Diversion

Today, was not the flagship day of quarantine times-it was a Monday in Feburary, the sun was shining but I was losing my mind. It felt like when you are swimming in the ocean and a really big wave is coming your way. You have to swim all the way to the sandy bottom to keep from having it toss you to next Tuesday. You swim to the surface just in time to take a breath and another one is coming. Three of those in a row and you start to panic. You check your distance to shore and you can’t find your footing. You start to get fatigued and you can’t catch your breath. I remember getting this education growing up at the beach and realized first hand, that that’s how people, even the strongest of swimmers, drown. It’s how I almost drowned. Just when I thought I couldn’t do one more cycle, a wave pushed me to shore.

Today, on an ordinary Monday, I felt the rhythmic tug of a new week starting and I started to feel pulled under. I used whatever oxygen reserves I had left to panic. I felt hemmed in too tight, by the people always around me and the routine tasks that lay before me. I’m outside in pajamas and a coat, yelling into a cellphone that I am done with all this. It was not pretty. I’m grateful for friends that help talk you off the ledge of crazy.

My dear friend offered me sympathy and laughter in the middle of my captivity. Then she said, “you need a diversion,” to which I heartily agreed. I was thinking that our whole family needs a diversion from the intensity of engagement with one another as it’s too much togetherness. How work for me has been a welcome diversion from the norm and how I crave more to save me from the routine of things that I am only somewhat good at.

That word diversion hung in the air long after our call. I was putting one foot in front of the other making the bed and started thinking about manna in the desert. How a miracle got old. The miraculous appearance of food flakes that came everyday-just enough-offering sustenance and provision in the middle of nowhere, how all that mercy became painful monotony. Leeks in captivity sounded better than familiar blessing in the wilderness. We are on a kid-centric rotation of mac and cheese, pizza, and tacos over here. We have options and still, I’m losing heart with thinking about food every day. I’m looking right past that blessing of a full pantry because the familiar monotony is threatening to undo me. And then the Lord brought to mind the golden calf- a story that in theory makes sense but in outward action does not. I get the human need to worship things- oh how I do. I know what it’s like to run to things to fill the God-shaped hole absolutely but I guess it’s the vehicle of their worship that doesn’t culturally resonate- I am not as tempted to melt down gold and worship a physical statue. So while I have thought a lot about the golden calf in terms of what idols look like in my life, I have never thought about the golden calf as a diversion.

But there it was, that word hanging in the air. The people were waiting for Moses to come back from the mountain to bring the words of God to them. They didn’t have homes to tend to. They may have had chores, like washing clothes or gathering water that might have taken the whole day. Maybe they had communal responsibilities. They had a regular meal plan but no kitchen and I would think a lot of time on their hands. Time to quarrel and have disputes, time to lose heart. What if part of the lure of the calf was its power to be a diversion in the midst of all the monotony. What if making that thing gave a bored community something to do. A group gathered the gold items, another worked on the mold, still, another poured it and cracked it out of its handmade shell. Word got out in the camp- that tonight there will be something worth seeing. The anticipation of something happening in their controlled time frame staved off the pain of waiting for the real thing, the truest thing.

There is nothing wrong with diversion per se, taking a break and taking your eyes off your situation is totally needed at times. I think the problem comes in when diversion is what I want to hook my heart to. I look for diversion to rescue me from the pain of the ordinary and move my worship from Christ to the “good thing” or even like the Israelites, the good thing that my hands have made. So maybe the golden calf isn’t so hard to understand after all. May we be steadfast as we wait on the sustaining words that the Lord has for us. SM

The Bibliophile-Part One : A Back Deck Gets a Refresh

I was so delightfully surprised when my dear friend from college asked me to come to her home to give it a refresh. She and her husband had lived there 18 years and in that time added 2 children, a dog, and a lot of well-loved books. They are both teachers, avid readers, and board game enthusiasts. On top of that, she is a quilter. All of these things can add to the interior volume of your house. When you move, you naturally go through things and pare down, but when you stay put you can end up putting off taking an honest inventory of your things. I love jumping in and helping curate a space that needs to be freshened up! Since we did most of the house I thought I’d share multiple posts from this project. I picked the back deck because spring is coming and our outdoor spaces are about to come alive. Here’s some inspiration to get you dreaming!

Here is the before pictures of a well-loved, hard working, multi-use deck. Kayaking, grilling, an inflatable country club are just a few activities this deck has seen. We talked through what she’d like it used for and came up with this!

