"Living a Beautiful Life"

I give full credit for the title of my post and most of the thoughts contained herein to Alexandra Stoddard, author of Living a Beautiful Life and many other books. I first learned of her books from my dear friend Rhonda almost 20 years ago. I met Rhonda in my early 20s. Although she is closer in age to my parents than to me, she and I share many life experiences and interests. Our shared interests included gardening, making our homes enjoyable, cooking healthy food, wearing comfortable shoes... Going to Rhonda’s home felt like being wrapped in a big, warm, welcoming hug: she always had beautiful music on in the background, her decor was beautiful—little touches of beauty and comfort were found in every area of her home. She taught me so much about living well.

At that time, I was living alone in a home which I was renting from my parents—they allowed me to do whatever I wanted to the house, and for the first time in my life, I reveled in creating a lovely space around me. I wish I had pictures from that house to show you…it was a simple mobile home, but my friends always told me that it felt cozy and warm, and they loved to visit. And I had so much fun decorating it to fit my taste and style!

After living there while I worked my way through college, I moved across the mountain to start my career in public accounting. For the first two years, I shared an apartment with a housemate, but then I moved into a basement apartment on my own again. Even though it was located in a basement, I found ways to make it feel homey and inviting. Of course, the wood-burning fireplace helped…and being able to take my rocking chair outside to read or knit while enjoying a cup of tea promoted to my enjoyment of the space.

Photo of basement apartment. Taken in 2009.

Basement apartment fireplace. Thanks to my dear brother, Sherman, for providing firewood.

Catching lovely fall sunshine on the apartment patio.

One of the next homes I had, I shared with another housemate, and she was the one who hung up the pictures and curtains…and it didn’t feel like my own home.

After this, I changed jobs and returned to the home I had lived in when I first set up housekeeping on my own. But I was teaching accounting at two universities, working a crazy amount of time, and going to visit my then-boyfriend (now my husband) when I had time on the weekend. I didn’t even have time to get all of my boxes unpacked, much less think about decorating it again!

When Ryan and I got married, he lived in a rustic, log home that he had planned and helped the contractor to build. It was a sparsely-furnished bachelor home. After we married and I started moving things in, it was easy to decorate…and amazingly enough, most of my things looked great in a log house—from my cast iron collection which looked amazing against the pine walls above the kitchen cabinets to the baskets and quilts that I had…it all worked. And for the first two and a half years, our home felt beautiful.

My office at the dining table during the summer break between semesters of teaching…Notice the plants and candles. :-)

And then we had our first child…

I don’t think I realized how much keeping our home beautiful fell by the wayside until one day, Ellie was looking at some pictures of our home before she was born. “Mom,” she asked, “When can you make our house pretty like that again?” “When you are older,” I assured her. Most of the changes that she saw were lack of blooming flowers, pretty vignettes, baskets of yarn beside my rocking chair, etc. I had stopped knitting when she was born. I had gotten rid of a flowering violet in a plant stand because I was afraid that she was going to pull it over on herself, etc. And I think the biggest change was that I no longer had time to putter. Most of my decorating happened previously on weekends, when I could wake up, enjoy a leisurely cup of coffee while reading and writing in my journal. I had time to notice my surroundings; I had time to interact with them—move things around, add a touch of beauty here and there. I could keep nice books on the coffee table without worrying about torn pages…

Fast forward to the present, we moved into a new home almost seven months ago. And, to be honest, I haven’t done anything to decorate our home. The main reason for my paralysis, besides being busy, has been not being able to figure out how to decorate it. Most homes, I can walk into and start imagining how to decorate it, but this house just hasn’t spoken to me that way. It’s a great house, however. I love the layout of it. But it’s very traditional and doesn’t fit the current farmhouse style trend, which I really like. The ceiling fans are insanely ornate, there is a sparkly glitter on the popcorn ceilings, and the front door and some of the fixtures look like something from a Victorian-style home, but some fixtures are very modern, like the chandelier in our dining room. Nothing seems to be of one style, and none of it goes along with the rustic-type decor that we had had for the previous seven years before leaving the log house.

But as I was resting while sick this past week, I have been taking some time to analyze and think more about what I can do with what we have. Also, I remembered Alexandra Stoddard’s books that I have, and I pulled them out and started reading.

