design inspiration

find your creative voice :: day 3 :: what have you mastered?

29 May 2012 by Andrea 2 Comments

This is the third installment in a series, Find Your Creative Voice, based on the article 10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice over at Accidental Creative, because it’s so important to find your voice when building a comfortable nest, be it a one room apartment or a sprawling mansion. I will be answering the questions that author Todd Henry has posed, and I hope that you will answer them too.

In case you missed the first or second installment…

Question 3 :: What have you mastered?

Mastery. Now we’re getting to the meat and potatoes.

I have mastered the unique ability to let a home speak to me and to design it accoringly. To take the hints given to me by the fixed assets of a home and add complimentary design.

And on a smaller scale, i have mastered the ability to move decorative elements around, to edit a vignette – picture the movements of a magician playing a shell game – and to make that grouping of elements sing.

I have also mastered the ability to bring together unique, and often dissimilar, items together to create an interesting artistic display.

To be honest, it’s difficult to put into words what I think that I have mastered. I was raised in an era that sharing mastery of something is tantamount to bragging. But I said it anyway and hope that you will also get all introspective and braggy and discover and share your special talents.

What have you mastered?

Feel free to start a dialogue on the subject of creativity and what you have mastered in the comments and on the Homage Style Facebook page.

Up next in the series…What Gives You Hope?

find your creative voice :: day 2 :: what makes you cry?

27 May 2012 by Andrea 3 Comments

This is the second installment in a series, Find Your Creative Voice, based on the article 10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice over at Accidental Creative, because it’s so important to find your voice when building a comfortable nest, be it a one room apartment or a sprawling mansion. I will be answering the questions that author Todd Henry has posed, and I hope that you will answer them too.

In case you missed the first installment…

Question 2 :: What makes you cry?

I’m not much of a crying type these days, which I suppose is a good thing. Some of the things that bring me to tears are serious tragedies, like the things that make me angry.

But there are things that make me feel sad and wistful, with a sense of “if only,” much of it having to do with home and family.

It is sad to see families separated from one another and separated from their homes, as so many have been recently through job loss and foreclosure.

Families should have some place to call their own, no matter how small – a place where they can feel shielded from how harsh the world can be sometimes.

While human tragedy is certainly of much greater importance than what happens to any building, it still does instill a sense of melancholy in my heart when I see the demise of a former beauty like this one…

…who stands empty, lonely, and in disrepair on the fringes of my town. It leads me to wonder what lives were lived there and what memories are lost from families over the generations.

I wish I could save these beautiful structures and the families who lived in them, as well as the families who would so benefit be restoring homes like this. Maybe someday that wish will come true. Seems like I’m uncovering part of my creative voice already…

What makes you cry?

Feel free to start a dialogue on the subject of creativity and what makes you cry in the comments and on the Homage Style Facebook page.

Up next in the series…What Have You Mastered?

find your creative voice :: day 1 :: what irritates you?

26 May 2012 by Andrea 2 Comments

This is the first installment in a series, Find Your Creative Voice, based on the article 10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice over at Accidental Creative, because it’s so important to find your voice when building a comfortable nest, be it a one room apartment or a sprawling mansion. I will be answering the questions that author Todd Henry has posed, and I hope that you will answer them too.

Question 1 :: What angers you?

Anger is a pretty strong term. A lot of things anger me. Things like…

Child soldiers in Uganda
Dictators and others who torture and maim
Starving children all around the world, including here in the the wealthiest country in the world
Rapists and murderers
Wall Street con artists
Melting polar icecaps
Congress

Um…that’s a pretty expansive list. Serious stuff. Not a direction I necessarily want to explore here in my shelter blog.

But as it pertains to my home and creativity, I don’t know that anger is the question I’d choose to explore. Maybe I’ll switch it up a little to…

Question 1a :: What irritates you?

OK, that’s better.

There are a number of things that irritate me. Here’s the short list…

Clutter
Perfection
Imperfection
Lack of time
My own inactivity

Carving smiley faces into the piano kinda irritates me.

OK. Let’s explore.

Clutter

Fact. Clutter irritates me. Yet clutter dominates several prominent areas of my home.

I could list all of the reasons (ahem…excuses) why I have clutter, and frankly, a couple of them are pretty darn good reasons. But all of that is irrelevant. Because clutter irritates me. Clutter is stultifying. Clutter makes me unproductive.

There, I said it.

Clutter. Makes. Me. Unproductive.

My messy office

Clutter prevents me from reaching my full creative potential, because it consumes my thoughts and energy. I spin my wheels thinking about all of the things that I need to declutter, rather than embarking on all of the creative projects that I have percolating in my head.