We ordered a sectional, gas fire table, 2 rockers, an area rug to define the space and end tables. Because the deck isn’t covered, we ended up purchasing a large cover that many of the pieces can fit under when not in use. Her 10 year old daughter put those rockers together herself- I am more than impressed.

Up close shot of the fire table, we got one with a rim to be able to hold drinks when not in use.

The deck has a step down that you can’t see from the pictures. It carves the deck into 2 spaces. I added 2 chairs that matched the sectional and added fun pillows and ottomans. I hung industrial bistro lights from the house to 2 metal poles for evening lighting. We moved the existing table and chairs to the section not being used up top and kept the kayaks around the side close to the garage.

I got this photo from my happy homeowner enjoying her space on a lovely summer evening! SM

A Church Hill Jewel Box Garden

This past year has been all about digging deep-all kinds of deep-moving forward when you thought you couldn’t pivot one more time. This story is about the good kind of digging deep- the kind that gets you elbows deep in dirt! This past fall, Amy Grigg of Cite Design, asked if I could plant her landscape design for a lovely couple in Church Hill. I was so excited to bring paper to life! Here is what we started with. The couple had previously installed bluestone pavers to create a walkway and are waiting for the concrete at the end of the steps to be hardscaped with more bluestone, once the workers become available. They had also planted a dwarf Ginko tree that they wanted to keep. It was great because I didn’t have a lot to dig out of the existing space!

The photo above is a front facing shot of the before exterior.

I pulled everything out and broke up the soil. I conditioned the soil by adding compost and hand tilled it to get what I like to call sexy dirt. Just look at that rich soil, all ready to grow some stuff!

Then I followed Amy’s plant list and placed everything according to her plan. Sweet mahonia is in the back, a lot of hostas, compact holly, mondo grass, cranesbill geranium, and wild ginger. It’s a yellow, green palate, with a hint of purple from the perennial geranium. All that is left to do is plant, water, and mulch!

TA DA! All done. It will sleep through the winter and we can check back in Spring! SM

Running Clear

““I heard him urging me to keep my own summer song, even though life’s winter tries to throw into my spring cold wind and snow. Do not throw away your confidence, he said. Do not budge from your perch, but sing your song, summer confident, sure of my great goodness to you. You did not bring this spring, dear child; you do not have to arrange for the summer to follow. They come from my Father’s will and they will come.”

The Journey of Desire by John Eldridge

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One of my most favorite things about living in Richmond is the James River. From where we live we get to cross it every day. We like to say it’s always a good day to cross the bridge! The best way to take it all in is to walk across it on the T. Pot Pedestrian Bridge. After a heavy storm or a lot of consistent rainfall, the beautiful James gets all murky and brown. It hides the rocks that are like mini islands and looks, as my brother-in-law said so artfully, “like one angry river.” But then, as the waters start to recede, blues and greens start to emerge. Today, while I biked across the bridge the river was fighting hard to transform back to its glorious state. Blues and greens were pushing to the surface and as the waves splashed over the rocks near the rapids-it began to look clear and clean again. As I think about 2021, I realize parts of me are fighting to re-emerge after the storm of last year. Bits of hope are stirring and I’m excited about some new things, but 2020 was an angry brown river that felt like it was trying to drown us all. My bounceback feels busted and the sheer stress of it all threatens to keep me murky. I want to run clear and clean again-trade the heavy for some wonder and glee.

I so much want life to be good again. I so much want to move from reacting to stressful events and survival mode to planning and dreaming. As a believer, I know we have to hold the future loosely- that we are always vulnerable even when a global pandemic isn’t raging, and that we are always held even in the hard. Right now my safety baseline feels adrift and while I know true north, I’m still reeling from all the setbacks. It feels like anger and tears are still close to the surface. I see it in others too. When I try and look beyond, even just into next week- it feels too hard. School for my boys next year is still unknown and I just have to be content with today’s portion. That’s all I’m asked to do. “Wait for the Lord, be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”PS 27:14

Part of staying open to God’s goodness and living with hope is stepping into the new that you are being invited into. That sometimes looks like holding space for healing that you are waiting on and other times it looks like faith-filled steps into new territory. I want to be brave enough to let the dirt-filled waters of last year settle back to the bottom and I want to be brave enough to run clear. SM

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A Different Approach to Storing Holiday Decorations

You know that question people like to ask as an icebreaker of some sort-the one that asks if you could only save one thing from your burning home (apart from your family or pets of course) what would it be? Well, after all these years I finally have my answer: My Christmas ornaments! They represent years of curation and too many after Christmas sales to count! They would not be quickly or easily replaced. Some of them I’ve even made and with the passing of years they become even more special.

