Thursday, March 31, 2011

The House With A Broken Heart

Whenever I go for a walk I normally pass by a certain house in my neighborhood that I call the "Spooky House".

On this certain occasion my daughter was with me and I said to her, "That house is spooky and creepy."  She turned back and said...

"Mommy, I think that house has a broken heart."
It hit me when she said that.  How many times have I looked and judged and not have taken the opportunity to have empathy.  She taught me a valuable lesson that day.

She referred me to this poem:

The House With Nobody In It ~ Joyce Kilmer

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black
I suppose I passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.


I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.


If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them for free.


Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in a store.
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.


But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.


So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and shutters falling apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor house is a house with a broken heart.






Sunday, March 27, 2011

Can It Be: Family Room Video

Hello everyone!  I hope you all are having a great Monday.
  I promised a video about the family room and the progress thus far.  This gives you a chance to see this room live.  Thanks to my awesome daughter, who videotaped it for me.  After the video there are pictures of different angles of the room.

 


The family room has that outdoor cabin feel.  I really believe that your house needs to represent the people that live there..needs to have their voice.  If you look at your home as an organism - what should it be saying?

This room is my husband's favorite.  When I go in there it speaks, Corey, with elements of the rest of us.

 The coziness of the fire is me and the kids..we hate to be cold.

 The hardwood floors are all about one of my daughters who deal w/ some allergies.

 The furniture is our first set when we got married..which is why I want to keep them and have them reupholstered.  I am sentimental.  The rug is me..love old things that have a story.

Pictures, books, liberty bell (a trip I took the kids on to my home away from home), and the horse that one of my daughter's made.

This is like my husband and son going fishing.

There will be more to come as I share about our other projects.

Would love to hear how you're home speaks..


Friday, March 25, 2011

Light Candy

I love Twitter.
I love how you get connected to people you normally would have never crossed paths with and that's the case with Michael McHale.  He has stepped outside of the typical and created beauty out of industrial piping.
Shall I call him a Genius.

Top-Chef’s Tom Colicchio with his McHale Chandelier

Bryce Banqueting clear crystal

Madison Avenue showroom window

An aluminum Bryce Banqueting chandelier above two Industrial Desk Lamps

 The sparkling contrast of a McHale Linear Chandelier
(all pictures are courtesy of Michael McHale Designs)

Yes, it truly is Light Candy. 

Visit his site and you will have a custom lighting experience..

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Paint It Black

I want to officially welcome, Liz Kapp to Modern Earth Design.  She is a singer songwriter, world traveler who does many humanitarian efforts and not only that, but she is a wife and a mother of three.  I am proud to call her friend.  You will enjoy her stories, as only she can tell them, and be inspired for your own life and creativity.


HOPE ( A lesson in Patience) ~ Liz Kapp



Since I was a baby my mother has carried this unattractive family Hope Chest from state to state. She’s even stored it when we’ve lived out of the country. Since I’ve been married and had our three kids, I honestly had forgotten it was still around until my mom had it put on the moving truck with us to Washington State, three months ago.

Old, dingy, and a ridiculous color of pink, I had hope in this chest!
My husband seriously was not thrilled about the idea, but I just knew I could make something I loved out of this piece of furniture. Paint it black and it would look great in our living room as a coffee table. Simple.



I bought four cans of semi-gloss black furniture spray paint for just 12 dollars, and couldn’t wait to get started. There was only one problem; the cold and rain kept me from getting outdoors and we don’t have a garage at our new place. I ended up just leaving it in the living room (pink and all) to keep me motivated.

So I Waited...

Shannon (my husband) and I were not really seeing eye to eye over something at the time, and later while at work I began getting these surprise pictures texted to me…..


Our disagreement quickly ended.
Shannon obviously found Hope in this cedar chest too! (or he was Hoping not to look at it anymore while he was sleeping on the couch!)

There it was! Finished! Shiny and looking brand new! I loved it.



It now sits in the middle of our living room on display as a reminder for me to Hope.




EVERYTHING has beauty and EVERYONE has greatness.
HOPE in them both.

Monday, March 21, 2011

Sleeping On Air

I have been taken up  - no pun intended : )  with these..

Hanging Beds.

I personally think it would be fun and so unconventional to have.  I guess there is that fear that they could come crashing down..lol.

Beautiful!


Maybe on a porch?

By far my favorite..thinking if I can talk my husband into this one..hmm

What do you think?  Would you attempt something like this in your home?


BTW.. if you are interested in making your own LOWE'S can help...  http://www.lowescreativeideas.com/idea-library/projects/Hanging_Bed_in_Sunroom_0508.aspx

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Design Your Life. Design = Passion.


 I am so honored to have Courtney Walsh do a guest blog for Modern Earth Design.  She is an accomplished writer & author, playwright, artist, mother, wife, friend and encourager.  You will be inspired by her perspective on life that will cause you to look deep in yourself and make you want to be the person you were created to be. 



