How do you fly?

Tonight as I was tucking my four year old son into bed, we had a very sweet conversation.

"Mom, thank you for my superman costume, it makes me so happy."

"You're welcome, Scotty."

"Mom, I thought it would make me fly. But I can't fly. And I don't have any super powers."

"Oh, sweetie" I said, giving him a big hug, "Every super hero has very different super powers, you may not fly like superman, but you have a superpower of friendship and kindness, you make friends so easily! And you have a superpower of happiness, just by smiling and being you, you make others around you happy! And you have a superpower of brilliance, you are very smart and love to learn, that's what makes you Super Scott!"

"Mom, tell me a story about Super Scott."

So I told him a story about making a new friend with someone who was shy. This precious conversation touched me on so many levels, and really made me contemplate my own perspective in life. How innocently my son believed that putting on a costume would turn him into the hero he most admires, but he is already a hero in my eyes and in the eyes of everyone who loves him. As his mother, it is my heart's dearest hope, to be the mirror that can show him to see that greatness in himself.

What costumes am I wearing hoping they will give me super powers? That my house is always clean? That I know just what to do all the time? That I always have it together? That I am always a perfect, engaged mom teaching my 4 year old everything he needs to know to get into college? That my heart doesn't sometimes break? That everything is fine? That I don't need help? I am just as human as you, and in that fallible, imperfect, humanity there is my truest superpower-compassion, sympathy and love.

Because I know how it feels to wish I could fly into the sky of perfection, and then realize I can't fly. I don't have any superpowers...But I am me. I am alive. And I am walking through this life choosing to love, create, and build a family that with God's blessing, will go on and on for generations. That, is superpower enough for me.

Music and the Mind, Book Review

I just finished listening to one of my all time favorite books on tape (for probably the 50th time) "Music and the Mind" by Michael Ballam. I love this book, it inspires and reminds me of the invaluable importance of the arts. Ballam has incredible information and research compiled into this treasure of a book that will compel you to go out and buy your very own copy of Handel's Water Music! There are stories that truly testify of the power and influence of music, the accounts he shares will speak to your heart and remind you of this incredible tool we have to bless the lives of others, wake up the mind and uplift our souls through good music. 

My grandpa always told me that music has to have "the three m's" in order to pass the test of time, it has to have melody, it has to have a message, and it has to have majesty. Ballam's entire book has all three. It is written like a song, it is filled with music and it will change your life. Music is a divine language, a way to convey love in such a powerful and personal way, it is nothing short of magic.

Turn on some Mozart, Brahms or Handel today, sit down with your little one and paint, draw, dance, sing, wake up your mind, wake up your heart, wake up your creativity. All of the answers are there, waiting to be unlocked, music and art will set them free.

What do you do to unlock your creativity?

-DD

Letting go

Life is constantly coming and going. Autumn shows us this principle in a very vibrant and exciting way. All the leaves are changing and falling from the trees, preparing for winter. The long sleep before spring.

Imagine a tree that couldn't let go of it's leaves! Season after season fearfully clinging to every leaf it grew. "I might need this leaf later." It cries. "I just grew this leaf it's brand new!" "I wouldn't look as pretty as that ever green without my foliage!" "I'm just not a tree without all my leaves!" Eventually the tree would topple under it's own weight, and with no room for new growth the old would just sit there decaying. It would not be a pleasant sight. But the tree let's go, and never worries that new leaves won't come. 

With every breath you take in you instantly let go again. You release the old breath to allow in the new. Your body is in a constant rhythm of giving and taking, releasing and restoring. If it were not so, we wouldn't last long. The nature of living is to let things come as we need them and go as we don't. It's as if everything in this life is reminding us that our walk here is just a moment. We will come and we will go. And it is okay. Nothing in this world ceases to exist because it lets go, the letting go simply allows for the process to begin again anew.

Photo copyright Heidi Nickerson

When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 3 of 3

After a year of decorating with wild, passionate abandon, and a year of ultra conservative "I'm just going to have such a spotless house all the cockroaches will starve" home, I learned a few things.

