Cottage Magpie

My daughter brought me two bouquets today. One of beautiful, luscious tulips, just at their peak. One of scraggly, ratty dandelions. She said they were for my birthday. To her, these are both just the same. Two bunches of flowers for Mom.

To me, the difference was so obvious as to be laughable. Of course I would take pictures of the tulips, just so. Of course I would set the dandelions aside and toss them later, when she wasn’t looking. Anyone would understand. Of course I would.

Until I saw her face. Her little face, looking down at the dandelions she had picked just for me as I was saying, “No, let’s put those somewhere else.” She didn’t understand, not at all. She had picked them both, the tulips and the dandelions, because to her they were both beautiful.

And it hit me. Aren’t we like that with people, too?

We decide, in an instant, which of them is worthy of our attention.

Which ones are clever.

Or funny.

Or good at conversation.

But what about all the people who aren’t?

Aren’t they beautiful, too?

Aren’t they worthy of our attention, our patience, our love?

I say yes.

Not that I’m a shining example, by the way. I have been angry and hurtful toward people who were less than easy. I have been angry because the way they interacted with the world (or with me) was inconvenient. Sometimes really really really inconvenient. I have been hurtful because I thought the way they interacted with the world (or with me) was a moral flaw. That something was “wrong” with them.

Yesterday in another forum I said, “Sharing your life with Asperger’s or autism can wear you out, no matter how much compassion you have. How something can inspire such love and heartache and also be so exhausting and infuriating, I will never know.” This is true.

But the thing is, aren’t each of us flawed in our own way? Carrying our own baggage and issues and history into every situation, making mistakes, muddling through the best we can? And we are so thankful for grace, when other people are patient and loving and embrace us even with all our multitudes of flaws. I know I am. I am infinitely thankful for every person who looked past my awkwardness and discomfort and social clumsiness and decided to just love me anyway.

Thank you, to each one of you, who has given me that gift.

Some of us are just a little different.

And some of us a lot.

But we are all beautiful.

Thank you, Baby Girl, for giving me the gift of your unsullied, unbiased vision. Your heart is big enough to love us all, flaws included.

I hope mine can be, too.

Much love,

I was thinking, with all this agonizing over paint that I’m doing, it might be helpful to share some pictures that I loooooove. I mean, I did share the inspiration post the other day, and those are great examples, too. But I was re-reading one of my favorite books yesterday and I realized that there’s one house in there in particular that really speaks to the “look and feel” I’m going for with my studio.

The book is called “Perfect English Cottage” by Ros Byam Shaw, and I wrote an actual review type article (with more pictures), in my Decorating section, where I hope to start compiling some more information and reference materials for myself. There’s not much there yet, but feel free to check it out if you’d like to.

But back to this house. It’s the very first house in the book, and it’s totally captivated me since the day I opened the book. The bedroom above is part of it. Isn’t it great? I love all the color, vintage artwork and eclectic things. The owner works for a design firm doing textile designs, so the house is full of vintage fabrics and things. I love it.

This living room is my favorite room of all:

Here’s a close-up look of the one corner. Isn’t it great? All that color, and yet not overwhelming at all. Even with all the color in the space it still feels very soothing.

You can really tell from this staircase how he uses color. Most of the house is white on white, so that the things take center stage. There’s that bright blue, but just as a painted strip on the stairs, not more. I love how that looks.

Guess what surprised me the most when I was re-reading it! The chairs in this picture of his dining area! Pink!! And nearly the same color as I painted my pink chairs. I’m wondering if these picture are more stuck in my brain than I realized. Ha!

If you want to see more pictures from the book, I wrote a review of sorts in the Decorating section. Enjoy!

Anyway. I hope you enjoy them and it shows where I’m heading in my craft room. Now I’m off to primer over that bright blue wall and start again!!

What about you? Any do-overs in your life lately?

So, I have a hard time with paint choices. I always have. I honestly am not sure why, because I’m not indecisive about other things, just paint. I don’t dislike painting, either. I do, however, hate all the furniture moving, unloading shelves, living with chaos… that part I don’t love. So I know once things are painted they’re likely going to be that way for a loooong time!

Case in point, I put primer on the shelves and wainscoting in my workshop in November. Then I didn’t have time to finish so I loaded up the shelves. Now it’s April and I’m finally working on it. Or Baby Girl’s room, which is half primer and half paint samples and has been that way for over a year. So yeah, it’s important that I get the color right the first time.