Clutter is the thief of creativity and productivity.

Time to call the clutter cops.

Perfection

What’s wrong with perfection? Isn’t perfection, well, perfect?

Sure, but we’re not perfect little Stepford wives, making it difficult to attain perfection. Damn near impossible. Especially if you have other people inhabiting your world. And pets. And life in general.

Don’t be fooled by bloggers with perfect homes and perfect photos. Most will probably admit that the other half of the room is stacked high will all manner of whatnot. And shelter mags are as bad as fashion mags, because they come in and “style” a perfectly awesome house for their pics. Learned that from The Nester’s photo shoot for Better Homes & Gardens.*

*Dislcaimer: In the event that this sounds like sour grapes, it is so not! I love The Nester – she’s on the short list of blogs I read daily – and am thrilled that she has this exciting opportunity that most of us would jump at, including me. Was just surprised to learn that what you see in a shelter mag has been “styled” by a magazine stylist, very similar to the way that perfectly gorgeous models get airbrushed for fashion mags.

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Striving for perfection is a fruitless pursuit. So give it up and learn to live with imperfection. It’s my mantra. I say it all the time…out loud. “I’m learning to live with imperfection.” And it let’s me off the hook. It doesn’t give me permission to do a crappy job on projects, or in life in general, but it’s the forgiveness that I need to be able to deal with all of the factors that life throws at me that are completely out of my control.

Waiting for the day when you will make it perfect will kill your creativity, because that day will never come.

Say it with me…

I’m learning to live with imperfection.

Imperfection

So if perfection is so bad, what the hell is wrong with imperfection?

Nothing really.

“Aren’t you learning to live with imperfection?” you may be asking.

Yes. Yes, I am. But imperfection still irritates me. Frankly, it’s what drives me. And that’s a good thing.

In my mind, I have a creative vision of how things should look, and every time I look at a part of my house that needs a creative update, I start to twitch a little bit. Creative cognitive dissonance, if you will.

So all in all, imperfection, while irritating, is a motivator that inspires me to expand my creative expression and realize it from a vision in my head to a reality in my home.

Lack of time

Pretty self explanatory. Time is short in varying degrees for all of us. We only have a short time on this earth, and often it’s filled with other things than just expressing our creative selves. So it’s important to make the best of it, finding the time and energy to express ourselves creatively, even if it’s only for a short time each day. Creativity is a part of our soul. An important part. Don’t ignore it because you don’t have the time.

My own inactivity

find your creative voice :: a series

25 May 2012 by Andrea 1 Comment

Recently I read an awesome article, 10 Questions that Will Help You Find Your Voice, over at Accidental Creative, and I’ve been rolling it around in my head ever since, thinking about how important it is to find your voice when building a comfortable nest, be it a one room apartment or a sprawling mansion.

We’re so fortunate to live in a time in which we can access endless blogs with so many creative ideas for our homes, and of course Pinterest is the hot fudge on the sundae!

But in making a house a home, it’s also so important to discover your own voice. Your house may be a showplace, but if it doesn’t reflect who you are, it might just feel more like a museum than a cozy place to land every day. It won’t feel like home.

So over the next couple of days, I’m going to write about the questions that author Todd Henry has posed, in a series called Find Your Creative Voice. And together we can find our voices, opening our creative selves a little bit more, peeling away the layers of the creative onion. Making a house a home. Creating a beautiful life for ourselves and whoever shares our little corner of the world.

Let’s get started…

Day 1 :: What irritates you?

Day 2 :: What makes you sad?

Day 3 :: What have you mastered?

Day 4 :: What gives you hope?

Day 5 :: What do you want to be when you grow up?

Day 6 :: If you had all the time and money in the world…

Day 7 :: What would blow your mind?

Day 8 :: What platform do you own now?

Day 9 :: What change would you like to see in the world?

Day 10 :: If you only had one day left, how would you spend it?

magazine binge

22 April 2012 by Andrea Leave a Comment

Oh yeah, I just did…

…spend $10.99 on this special edition of Domino magazine.

There are several shelter mags out there with this kind of price tag, and I usually walk. right. by. them.

By not Domino. Dear sweet Domino. How I love you and miss you, Domino.

Honestly, there are very few magazines that still capture my attention these days, since there are so many bloggers that I follow doing amazing things with their homes.

But somehow Domino was different – so creative – and I was really bummed when they went out of bidniz.

So when I saw the special edition at the grocery story, I had no reservations and ponied up the 11 big ones. And I wasn’t disappointed.