Design is a process. Don't be afraid to start the process, just because you won't be in the same house five years from now. Chances are, even if you were in the same house your style, skill level, and resources would change so much in five years you'd have a "new" house anyway. Don't deprive yourself of joy today for fear of leaving tomorrow. If that joy is simply cutting out paper hearts and taping them to the door, so be it! But let yourself create!

Design has seasons. Sometimes it's time to design, and sometimes it's not. It's that simple. Money is short, or stress is high, it's just not time. Let that be okay. I do recommend always keeping things tidy and organized and maintaining your dream notebook.

True passion can not be stopped. Keep your dream alive, if you don't have money for a headboard find pictures of the headboard of your dreams and get a mason jar to fill with left over grocery money till you can buy it. If you don't have left over grocery money, paint a headboard on your wall, pin the picture of the headboard above your bed, start a dream notebook, don't let anything stop you. You can always create on some level, even if it's not the grand level of putting the actual room together, just yet.

If it's not yours, tend it, don't mend it. Everyone warned me not to put money into that condo we rented, but I couldn't hear them yet. That's life, sometimes we have to get burned to know the stove is hot. While I do think it is important to be an honest and respectful tenant of the landlord's property, it is ultimately their property and it is not your job to put any money into repairs or improvements unless you really want to. I recommend saving that money for your own house. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that now, but I probably wouldn't have listened. Oh well. Life goes on!

Create a vision and dream notebook. I have an entire blog entry about this here. Keep it updated, keep working on it, keep the dream alive. You will feel like you are moving forward even if you aren't making any physical changes to your space yet.

Plan to take it with you. Invest in things you can take with you. As you get clear in your dream notebook you will create a vision for your dream home, so when you make purchases you know you are moving in the right direction. My favorite investment in something I can take with me, is my beautiful headboard and custom bedding. My bed will never change where ever I live. Curtains and even furniture might depending on window sizes and house layouts. But knowing I have a beautiful bed to set up wherever we go is always a comfort to me.

I hope that my stories and insights are helpful to you as you find that balance as a tenant and home maker, while you rent. Just don't give up! That is my best counsel, don't get discouraged, even now you are building your dream home and as you create and hone your talents and vision you are preparing to make that home into something truly wonderful for you and your family.

When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 2 of 3

Not only am I a renter, I am a Navy wife. So we move. A lot. A year after I poured my heart, soul, time, energy and money into that beautiful little Monterey Condo, we left. We handed our keys over to a VERY happy landlord and we said goodbye forever. That was heart breaking.

When we got to Goose Creek, South Carolina things were different then our honeymoon year in Monterey. Again we were renting, an old, stinky, oddly designed, cold, military house on base. I had a brand new baby. And Josh was going to Nuclear Power School. You should feel happy to know that the United States military has the most difficult Nuclear power program to get through, in the WORLD. To say my husband was stressed this year is kind of an understatement, but he got through it. I think some of that stress translated into my design work though....

This was our master bedroom.

It looked like that the entire year we lived there. I didn't even buy a bedspread. This was the quilt from my bedroom while I lived at home before I got married. I kept the house very clean, and I did my best to make it pretty. Okay, not my BEST. Sometimes I just settled for "functional". These were the only curtains we had in the house.

This too, was in the master bedroom. Here's me being real, sometimes the best you can muster are towels to block the light in your bedroom because your husband has to sleep all day so he can work all night. Sometimes, it is simply enough to keep your house clean and functional. To make dinner every night and be there with open arms when your husband is going through something tough. We quickly realized that unless we wanted to acquire some serious debt, we needed to stop the frivolous budget free ways of spending we lived in Monterey. So we really hunkered down this year and saved. I didn't spend any money on decorating. I bought a few things we needed, used, and my amazing mother in law bought us a king sized bed, but other than that this was a simple year for us. And it was okay that way. I did things like, cover our bedroom door with paper flowers and hung scrapbook pages on the wall to brighten my craft room!

If you really want to create, nothing can stop you but yourself. This is where I came up with the Dream Design Notebook idea and started working on it! Ultimately, I learned a few things from these wonderful homes and life experiences. 

Which you can read about in part three of this series tomorrow!

