Well Said.

Read this quote today. I needed to hear this piece of advice.

“Start before you’re ready because you’ll never be really ready.”

1000%

Design*Sponge recently featured an interview with decorator Ruthie Chapman Sommers. I especially liked her answer to this question...

Design*Sponge: In addition to being an interior designer, decorator, former AMAZING shop owner and author, to name a few, what would you like to conquer next?

Ruthie Chapman Sommers: Well, that is really nice to list everything, but I feel that I am simply a decorator. I am deeply concerned about our wonderful and amazing planet . . . from being able to ski on gorgeous mountains to being able to surf in beautiful waters. Just catching fireflies is a luxury. Aside from the freedoms we have as Americans, we also have visual eye candy everywhere to enjoy. Why we all do not do 1,000% and really sacrifice to protect it is beyond me. We all should be doing everything we can fight to save wildlife that is going to be extinct due to human interference (from gorillas to elephants).

I use as little plastic as possible — from toys to juiceboxes, all are just landfill [waste] (give your child a hose and they will be happy). I edit wherever I can and try not to accumulate stuff. I will never drive another car as long as mine holds up. I choose all sustainable food and don’t eat meat unless I know what farm it came from (for the humane treatment of animals and for the humane treatment of the environment); it bothers me that people care more about where their child goes to preschool than cleaning up the environment or even what is happening to Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. I live in Hollywood, so I have a low tolerance for chit-chat when we could be having some amazing intellectual conversation.

Read more at Design*Sponge 

I love this quote...

         Photo found here. Original source unknown.

Make things happen today!

 just a pretty fern on our back deck

"I like things to happen; and if they don't happen, I like to make them happen." 

Winston Churchill

I totally agree with this quote.

*

"Dress shabbily, they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman."

- Coco Chanel 

*A casual yet stylish dancer in Berlin. From The Sartorialist of course.  

Economic Restraints Ensure Beauty

I first read this article last summer. Happily, I stumbled upon it again and was again inspired.  It seems that I'm most creative when working on a budget or a time constraint.  Does that ring true for you too?  Read the article below and feel your creativity flourish!

Hannah Betts looks at how the recession has had aesthetic impact...


Unemployment, a plunging housing market, unflattering hemlines - without doubt, the bad times hurt. But in one sense, a curb on our more extreme excesses might be welcome. As consumers, we have come to expect instant gratification, immediate satiation of our every whim. 


Want something? Click on it. Like something? Get several. Over something? Toss it away.


Something has been forgotten in all this: taste. Taste, let's not forget, is a muscle, and it requires exercise, exercise that is as much about what one excludes as what one desires.

Inspiring for the New Year

"Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants." Esther De Waal

photo from realsimple.com

Lessons in How to Be a Woman

"Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don't want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you're doing here. Believe in kissing."

- Eve Ensler, author and playwriter
Quote from Glamour December issue - photo from here 

Isn't Fall Lovely?

photo credit realsimple.com

"The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely." Louisa May Alcott

The 'Superior Wife Syndrome'

I had just had a conversation last week with a friend about this very topic...  to me, it's an interesting societal issue with many layers to dissect.  Read the memo below from Barbara Rainey and consider if this affects your marriage.

by Barbara Rainey from The Marriage Memo

On a recent Monday morning, I had turned on the Today Show to catch our local news and weather on the half hour. As I listened from the kitchen I heard one of the hosts introduce an author with new research on wives. The title of her book is The Superior Wife Syndrome. When I heard the intro I grabbed my notepad and sat down to hear about the latest syndrome to afflict our population. I was ready to critique.

But as I listened I found myself agreeing with some of what she said, though I wouldn't go so far as to label it a syndrome. The author, Karen Rubenstein, has discovered that millions of wives think they do everything better than their husbands. They feel they are more responsible, more capable, and in a word, more superior. Hmmm, I thought. Sounds a little more like pride to me.

There is truth to this discovery. Beginning in the 1960s, women have been instructed to do it all. We've been told we can work full time and raise kids at the same time, all with great success. Many have gone so far as to say we don't need men. Women's drive to achieve equality in the work place has resulted in this attitude of superiority, I believe.

This temptation to exalt ourselves over our men is as old as the earth. I find myself dealing with this attitude more than I'd care to admit. I load the dishwasher more efficiently than he, I fold the clothes better than he, and I pack the car much more neatly than his haphazard preference of just throwing it all in and slamming the door to keep it from falling out.

And when I focus on how much better I am in certain tasks and responsibilities I can quickly move to feeling superior. In addition I'm learning this is much more of a temptation in the empty nest. When we had kids my corrective measures were directed at them and less at my husband. Now he is the sole focus of my rehabilitation and retraining efforts. Poor man.

Rubenstein gave three tips for this syndrome which are not new, but they are good to remember because they are timeless. First,ask for help. He can't read your mind. Second, educate him with logic, not emotional outbursts. And third, be willing to settle for less.

I would add a fourth tip: Let him be who he is, as my husband would say. And he is so right, because there is more than one way to do a task. My way isn't always right and his isn't always wrong. Most of our conflicts aren't about right and wrong anyway, but about personal preferences for how something is accomplished. In the end it's not a big deal anyway. Certainly not worth the damage to your marriage and to your man that an attitude of superiority will cause.
You can read more from Barbara Rainey on FamilyLife MomBlog

Personal Responsibility

I just read this quote here.  I think it's excellent.

We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker.  It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.  

- Ronald Reagan 40th President of the United States

AMEN Ronald!

Well said.

"Write to be understood, speak to be heard, read to grow." Lawrence Clark Powell

"I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place." Ann Tyler

Remember

I think this quote sums it up pretty well. Quoted from here.

America has stood down enemies before, and we will do so this time. None of us will ever forget this day. Yet, we go forward to defend freedom and all that is good and just in our world.

- George W. Bush
43rd President of the United States
September 11, 2001

Albert Einstein said.

"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious."

photo from here

I like this.