I’ve read that thing from cover to cover at least 3 times. I’ve definitely gotten my $10.99’s worth out of it. And I haven’t even started tearing out pages yet. That is still to come!

So unless it will leave you unable to feed your small children, I’m going to suggest that you run right out and get your copy!

rules & regulations

3 April 2012 by Andrea 7 Comments

“Rules? We don’t need no stinkin’ rules!”

Today I got into a bit of a Facebook fight.

Well, it was more that I shared an unpopular opinion. But it was on a big blogger’s Facebook page. And there were other big bloggers chiming in and sharing their dismay with my opinion.

So while it wasn’t really a fight, I don’t think that my opinion was terribly popular.

What was it all about?

Said big blogger offered a helpful “tip” suggesting that if you have a link party that you shouldn’t invite others to your link party in another blogger’s comments section or by sending them an email invite.

Things like this were said on that Facebook thread…

“If you have to beg others to join…you shouldn’t be having a link party.”

“Really the blog world doesn’t need another party. Why don’t we just put time and effort into the already established ones?”

“If people consider it rude, why would you want to continue to do it just because you don’t think it is? What should matter to you is how your comment is PERCEIVED, not how you meant it.”

“If you are offending 10 or 15 or even 20 people that are participating in this conversation, imagine the sheer magnitude of how many others you are ticking off that AREN’T here reading this.”

There were a handful of us who talked about being open to this type of invite when offered up sincerely, but it seems that a number of people really want to develop this blog etiquette, which to me looks an awful lot like a rigid set of rules of engagement to play in their blog world.

Like a movie star complaining about evils of the fame and fortune that they’ve gained, these big bloggers complaining about comments, email, and people promoting to them seemed disingenuous.

Frankly, I found it condescending and offensive. A grown-up version of the limits set by the queen bees in high school. And contrary to what the Internet is all about. You know, the Internet…the place where you can create an online world, made up entirely of computer code. That same place made into what it is today by a bunch of computer geeks wearing Def Leppard t-shirts and living in their moms’ basements. The very essence of which is diametrically opposed to rules and regulations.

But a number of these blogger ladies think that it’s their job to “teach” newer bloggers their desired rules of engagement. Teaching them that they should concern themselves with how they are perceived by others. This really rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it looks like sour grapes, since they have giant followings and I don’t. If that’s how it looks, so be it.

Some of the comments were mean spirited. Some of them were of the “I got mine, now you need to work hard to get yours too” variety. And some were downright dysfunctional, if you ask me.

To say that we need to try to figure out how every reader “perceives” us is dysfunctional. Forget about bloggers and the Internet for a minute. If we are constantly trying to figure out how others view us and what they think of us, we will never be happy as individuals, nor are we likely to do what it is that satisfies us, because we will constantly be dancing to somebody else’s tune. Frankly, I don’t think this is a good way to live a meaningful life.

But back to blogging and the Internet…

The beauty of the Internet is that you can create the very world that you want to live in. If you don’t want to get a certain type of comments, perfect, moderate your comments. If you don’t like the comments or email that you receive, you are always free to use the ever-popular delete key. In fact, some of you may not like what I’m saying here, and I will take the luxury of using the aforementioned tools to eliminate comments or email that I find offensive.

I’ve been thinking a lot about creativity and blogging lately. Been thinking about how to express myself uniquely in my home as well, which is my creative palette that I share here.

My philosophy about the Internet extends to my home. The possibilities are endless. I don’t just want to copy what I see in magazine or on Pinterest or on other blogs. What I really want to do is stretch my own creativity to the nth degree and create something new and unique in my home. Something that I love. That’s what I want to share on my blog. And hopefully as a reader of this blog you might find a shred or two of inspiration and will take that to your home and create something new and unique in your world.

So instead of worrying about rules and regulations, whether they’re about blogging or design, let’s throw caution to the wind and expand our horizons, think outside the box, and challenge ourselves to stretch our creativity. In our hearts, in our minds, in our blogs, and especially in our homes.

In many ways, the Internet carries the essence of creativity. Make of it what you will. Be kind and be a good person. That will mean something different to every person, but do your best.

And for the love of all things holy, let’s spend our time thinking about new ways to stretch and be creative, rather than thinking of ways to reign in creativity.

i want my home to feel…

1 April 2012 by Andrea Leave a Comment

breezy

unique

ecclectic

warm

full of love

creative

inspiring

comforting

calm

fun

happy

hilarious

unexpected

occasionally shocking

lived in

…and not necessarily in that order.