 Design Your Life. Design = Passion
~ Courtney Walsh

We’ve always been those people.

You know the ones. Stable. Solid. Not risk takers.

We don’t play the stock market. We don’t jump out of airplanes. We’ve patterned our life after the norm—marriage, house, kids, church every Sunday…

Yeah, we’re boring.

We got married in 1999 and almost immediately started working at a church where my husband continued to work for eleven years. That’s a long time. He made a good living. I didn’t have to work. We had a beautiful family. We’d recently moved into our forever house.


But something was off.

About a year and a half ago, I started to feel this niggling, this there’s got to be more than this. And it made me feel so guilty. We had so much, how could I ask for more? But the more I examined it, the more I realized it wasn’t more I was seeking. It was different. I wanted a different life.

I wanted a simpler life. I even blogged about my search for simplicity. (Long before we actually had any inkling of change...)
I wanted to have a beautiful life. But I hadn’t stopped to figure out what that meant. To me. I knew what it meant to other people, but what did my beautiful life look like?

I wanted uninterrupted time with my family. I wanted to be free of the sense of obligation that had always accompanied me. I always did what I was “supposed to do.” But for some reason, it stopped feeling like the right thing. I wanted creative energy. I wanted nourishment—body, mind and spirit. I wanted to live an inspired life.



After eleven years, we had gotten complacent, and I think I probably whined about it a lot…until the day it dawned on me that we create the life we want. It’s in our hands—no one else’s—so for me to complain about it made no sense. We started to examine the life we were living. And in doing that, we started asking questions. Big, scary questions without answers…

What if we started looking for a new job?
What if we moved away from Illinois?
What if we had to give up our stable paycheck and our forever home in order to have a better life?
What if we made less money? What if our kids changed schools? What if we went somewhere where we didn’t know a single soul?
Are we strong enough?

See, the truth is, we could’ve stayed where we were. We were doing good things, had great friends, our family was close. The life we were living was all we’d ever known. But sometimes “all you’ve ever known” is the problem. When your life becomes something you don’t really want, there’s really only one option.

Change it.


I’m convinced that if we’d stayed where we were, we never would’ve been challenged (creatively or otherwise) and eventually, I believe it would’ve led to our demise.

In the end, we decided to take the risk. It took nearly a year to figure out what that meant, but eventually, we were led to Colorado where my husband took a different kind of job—one that he’s equally as good at, that challenges him and inspires him. And our entire family came along for the ride. I’m convinced that in many ways, this move saved us. It brought us closer together. We were making grown-up decisions without the input of everyone around us. We’d heard from God and that was what mattered.

But changing your life is kind of like cleaning out a closet. You have to take everything out on the counter and decide what to keep and what to purge. You have to throw away the rotten stuff, the moldy stuff, the stale stuff. And then, little by little, you start putting the rest back in.


Right now, we’re just coming into the stage where we’re “putting the rest back in.” At first, we lived exactly the same way, and we had to stop ourselves and say “No. We’re here for a different life.” We had to constantly remind ourselves that we did all this for a reason. And it would be worth it in the end.

It’s hard to break old habits…and easy to revert back to what you know. But to truly design the life you want, you have to constantly evaluate yourself. What do you want to change? How can you start? Little by little, we’re purging our closet of the moldy stuff and stacking the leftovers neatly inside. Some days it feels like the entire contents of my life are spilled out all over my kitchen, but I know that with a bit of time and energy, I can put it all back together again.

Changing your life doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. It’s a process. But we design the life we want. We decide what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. We decide if we’re going to listen to what everyone else wants us to do or become the person we were designed to be. And sometimes it’s messy. And you want to tuck tail and run the other way. And not look back. But when the closet is purged and the mold is removed and the good stuff is neatly stacked inside… that’s when you can take a deep breath of clean mountain air and say “Yep. This is just what I was looking for.”

You won’t likely find us jumping out of planes or even playing the stock market. We’re still the same stable-minded people. But we trust ourselves more now. We believe that our decisions are God-inspired. And we also realize that together, our family is creating the beautiful life, the simple life, the different life we so desired.

One day at a time.

You can read more about our continuing journey on my blog HERE.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

My Love For This Stone

I am having a love affair with this stone


Carrera Marble.
It's classic.  You won't have to worry about it not being on trend.  I want to have this in my kitchen going up on the walls with maybe a concrete countertop or a honed dark granite.
Here are some kitchens that are inspiring me.


Love the brick pattern.

from COTE DE TEXAS

from Tommy Smythe via decorpad.com
This kitchen has warmth and character.  So here is the inspiration to my dream : )  I better get to work and start peeling off wallpaper.

What about you?  What is inspiring you to create your beautiful space?
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