It was a day of mismanaged expectations and mysterious chocolates.

In other words, if you ever see me at Bernard Callebaut and I’m about to put five packages of ganache cream chocolates in my cart, please stage an intervention right there in the aisle. Thank you in advance.

I was there to style, source materials, and all be an all around design genius for my client’s newly purchased condo. Looking like forty miles of rough road, in that I had to be up at 5 am to catch the first bird out, I was greeted graciously and soon whisked away for nourishment.

Victoria is a city of gourmand and visual delights set against a background of sea and sky, peppered with shops to engross the most skeptical and reticent shoppers.

Sprigs of new growth shoot up intermittently through damp soil, paired with tentative, brave blooms, the rest waiting, timorous of another hit of snow.

The textures and nuances of green overwhelms! Mosses, evergreens, foliage. They revive, restore and renew – nature’s neutrals.

Any Canadian who drops in at this time of the year elegiacally resists perusing the real estate section of the local paper.

Given I had a multitude of days to complete my assignment, we decided that our sole purpose that day would be to purchase a few scant provisions to augment upcoming meals.

But true to form, we soon got on a tangential course sidetracked by the usual.

…a clothing store filled with a cornucopia of jackets and shoes. (Yo’all know how I feel about shoes.) Yup, bought a pair…and a pair of vintage gold earrings and almost a jacket.

Next door a bookstore, which took another hour, and then…how is it possible to walk by the storybook wonder of Murchie’s Tea without buying a package and imbibing in a piece of passion fruit chocolate cake?

We then came to the most fabulous Goodwill store in the world and fell in love with two chairs that were aching for a bold upholstery fabric. We hauled them down the street to an upholstery shop and pursued books of fabric samples until we found the perfect one. They’ll be ready in four weeks.

And the masses and abundance of fresh flowers! Between you and me, I think there should be a law against plastic flowers in Victoria. It’s scandalous.

We then purchased tickets for a play for that night, took photos of totem poles, slipped into a delightful coffee shop to sip a cappuccino and share an almond croissant, unearthed an antique train set for a son-in-law, and finally an art gallery where we settled on a small oil and a felted rooster for the fireplace mantle.

We were back home when we remembered that we forgot to buy the food.

So I called my five days in Victoria, The Art of Carefree Timelessness (time spent together without an agenda). Any relationship thrives when this is done on a regular basis. Nothing is to be gained by hurrying, the sure mark of an amateur. And most everything is to be gained by its converse.

There are so many trying to get somewhere, to get something done. They have longer to-do lists that time for the people that mean the most to them. And the time passes, the day never to come again.

The Danes know a thing or two about living life well and it starts with one small word: hygge, which roughly translates to ‘cosiness’. It just might be the recipe for a better lived life. 

Hygge is more than just a decorating philosophy, it is about creating an ambient atmosphere and enjoying the good things of life; some material, some more important. It is a philosophy for the Danes that enables them to also understand the importance of simplicity. It’s prioritizing their lives with time to unwind and slow down with good people, camaraderie, and general well-being.

For those who are not yet aware of this most speculator day…

this is a day where we celebrate with our BFFs, giving each other compliments and talking about our accomplishments and shoes.

You always have to talk about shoes.

Preferably in song.

It’s bloody briillant. A truly beautiful occasion.

Way better than Valentines’ Day.

Better than wondering how many times is too many to watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, why our parents thought white Wonder bread slathered in Miracle Whip was a good idea, or listening to your favourite boy bands on repeat.

I think it should be mandatory. A national holiday. A flag designed.

Romantic partners come and go, but girlfriends outstay all of them. Girlfriends are our support system, a bond untainted by sex and wilted roses bought in a rush.

You know…

…uteruses before duderuses. Fries before guys. Holy mantras for this day.

Although Ryan Gosling is really nice to look at.

Galentines’ Day is “…like Lilith Fair, minus the angst.”
– Leslie Knope, the patron saint of everything lady-powered

Galentines’ Day is not only for those without romantic attachments, but for all gals.

