Have you ever looked at something and seen it all of a sudden completely different?
I sit in my snow room (which is like a sun room, but in Indiana it has snow outside more than sun) daily. It’s my favorite room to drink morning coffee and wake up for the day. As things have slowly winded down with our Spoonful Studio and the days of it closing are nearing, I have found myself with more and more free time.
One day, I was sitting there and looking at the same mantel that I have every other morning but I asked myself, “when did that turn yellow?” I noticed the stain had yellowed and it now looked dirty and old. I realized that as my mind was being freed up from running a business- it all of a sudden had margin to process other things.
It was such a cool moment to mentally process the margin I was working hard to find-I was finding. If you listened to Matt and I share why we are closing our non-profit Spoonful Studio, you heard that wearing all the hats felt like I had 5 full time jobs. I was working nights and weekends, and I desperately needed to be freed up to be more present at home (physically and mentally) to my fast growing kids.
So, here I am now remembering how creativity is a muscle. It needs space and time to heal, play and grow just like any other muscle. Below are a few very real life pictures of the mess my snow room had become with the busyness of life and my over crowded brain…
I love to work on our house. It is part of how this blog began 14 years ago, by sharing my projects with all of you. Yet, as running an art studio took over my time, I have found I have not worked on or done a project on our house in a long, long time.
Side Rant: Our houses don’t have to have the latest trend or constant projects, but I do believe our houses should be a safe place. I want my house to breathe rest, peace, and love to my family and those who visit. We all know that messes, piles, un-attended decisions can lead to more stress or tension, which is in conflict to what we want our houses to represent. Part of finding margin in my days was to make our home more peaceful as well, which for me is attacking some of the projects.
What began as “I’m going to paint that mantel” led to…painting the walls, painting the trim, painting the doors, ripping up the carpet, staining the concrete, panting the handles on a chest of drawers, washing the curtains, and reorganizing some games we pull out regularly in this room. Here are a few pictures of my process.
This room isn’t very big, so I did half the room at a time. Whichever half was not getting worked on, kept all the furniture piled up.
What I found as I created was I was super rusty. I stepped in the can of paint and literally spilt almost an entire gallon.
I then went to shake the gallon of cement stain and the lid wasn’t on all the way. Stain went flying on my freshly painted trim and walls. I wasn’t even mad though. I felt alive.
As I have been finding more time available in my days, I have done yard work, read and felt rest filtering into my new routines. I was doing things I enjoy, but have not had time to do in a long time. Yet, I did not feel completely like myself. When you change what you have worked so hard to build and have a lot of identity wrapped up in it, I am sure it takes a lot of time to deconstruct and process all the feelings and experiences just lived. Getting messy with paint was one of the first moments I have felt so alive and like ‘Erica’ once again. I needed to create and dive into the process myself.
It didn’t matter that it got worse before it got better.
It didn’t matter that I was rusty and “messed up” a lot along the way.
I was creating, and my heart needed it.
This room reminded me that creating is a muscle and it needs practice and margin to grow. We can’t live extremely stressful and busy lives and expect to come up with our best ideas, most creative dreams, and to see everyday things differently. Just like athletes need to rest after a big game, our brains, souls and creative spirits need to recharge as well.
It took quitting my job to find margin to see this room in a new way and imagine how I could keep my favorite bohemian, colorful vibe but breath new life into it.
For laughs and because it makes me smile, I did leave a hidden footprint in the cement. It’s a reminder to make time to play with paint and not to take anything too serious.
What about you? Do you need to create margin in your life? You may not need to go as extreme as I did with changing up your career. You can form a new habit by switching out an old one.
Go for an evening walk after dinner.
Get off social media, if you can. I did, but that will be another post.
Make a no laptop or phone spot in your house so you unplug.
Sit on the patio, as the day turns into night, being with the people around you.
Tell a few close people what you’re going through. It matters.
We only have one life. I am encouraged how one of my favorite writers, Bob Goff, said “he choose the life he wanted and placed work around it- rather than choosing a job and trying to squeeze a life into it.”
I will always look fondly back on the times Spoonful Studio was open and the powerful work I got to do with it. Yet, I need more life. I want to enjoy my kids and have time to let creativity grow. Because we all know, I believe a Spoonful of Imagination leads to a more beautiful life.
To see more of my room remodel, Caleb created this quick video for me to share with all of you!
Do you ever have natural instincts towards something, but you can’t always fully explain it until you keep learning in towards it!? Whew. That’s a bit confusing. Let me explain.
I love color, so I gathered my usual color scheme. I used leftover latex paint from when we painted our studio. We had a great selection of samples and colors that we had used to paint the studio’s walls. To use what I had and save money I chose to not use fabric paint. Please note: this did make my curtain more crisp and stiff.
