Jul29
Category Archives: beauty
Jul7
be it ever so humble…
It’s the weekend; let’s lighten up. Here are two of my very most favorite designers, Alexandra Tolstoy and Butter Wakefield. They each have a unique style and a lot in common to my eye. They have an unapologetic love of color. And they insist on comfort. Those are my two priorities…oh, and how happy their homes are. Happy, exuberant, whimsical and personal style. Dare we say dopamine style? Our homes should delight us first thing in the morning, last thing at night, and especially after an outing, long or short. If you don’t walk in your front door and feel your shoulders lower, let’s talk.
Now both of these women are decidedly maximalists. As am I. Full disclosure, I cannot understand anything else. Everyone I share my enthusiasm with often responds with something similar to “well there’s…just…so…much…stuff.” Well, yeah. Hence the genre called maximalism. I call it a good start. But truthfully, it absolutely tickles my fancy.
I dream in maximalism. I actually dream of walking around inside strangers houses and taking note of the paintings on the wall and the patterns on the fabrics. It’s my idea of a good time. But don’t be fooled – it’s not an easy style to pull off. I work at it and never seem to get the relaxed result these two women have achieved. I have a theory about that, but I’ll save that for another day. I will tell you this: I have watched countless hours of maximalist house tours and not a one of those homeowners is glum. They seem genuinely chuffed.
Let’s recreate Butter Wakefield’s Conservatory on a budget! Loveseat Slipcover: https://amzn.to/4bBhdra; Colorful Floral Paintings: https://amzn.to/4cNLWmF; https://amzn.to/3RYHBo2; Farmhouse Style Plate Rack: https://amzn.to/4cuXMSg; Floral Ceramic Plates: https://amzn.to/3xY3qNF, https://amzn.to/3xG1lpN; Peel & Stick Floor Tiles: https://amzn.to/3WfnWmw, Striped Throw Pillows: https://amzn.to/45Uku3P, Wall Sconce, Set of 2: https://amzn.to/4eU3Pl2, Galvanized Tray Table: https://amzn.to/4eOQU3X…I’m afraid you’re on your own for the dog.
Jun16
a public service announcement
For church this week I’ve invited Angi Sullens to speak to us. She’s been inspiring me for years. She doesn’t pull any punches, and I appreciate that in a person. Wonder Hunter, filmmaker, Muse Juice travel guide, founder of Duirwaigh Studios, publisher of books and decks. I’m betting she doesn’t need to look for thin places; they emanate from her. So when imagination knocks…
Jun12
work like a woman
Okay. New week, new rabbit hole. Same theme: what do fashion, storytelling and rest have in common? I’m going to be a social archeologist until I grok this equation thoroughly. I’m certain there is some pearl of useful wisdom in here that I can build my empire on. Or at least get inspired to get out of the chair…
Enter Mary Portas, Habitat Voyeur. The creator of the kindness economy, Queen of Shops, considered a conscious entrepreneur, and dare I add, wizardess extraordinaire? Let’s just say, she gets it. She came from the future back to rescue us from ourselves and walk us into a new paradigm. We need a new paradigm. Sustainable. Inclusive. And nothing if not hopeful.
Very few people know that my teenage years revolved around fashion. My parents indulged my obsession by letting me go to finishing school on Saturdays during junior high. In addition to the cost involved, it meant my Mother drove downtown, about 20 miles each way from our suburban home, to drop me off and then again to pick me up eight hours later. That’s where I learned fencing, among other (mostly useless) skills. I loved it.
Around this same time it happened that my sister’s piano teacher had a daughter who produced shows at the big network affiliate in Detroit. Mrs. Hanes suggested her daughter use me as a model for The Jackie Crampton Fashion Hour, which followed the mid-day news on ABC. I guess you could say I was “discovered” in my own home. It began a bit of a teenage dream career, and before long I was making better money than I’d ever earn again the rest of my life. I worked as a model and then as a dresser and fashion assistant for Saks Fifth Avenue, and then for Belle Jacob Wigs. At the time they were one of the largest wig manufacturers in the world. I fell in love with wigs. I found I could create an entirely new persona on a daily basis. They really are an art medium all their own.
My first semester of college was in fashion illustration at The Detroit School of Arts and Crafts (now the College for Creative Studies.) But long before that I got in trouble in grade school for making anatomically correct paper dolls. It hadn’t occurred to me not to draw them correctly. Duh. By high school in the 60’s, where the girls were required to wear dresses, I was shopping at St. Vincent de Paul and other charity shops and taking the clothes apart and reconfiguring them to make outrageous outfits – but they had skirts! I was born this way, apparently. I still design clothes in my dreams. I often get up and draw them so that I won’t forget them. I have designed entire lines of shoes – none of them brown. Decades ago I designed a line of attachable pockets that you could mix and match and move from garment to garment. And a series of baggy linen tops with subtle tarot symbols embroidered on them. I’d love to wear them all.
