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What does a Nature Shelf Collect?

April 20, 2022 By Erica Deuel Leave a Comment

Time is going so quickly.

Can you relate? Nothing makes you feel the years slipping by quite as much as having a high schooler.

As I process my kids quickly getting older, it has me reflecting on what things I do with my time, how we interact as a family, making memories, and doing things that make our spirits full of purpose and JOY.

Two things that I love are playing with my family and being in nature.

There is something so special when that combination intersects. Times slows down. I have always loved collecting little sticks, shells, leaves and bits from my time outdoors. As a kid, I used to ask to go on family hikes for my birthday celebrations. Being in nature takes me back to my roots and smooths the stress of the world for a bit, so when I come out of it, I am better for it.

One day, I had this idea of creating a nature shelf. I was staring at this little shelf in my kitchen holding pictures and art and thinking how special it would be to have a nature version. I pictured a shelf dedicated to holding small things collected out doors, yet I knew it would be collecting so much more than just those treasures. Let me show you what I mean.

I went to Hobby Lobby one day for paint and as Hobby Lobby can do, it had me wandering all the other aisles. I saw that wood shelf above and immediately recalled my need for a nature shelf, so I brought it home and played around with where it would go.

Since we are a family of artists, we don’t have a lot of empty walls in our house. The walls are full of our passions, creative processes and journeys of exploration in time and who we are. I view them as a living museum of us. But, I found a space for this new shelf. It would live in my art room. Right where I sew, paint my journals, and even type this message out to you.

A few weeks passed and nothing happened to my shelf, but then we left for spring break and guess what we found!?

We found shells! The first two days of our break, I sat in a chair happily just decompressing and watching my kids play and enjoy their youth. It was like my body literally was saying, “It’s ok to just be.” Then I found myself walking, reading, playing, and the shell hunt began.

I am an Enneagram 4 (a creative with all kinds of feels) so it’s probably no surprise that I now look back at these shells collected, and I remember the joy of the moment, the fun of the hunt, the youthful innocence in each of us as we shared the joy of new treasures with one another.

We had brainstormed best ways to collect, techniques to try as we waded through the cold waters, and light heartily embraced pain as broken shells hit our ankles in the hunt.




The shells are like souvenirs of memories made with my family. The nature shelf holds those shells and those memories on display.

This nature shelf represents me slowing down and making time to see beauty in the everyday ordinary things and the most of each moment. How often do we walk past a bed of flowers, blooming tree, or intricate stick and miss that extreme beauty because we are racing to our next thing? How often are we sitting with our people but not really sitting with our people?

I’m really excited to have this growing reminder to tell me to slow down, notice the everyday beauty and make more moments count with my family.

There’s lots of empty squares on this shelf. I can’t wait for summer and warmer weather to finally arrive, so I can do more fun outside with my people. My shelf treasures will grow as a result as well.

What about you? What is a reminder you hold that allows to pull you out of the fast pace and make time for that inner child in you to play with your family? It’s never too late to start something new.

Do you want a nature shelf too? See my shelf come alive in this short YouTube video.

 

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Afghan Confusion

July 8, 2013 By Erica Deuel 4 Comments

When you go thrifting (if you go thrifting) do you always look for the same item? Do you always head straight to the dishes in hopes of finding some vintage Pyrex or straight to the furniture section for your next piece to redo? I love to check out a few sections. Pictures frames, toys, baskets, and linens are a few of my favorites. Lately, I have had some afghan confusion.

Every time I walk into a thrift store I see at least one afghan for sale. I am confused! Why do people part with these beauties?

By definition, an afghan is a blanket, wrap, or throw made of colorful yarn. They are hand stitched or knitted into beautiful geometric shapes and patterns.

colorful afghan throw blanket

I love color and I love handmade, so afghans are my latest obsession. I have three and all three have come from a thrift store. Each one is a different knitted stitch and I just love them. We use them daily to build forts for the kids to play in or to cuddle up with on the couch. Just this weekend did each kid have their own fort and they ate their lunch in them. Childhood memories are being made with these pretty blankets in my house.

blanket tent fortsWhen my afghans are not tided or clipped to furniture for forts, I keep them in a big basket on our fireplace to grab for couch snuggle time. I think they add such a nice warmth to our living room with their pretty colors.

pretty afghans

Why do you think these homemade beauties are selling for just a few bucks at thrift stores? Or maybe they aren’t selling-that’s why they are always there! I think I just made it my little mission to collect a few more. They are fought over on movie nights around here.

afghan fortI tried making Caleb an afghan when I was still pregnant with him. I only got a few rows stitched, before I became burned out and I quit. There has to be some serious dedication to finishing one of these blankets to be a usable size. Lots of time and yarn are invested in them. If I had to price one (from my experience of buying yarn and trying to sew one), I think they would easily be in the hundreds of dollars. So, tell me! Why do you think these are at thrift stores?

Is there a particular item you are searching for at thrift stores lately? I am headed out for a day of errands with my kiddos and just might have to stop to find another pretty afghan for my collection!

Thank you so much for stopping by! If you missed my DIY Ruffled Shower Curtain over the weekend-check it out and enter to win two of my embroidered hoops!

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Saying Goodbye to Our Home

April 16, 2013 By Erica Deuel 4 Comments

saying goodbye

Matt has lived here going on twelve years and I’ve been here just short of nine years. Saying goodbye is hard. So many amazing memories. But for me saying goodbye to the house isn’t the hardest part. It is the backyard. My favorite tree of all time lives in our yard.