Speaking of color, do you know this is the first time I’ve considered putting an actual color on the wall in TEN YEARS??? Amazing. Part of it is that I love light, bright, airy spaces, so I tend to go for the classics of white and cream on the walls. But part of it is because last time I put color on the walls they looked like this:

That’s the kitchen nook and dining room from our last house. It was such a cave, and it was only a few years later that I painted all the walls white.

But, since I have all the white wainscoting in the workshop and all the white plates on my cottage plate wall, not to mention all the great rooms out there with pretty blue-green walls, I thought, now it’s time.

So I put up some samples.

With the help of everyone on both Facebook and Instagram, I decided I liked the green one (Refresh), but wanted to go one lighter. So I painted the trim my usual white (Westheighland White), and the wall Waterfall, which is one step up from Refresh.

And I didn’t like it.

In fact, I could say that I hated it.

I know it looks great in the photos. It even looks great in the photos to ME! If I saw someone else post a photo like this, I’d be all, “That’s Amazing! Love!”

But in real life? No thank you.

Everyone said that I’d get used to it, or that the artwork would tone it down.

So I tried it with a sample of artwork:

And a plate:

And then with a whole bunch of paper plates, stuck up with masking tape (to avoid putting any holes in the wall until I was sure):

And I’ve been living with it for a few days.

Sorry, everybody. I still hate it. It might make for great blog photos, because it’s very exciting, but it’s not giving me the feel I want for the space I spent 80% of my time in.

It’s hard, you know, making unpopular choices when you have a DIY blog!

A lovely commenter on Facebook, though, asked me the perfect question (thank you Heather!). She asked me how did the wall make me FEEL. Did it make me happy? Did it make me want to be creative, to spend time in the space?

The answer was NO.

So it’s going to change. On the other wall, I have a new row of samples. Most of them are variations of white on white, although I do have one sample with the Refresh mixed with lots of white, and I’m kind of loving it.

But of course, I won’t know for sure until I paint the whole wall.

I was feeling discouraged, but then I remembered. The only way to figure out how to get the look and feel you want is to be willing to try stuff, rip it out, and do it over. At my old house, I ripped out and redid the garden about a hundred times. Fully redid it. Moved walkways, moved beds, moved lawn. In the end, after I stopped trying to be clever or follow current trends and just went for simple and classic, it turned out beautifully. I was so afraid it would be boring, but instead it was perfect.

So I’m sure there’s hope for me yet!

I’ll keep you posted!

Meanwhile, tell me. Do you agonized about paint or is it easy for you? Are you afraid of being boring if you go with classics?

We have been working in the front garden for several days, cleaning things up, making things presentable. Each day, or rather, several times a day, Baby Girl would come to me and say, “Mama? Mama? Here are flowers I picked for you.”

Into my hand, then, she would carefully put a little handful of dandelion tops or raggedy clover.

This evening, then, we took a break and went to the back garden to weed the vegetable beds. As were heading in for dinner, she lingered outside. I didn’t think anything of it.

When she came in the back door a few minutes later, I heard her little voice say, “Mama? Mama! I picked flowers for you.” I smiled, thinking I would be getting another handful of weeds.

But when she came around the corner, instead of dandelions, in her hand were the tops of all the pink tulips.

I had to bite my lip to keep from saying, “Oh, no!!!”

I managed not to. I even managed to smile. How could I not, with her little shining face SO proud of the beautiful flowers she had brought her mama.

So instead I said, “Thank you so much, little one, they are beautiful. Let’s put them in some water and we’ll put them on the table for dinner.”

And she did a little happy dance.

Lest you think I am a paragon of light, love and self-discipline, let me assure you that when this same event happened with her brother when he was her age (what is it about little children and tulips?), I wasn’t nearly so sanguine. I did, in fact, say, “OH, NO!” and tell him not to pick any more. Remind me to give him some extra hugs tomorrow.

But as for tonight, a bit later Mr. Magpie said, “Those are lovely sweetheart, but let’s leave the rest of them to grow outside, okay?”

Baby Girl said, “Yes, so the flowers can come back next year.”

Mr. Magpie said, “Right, but any flowers that are still out there, we’ll leave them to grow outside, right?”

And she said, “Oh Daddy, I got them all!”

Oh, dear.

But she is right, they will grow back next year and we’ll have tulips in the garden again.

Meanwhile, I have a very pretty bunch of pink tulips for our table.

Short-stemmed, of course. It’s all the rage, don’t you know?

Hope the tulips are blooming at your house!