It’s so exciting when it’s finally time to pull out the Christmas decorations, but it’s always mixed with the dread of pulling out tubs that you have to lug into your house in order to get the party started.

Because Christmas can be my busy season work-wise, I find if I don’t have everything up and ready by the Friday after Thanksgiving then I am playing catch up all season long with my decorations. Tubs stay in the house longer than they should and add to visual clutter that stresses me out. Like this year- you can read about that in the previous post called that tree.

I like to think of ways to streamline holiday decor so it’s easily accessible when next year rolls around. I used the Marie Kondo method to ruthlessly clean out my clothes closet and I was left with half a closet to store things. I use part of it to keep my small fake holiday trees and Christmas ornaments tucked safely away and in a climate-controlled space, unlike my garage. It’s so much easier to reach for this from the top shelf of my bedroom closet:

or even this:

Find some small storage bins that you like the look of. These are fabric-covered, but they don’t have to be. Make sure they have lids so you can stack them if needed. They should be larger than a shoebox-otherwise you’ll need too many to fit your ornaments. They should be small enough to fit on your shelf (12'“-18”). Then I put all of my delicate, breakable ornaments on top of each other. I group like items together and I don’t wrap them all up in tissue paper like I used to. Because they are packed snuggly, they aren’t moving in the box and because you know right where they are, you don’t have to worry that they will be carelessly overturned in an attic or garage when people are looking for something (make sure you don’t stash them somewhere that your kids plunder-that would be a mess!). Surprisingly, the metal hooks don’t get any more tangled than normal. Pulling down a small box filled to the brim with beautiful ornaments is a much better way to start off your holidays. I have three small boxes for all of my ornaments and garlands. I still use my tubs for my lights, my kid’s tree with its ornaments, and odd-shaped Christmas decor that would take up too much room inside. All I need to fetch from the garage to get Christmas rolling is a clear tub with my lights, stockings, and advent calendar. My tree stand and collar sits right on top of the tub. Sometimes it’s fun to think out of the box about your boxes. *No owl, walrus, or wolf was harmed in the packing of this box* SM

A Pop Up Porch Wedding With Team Hassler

What do you do when your neighbor says she’s getting married tomorrow and would like you to take the photos? You say yes and then you get all your crew involved to make it a lovely, elegant moment in the middle of all the hard things of this year!

Team Hassler showed up with a fur stole, adorable bridesmaids, a Pinterest worthy cake, and a camera. I had the very special honor of making the Bridal bouquet and groom’s boutonniere! It was so fun to be involved in something good and happy again. The celebration of love carrying on amidst a pandemic is a rally cry of joy for these hard times. Way to neighbor Team Hassler and cheers to you Neil and Jess for letting us share in your special moment. All these photos are courtesy of Lyric Hassler.

Rachel the Maximalist

I was supposed to be teaching our youngest kids grammar during co-op because it’s Covid times and everyone must do their part. And I was, just not with all my attention. As I was reading aloud, my mind wandered to how I could help Rachel finish her dining room. She needed a paint color and was thinking yellow. I have a strong aversion to yellow on walls- it’s a hard color, maybe I was burned by a light yellow paint that promised just the softest kiss of yellow but delivered a full-blown STD highlighter look that immediately had to be repainted. Maybe, just maybe that happened to me. Ochre, maize, golden yellows are easier and I have fond memories of my school bus yellow dining room in my old house but Rachel wasn’t feelin those tones so I jumped in with both feet with another color option that would get the job done.

Rachel is a collector of unique items that beg to have your attention. She finds treasures at local auction houses and I was gonna roll up my sleeves and find a place for all of them. Here’s the trick with maximalism- you have to go all in. You can’t half step it at all because instead of a visual punch your items will look crazy and ill-placed. With that warning in mind, she agreed all in and we began. Here is the room when we started. It was a fine room…

Those Chinoiserie chairs that she got for a song, ($40 for the set) are amazing, they just needed a new color to accent their sassy sensibilities. She sprayed them with an emerald green color and gave them a whole new vibe. We needed fun, unruly wallpaper and I told her to paint the room, Country Squire, by Sherwin Williams no less than 6 times-until she went and bought the paint. I let her have her yellow on the campaign dresser and she did an incredible paint job on both.