When it's not REALLY yours, renting. Part 1 of 3

When I got married, I was over the moon ecstatic! Anyone who knew me could tell you I lived on cloud 9, Heck, I OWNED cloud 9! I was marrying my best friend and love of my life. He was everything and more than I'd ever dreamed of in a man. We were moving to not only, sunny California, but Monterey California,  the most wonderful place to live in the world. My life was a fairy tale come true in every way. We rented a ridiculously overpriced condo, that needed some work, and I got right to it. To me, improving the space even though it wasn't mine made complete sense in my newly married brain filled with cloud nine cotton candy goodness. Every person that came to visit our one bedroom 1960's love nest, said the same thing, "Wow! This does NOT look like a newly wed apartment! This is gorgeous!"

That's right I thought. That's just how I roll.

I repainted....The walls. The ceiling. The doors. The trim. I replaced all the hardware on the doors and lighting. We even helped pay to have the kitchen redone because I couldn't stand not having any drawers that opened. I bought furniture and bedding and curtains....and the rather impressive nest egg my husband brought into our marriage got fried up and served for dinner at our new kitchen table. We inhaled that delicious little egg.

Oh, but look how blissful I am! Painting my landlord's door...(To add to the absolute bliss I got pregnant a month after we got married so now we can throw some oxytocin into the mix along with sleeping every night with prince charming, so who WOULD'T smile because they were painting. (With non-voc paint of course. We can't blame fumes on anything here!)

The reason I am sharing this is that a lot of time, when people rent they feel restrained. The property is not theirs and so they hold back, thinking making improvements is not going to help their pocket book and they have to leave anyway, so what's the point?

The point is, you have to live there. I'm a firm believer in creating a beautiful home wherever you are, whoever owns the home. The immediate blessing is the joy of creating and nurturing your creativity. You will also gain important skills and experience that will be a benefit to you when you DO have a home of your own. It will also help you form very solid ideas of what you like. Life really is too short to deprive yourself of beautiful surroundings just because someone else owns it, and remember you are the steward. Just as God put us on this earth and made us the stewards of it, we are also stewards of the dwellings we inhabit. While I  believe and strive to live this, I think there is a balance. 

There is a part two, to my high in the sky eating love pie story, and it is well worth the read in our quest to understand where we stand as renters. See you tomorrow!

Go Make Your Bed!

One of the fastest ways to make your bedroom look more appealing is to make the bed. Consider the fact that the majority of the floor space in your room is taken up by the bed. If the bed is a mess, most of your room appears messy, if it is tidy and neat your room will instantly feel more in order.

If making the bed is not already a daily habit for you, try creating a link to the activity that you find rewarding. Turn on your favorite music while you make the bed, or after the chore is done reward yourself by reading a favorite page out of a book, your scriptures or take the time to meditate and pray. These are all wonderful ways to start the morning anyway.

If you really want to make it special, do something out of the ordinary, spray your favorite perfume between the sheets. Wash your sheets with a few drops of your favorite essential oil. Place a rose on the pillow, sprinkle rose petals on the blanket, make a special award or gift to place on the pillow for your spouse or top the pillow with a mint, or chocolate. Making your bed special will make you feel special. You spend half your life in your bed let that part of your life be a delight!

Who are you robbing?

Recently I purged my scrapbooking and art supplies. Truthfully, I use about 5 of my tools 80 percent of the time, I love to water color paint so that is a project I constantly have out on the table. And I love to scrapbook but I tend to do this less of the time. While my water color habits are confined to two favorite brushes, a bag of paints my pallet and block of paper, a very manageable amount of tools, my scrapbooking supply is massive.

The industry is always designing new and fabulous trendy papers and embellishments to inspire even the most left brained of us all. It's a beautiful industry. Sadly, I don't have the room I need to accommodate all that I'd collected, and despite my best intentions when I feel inspired to do a new project I usually find myself at the store buying the latest and greatest papers instead of using something from my stash, my stash was enormous. Many of my supplies had been sitting in boxes for upwards of three years.

Then, one day a good friend of mine got on facebook and asked if anyone had any extra scrapbooking materials they were willing to part with. She had lots of projects to do but not a stock pile of supplies to support her creative endeavors. I looked over at my papers and embellishments almost crying for a chance to be used and I realized that by holding onto these things, I would likely never use, while someone else needed them was robbing that person.

