it's a wee bit past mid-january. right about now i'm feeling pretty good that i resolved to make more mistakes. i LOVE the nester and friends idea of claiming a word for yourself this year. not a TO DO word. not skinny. not organize. not promotion. not redesign. not money. not more... we have enough TO DO. an UNword. something we will stop doing. my UNword is UNcount. no more sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of coffee and counting... facebook likes pinterest followers page views twitter followers website visitors instagram followers blog comments status likes houzz reviews... these numbers will not define me. these numbers will not make me feel good about myself and they will not make me feel bad about myself. these numbers are not why i do what i do. i do what i do because i know my Maker made me really great at something. and i know down deep in my soul that i am here to give that gift back to the world. i will do what i do with blinders on for an audience of One. and i will sleep well at night knowing i gave everything i have back to the Great Gift Giver. the numbers do not matter. so i will stop counting. once upon a time i met cortney and robert novogratz. they are every bit as gorgeous and inspiring in real life as you can imagine. they talked about following dreams, breaking rules, and doing what you love. even when nobody believes in you. i asked robert how they got to where they are. he said something like... you just keep doing what you love. no matter what. eventually, people notice. from now on, i'm only counting stars. peace... christina by christina britt lewis and timothy dean lewis photography by angela statzer it's the little things. know what i mean? we hear the same things over and over and over... it just doesn't feel finished. i want it to feel done. maybe i need more stuff... so we ask people to show us what they love. we ask what they are most proud of in their home. we ask what makes them happy... and then they tell us their stories. and then we know. we know how to help them love coming home.... when we walk in the door we already know we will make those windows feel far more important by stretching the existing rods and adding some longer panels in a color that better complements their gorgeous rug. we already know we will center that rug in the room and tighten the furniture for better conversation having and family game playing. we already know the big things. we are there to find out if they are dewey decimal point sort of people or backwards bookiness sort of people. we are there to discover if they prefer to live surrounded by crystal and candlesticks or pottery and picture frames. we are there to find out the little things that make them happy. we are there to know how to help them love what they already have all over again. so we ask questions. and we listen. and then we know... we know that rusty reds and spa blues are going to make that beautiful rug they already have even more beautiful. we know that we what they already have will come together beautifully with less new things than they imagine. we think that home is the most important place in the world. so why wait? finish. because when you love coming home... when you are proud of your home... when home is your happy place... you are free to carry on with the things that matter even more... things like... setting the coffee table for family room picnic and movie night. inviting neighbors over for pot luck football parties. spending money on weekends away with the ones you love instead of more stuff for the house. takeout by candlelight in the dining room with lots of good wine and good friends. things like... people the people you love are more important than your home. for most of us that means accepting some things the way they are... we are going to live with our orangey cabinets and floors. happily. we are going to live with linoleum in our bathrooms and those big ugly sheet mirrors. we are going to live with old carpet and will forever swear by "spot shot" to keep it looking newish enough. we are going to love coming home and consider it "finished" even in all it's "unfinishedness". it's finished enough for us and those things don't bother us. once in a while i think about painting our kitchen cabinets... but we choose adventure with our people over painted kitchen cabinets every single time. and i hope (please God, i hope) that if we become people who can afford to have both... we would give any extra away to somebody who needs something more important than painted cabinets. may we be people who see beauty everywhere. may we be people who feel gratitude for what we already have. gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. it turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. it can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. -melodie beattie and us so sing with us as you finish just until you love coming home... the entire first floor of this home was a big project taken on just before christmas...
when we were already completely overbooked. we could not possibly have made it happen without the always brilliant, endlessly optimistic, ridiculously creative status quo antagonists we get to call our people... angela statzer kelly lies uncle bill linda gromko tyler antrican charlotte white glove delivery andrew roby electric nadeau west elm charlotte with so much love and gratitude... christina and tim this room makes me wish i said "YES" when mom asked if any of us wanted the piano we grew up with. i bet i can still play and sing and cry my way through "imagine" like the hopeful teenager i still am inside. you may say i'm a dreamer, but i'm not the only one. i'm totally not the only one. so...um...imagine if this room had pretty window treatments and more comfortable seating... ta da... imagine the lamp on the right in the dining room and a pair of larger lamps that are better scaled to the new sofa and the client's beautiful botanicals as a focal point... ta da... imagine me playing and singing to you right now... all together now...
i hope someday you will join us and the world will live as one *sniff* peace and love... CBL by christina britt lewis photography by angela statzer my very favorite redesigns are the ones where we hardly buy a thing. a gorgeous new light fixture was all this room really needed to feel warm and welcoming and well, wonderful... to be continued...
xo.. CBL tim just made me a tequila sunrise. we are still in pj's. my email auto-responder still says... hey! island hopping with people we love was the perfect way for our family to end this year. adventure together is all any of us want for christmas. we love coming home, we do. but we miss snorkeling in roatan every bit as much as we love coming home. so we are back in body, but not in spirit. and our bodies are still in pj's drinking tequila sunrises. from this happy photo you can't even tell that we died a little this year. in more ways than one it was the worst year of our lives. and in more ways than we can count it was the best year of our lives. because... you have to die a few times in order to really live. the shadow proves the sunshine. there is a darkness upon us that's flooded in light. so... i hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes . most of us spend today reflecting on how we fall short and resolving to be better. maybe this year, reflect on how you are fabulous and resolve to keep being fabulous. it's that whole shaquille o'neal thing. (click on that and go read it. really. we'll wait...) we made some BIG mistakes this year. we have made mistakes before and we will make them again. but when you believe that things don't happen TO you, they happen FOR you... mistakes are merely a plot twist in your life story. for us, failure IS an option. we are not really all that into basketball, but michael jordan said... i've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. so for the love of pete, let's stop beating ourselves up for letting ourselves down. resolve to be fabulous. because you already are. peace be with you, tim christina cole camden george |