Pink of Perfection

I think a lot about the creative process: how there are sparks of ideas and bursts of activity followed by periods of inaction. That period of inertia is what always drove me mad. What are we doing if not getting better and moving forward? Something important, it turns out. Like a field that’s given up its harvest, we’re lying fallow: rejuvenating, gathering reserves, collecting our energy for the next big burst.

This, I think, is what is so sweet about winter. When the world slows down, as it naturally does this time of year, we can take the time we need to prepare ourselves for our next surge of growth–whatever that may be. And so we stay close to home, write in our journals, practice yoga, linger over our coffee, and take the time we need to reflect. Its not laziness and it’s not inaction; it’s the practice of shoring up, and equipping ourselves with the care, thought, and ideas for whatever comes next.

In Chinese Medicine, winter is associated with the element water. Water is “the stage of energy before structure; it is potential,” writes Lorena Monda. “To access this phase of transformation, we must create space and quiet within us to mindfully look and listen. We direct this deep looking and listening to the world inside and around us. It is here that we begin to know what we want or what is necessary. It is here that we set our intention.” Continue reading “Winter Wellness Guide” »

Are you getting holiday yet? I blame Pinterest, but I’m in full-on feeling cozy mode. Last night I sat in a corner booth in a restaurant that sits like a beacon on a quiet street corner and feels like a lodge tucked into the woods. Over plates cheese and sausage, my book club exchanged gifts and talked about the cold wilds of Nova Scotia. And before that, I walked with my husband as he carried a Christmas tree on his shoulder back to our house. We cut the clear fishing wire netting loose and tucked lights into its branches. We listened to carols, I bought whole milk for homemade hot chocolate, and though the temperatures hover in the 50-60 degree range, I happily wiled away an hour or two making this Christmas vision board.

Who knows what does it? Sometimes we’re in the mood for the holidays and sometimes we’re just not. But even the years when I feel pretty grinchy, I can usually still manage to see the charm in a hot toddy and a digitized fireplace. What I like best is the world at large agreeing to champion the virtues of coziness: curling up, staying home, and cocooning yourself in warmth.

So even if I’ll never get excited about the jangly Christmas jingles in the drugstore or the deep discounts make me seriously consider buying things I don’t really need or want, I can get behind that: more candles on the table, vintage ornaments, and a cheerful, twinkling tree in the corner.

Where are you on the feeling-holiday-o-meter this year?

I think these yarn wreaths are just about some of the cheerfullest spring decor items I’ve ever seen. I like how they are both cozy and sweetly fresh, just like season itself. The most seasonal decorating I ever do is bringing in lilacs instead of dahlias, but I’ve always loved the idea of lightening the interior of my home when things warm up. Do you swap out decorative items–throw pillows, blankets and the like? And have you seen your first lilacs? I bought my first bouquet yesterday, and they sit–already a little droopy–in the morning light of the breakfast table.

I have long had a blog crush on the The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, and now, happily, I have a book crush. In the The Hip Girls Guide to Homemaking, Kate Payne speaks to that fun, creative desire for pleasure-filled, budget-friendly, mindful self-sufficiency so many of us are after in efforts to make a house a home and a life our own. It’s an inspiring guide for the badass of domestic arts, and one lucky Pink of Perfection reader will win a copy! Enter to win the giveaway by leaving a comment about your favorite homemaking skill or tradition by Friday, April 23. One winner will be chosen at random. Happy nesting!

What inspires you to write, to create, and to live well?

Simplicity and sharing. I’m continually astonished at how basic my needs are to be happy: homemade bread, being outside to feel the way the light falls at dusk, shared suppers, hearing the trains passing in the night, reading books in the hammock, and good coffee, of course. The opportunities to share these simple pleasures (and help others discover what makes them happy) keeps me moving forward every day.

Continue reading “Giveaway: The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” »

1. print, Etsy; 2. Jade yoga mat, 3. Ganapati statue; 4. succulents; 5. kilim, Ebay; 6. yellow desk lamp, West Elm; 7. Seda Japanese Quince candle; 8. pink stool, Ikea; 9. pennant throw pillow, Etsy; 10. reading chair, West Elm

This story begins in the mid-’80s with a Berenstain Bears book in which Sister Bear spends an afternoon, legs (paws?) thrown over the arm of a reading chair, a book in one hand, an apple in the other. The Bear treehouse was already the height of coziness, but this illustration clinched it: I wanted a reading chair of my own.

There’s a photograph of my mom from this same era. She is sitting in her bedroom reading chair, a soft wide thing upholstered in the cheeriest fabric of tiny, bright flowers. She is wearing a sweater vest, a striped, button-down poplin blouse, and a high-waisted, full wool skirt: perfect intellectual ’80s prep. She has a book in her hand, and she’s smiling. This, too, is etched in my mind as a more grown-up ideal. Isn’t it funny how these images stick in our minds and shape what we want for ourselves, even twenty years later? This, I imagined, is where style, ease, and pleasure meet. She looks so happy sitting there, so relaxed; and she’s wearing a really great outfit.

I once sat with a friend of mine in her very lovely apartment with its high ceilings and tall windows and a wide kitchen island. To me, it seemed perfect, but she wanted a little nook of her own, too, a “weirding room,” she said. In the context, I felt as if I knew what she meant even though intellectually I didn’t: a place for her sewing machine, collages, and yoga mat, a tiny space where all her “girl things” and projects to live safely out of sight from her husband’s curious eye.

