Surrounding Yourself With Things You Love

Your home is suppose to be your sanctuary.  The place where you go to after a long stressful day and you can kick you shoes off and be yourself.  You open your house up to the people you love the most.  I always felt your home is a reflection of the people living inside.  Maybe that is why I have always wanted a home that was clean and clutter free.  Mostly because I want to feel comfortable when I am there.

Which is why I like to put things in my home that I love.  My hubby has his " man cave" where he has things he loves like his prized deer mounts, metal vintage signs, sports memorabilia, and other things he has collected through the years.  Might I mention his huge life sized indoor scoreboard complete with buzzer.  I must say when he fires that baby it heats the whole basement!!! Our daughter has her room where she has all the posters from movies she loves, two huge bookcases filled to the brim with books she buys,  one wall is completely covered with pictures of friends and places she's been to.  Even a Clint Eastwood poster!!

Which pretty much leaves the rest of the house for me.  First time visitors to my house notice as they walk in the front door immediately that I may have a slight obsession with Paris.  After all I have my mini Eiffel Tower right inside the front door.  My house is filled with pictures, posters and other Paris things.  Some, like the framed drawing of my daughter that was done by an artist in the Place du Tertre (I know, I know, but I am after all a tourist), and my personal pictures I took while there are some of my prizes possessions. I don't think there is a room in my house where there is not something from Paris in it.  These are things I love.  I even have my small walk in closet decorated with a poster from the Louvre,  and pictures I bought while in Versailles, not to mention all my Bono and U2 pictures and momentos.

I do have one non Paris thing that I love and that is my child sized China hutch that I bought from my Aunts estate when she passed away last year.  That little piece had great memories for me.  Growing up the 2 things that remained from when my Family had a small farm was the empty barn and chicken coop.  As a child I played in that chicken coop and I had it cleaned out and it was a playhouse for us and the neighbor kids.  It was mostly me and the neighbor girls that used it.  Anyway my aunt had this China hutch when she was little and it ended up in that chicken coop, so we used to play with it and put our dishes inside.  Eventually my Dad sold that chicken coop and my Aunt brought that hutch in her house until I bought it from my cousins after she passed away. I took it home, bought some chalk paint and brought it back to life.  It sits by my front door with a Fenton glass basket from my Aunt and some other momentos inside.  My Mom had a child's tea set from Germany she gave me so that is in there too.

I think it is important to have things you love in your home.  For awhile I collected various things Only realizing later they really had no meaning to me and I didn't really love them.  I started to weed out all those things.  You can fill up your life with stuff, but in the end you can't take it with you.  Does it really matter to have all that stuff that you just like around? A house is only a home when the people you love live there and the things you put inside it show your personality.

As spring will roll around eventually it will be time to clean out and unclutter.  Take a look at the things in your home.  What do you love and what do you look at and think "not really loving this" or " you know I thought this had meaning, but it really just takes up space" ? Get rid of it. Surround yourself with only things you love.

In Celebration of Parents and Grandparents-My Year of Graditude



Myself, Mom, Dad, my daughter Megan

I'm lucky enough to still have both my parents with me.  They live only 3 miles from me, but yet if I see them every couple of weeks or so that's about it.  my Mom especially has always had the philosophy that she wanted to stay out of her kids lives and if we needed her, we knew where to come to.  I depended on them a lot when our daughter was young.  My Mom took care of her from the time she was 5 and going to pre-school until she was old enough to be on her own.  Besides us my parents were the ones who were with her the most.  She has that special bond with them that every Grandchild should have with their Grandparents.  I certainly had it with my Grandmother, who has been gone for many years now, but I think of her almost everyday and miss her terribly.  Some of my most precious childhood memories were of spending time in the summer staying at her house.  I can still see her sitting at the kitchen table in her apron teaching me how to macramé, or embroider, or letting me play with her jewelry. As Grandmas go, she was a perfect one in my eyes.

Sunday I had my parents over for dinner.  It was my Dad's birthday during the week and We decided to make dinner and have them over.  After dinner we sat at the table talking about my Dad's Mom who is in her 90's and living in an assisted living facility. Its not often I can get my parents to talk about the past, they tend to not share stories as easily as other families do, but on this day they shared a few about my Grandpa and Great Grandpa.  My Grandpa died from cancer when I was a toddler, so the only recollection I have of him is from old 8MM film.  My Mom said how my Great Grandpa used to come over everyday to get a peak at me when I was a baby.

At times I have to remind myself that my parents will not be around forever.  I did not always have the best relationship with them.  I know for a fact they will tell you I wasn't the perfect child. We probably had a pretty normal family life.  We were lucky in that as a family we did so many things together.  Snowmobile, camp. fish, going on yearly vacations, my parents saw to it that we had a good life.

So in my year of gratitude, I am first celebrating my parents and grandparents.  Our parents shape us into what we become as adults.  Grandparents are the ones who have the patience to teach us all kinds of things and love us even when we don't clean our rooms.

And I am grateful for them all.....