Because my bookshelf conveyed with our previous house, all of my books are stored in boxes and bags in our bedroom closet right now. Initially, I could not find my copy of Living a Beautiful Life and first picked up Creating a Beautiful Home to read. As I started skimming the first few chapters, I realized that I need to go back to what gave me decorating inspiration at the beginning of my adult life…and read these books again!

Immediately as I began the book, these two thoughts grabbed me: “Design your life, not your house” and “Perfectionism keeps you from your goals.”

I will delve into the first thought. Part of my frustration with the current stage of my life is the mess. I simply become exhausted by the chaos generated by two active children in addition to my own creative mess! Also, I feel frustrated because our furnishings feel hodge-podge. Nothing really goes together, and I don’t have funds to change that at this time. But lines she wrote captured my attention:

“…no room could be more beautiful than one that was flooded with light and filled with good books and flowers….” (page 16 of Creating a Beautiful Home by Alexandra Stoddard)

“It is the expression of well-lived lives that creates beautiful spirit and charm in a house, not the beautiful furnishings. I’ve seen the homeliest houses transformed into havens of affection and joy by fascinating, high-spirited people. An architecturally elegant, symmetrical structure doesn’t automatically translate into a relaxing, comfortable atmosphere in which we want to spend time alone and share our love of life with others. It may actually impede it and cause discomfort and rigidity…” (page 17)

And it reminded me that some of my most comfortable and cozy homes were in a basement apartment and a mobile home—it wasn’t the structure that made a beautiful home! In almost every home before I had children, I had flowers and plants and candles and books…I dined on my simple fare of soup and salad (my absolute favorite foods!) while listening to soft classical music and enjoying the flickering candlelight—even though I was eating alone.

And in my frustration with desiring my home to always be neat and clean, she challenged me with these words:

“We may celebrate the daily moments of life when we throw an extra log on a roaring fire, light a scented candle, open a window, move a chair over to the light, and sip a glass of Chardonnay; prepare a snack, read the paper, or write a letter with a fountain pen; but the soot, the scratches, the crumbs, the ring on the table, the mess on the floor, the ink on the chintz, the wrinkles, the work—these are all part of the romance of everyday living. Perfection on the other hand, chills the mystery and leaves us frozen in space. Perfectionists miss it all.” (page 20)

She encourages her readers to create a beautiful home by surrounding themselves with things they love, even if not everything meets a particular style. Basically, don’t let perfectionism stand in the way of creating beauty and enjoying life.

Recently, I was reading Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington, and I was fascinated by this thought as he wrote about the institution of slavery and how it impacted life on the plantation where he lived: “As a rule, there was food for whites and blacks, but inside the house, and on the dining-room table, there was wanting that delicacy and refinement of touch and finish which can make home the most convenient, comfortable, and attractive place in the world..." Wow! How important it is to take the time to create a wonderful atmosphere in the home!

As I was reflecting on why it was so easy to create my own place of beauty and comfort in my home so many years ago, I realized that I wasn’t concerned with trying to conform to a certain style. Now, in these days of being bombarded with images from social media, it seems that there is a standard to be met. And, that isn’t so!

Again, I quote from Alexandra Stoddard: “We all want our home to be a true expression of ourselves. But too often we’re timid about decorating houses because we have preconceived ideas of how a house should look. Inhibited by our lack of ‘expertise,’ we don’t trust our ability to group furniture or select colors, and we worry that some of our possessions are a bit shabby or don’t go together…” (page 28)

I need to stop trying to fit into a certain style and just go forth and create beauty and comfort in the way that suits this stage of life and create routines and rituals that help me to maintain and sustain a beautiful life within the chaos of parenting two small children and operating a business at home. I want them to grow up remembering living in a beautiful home, and I want to teach them how to be creative, yet tidy and clean as we go, so that our home is comfortable and inviting to us and to others who enter here.

And so, encouraged by the words of Alexandra Stoddard and Booker T. Washington and compelled by my own desire for beauty around me, I took the first step this weekend to start adding some touches of things I love around me. And hopefully, as Alexandra Stoddard says, “Actions beget actions.” I hope that I will continue to have the motivation to keep adding touches of beauty in my own style…to live a beautiful life.

Ellie has been asking me to bring in some boxwood clippings. When she saw that I had done so, she gave me the biggest hug!

And if you want to purchase these books for your own inspiration, I am including these affiliate links for your convenience. Both of these are available as new and used copies on Amazon. In other words, you can find Living a Beautiful Life for less than the amount showing in the link below. :-)

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.