Yesterday I finally googled “weirding room” and was taken straight to the pages of Dune. Have you guys read this classic? You’ll have to explain more fully what the implications of a weirding room might be in the context of the book to me, but what I found skimming through was a note left from one lady to another:

To the Lady Jessica––
May this place give you as much pleasure as it has given me. Please permit the room to convey a lesson we learned from the same teachers: the proximity of a desirable things tempts one to overindulgence.

If we had a room (or even just a nook) with a cozy chair tucked in the corner, surrounded by what most inspires us, wouldn’t it be fun to see how life would change should we overindulge in such desirable things?

This is my wish for 2011: to create a little space in my apartment just for me: a place to meditate, succulents lined up on the nearby windowsill, and a chair for me to throw my legs over the arm of. My mother’s sweater vest is tucked in my bureau, second drawer from the bottom.

Do you have a space like this in your home? What delights have you tricked it out with? Have you read Dune (please don’t tell me a weirding room is where they, like, murder people!)?

There are few things as soullessly austere as a home with blank walls. Figuring out how to add personality and pretties to your walls (while staying on a budget) is no small task. One solution: giant, striking wall decals. Perfect for rental apartment-dwellers who dream of wallpaper (just peel them off when you want your security deposit back), these decals let you add a flock of birds, lotus flowers, or a flowering tree to your home. A family I know put birds in flight down the hallway of their apartment and the effect was so whimsical. Dezign with a Z is giving away a $30 gift certificate to one lucky Pink of Perfection reader. To enter to win, leave a comment about the creative decorative elements you’ve added to your walls––quirky or traditional––by Friday, January 21 at midnight EST. One commenter will be chosen at random. Can’t wait to hear about the genius decorating you’ve done, and good luck!

Update: The lucky winner is commenter #64, Athina! Thanks to all your entering––what terrific ideas!

Many moons ago, I drew up a list of New Year’s resolutions which included things that have been accomplished (get haircut), fallen by the wayside (run 10k), and no longer seem as pressing (buy new cowboy boots––not really part of my fall look). But one item that has been accomplished with flying colors––perhaps my most successful New Year’s Resolution of all time, in fact––was the intimidatingly vague yet delightfully-phrased task to “Make apartment dreamy terrific.”

When my sister started working at shelter magazines she shared a piece of sage advice with me: it’s often the final 10% that brings a room together. At my house, we had been skating by with 70% decor completion. We painted, we put up curtains, we bought a headboard. But it was going to take more than throw pillows to make this house “dreamy terrific.” (But really, what a difference throw pillows make! A white waffle print has perked up a corner of our sagging, uncomfortable flea market sofa.)

And while I’ve never been one much for tchotchkes, I’ve come to learn the value of home vignettes. My first rule: not any old knickknack will do. It has to be an item you positively love. Take the matroyshka dolls my mom and sister brought back from St. Petersburg in the spring (still in search of the perfect vignette companion), or the 1930s wooden toy lion found at a Paris flea market. These things don’t have to be expensive, but they do have to be, in your eyes, utterly irresistible.

Rule number two isn’t so much a rule as a personal preference (which, let’s just admit, is all rules really are; somebody had to make them up!): bring in green things. Let natural forms be a wild foil to your favorite objects.

And the final guiding principle is something I’ve read in magazines but hadn’t demonstrated its weight as a truism to me until recently. I had three different little pictures, each beloved, languishing around the house in separate spots. There is the Texas print given as a wedding present; a page of an astronomy textbook index printed with fine-lined, pen-and-ink blooms; and a silhouette print of a boy and girl, falling apart, but to me, immeasurably charming. Something compelled me to hang the trio above the bed in a little asymmetrical grouping. Together, they bring me infinitely more delight than each on its own.

But what I also love about bringing disparate items together is how deeply personal and unique each little assembly is. No one else has a turquoise typewriter set next to a ’50s ceramic coffeepot that has lost its lid and is now stuffed with the tissue paper flowers my sister made for our day of wedding dress searching. And while I hope every woman who wants one has a print of a red swim-suited woman afloat in an inner tube, I feel certain it brings no one else the exact brand of peace and equanimity it does me.

Remember that vintage fabric my friend sent me after finding it in a relative’s North Dakota attic? I didn’t know how to properly honor it, and a year later, here’s the answer I settled on.

I first saw embroidery hoops used as fabric frames at Purl Patchwork as a way to display their Liberty of London swatches. (I’ve always loved the black and blue feather print.) But when I kept seeing them in shelter mags and on design blogs, I thought it was a decorating device too “over” to do in my own house.

But you know what? Screw that. It might have taken me a few years to finally cop to my desire to get pretty fabrics on the wall any way I can, but now that I have, I find the results ridiculously cheering. Who cares if something is “everywhere” (Keep Calm and Carry On, anyone?). If you love it, make it yours, bring it into your house, and let it bring you a bit of joy every time you pass down the hall.

This project is just my kind of skill level: Iron your fabric. Then slip the fabric into the embroidery hoops, tighten the screw and pull the fabric taught. Cut off the excess fabric, and hang them on the wall on tiny nails. Done and done.