But it was a different era. And I was learning to survive in a chaotic and sometimes violent home. A career in fashion was not to be. Mary Portas exemplifies the business woman I would like to support. Well, second only to Estella, perhaps. I do love trouble…
Mary Portas, Work Like A Woman, A Manifesto For Change, https://amzn.to/4edEGkN
Jun10
a thin place
New to me, this concept of the thin place, where the veil between heaven and earth is thin…”this is what it must be like to be in heaven,” says Sarah Louise. So, like Michigan in the spring. Surely there is no place more wonderful on earth. Misty sunrises feel like a warm blanket. Suddenly everything is lush and green and aromatic and yummy and all the birds arrive at once.
The hawthorn tree out front is blossoming and it is magnificent. It’s old swooping branches whisper to the soft grass and curtain my bedroom window. I look out through it eastward to a valley across the road. Hawthorns are considered sacred in Celtic mythology. They are purported to be the portal between worlds, where the magical creatures like leprechaun and fae travel back and forth. I haven’t seen them, but the Cedar Waxwings fill this tree each May to gorge on it’s berries, and that’s magic enough for me.
Can thin places be as close as this? Can they also be indoors, perhaps in the form of altars? I’ve always thought of my entire home as an altar. Isn’t it all sacred as it shelters my body and my life? How could it not be? I believe our homes do, in fact, provide a thin place. Alone and with our closest loved ones, we are safe here to grieve and to dream. Be it ever so humble.
“Now I become myself. It’s taken time, many years and places…” – May Sarton
Jun9
Now You Know That You Are Real
This next week I wish to explore a new concept that I have just come across – yesterday, actually: the thin place. The thin place means a place in our environment where the veil between heaven and earth is thin. Decades ago I read a quote in an interior design book that profoundly impacted me: “Home is heaven for beginners.” I was a guest in someone else’s home at the time, long before cell phones existed. So, no camera or way to record it, I soon forgot who said it.
Around that same time I participated in a meditation retreat. Normally I hate guided meditations. My imagination needs little encouragement to take off, and by the time the person speaks I’m far off in my own world. They’ll start us down a path and seconds later suggest we are standing on a vast beach, when I’m already talking to a bird in a dense forest. Leave me alone.
But this time something remarkable happened. Tuning out the voice from across the room I continued walking further through that dense forest, and I came upon a castle. Tower and all. Big heavy door pushed aside I started up the circular stone stairway. It was lit with gemstones set in the outer wall, refracting rainbows of light to guide my way. When the meditation ended we were asked to describe what we saw. The woman nodded at me to go first, and when I described the castle, she said, “in dream or meditation work you were scouting heaven. That structure represented what you expect the afterlife to be like.” Ahhhh…yes. Yes, I do expect that. Beauty beyond my wildest imagination.
We’ve all experienced a thin place; we know how it feels, viscerally. Goosebumps and skin prickles and an otherworldly sense of wonder overwhelms us. To me, it speaks about the concept of environmental fit that contributes to self awareness. You have to be able to be present, to notice that something is happening. You have to be comfortable enough in your own skin to be just 10% more curious than scared.
Like Francois Halard, I, too was a shy and quiet child. My environment was anything but. It was constant chaos and noise and activity. I spent any and all available hours alone in my room, reading and thinking and drawing and painting and more reading and staring at things. I bonded with inanimate objects and the trees outside my window, my cat, and my own imaginings. Years later in high school when I first took LSD it would be as natural as breathing to walk through walls, to vibrate with the plants, to become the colors of the sky. I still believe it helped keep that portal open, the veil thin, and made for me a better life.
While I love the idea of heaven on earth, I’m taking it literally. I am entirely committed to living fully in my body. I’m not interested in spacing out, or fantasy, or in any way becoming less present. What if the thin place exists within us? Do we carry it always? Sometimes we happen into a place that reminds us to notice; sometimes we create that space. Any surreal experiences I’ve had (and there have been many) were solid. Not beyond my senses, but through them. They were not ethereal or “spiritual.” They did not take me to other worlds, they expanded my awareness of this one. That is The Hanged Man experience in the tarot. You know what you know, even if it is not shared. It cannot be described with the English language; we haven’t the framework.
I haven’t taken any recreational drugs since high school (and few prescribed medications if avoidable). The last time I drank too much I was 21 (I’m 70). I don’t want (or need) my state to be altered, unless it is the organic release from anxiety that allows a fuller experience of presence. Even if that means pain. I’m all in, having a look down life’s hallways…
Jun3
the only egg in the room…
…besides my head. Pardon me, I couldn’t resist. If God is in the details, Fiona de Lys is an angel incarnate. Here I am, still in wonder. Join me in my rabbit hole this morning? What do fashion, storytelling and rest have in common? Let’s visit Fiona and have a look ’round and see what we can learn about living a creative life…a deep, soul quenching life of peace.
Her home tells a story, a “narrative” as she calls it. She is telling us her personal story – about what she loves about her home, color, and her work. She can’t separate those out, nor should she. Let’s face it, our homes are at once metaphor and expression. Fiona was being restored as the space was being restored. When life’s changes (whether chosen or forced) require a move we must slow down and listen.