Oh man. There were so many smiles, laughs and brainstorms as they created side by side. As they filled in the gray…
The hardest part of this whole project was waiting for it to dry. We might have driven back over to the studio (where we painted it) to pick it up a few hours latter…only to realize it wasn’t dry yet. We ended up letting it dry overnight and then brought our masterpiece home. My girl tried to claim it as a blanket. Haha! It would not be a very good blanket since the material was thin and now also stiff. It was the perfect curtain though.
I hung it in my room. My husband no longer needs to pin a shirt up to our window. Success! I love how the colors on the curtain add a fun pop of color to my gray walls and light colored bed quilt, yet it combines with my 
What do you think? Do you enjoy the art process too? Would you ever try a large scale abstract process art project like this!? If you don’t want to do it or it feels intimidating, don’t do it…kids will gladly step in and make it happen for you! 😉
One day I was drinking a tea and started flipping through a book I flip through often for inspiration. It sits on a side table to be a quick read. As I was thumbing through it for the 100th time, I had the thought, “I wish I could see all the pages at once. They are so beautiful.” Almost as quick as the thought came, it was followed by thinking of my accent wall I had been trying to figure out. Could these book pages be collaged in a way to make wallpaper?
I really didn’t give it any time or research before knowing I wanted to try my idea. I started ripping my beloved book up page by page. Once I had ripped out all the pages, I had a huge stack of beautiful paper. I used scissors and cut off all the frayed edges. I was then ready to figure out the wallpaper method.
I taped a few pages up in different directions to figure out if I wanted a messy scattered look or if I wanted it to look more like organized rows. I decided I liked the messy look. I went to Lowes and asked where the wall paper paste was located. To my surprise, there was a roller of wallpaper paste made for doing wallpaper boarders. It was the perfect size for my project! It was a small bottle with a roller to easily apply the paste to my book pages.
Most of the pieces didn’t need to be trimmed. I simply picked a page and decided which side of it I liked best, and rolled my wallpaper paste onto the side that would be up against the wall. I rotated the piece of paper different little angles so it didn’t look perfect and pressed it onto the wall. I then used the smoothing tool and pressed all the wrinkles and air bubbles out.
A few little things I thought through as I worked…
It was really messy. I used a huge old sign and placed it on the floor as my mobile work space, and it had gluey wallpaper paste all over it. I probably could have sorted my pages out to have a stack of images vs. a stack of quotes, etc, but I didn’t. The creative in me decided to just go for it. Some of you organized folks will probably have a much more calculated way to go about it, which is great!
I love how it all came together! It’s so colorful and fun! The book, How to be a Wildflower by Katie Daisy, costs $11.46 on Amazon. I ended up buying two books from there. What an inexpensive way to buy wallpaper we love, to brighten up a small space!
This door leads into our garage. It is the most used door in our house. We can see this little nook from our kitchen, which is part of why I wanted to brighten up the space! It is also our walk through laundry room into my craft room. This small nook is one high traffic space!
I love how these beautiful pages are perfect for inspiration and deep conversations. The other day I was sitting at the table with my kids, and I asked them what they thought one of the pages meant when it said, “gather unlikely friendships.” It has led into some of the most real, challenging, and beautiful conversations.
This little nook is a well used space in our home, and now as we come and go and just live…we can be inspired. It’s a small wall with a huge punch.
I have been on the hunt for lockers to put in our home for years. Seriously! It’s not like they are super hard to find. The problem is that the folks who sell them are often pretty proud of these old rusty boxes that used to hold sweaty gym shorts. Finally, I found these beauties that met my criteria for price and size and I quickly scooped them up.
My amazing kiddos jumped in right away, when I asked for their help to scrub those old sweat boxes down with some soapy water. I mean seriously, these did come out of an old locker room. Yuck!
I went ahead and placed the lockers where I wanted them to go. The contemplation game was on. What would be the perfect color to help tie my new lockers into the room?
I pulled out my tarps. Covered the locker face plates with some masking tape. Then I applied my five colors.
Below is the finished test color results. Once I saw the lockers in place, I had a feeling I knew which color I wanted to use.
Please ignore all my laundry and look through the doorway to the right. You can see the beginnings of a project I will share with you soon. The colors were all coming together making me want to lean in a lighter direction with the lockers. But, like I said, I turned to Instagram to see what my followers had to say. My followers know I love color, lots and lots of color. They all rallied for me to keep the test colors as-is and go with the multi-colored box of crayon approach to my lockers. I just couldn’t do it. My OCD overruled my Instagram friends. (Sorry!) 
I landed on the light pink and after letting it settle in for a few weeks, it’s official, I love it! This room already has a lot of busyness with my rug and new wall art happening to the right. The solid color ties it in well while it still has a nice soft pop.
Reagan fell in love when I showed her how she could use magnets to now hang her artwork to the lockers. Which by the way is the primary use for the lockers – art supplies. This little corner is my kids crafting corner. The have all their own supplies and are free to dive into projects whenever they want. Now the locker gives us a little more storage and a fun place to put their work on display.
I’m not a very patient person but some things end up being worth the wait. I love love love my new lockers even though they took years to find. I also love the color after weeks of deliberation and lots of back and forth.