Girl-ships are EVERYTHING. Our women friends are our life blood, our support. They don’t care how weird you look in hats, and never ever take the wine glass away.

After all, no good story started with someone eating a salad. 

Fifty Shades Darker

In honour of this day, I like to pay ode to libertines, my favourite brand of ladies.

So, who are libertines?

Libertines live according to their own rules with complete abandonment, but ever with great style.

Some of my favourite libertines:
Jane Digby
Elizabeth Smart
Sarah Bernhardt
George Sand
Isak Dinesen
Beryl Markham
Victoria Woodhill
Josephine Baker
Isadora Duncan
Ninon de Lenclos

Because they:
 – never give up a room with a view
– are often called a gutsy broad
– are invited everywhere but rarely go out, which always makes their presence an event
– have a body/mind/spirit approach to nutrition, which consists of red seedless grapes, chocolate truffles, and champagne
– give great gifts
– consider not being told she looks beautiful, the real sexual harassment
– worry that they aren’t whispering behind her back

Good galfriends, at least your very best ones, express some interest in you. They really don’t need much to go on. In fact, almost anything will do.

I feel that this is now an opportune time to thank you for letting me do things which I should never have done, drink wines I did not like, and enduring some of my more deplorable faults, of which I have narrowed down to the top five. Okay, six.

Number One: I think very highly of my own opinion.

Number Two: I require an amount of devotional attention that would make Marie Antionette blush, while wondering why there are so many yellow Skittles compared to the other flavours in a pack.

Number Three: I routinely take on more than I can handle which causes me to break down in quite predictable displays of dramatic overtures.

Number Four: I am at various times, unbelievably tedious. Of which I whole-heartedly apologize for. Even though I can’t remember which times those were.

Number Five: I have been, maybe still am, a master arcturologist. I’ll let you look that up. Although I don’t think it’s a real word.

Number Six: And the most deplorable of all? It takes me a long while to get to this point…I rest in the paradoxical position of feeling nostalgia for a situation, which in fact, has not yet happened.
(This isn’t going exactly the way I acted it out in the shower.)

So, today, and everyday, is OUR day. Cause as Truvy said in Steel Magnolias, “Honey, time marches on and eventually you realize it is marching across your face.”

Have a happy, happy Galentines’ Day with any or all of your irreplaceable galentines.

Living beautifully in a home is like dropped stitches in a sweater. The piece starts out with a distinct pattern to follow, but then something goes amiss. The yarn gets twisted, a knot forms, an extra stitch is knit, or a different stitch is inadvertently made. But this is what can make the sweater all the more complex and interesting. Or just a plain mess.

But like a sweater altered with intention, a beautiful home also can be made when the pattern is altered to suit how you want to live everyday and how you want your home to look.

When you walk into a well-designed home you just know is it good. Like a good story. You just know the story is good without necessarily knowing why it is good.

There is always one common denominator in a good story. It’s when the change happens; the wild storm at sea, the invasion of an army, the near fatal car crash. These are the dropped stitches, when things get interesting…when the story truly begins.

An interesting home, like an interesting story is unique, nuanced. And it needs to be true for you.

Just like characters in a good story are not clichés, nor should your home be a cliche.

A home should be engaging and impressive, but at its core, familiar and safe.

It may be that the home suggests sunny, lazy afternoons spent without having to leave the room…the comfort of warm winter evenings snuggled in a deep-cushioned sofa…the inspirational reading hours sunk in an armchair next to the fireplace…the dinner party camaraderie of conversation and shared meals.

Now that last image comes directly from the reign of Queen Victoria. But this would mean that I actually attend dinner parties, but I can’t really remember the last time that happened. Most social events I attend involve some sort of sporting event with stale bags of Cheetos and a paper cups of cold coffee, and I am rarely (never) asked about my knowledge of nineteenth century British royalty or art, which frankly is a shame.

Most people do not see things as they are because they see things as they are! – Fr. Richard Rohr

Nevertheless, the truest lesson I know about designing a beautiful home – and life – is that we must move in the direction of our true calling, not anyone else’s.

