“What actually happens is this frontier between what you think is you and what you think is not you.” He is hilarious here. What a treasure he is. Here he takes us to Finisterre and beyond…Happy New Life.
“Who would not go on a while longer were it given them to know, the way is short, and Heaven is the goal…?” – ACIM
…give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong…ANYTHING or ANYONE that does not bring you alive is too small for you.” Happy New Year!
Jenny Jackson is my superhero. She is “four years away from ninety.” She has a red refrigerator. She is an expert at making wrong moves in life. She sews buttons on her shoes. She lives on the edge of terror. And she is grateful. I love her. I love you, too. MERRY CHRISTMAS!
“I have been absolutely terrified every moment of my life, and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single thing I’ve wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keefe
At 240 square feet – you read that right, 240 – this space holds everything this designer needs. Here we see a great example of how a space must provide not only physical comfort, but visual comfort as well. What would you need to feel comfortable here?
“A house is made with walls and beams, a home is made with love and dreams.” – Emerson
This friendly young designer is just delightful, as is his home. He has nailed the attention to detail. Here in his small 2 bedroom bungalow he demonstrates maximalist style exquisitely.
I do love black walls. Pair them with natural textures like rattan, greenery, and velvet (oh, my!) and you have just created warmth and drama. Trust me, you’ll love living with this classic design. Put some pattern on your fifth wall and we are talkin’…
Javier’s bathroom is my favorite of all time. I’m planning to steal this idea and paint a mural in mine. If you’re curious, it shows much better in the original tour a year ago (link below video.)
Grab a cup of your favorite holiday beverage and take a little break…XOXO
“Good artists copy; great atrists steal.” – Pablo Picasso
The original tour. Check out the mural walls in the primary bathroom.
Molly Mahon is known for her block printed fabric and wallpapers. She often carves on a potato and prints papers and tea towels. Did you do this as a child? She gives us permission to do it again and now. I say yes!
Here she shares a fantastic idea – a handmade “commonplace book.” I’ve been fascinated with this idea recently since first learning of these handmade books that people fill with personal wisdom and artwork. She sent this book around the country to different artist friends and they each added a contribution. What an absolutely marvelous idea…hmmmmmm….shall we?
Let’s start here, today. You may think me crazy (a post for a different day) but here’s a basic lesson in personalizing your space: GIVE IT A NAME. Go ahead, I dare you to see what happens. I don’t care if you live in your rusted out van – name it. You have a name. Your cat has a name, your state, etc…you want to engage in a healthy relationship with your environment? Name it.
Not your dream home you say? Take a number. I have had the tremendous privilege of living in some beautiful houses in my life. None of them were my ideal, for a variety of reasons. Currently I live in a 1950’s mid-century ranch. This is quintessentially my least favorite architectural style. I was raised in a dysfunctional family during the 1950’s and 60’s: mid-mod gives me the willies.
My personal style is traditional all the way. It is so not happening here. Nothing grates my one last nerve more than ignoring the architecture of a house and it’s vernacular when decorating. But there are ways to S T R E T C H these boundaries successfully.
My son found me this house on Craig’s list. I had exhausted the available options in a very limited market on a very limited budget. The seller was in the midst of flipping this house, but the essential basics were done. Unlike many of the houses I had seen it was live-able. I could move in and finish it over time. When I prayed and meditated on this option I clearly heard: “you are being placed.” Say what….?
Shortly after moving in I woke at first light to look out an eastern window. The gnarly old tree out front was crowded full of Cedar Waxwings looking in at me. I will never doubt this placement, nor the grace that brought me to Hawthorn Hill Cottage.
“The home should be the treasure chest of living.” – Le Corbusier
Ahhhhh….the wisdom of not knowing, yes…perhaps the greatest gift of age. “Very little makes sense to me these days…” she says. The world is crazier and crazier than I ever could have imagined. How will we navigate these atrocities to our collective soul? The only way I know to be is curious.
Tiokasin Ghosthorse reminds me to change my inner language, to think like a child again. The Lakota language does not contain nouns. There are no words to define us, only verbs. We are all in a state of becoming. I require constant reminding of this. I do know how to live intuitively. Fifty-five years of working with the tarot has helped with that; I hate to think where I’d be without it. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Simple, not easy.
