Okay you – yes, you. Here’s a bandwagon I can jump on! Wendy Knox is on a campaign to re-brand aging. She’s turning muck into magic. Let’s support her any way we can. For starters, let’s subscribe to her YouTube channel and like her videos and let her know we are listening:
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?
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!
Almost a decade ago I began this blog, meant to be a lifestyle blog, and ultimately an expression of what home has meant to me. But it has often been about the process of my life, about personal growth and healing. It turns out that “home” means something different to each of us, and has common threads that connect us…and that we all FEEL home within. We feel beauty and appreciate it differently – but we all feel it – physiologically and psychically. Comfort is a visual sense of beauty as much as it is physical. Our spirit recognizes an uncomfortable environment as dysfunction; something is off. It matters to our well being. Let’s explore this further in the days ahead, especially as the long dark winter sets in here where I live.
A craving for beauty has driven my life forward when nothing else could. Color excites me, greenery makes me feel alive. Music and birdsong open my heart and the floodgates of tears, both of delight and grief. I’ll welcome it all.
This morning I had seven young deer in my yard. The past year-and-a-half have brought physical struggles with Lyme disease for me, which the deer carry. I will learn to protect myself, but I will not run them out. These deer all looked like young adolescents. Deer hunting season ended a week ago and my guess is that the adults of the herd are gone now. I can’t imagine living on a planet where you are hunted.
I’m using this video to help illustrate some of the ideas I want to explore here with you. Namely, what are the elements that create a sanctuary home – and WHY is this an important objective? I think it’s actually an innate motivation for us all. Pay attention to how you feel watching this – how are you affected by the soft colors and the imperfect surfaces? Sarah Stanley is looking for her home to “lifts the spirits and stir the soul.” A comfortable home is never perfect. Welcome to The Fable:
“And I thought this is the good day you could meet your love, this is the grey day someone close to you could die. This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world and the next…this is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. This is the temple of my adult aloneness and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life. There is no house like the house of belonging.” – David Whyte, The House of Belonging
She’s afraid of beige…I so get that. Beige is a euphemism for mediocrity. Mediocrity scares me. It has frightened me away from writing, here and elsewhere. It has frightened me away from painting. But ya know what? Screw that…I will turn 70 in a few months. I’m tired of being afraid – of anything. I’ve lost people that I don’t know how to live without. I’ve lost beloved pets – some of my best life companions, shitloads of money, my sanity more than once…
When I began this blog many years ago I was grieving heavily. I still am. I’ve come to understand that grief is part of my everyday life, and I am so good with that. It’s a portal to an open heart and a remarkable way to live more fully.
Since you have wandered here today, please come back soon. I’m going to explore this world again and I would relish your company, and your input. I plan to write and share ideas, music, books, and most importantly, inspiration. I need more of it, and don’t we all?
“…the insidious, evil, creeping taupe…” – Alexandra Stoddard
“Do something, Susan, even if it’s wrong.” – my Mom, Doris
“This is the bright home in which I live, this is where I ask my friends to come, this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn to love. There is no house like the house of belonging.” – David Whyte
Well, I wanted to write a blog post about the fabulous home of designer Thomas O’Brien showcased in the latest video by Quintessence. But I’m fighting back tears…it has sparked childhood memories of sliding down the banister of my grandparents huge old Tudor in Detroit, shaking out cornstarch on the linoleum so our feet would slide when we danced the Twist, and of watching scary movies at a friend’s renovated old colonial in Birmingham where I used to dog sit the beagles Liberty, Justice and Freedom, and of the smell of old polished wood and ancient roses…and life.
My parents bought a rambling Cape Cod when we five kids were little. It was old by 1960’s standards; the architect had built it for his mother in 1926. I loved that home for many reasons, including the hidden staircase from inside my sister’s bedroom closet to the attic. And the faerie-sized garret doors perfect for squirreling through to hide. But I remember playing hide and seek outdoors most of all, crawling inside the peony shrubs that lined the 400′ lawn between the house and the Detroit River. They were so old, stems so woody, that they were hollow in the center, a natural fort of branches. They had been planted when the house and gardens were new as a frame inside the majestic willow sentinels. Those trees were taller than the fourth story of the house (where my room was in the eaves) and drifted lazily down to the grass. They whispered to me at dusk that everything would be alright; I swear they bowed to me every sunrise. They kept my tender heart swathed in hope and beauty.
As the house let sway the hours of the day, activity increased around me. I heard the movement of a family, sometimes peaceful, sometimes in glorious song together, often engaged in a personal war, always a family. The willows were still. Downstairs my father or my sister practiced on the grand piano in the living room hours on end. Their repetition, their mistakes, unnerving then, are now fond remembrances.
Such an enchanted life we all live, whether or not we realize it in this moment. I am grateful for all of it, all of the struggle and the beauty. Here, I get a sense of it all rushing back to me. I love watching and listening to these two. Thomas is obviously happy to be sharing the home he truly loves. Susanna Salk always puts a smile on my face. She’s such a “tourist” – she gawks and is demonstratively awestruck – as we all would be. And she’s paying attention! There is no pretension or affectation. She admits she’s embarrassed at just noticing the fireplace two hours into her visit! They both make me feel more creative and more alive by their inspired way of life. Watch closely, you will see the willows in the garden bowing…
This house has been one of my “all-time favs” also…this artist has got it goin’ on. You know she’s living life to the fullest. Susanne gets it: it’s deeply personal. Not being a drinker, I don’t know what much of this stuff is that she’s talking about – but I DO drink Limeade…and am a coffee-holic. I’ve always made coffee ice cubes so my iced coffee doesn’t get diluted. I’m serious.
Anyway, I maintain that all “true beings” love color, Lulu, and that we make far too many compromises in our own love homes. My home is a love home – I love my home, my land, my pets, my bed, my memories, my time here , my sweet, sweet life…
“Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment.” – Claude Monet
Here is an old video taken from my favorite blog, Content In A Cottage…it cheers me to no end! Lucky children to have her as their second grade teacher…
For Turkey Day, I thought I’d share a dining room tour with P. Allen Smith. It is the home of the artist Rebecca Thompson, whose studio I featured yesterday. There are so many design elements I admire and ascribe to, especially the personal touches that delight the senses…home is, after all, heaven for beginners.
Listen to the details that this design genius points out; I always learn from him. Enjoy your dining today…XO
A Painterly Home 