Truth or dare.

Our story is just that. Our story, not anyone else’s, as is your home. If you don’t tell your stories as they are meant to be told, you are somehow diminished, living with your eyes wide shut. If you are open and honest and true, others will benefit, yes. But so will you.

We need our home to remember who we are. Or who we were. Or even who we want to be.

The oil painting of dry rock fences from the island of Inishmore, the Persian carpet purchased after years of waiting, the vase that was a wedding gift from your childhood friend, the burled walnut sideboard inherited from an aunt, the platter that your Grandfather brought over from his homeland, or the chair from your first apartment.

This collection can only belong to one person: you.

We now ask of our home: what needs to be corrected? And why now?

All things communicate.

We need to rely on a certain kinds of chairs, dinnerware, and bed coverings to straighten and secure us with who we are and who we want to be. Home is the place where our soul feels that it has found its proper physical container, where, everyday, the objects we live amongst remind us of what we hold most dear. The smallest things in our homes can offer encouragement, they can be reminders, consoling thoughts, warnings or correctives, as we go about time in them.

Thomas Moore maintains that if you don’t love things in particular, you cannot love the world, because the world exists in individual things. Without a connection to things, we can become bereft, separated from the world, maybe even dismissing the value of people and home.

Like the mission statement of Calgary company, HouseCharming: every home should be a haven that creating feelings of delight and happiness, thus inspiring one to contribute to a higher quality of lifestyle and thus, community.

As much as we try to replicate the feelings we’ve had in homes we visited and loved, usually there is often something in our home that is disingenuous – just a bit off.

Interior designers make it their business to study these details that make each room work well and look beautiful.

Elegiac Inculcations Why A Room May Not Be Working

Well, I can’t really prove it, but generally these problems don’t just arise unless the Rapture happened and it believed in Jesus.

But I know what’s going to happen here.

It’s going to lead to a litany of questions. “Is a bench seat better than two cushions?”, “What colour leather should I buy for a sofa?”, “Is burgundy trendy?”, “Should I buy everything from the same store?”, “Are matching chairs passé?”, “Where should we put the new baby?” And so on.

1. Selecting the Wrong Sofa

As far as I’m concerned, there really are two important decisions in a person’s life: choosing a mate and buying a sofa. If that seems like an overstatement, you just haven’t found the right mate.
This can give anybody a case of discouraged

2. Falling Into the Showroom Look

The two worst qualities imaginable in a writer is being lazy and being a perfectionist. As so with designing a room, these also are the essential ingredients for torpor and misery. If you want to have beautiful home and live a contented, creative life, you do not want to cultivate either one of those traits. 

Instead you need to learn how to become a deeply disciplined 80/20 person.

There is nothing worse than walking into a house that looks like it just backed up to an IKEA store. And if I never see another LACK wall shelf again, then I will consider my life a triumph.

Steer clear of trends and stay on the side of timeless and classic. A mistake many make is being taken in with trends. People go to an home show and see a countertop that changes colour when they touch it. Or see brightly coloured kitchen cabinetry. Yes, it is new and exciting, but will it stand the test of time?

The secret is in sticking to a high/low mix and blending the expensive with the budget-friendly, if you can’t afford all high.

3. Poorly Arranged Furniture

Think of your furniture in your room like friends at a party. Some people are animated in intimate clusters and some are alone – strained and stationed against involvement. These are the wallflowers, and wallflowers don’t tend to have much fun. They just sit quietly on the couch making everyone feel awkward for having a good time.

4. Buying an incorrectly sized rug

In a more formal room, an area rug can fill the space, leaving 12 inches of bare floor around the edges of the room. If you do not want such a large rug, you can ground the furniture by having the front legs of the sofa and accent chairs sit on the rug. Or alternatively, have two inches of floor exposed in front of the seating units.

5. Hanging Art Incorrectly

The last thing you’d want is to undermine any art’s beauty is by hanging it poorly. That being said, the right piece can exponentially elevate a lackluster room. Beauty (and art) is in the eye of the beholder, so don’t worry about pleasing anyone but yourself.