Old Tree

It is gorgeous and huge. I love to lay on the trampoline with the kids and stare up at it. Watching it fill out in the spring with the early morning sun shinning through its branches is one of my favorite things. I will be sad to say goodbye to it.

As we are packing and talking about our new house, we are getting more and more excited about the change.

You have seen a preview of what we are planning for Reagan’s room and our dinning room, and you know we are really excited about our new place. As excited as we are, I want to fully embrace the saying “goodbye well” stage and let the memories and sweet moments flood my head.

I had the idea that we could paint pictures of our house to stimulate conversation about what we love about our home. These moments and the paintings are something we can take with us to our new home.

saying goodbye to a house you love

Caleb wanted to paint the front of our house complete with the basketball goal and our car out front. J wanted to paint the backyard with all our play stuff, so we stared out the window at our tree and talked about its size and shape and he painted that as the first part of our backyard. Reagan just wanted to paint. 🙂 Matt actually did a painting too, but I forgot to capture him in action as I had already started dinner when he started his painting.

Kids painting House Pictures

I have not painted a house tribute portrait yet, but I plan too. I love how all these came out and I know they will be something special to hang in our new house. After the paintings dried, I sprayed a clear varnish protectant on them.

painting to say good bye to a house

One of my favorite shots of everyone posing with their paintings is this one…

house portraits

 I love my little family!

Have you had to move with kids? I know I briefly told you in our Packing Boxes (part 1) that my four-year old is showing signs of nervousness with all of this moving talk and changes happening. I was hoping this activity of talking, intentionally playing, and processing our life would help him.

Two more weeks! We can do this! I am thankful for my mom taking the kids for most of tomorrow, so I can run to Hobby Lobby by myself and attack packing this place up without cute distractions. I hope you are having a good week!

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Our Vacation Books

October 26, 2012 By Erica Deuel 1 Comment

***First off, congratulations to Becca Stanley for winning my Embroidered Owl on last week’s giveaway!  Thank you to everyone who entered!  That was our largest entered giveaway to date!  I’m going to try to do them more often, since it seemed like a hit.  Please stick around and keep coming back!***

My project I would like to spotlight this week is my boys’ Summer vacation books.  We worked on them all week in school, and they are so completely proud of them!

I have wanted to incorporate making a summer book of our big road trip into our school days, but it kept getting pushed to the following week’s to do list.  Finally, I just decided we needed to do it, and this was the week!  I am so glad we did it!  We have all had a blast with this project!

We have talked about and learned so many valuable things this week through the process of making these books.  One of my main lessons was to try Super glue before many other strong glues needed to hold these thick babies together!  The boys have learned about the author and illustrator of books.  They know the names and the difference between the two roles.  They learned what a title page was and where it is located in a book.  We talked about key events and order and sequence.  We pulled out the map and showed the path we took on our 25 day road trip, while talking about states and distance.  We talked about the difference in opinions and facts.  They did a mock interview and are now doing “show and tell” for all who will sit through their reading of their books.

I love the pride that was earned with the completion of this big project.  Everyday Caleb wanted to “finish” his book, so it really taught patience to work a little at it everyday.

We picked out flag fabric for our cover since we drove across the United States for our vacation.  Caleb created both boys’ covers by glueing and wrapping the fabric around big pieces of cardboard.

We glued postcards that we had collected at our different stops on sheets of paper to insert as pages.

The boys sorted through a huge pile of pictures from our trip to pick out the ones they wanted to use in their book.  It was so fun to see and talk about the different things/events we did as the memories came back to us.  It is really quite funny to see the pictures they actually choose to use in their books.  They might not the the ones I would have chosen, but it is their books!

We worked on writing as they created title pages for their books.

Everyday, Caleb wrote a sentence for his book.

You know we love dictation.  He also dictated lots of stories or memories to me for pages in his book.

We printed out maps and drew the route we took to and from California on our maps.  We talked about distance and the United States, and had a blast talking about places we would like to travel next.  Caleb wants to travel across a different country on the other side of the world now.  Dream big my boy.  I love it!

Once we had finished creating all our different pages, we had to sort them into an order for the book.  We talked about events with similarities/differences as we placed all the “same state” pages in piles.

I get to do my job in my pajama pants. Awesome!

I had plans to sew the pages together with my sewing machine, but our books were too thick with all the pages and card stock.  We opted to punch holes and string thread though them to bind all the pages together.  I then glued the two outside pages to the cover.  It has taken several different types of glue to figure this step out.

The boys are so proud of their creations!!  They worked so hard writing, cutting, gluing, and learning this week.  I am just as proud of them as they are.

Today, we also talked about being a hard worker and finishing strong.  They were not wanting to complete the last steps, but they came around and finished strong and I adore their results!

Thank you so much for reading this week’s Project Spotlight.  Thank you again for all of you who entered my giveaway and might have started following me in a new way!  I really appreciate it!!

Tomorrow, I am attending the Country Living Fair at Stone Mountain with a group of other DIY Atlanta Bloggers, and I am so excited about it!  I will be sure to share it with you next week!

Do you have big plans this week?  Are you going to check out Mitcham Farm?  I hope whatever you do, you have a wonderful weekend!  Happy Friday!!

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