time be well and I’ll see you over on the Gram!