Collecting art is a personal journey, whether you’re making purchases on a piece-by-piece basis or cultivate a long-term collection. The key is to select pieces that resonate with you so that your collection begins to reflect who you are. You may find that the process of collecting art is less intimidating than you may have assumed.

6. Improper Lighting

You cannot ignore the principles of scale when it comes to choosing ceiling and table top lighting. Choose lighting proportionately to the size of the room, the height of the ceiling, the table it is on, the table underneath it.etc. Beyond regular overhead lighting (which should always be on a dimmer), what other places need mood, task or accent lighting.

Is your reading nook dark and gloomy? Do you have adequate bedside lighting? Is your staircase poorly illuminated?

Think of adding lighting at eye level in all rooms with table lamps and sconces to cast a more flattering light, and disperse your light sources around the room — ideally in a triangular shape in each room.

7. Not Mixing Periods and Styles

Work with what you already have as much as possible. Take stock of what you have and see if you can work with something you already own. If you can’t, then you wait until you can actually do it correctly. 

In the immortal words of Mark Twain, “Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.” What this means, other than procuring a good whiskey, is that too much of one thing is never a good idea.

It may be best said to follow the one or two of the 2 Cardinal Rules of Design: Less is more and contrast is far more interesting.

8. Insufficient editing

Or as I like to say, punctuation-ally challenged.

How do you decide what souvenirs and tokens of your life to keep and what to give away?

Think of it like having relatives come to stay. You love them, you’re thrilled they are going to be with you for a while, but you’re relieved when they leave. It’s just as important to continue defining who you are as to continue eliminating who you are not.

I look as Janus, the two-faced Roman God, at the same time to the past, as to the future. Eyes on the horizon, I look back.

Now that the trauma of decorating your Christmas tree is over, as “tree with lights”, some using a method I call, “Keep wrapping the tree in lights in a haphazard manner until you can see it from outer space and they look kind of even” (Trademark pending), the time draws closer to tenuously brave our next challenge, The New Year’s Resolution.

The new year wasn’t always celebrated in January, as the ancient Roman calendar followed the lunar calendar. Sosigenes, an astronomer, convinced Julius Caesar to follow the solar year. Thus from 46 B.C. on, the new year begins in January.

Starting the new year in January was also done to honour Janus, for whom the month was named. The tradition of the New Year’s Resolution dates back to 153 B.C.with the Romans honouring Janus, the two-headed deity who had the ability to look forward and backward at the same time. This then became the symbolic time for the Roman to make resolutions for the New Year, as well as forgive their enemies for past transgressions.

He also presided over the beginning and ending of conflict; hence war and peace. The doors of his temple were open in time of war, and closed in times of peace. Thus he was the guardian of beginnings and endings, gates and doors.

It might have been him, in his eternal wisdom, that coined the saying, “Where one door opens, another one closes.”

Or is it the other way around?

The kinds of resolutions we make can tell a lot about us. Some may be lofty, like learning to fix your leaky faucet or reading all seven parts of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past.

Some may be easily enough achieved, like cutting down on extramarital affairs.

And some are like hammering the ‘close door’ button in an elevator when you see your arch-enemy approaching. There just is no point. It won’t close any faster by continually punching it. It only gives you the illusion of control and stops you from remembering that you’re in a metal box dangling from a wire 57 feet in the air.

However arduous it might be, it is a good idea to be honest with oneself.

It is of note that most people have a lamentable track record on keeping their resolutions. Like what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages, they represent “the triumph of hope over experience.”

Maybe then, we should keep it simple, like a resolution to be kinder to others (and ourselves), or something slightly nice, such as opening doors for people.

Which opens the door to continue this lucubration, on doors. 

We have a multitude of doors in our lives: front doors, back doors, side doors, cupboard doors, cabinet doors, basement doors, cat doors, shower doors, pantry doors, sticky doors, distressed doors, crooked doors, battered doors, worn doors, damaged doors, closed doors, locked doors…and closet doors. Behind which are clothes and a surfeit of various and sundry – often overflowing and unorganized.