Oddly enough, most of those words not only describe my home, but they describe me as well. OK, maybe calm doesn’t describe me. More like hyperactive. But I try to be calm. 😉

What brought all of this up? Mandi, over at Vintage Revivals. She started a club. The Fearlessly Finding Awesome Club. And I’m a member.

Our first club challenge (kind of like hazing for homebodies) is to describe ourselves and how we want our homes to feel. Aside from the calmness issue, seems that my home and I are pretty much in sync. The good news is that on most days, my home makes me feel very calm. At home. The place I want to be.

2012 – the year of the blog

4 January 2012 by Andrea Leave a Comment

2012 may be the year of the dragon on the Chinese calendar, but in my world it’s the year of the blog.

This is the year that I’m going to honor myself by taking the time to do what I love and feel passionately about – decorating – and enjoy the thrill of writing about my experiences and sharing them with you.

Like so many of you, I spend the vast majority of my waking moments tending to people and things other than myself. Raising my kids as a single mom, working full time to pay for everything that my family needs – from basics like food and housing to college tuition for my college-age kid.

Of course all of these things are important. But I’m also finally beginning to learn that in addition to meeting everyone else’s needs, I also need to tend to my own needs. Especially when I hear a voice inside of me, dying to come out. A calling. I owe it to myself to heed the call. So beginning this year, I will begin to peel away the layers of the onion. I will heed the call to be creative. To create. With my home as my canvas.

But I’d be kidding myself (and you) if I said any of this would be easy. I’m busy. I’m tired. I’m stretched too thin already. Single mom. Full time job. Kid at home. Kid at college. Chronic fatigue. Not enough money. Not enough time. All valid reasons to do little or nothing.

Until I realized that maybe I need to push myself. If I love this – and I do love this – then maybe I need to sweep out a corner of the world for myself. To fulfill my dreams, and not just contribute to the fulfillment of other people’s dreams.

A time and a place for me. Life is too damn short to let it pass me by when I have a passion so strong.

It’s time to heed the call.

What’s the little voice inside of you telling you to do?

catalog love

12 September 2011 by Andrea 1 Comment

imagine my surprise this evening when I sauntered out to the mailbox and found this…

The Restoration Hardware 2011 Source Book. Also known in lesser circles as a catalog. And not just any catalog…616 pages of juicy home decor catalog goodness.

It was like a gift from the decorating heavens, delivered by reproduction vintage angels. What a pleasant surprise it was in my mailbox.

Now I’ll have days and nights of catalog love, like when I was a kid scouring the Sears catalog circling all of the toys I wanted Santa to bring. The difference is that now I’m my own Santa. Not that it’s terribly likely I’ll buy anything, but oh, the ideafest!

In an age of all things digital, the shock of receiving a 3/4″ thick catalog is almost enough to make a girl hyperventilate! Of course, there’s a whole marketing theory behind it, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Quick, run to your mailbox to see if yours came. If it didn’t, get one here.

And before you start hating, it’s made from recycled paper. Love you, Restoration Hardware!

motivation

4 September 2011 by Andrea Leave a Comment

Motivation. Or lack thereof.

Unmade bed. Laundry to be done. Floor needs vacuuming. Dishes in the sink. Projects sit curing.

Sometimes I suffer from lack of motivation.

Blame it on a demanding full-time job and being a single mom. Or on a collection of health issues that result in lingering chronic fatigue. Or that often I just need to sit and do nothing to recharge my creativity. Or all of the above.

Whatever the cause or collection of causes, I’ve grown comfortable with it. It’s part of me and who I am. That’s not to say that I don’t envy people who seem to have a much higher energy level than me, because I do. But at the end of the day, I have a nice life and plenty to be thankful for and so I’ve decided to get real with myself and recognize that I’ve got a lot on my plate and this is my pace.

So how to do I get anything done?

A couple of years back, I worked with a personal growth coach who encouraged me to get rid of my to-do lists. Sounds counter intuitive to get rid of lists of things to do when one wants or needs to do more or gain some direction in life. However, his theory was that a to-do list self-imposes a lot of unnecessary pressure and that the things that I feel are important will automatically rise to the top and will be the things that I choose to do. So I’ve dumped the to-do lists and let things happen as I feel them.

I also do a lot of project start and stop. I don’t always just push through a project until completion. Probably not the most effective way to work, but the way I see it is that I work effectively and efficiently all day at my day job. In my creative time, I want to feel it…I want to do what moves me, and so I do. Not always efficient, not always logical, but always inspired.

Inspired.

Now that’s motivating!

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