She had these 2 terrariums that she was going to sell to make some cash for the dining room fund but since she describes her style as a victorian, vintage, solarium-I told her that we had to keep them so we could flank the campaign dresser with them. I used a good bit of symmetry to help tame the patterns, but Rachel was not as interested in that kind of cohesion. Her personal motto is, “no place for your eye to rest”. Luckily, she humored me and bought matching oval mirrors for the wallpaper wall.

We also needed wall art and she just happened to find a vintage bird picture with a cork mat and a bamboo frame to which she said we could use it if we want to. Want to? How about just the showpiece we were looking for! The Boho macrame light fixture was a score from the Shades of Light outlet.

The wallpaper is by Milton and King, called “Hummingbirds Wallpaper” in green. Rachel and Alex hung the wallpaper themselves and did an incredible job. She was even nice enough to give me some leftover scraps to make into trays!

Now the one item of home decor that Rachel cares the most about is rugs. I picked out some fine rugs to cinch everything up. She has champagne taste for real vintage rugs but does not want to pay the price. I tried to find a middle ground store bought rug from Wayfair that shocked her husband enough to say, “I didn’t think we were wayfair rug people.” To which she replied, “we aren’t!” The rug promptly went back. She tried to slip in a shady “green” rug from FB Marketplace but I was having none of it. We compromised and went with a rug she already had in her sewing room until the mythical unicorn that she is looking for presents itself. This rug is a beautiful black and white houndstooth wool rug purchased after much deliberation from Tuesday Morning that adds a lot of graphic interest to the room.

That high gloss yellow campaign dresser steals the show. She put MCM legs on it to give it some height. If you look back at the first picture you’ll see it sits on the ground.

We moved a MCM china cabinet from another room into the dining room and put the busts of Robert Burns and Chopin on the top. The parson chairs that bookend the table will likely be recovered, but for now they will add to the overall drama of the room! We had nothing left to do but break in the space with a holiday dinner.

The dining refresh caused the den living room to need tweaked a bit. So we created an over the top maximalist gallery wall with fabulous aged brass sconces that I left Alex and Rachel to expertly install.

Rachel made the bird drapes a few years ago and the craftsmanship is amazing. I like to tease her that she excels at highly intricate projects- the rest just don’t interest her! Below is a rare sighting of my favorite red fox and the incredible shower curtain art that team Burton put together!

Now on to other rooms in the Burton estate and I just need to find a home for this guy!

To all you lovers of color, pattern, and texture: may all your dreams come true! Photos by the amazing Holli Coats! SM

That Tree

Yes, that tree, the one that cost a small fortune at Lowes. It started off so well. I grabbed a pre-wrapped tree all ready to go with my youngest helping pick it out. A kind and generous stranger in Covid times offered to carry it to my car since I couldn’t lift it on my own. There was no line on black Friday, the new friend placed it in my van, I didn’t even have to tie it to the roof-it was such an easy transaction! But that is where the good feels ended.

In my excitement, I forgot to have them trim off the bottom so the tree could drink up water. I figured our new axe could take care of it and it did, sort of. It wasn’t super even-ok it looked like a small child did it and not the 2 adults who were actively troubleshooting this thing. We brought it in and it was too tall, we needed to cut 5 more inches off the base, so there it stayed wrapped up on the floor like a ten-foot-tall dead body. We had to borrow our neighbors saw the next day and we finally got it sorted.

This year, I bought a pre-lit garland and before I even plugged it in a cat ate through the wire. I had bought 2 sets of extra white lights while it was still hot outside just in case we needed them. So I put them on the garland and kept moving forward. I began putting lights on that tree after I had some space from it. Once they were all on, the middle 2 rows went out. I started troubleshooting the lights, changing fuses and actual bulbs-I felt like Clark Grizzwald: way too committed and still so far from the finish line. A couple of those lights that burnt out had come back on, teasing me to keep trying, but the rest wouldn’t budge.