When she talks about the home needing to breathe she is describing a physical characteristic of many European and northern African houses. The lime finish on the walls is an organic material, a kind of chalky plaster. The climate is not friendly to gypsum, or what we call drywall. In her stairwell you see it’s natural state before any color is added. It’s a soft, mottled finish. And it does contract and expand with the temperature and humidity.
She likely added solid flooring. That is a fairly new addition there. Many old English country houses are open to the ground underneath the floorboards or bricks. Most of them do not have central heating systems. That is why you see doors on every room; they closed the heat of the fire in to stay warm. If they are listed (on the historic registry) they were built long before these amenities had been invented. Having a “cooker”, or Aga, later became the only source of heat other than open fires. Notice the desk in her dining room is almost as old as the U.S. How is it that we are not humbled by how much we have to learn and how much we take for granted? I’m convinced that if we possess any emotional intelligence at all it came from our ancestors through our genes. But I digress…
This home is full of interesting details and ideas. I’d love to hear what you noticed and liked. Fancy trying any of them?
I am new to the Amazon Affiliate program, and have yet to figure out the technology of adding a section to the blog. Any link from inside the YouTube video is from the sponsor, in this case, Homeworthy. The links following here provide me with a small commission should you make a purchase. Let’s start with the shoes. I have these! They look just like the Amazon essentials I love, found here: https://amzn.to/3X7y3e0 They’re comfortable and I wear them often. William Morris coffee table book for inspiration: https://amzn.to/4c2om4B, Green Kimono: https://amzn.to/4aEln1a
May26
I am many other worthy things…
Lately I’ve been struggling with extreme fatigue. Feeling lousy, my joints are stiff and surprisingly painful, so movement is difficult. I try to limit taking any medications, including Tylenol. My poor liver is as overwhelmed as the rest of me. The dishes are done. The sheets will get changed another day. The lawn mowed another day. The rain will water the garden. Let’s just visit The Unexpected Gypsy today…
May24
Peace and thank you
My Mother never ever complained. About anything. She would famously say, “there’s nothing wrong with me” when we kids would corner her. We could see the pain on her face. Then she’d say, “there’s a hitch in my giddalong…” or, “the only thing wrong with me is that my children are trying to find something wrong with me.” Every so often she’d finally admit to a headache. I don’t know how she did it. She had five very spoiled children, 6 if you count my Dad, and most certainly many mornings had a hangover. As she aged her hands began to cramp up and become crippled with arthritis like her fathers had.
I am not my Mother. Try as I might to emulate her talent and tenacity, I whine. Regularly. I’m not proud. But today I have a hitch in my giddalong, both physically and mentally. Nothing is really wrong, but somethin’ ain’t right. Let’s just say it’s been a week. I began this week of writing most enthusiastically, setting out to explore the common denominator between fashion, storytelling, and sleep.
I think I do know the connection – it’s creativity, of course. But when I don’t get enough sleep I am anything but creative. Surly comes to mind. Coffee and Morning Pages certainly help. As I’ve talked about since I began this blog over 12 years ago now, Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages practice has saved my life, and certainly my sanity. When I don’t feel like writing – or think I have anything interesting going on, I may write stupid trivia, but I write. Some days I can barely think, and I might start by “reporting” to myself, the weather, the night’s holdings, any plans for the day, all of my frustrations, what I’m most surly about, and eventually listing things I am grateful for – even if I don’t feel grateful. Sometimes I can write myself free; sometimes I can’t. By free, I mean through a change of mental state, from anxiety or perfectionism to optimism and more creativity. It’s an invisible door that I have to find by feel.
But the real goal is always peace. Creativity is the how. It’s how I get to peace. It’s how I shift out of fear and toward expansion, possibility, and hope. It’s how I re-member myself. And that, quite simply is what fashion, storytelling and sleep have in common. Fashion, design, architecture, color – the ideas of others that excite and inspire me. Storytelling, mine or others, that incite curiosity and invoke my sense of human-ness, of belonging. And sleep, even if it wasn’t enough…dreams or nightmares, rife with the potential for more. These simple elements get me up, curious about what the day might hold, moving forward.
Ever forward, toward peace and thank you.
May20
Coco Chanel’s Tarot Cards
What does fashion, storytelling, and sleep all have in common? This week I’m hoping you will join me on a little curiosity journey. I wish to explore some of the homes of artists, beginning today with the New Orleans home of Debra Shriver. I am also going to explore our personal development using our intuition, or psychic abilities. AND THEN, because I cannot separate these things in my own mind – I think we will discover the common denominator here. I believe there is an integral link that creative thinking has with intuition, or psychic awareness. Furthermore, I not only believe they are all part of the same function, but entirely dependent on one another. And, I am also convinced that our very survival depends upon us recognizing this. As it happens, this awareness is also intricately connected to our sense of safety, physically and psychically, and to our ability to rest and relax. They are all components of freedom, and I want more of that.
If you will indulge this exploration with me this week, I believe we will all feel better about ourselves a few days from now. Ready?
A Painterly Home 