I know it seems  a little extreme, but think about it, you have something you really don't need, and someone else does need it, to hold on to it is selfish, don't you think? Even if you are not as lucky as me and a friend doesn't come knocking at your door asking to give a new life to your dead, hoarded, thing a ma-bob, just donating it to a charity or Goodwill gives it the chance to find that new lease on usefulness.

So, the next time you are debating whether or not to get rid of that thing that has plenty of good use left in it, but is of little use to you remember that by hiding it away in your closet you are denying someone else the joy they would get from using it.

Now it's easy to let it go, isn't it ;)

Create A Dream Design Notebook

Design is a process and requires clear vision. We are bombarded with options and styles, this is both wonderful and overwhelming. If you don't have a clear vision of what you want you will not be happy with your efforts. I suggest beginning your journey with a dream design notebook, to hold all of your inspiration.

I use a beautiful 12X12 scrapbook. The pages are bigger and give me more room to spread out. My book started with a journal entry that simply talked about how my dream house felt. I didn't even mention color, fabric or style. I wanted to understand the mood. I thought I would start with an entire dream house but this quickly became too big and overwhelming. As I worked the book naturally narrowed down to my dream master bedroom. This allowed me to really focus. Consider these elements when assembling your own book.

• Start with a single room you are passionate about, master bedroom and bath, or a kitchen or family room. You will be able to fill a book dreaming up one room.

• Find a fabric you love and work within the colors of that material, if you struggle to find a fabric you start gathering samples of fabrics you like. As you gather many of these one may soon stand out as a very favorite.

• Journal out the mood you are trying to create, consider the activities that will take place in that room. Mood and Function are always the first things to determine when creating a space.

• Be sure and include poetry or lines from your favorite song, scriptures or favorite quotes, anything that reflects the mood you are seeking to create. 

• Gather tangible pictures you can cut and paste into your book. Pintrest is lovely, but there is nothing like scouring through magazines and cutting out pictures then pasting them into a book you can hold in your hands as you sit on your couch and turn each lovingly made page. It's also fun to share with good friends.

• Include descriptions and pictures of as many aspects of the room as possible, including accessories and even the type of music you would play or scents wafting through the air. 

• Be ready for your ideas to change, the beauty of this notebook is that your ideas will evolve, and you get to make mistakes and find out what works on paper first, without busting the bank!

Have fun and take your time, this is a project to enjoy! My dream master bedroom notebook has expanded into two books and I've been working on them for the last four years! It has been a delight for me to create these books and has helped me develop my style immensely. I hope your book will give the same to you!

The BEST!

I painted this! And it is the BEST!

I spent hours joyfully painting. Happy to have the time to paint and to think, while my husband took our four year old to the park. I love the memories it evokes of Long Beach, and watching Scotty on his first carousel ride with his Gommy, she smiled and waved right beside him as he bobbed up and down on the magical ride.

What if I compared my beautiful painting with a carousel horse created by a master water color artist. She's spent a lifetime studying and practicing the art. Her ability to work the paints with such oneness result in a masterpiece appearing more like a window glimpsing onto a real carousel ride than a painting. 

Is my painting still the best?

Place my painting next to a rendition by a six year old. Her excited fingers clutch the crayons. She gleefully alternates between bright pink and purple. "Here are the ears!" She proudly explains to her mother "And the nose and the eyes, and here's me, I'm waving to you!" The picture is hung prominently on the center of the refrigerator.

Is my painting still the best?

Yes, my painting is still the best. "The" best, is my best. Each is the best work of the artist. Comparing them makes no sense, they are all a unique effort, and they are all the same effort. Each putting forth all the skill they have. 

Just as the master's work can not take away from the child's talent, or the child's work enhance the talent of the novice, nothing can take away or add too, the beauty of your your home. What you create contains all the beauty of your best work. Tell me, what could possibly detract from that? Pintrest, a magazine, how about HGTV?  What about this very blog?

None of it can take away that beauty or the joy you receive from creating, except you.

Why do we create? Why do we paint, and sew curtains, and organize a drawer? We do it all for joy! But you are robbed of that joy when you compare your ability to others. So create! Seek out inspiration! Be bold, be joyful, and love your best completely.