The family decorating sesh ended with a stressed-out mom and little people fighting-Derek had to shut the whole thing down. I don’t think any happy Christmas memories were made that night, just some stories to tell a counselor when they are all grown up. The next day, I called Derek in time to run back into Lowes and get more lights after a firewood run. The tide was turning, I was so happy that I didn’t have to go there again! I put them on in a flash- 3 boxes only to discover at that moment they were LED cool white and no there was no way I could make it look right. At which point Fisher said it doesn’t have to be perfect Mom-and I was thinking- not perfect honey, I just don’t want to get a headache looking at it. I carefully took them all off and stole a random strand from a little tree in the other room- a strand I bought before the EPA got involved and made other shades of white. I didn’t have the heart to take them off the Garland because it was the only decoration actually behaving itself. I finished decorating the tree and Derek was putting the kids to bed. I could tell the base needed secured but I couldn’t yell for Derek and risk waking up the almost asleep kids-so I ran to get Derek to help me secure it and then it all fell down. All ten feet of it. That’s right, the night before my hot chocolate advent party, that ten-foot dead tree body was back on the floor, this time covered with bling.

Thankfully, I only lost a few ornaments and Derek expertly helped put it back in its stand. Hours later it was all sorted but after that the damage was done, this tree was no friend of mine. Whatever notions I had about letting it into my Christmas heart were gone-we were acquaintances, nothing more. It loomed over me crooked with a silly little wire trying to hold it in place. It was like a Christmas version of Weekend at Bernies-all it needed was some sunglasses to make it look alive.

At some point in the middle of the tree wrestling, light checking, fuse changing tasks I wondered what this was all about. My Dad would have quoted something about Murphy’s law. That tree process felt like a microcosm of this entire year. The excitement when it started off with hope and promise and then the unexpected twists. What do you mean they closed the schools? The pivoting, the reassessing, the four decisions needed for every one action. The word unprecedented thrown around like confetti. As it turns out I don’t really like unprecedented things- at least not any of these.

I’m so tired from trying to make beauty out of something that is broken, something that won’t stand up on its own.

We all feel the strain of engaging in a fallen world, maybe never so much as this year. I start thinking-why do we even have Christmas trees and then I’m struck by the word tree, how so much comes back to that word. That the very one born to carry the sin of the world would let himself be nailed to one. How I serve a God that never ceases to make beauty out of broken things. He willingly offered up himself as a remedy for all that is wrong in the world. We are told that those who wait on the Lord will renew their strength-our waiting and pressing into the situations we have been called to are not in vain. That’s the hope of Christmas.

SoI let that tree be. I left it alone and tried to shake off the guilt I feel when it gets crispy because I never water it enough. I let it’s half decorated backside stay that way and tried to ignore the fact that it was too far from the wall.

Ten feet of toil whose beauty did not match the effort put into it. Much like this year.

As of today, the tree has been stripped of its finery and its tour of duty complete. Tomorrow, I’ll usher it out to the trash and begin again-setting my hands to the things before me and wait to be renewed. SM

My Molly

Living next to someone for 14 years is no small thing. You get to know someone in a steady unplanned way that is second only to marriage, kids, and college dorm life. Molly and I share a love for pajamas as daywear and puttering around the garden-in those aforementioned pajamas. Like many of my forever friendships, this one started out with me introducing myself and then asking to borrow something totally inappropriate for said level of friendship. Hi, I’m Sue can I borrow your grill? Ours isn’t working and we have thirty college students heading our way in 20 minutes was what I led with, and the rest is history.

Molly, has been my cheerleader over these many years and a sounding board. She has an enormous heart in a tiny body. She’d give you the shirt off her back and, as it turns out a grill if you need to borrow it. I watched her meet her husband, marry him, and have twins! Those little babies are 9 now. She trusted me enough to let me do her wedding flowers and decorate her nursery. She lets me boss her around and push furniture in other rooms on a whim. She let me steal plants from her yard and haul my brush debris to her trash pick up pile. We go to the fabric store- I point and she pays. She subsidizes my hair brained ideas. She has denied me only a few things over the years: she wouldn’t paint her kitchen wall eggplant and she bought and kept an unfortunate blue chair for many years much to my chagrin. Nobody’s perfect.

In all honesty, Molly doesn’t really need me, she has an incredible style and a penchant for great taste all on her own. I’m just grateful she lets me collaborate with her and that’s she’s kind enough to still ask for my opinion. SM

THE LIVING ROOM

THE GUEST ROOM

WILL’S ROOM

LILA’S ROOM

40 and looking lovely

I was honored to get the opportunity to host a dear friend’s 40th birthday at my house. The weather that evening was perfect and the catering was not too shabby either! All I had to do was pretty up our space and fill it with flowers. Sounds like my perfect kind of day. I didn’t want the party to end! To me, a full house is a full heart! SM

This bucket of beauties became…

THIS!