Back home and catching up on the magazines that arrived while I was in Chicago, I was struck by a quote from Erin Flett in Country Living. Erin believes that life and decorating, is “like weaving a tapestry. You don’t buy a bunch of stuff at once. Collect things you love, that are authentic to you, and your house becomes your story.”
That reminded me of the night I came home. I was sitting in my usual place on the couch looking around my living room, when I noticed that my husband was smiling affectionately at me. I realized that he had observed me appreciating my stuff – the tapestry of our lives.
My younger daughter loves the movie “Love Actually” and like more than one bride of her generation adopted the theme “All you need is love” for her wedding theme.
Subsequently, the phrase became a part of their decorating theme.
Amazingly, the MIL had made a beautiful calligraphy interpretation for the FIL back in the day which now hangs in the dining room.
So when I saw two cards featuring owls with the phrases “Owl you need is love” and “Love is owl you need” I knew they would be perfect for the expected baby’s room.
I am visiting my daughter and new granddaughter and I have been spending my downtime doing what Melissa Taylor (in her book Pinterest Savvy: How I Got 1 Million+ Followers) calls curating my Pinterest boards.
Pinterest for the uninitiated involves creating and naming “boards” and “pinning” pictures (often with links to the net) to them. The curator can upload new pictures or “repin” pictures others have pinned.
Choosing the appropriate board for pinning and repinning can be more challenging than you would think. For example, where does a basket full of polka dotted felt hearts with a button
ornaments go? Felt Projects, Hearts and Stars, Polka Dots and Stripes, Button Up, Collections, or Christmas?
Some pinners dodge this curating challenge and pin to multiple boards which is pretty annoying to those who “follow” them. I pick the one that seems most appropriate figuring that if I can’t find it on the most logical board I’ll just look on the next most logical – which when I think about it is the way I organize things in my real life as well as my virtual one.
Here is my granddaughter who is collecting owls – home from the hospital and wearing her owl hat.
Here is the link to Etsy shop where I bought the owl bag referred to in previous post.
We are in Chicago right now because our first granddaughter has arrived! Last summer I bought my daughter this bag to use as a diaper bag. I fell in love with these bags made of coffee bags at the Green River Festival and then found out they were made by one of the former teachers at my former school. It features owls and I had a sense right then that since owls are so popular these days that they would become my granddaughter’s theme.
And they certainly did:
In this photo you can see one of the owl lanterns that I made as centerpieces for the shower. You can also see a photo from my daughter’s “photos of flowers” collection by another former teacher at my former school!
Link to Flower photo CafePress store www.cafepress.com/hope_lovejoy
My mother said that when I was a little girl she was amazed when I pointed from a box of cereal to an advertisement in a magazine for the cereal and said, “Look, the same”. She was less impressed when I was a teenager and talked about the differences between the zoo we were currently at and some other zoo I had previously visited. “Can’t you just be at this zoo without comparing?” she said. I think this urge to compare same and different is at the heart of my urge to collect.
I collect mermaids because they are mermaids and therefore the same but I love to look at what makes them different: the color of their hair (I have some with green hair), the color of their tails (not just green and blue but pink and orange), where their tails start (I have one that starts at her breasts and some that start at the top of their legs), whether their breasts are covered or not, what their breasts are covered with (shells “top” the list here), and what they are holding. Mermen always seem to be holding tridents but mermaids hold a variety of objects including combs and mirrors, fish, shells, pearls, and musical instruments. Mermaids seem to hang around with quite a variety of animals too, not just fish and other marine life but polar bears, unicorns, cats, snakes, and frogs. As I gaze at my mermaids from my bathtub, I sometimes imagine a Ten Thousand Dollar Pyramid category: “Things associated with mermaids”. Do you think anyone would guess it? Of course, I’d mention shipwrecks too.
A leaf on our Spring tree above one of the magazine butterflies I learned to make from one of my younger daughter’s college roommates.
Last year we were in Charleston, South Carolina on Easter. We took a walk on Easter morning and admired people dressed in their Easter bonnets. We saw a woman selling her sweetgrass baskets across from a church and it just seemed right to buy a basket on Easter. This year I filled the basket with some of my painted wooden eggs.
Collections and Other Stuff I Like 