Once Upon A Time

I've been reading Gretchen Rubin's book "Happier at Home," and she touches on something that I think about often, the pervasive idea that enjoying "stuff" i.e. one's possessions is shallow and materialistic. I think it definitely can be, but I'm someone who (as the author puts it) "is not embarrassed to love [her] possessions." I freely admit that I love stuff. I don't love my stuff more than I love my family, friends and pets, but I definitely find joy in being surrounded by things I find beautiful. Surroundings are important to me, and they always have been. I don't think I buy things for prestige, as the author suggests many people do. If you know me, you know that while I have champagne taste, I have a...prosecco budget. But even when I was 19 years old and flat broke my apartment was pretty great. I remember having to make a hard choice every month between a $5 design magazine or another Guinness at the pub. My liver probably thanks my design addiction, as the magazine usually won out.

My then-boyfriend used to joke that I should write a book called "The Happy Hippie Home; Decorating With Things You Can Beg, Borrow or Steal." The stealing wasn't of bulky 90's style TVs or anything, more like plastic milk crates. I tied 12 of those bad boys together with a ripped up batik scarf (in retrospect, zip ties would've been better, but the scarf was free...) topped them with the worst records in my collection (to create a flat surface) and covered the whole thing with a purple tie-dyed sheet. Yeah, I was *that* kind of girl. I was so proud of myself. All that storage and all I'd had to do was carry out a misdemeanour!  We also had a metal egg-crate end table that wobbled like I would after one too many of the aforementioned Guinness', but it added a certain  level of industrial charm to our 100 year old apartment.

Before that I lived in a big old house with a bunch of roommates where I was the only girl, living with a rock band. Obviously, there was not a decor budget. We had a huge blank wall in our kitchen that needed something. We'd had a running joke about A&W's "See The Bear, Taste The Food" ad and always joked about Seeing the Food and Tasting The Bear. What can I say, we were young and weird. So, one day some of the fellas and I were walking by an A&W and they had these big cardboard posters in the windows, and one of the boys dared me to go get one. I wasn't about to walk into an A&W and steal a poster off the wall, but hey, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! I walked in there, asked to speak to a manager and when he came to talk with me, I made up some ridiculous story about all of my roommates and I being huge A&W fans, and in fact, that's where we had all met! (Lies, outright lies.) "Gee, mister, we sure would love one of those posters, do you think you could spare one?" He went up to the window, took one down and handed it to me, while my roommates stood on the sidewalk shaking their heads at my genius! Or at my unashamed idiocy, who cares? We took that sucker home and with a slight adjustment, it became the highlight of the kitchen. At least until our friend T came by with a 5 foot tall black plywood silhouette of Sherlock Holmes.

That was such a digression that I don't even know what I was getting at. Something about being surrounded by the things you love. And no matter what your budget, with a little creativity, you can create a home that makes you happy. Sure, let's stick with that! And hey, if you want to check out "Happier at Home," may I suggest your local bookstore? xo

See The Food, Taste The Bear. The kitchen definitely looks like rockstars lived there. (This was after a party, I can tell because of the torn apart feather boa on the floor!)