Intuition is the only thing that ever saved me. It is intregal to the creative process. I’ve said for decades that “ultimately, it is the artists who will save us.” It is. The writers, the painters, the musicians, those who live intuitively. Einstein knew it. The stoics knew it. Toni Morrison knew it: “Your life is already artful – waiting, just waiting, for you to make it art.”
It’s not too late and I am not too old. Bonnie Garmus published her first novel at the age of sixty-five. After 98 rejections. She knew something and didn’t back away from what she didn’t know. Julia Cameron teaches the wisdom of not knowing in her series The Artist’s Way. It’s a system for creative recovery – not a how to on being an artist. It’s not about producing a thing, a product, a finished piece! It’s about learning to live like a child again. Vulnerable. Curious. Open-hearted. Available to intuition – to hearing the divine speaking within you.
“…forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in…” Leonard Cohen wrote in his brilliant Anthem.
“…the less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine.” – Indigo Girls
Cathy B. Graham is one of my favorite artists, not least of all because she is inspiring and funny. She re-invented herself in her sixties with her illustrations and her two books; Second Bloom and Full Bloom. They are among my favorites. Her tablescapes are wonderfully whimsical.Notice the watercolor paintings in the dining room and throughout the home; those are her originals. She decorates with vegetables and food and flowers and toys and….she also designed the linens, the invitations, the dishes, the book illustrations….there isn’t anything she can’t do. Let her remind us all to let our inner child play and be delighted in everything we do!
“…you are the perpetual arranger,” said a childhood friend one day many years ago. It is true that I am constantly changing the furniture layout, the menagerie of items, the plants indoors and out, the accoutrement of life. C’mon – you do it, too, whether you are conscious of it or not. We are the curators of our own space. It is a thankless struggle when we are raising children, but it is innate. Now in my later years it is an act of pure delight. Don’t put that there! That goes over here…see?!
My darling mother used to say, “I’m just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.” How many times I’d been astonished and befuddled by how she managed a big house full of five children (six if you count my father, who certainly qualified.) We would laugh, but I always had the same reply: “It matters, Mom. The arrangement of the deck chairs matter as long as we’re standing here on deck.”
A friend recently confided that her mother thinks her house is cluttered. I’ve been told that about my homes since my early 20’s. But let me tell you something about my friend’s house. The house itself is beautiful, but there is a less apparent component: I walk in and I FEEL an energy shift. She arranges her home with INTENTION. Like myself, she believes her home is her sanctuary; a living altar. I’ve already asked her if I may come film a short video for the blog after the holidays. I’d like to investigate this process with several people whose homes I admire for different reasons.
In design terms, we are maximalists. I am just as disheveled by clutter as anyone, but clutter is not useful nor attractive. And there are ways to live with the belongings you love without them becoming visual clutter. There are specific ways to do that, and we will explore those here in the coming weeks.
The internet is – pardon me – cluttered – with videos about clutter. Believe me, I’ve watched them discerningly. I’ve read the books (glad to share my favorite) and yes, clutter is a symptom of PTSD. It is both indicative of and perpetuates mental unrest. But most of the approaches I have found fall short of long term solutions; they address the symptom rather than the cause. Have we not learned better yet? We’re seeing the manifestation of this in our health care system. Yes, recognizing a problem is the beginning of finding a cure. We’ve got this.
I love my stuff. I love my home. AND, I love my health, mentally and physically. Health is a lifelong goal I will not compromise (shall we talk boundaries here yet?!) The goal is also beauty, inside and out. Health and beauty are two sides of the same coin. Beauty is a sacred affirmation to our spirit, to God, that we are thankful for the grace in our lives. We are paying attention. We are outgrowing survival mode. We are committed to life. Can I get a witness?!
But beauty is entirely personal. AND, I insist – NOT based on economics. You can live a beautiful life in a beautiful place with or without money. Stick with me and I’ll prove it. (I’ve made some pretty cool decorations out of the plastic netting the onions came in.)
What are your seven favorite things at home?
“Nothing is interesting unless it is personal.” – Billy Baldwin
A Painterly Home 