Google+ House Revivals: Creating Moments of Beauty in Your Home

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Creating Moments of Beauty in Your Home

We all lead busy lives. We have children and pets and spouses and jobs. We have so many things to keep track of, and somehow, still make sure the grocery shopping is done, the laundry is folded, and dinner is on the table. Some of us have been blessed enough to live in a perpetual state of renovation on top of everything.

When your home is being demo'd and painted -- or whatever insanity is going on in your life at any particular moment -- sometimes you need to create a moment of beauty. One small place in your home that makes you smile, or reminds you to take a deep breath. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be beautiful to you.

It seems a little backward to stage a pretty dresser at one end of a hallway, when major demolition is being done at the other end, but sometimes that is exactly what we need.


Just one moment... to remember other beautiful moments. An oil painting picked up at a swap meet in Germany, a piece of pottery from a "girlfriend road trip" in Poland, a carved box from a sibling's trip to Southeast Asia.


A woven kataw ball -- a memento of a loved one's tour in Vietnam, vintage Henty novels read by your husband and sons and who knows how many other young boys.... bits and pieces of our lives, displayed on a dresser. Artifacts to remind us of moments in our lives... to remind us of what is important... to remind us to breathe.


Really isn't that what everything is? One moment of beauty after another, strung together like beads on a necklace, as one day leads to the next?  I suppose it is appropriate, then, to create similar moments in our homes. Moments to pause and remember. Moments to be reminded of the beauty that is our lives.