So in true New Year’s fashion, I surmise that right after your resolution to eat more vegetables this year, you have vowed to get those closets organized, once and for all.

Yes. Yes. You gaze in the bathroom mirror and ask: Why in my brief existence on this planet, does that closet have to be mine?

So in my vow to be kinder and open more doors, (including your closet doors, should you thus choose), I offer this.

What is the fashion crowd’s favourite hanger?

I love the simple black velvet hanger. I practically revolt if I spot a plastic or (gasp) wire one. And don’t even talk to me about the ones crocheted in pink and green Phentex. You know the ones.

This thinner hanger is not only more glamourous, but you can fit more clothes in your closet.

You can use another type of hanger, like a wooden one if you have room, but remember to only use one hanger style in each closet. Exception – suit jackets. See below.

Be sure to buy all the hangers from the same manufacturer, as at first glance they may look the same, but they could be slightly different, hanging at a different level.

Do I have any other “go-to” hangers?

Wooden hangers are recommended for suit jackets and tiered hangers for skirts and pants. Tiered hangers are an especially efficient choice if you are short on space.

Where do I stand on organizing clothes?

Usually in the middle of the closet.
All you need to do is Keep It Simple, just like authors William Strunk and E.B. White wrote in your high school English text, Elements of Style.

“A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reasons that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts, This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subject only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Arrange clothes in colour blocks from dark to light.
Keep similar items together: suits, shirts, pants, skirts, long garments
If you prefer and/or have enough space, you may choose to separate long sleeve garments from short sleeve garments, or hang sports clothes, evening clothes, etc, in their own section

A few years ago – okay, more than 30 – I left Edmonton for Calgary, lured by the liberal arts education promise of being taught how to live. As the reality fell short of that promise, I began keeping my own record of what I was eating and drinking outside the classroom of life, mapping this academically unaddressed terra incognita of being.

As my intellectual, creative, and spiritual development began not to unfold, I realized that there was a distinct and important lack in my new life.

I was not ever going to be offered the experience of spending an unadulterated amount of time in Spain quaffing cheap wine and engorging an inordinate amount of tapas.

At the end of last year, I was offered this small window of opportunity. So I got on a plane to Barcelona and meandered until I reached a tiny southern village near the sea.

During this, my ‘Solo Sojourn in Spain’ , I had people writing to me saying that “I was living their dream life”.

It quite took me aback.

First, I did not really think I was necessarily living “a dream life” – I was just living my life.

And secondly, if this is what they saw as their dream life, why weren’t they living it?

After all, if you wait, all that happens is you get older.

Like Picasso said, “To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing.” 

It may be because our present social media culture inculcates, perpetuates and intensifies our Fear of Missing Out (tweet as FOMO).

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson in the movie, “The Bucket List”, have forever personified this perceived scarcity.

They had 18 items on their pad of yellow paper and crossed off each as they accomplished them.

Now it goes without saying that most of us aren’t billionaires like the fictional Edward Cole, but that shouldn’t necessarily stop us from checking off our own bucket list.

Well, maybe not the skydiving one.

1. Witness something truly majestic
2. Help a complete stranger for a common good
3. Laugh till I cry
4. Drive a Shelby Mustang
5. Kiss the most beautiful girl in the world
6. Get a tattoo
7. Skydiving
8. Visit Stonehenge
9. Spend a week at the Louvre
10. See Rome
11. Dinner at La Cherie d’Or
12. See the Pyramids
13. Get back in touch (previously “Hunt the big cat”)
14. Visit Taj Mahal, India
15. Hong Kong
16. Victoria Falls
17. Serengeti
18. Ride the Great Wall of China

Yes, the world is continually letting us know how much we are missing out on.

Once known as “keeping up with the Jones”, these social media timelines bombard us with a crushing sense of perpetual urgency, making the satisfaction of our mostly ordinary lives almost non-existent.

Many cannot leave their phone unattended for more than two minutes in the fear that – what? They will miss a recipe for cucumber popsicles, a play that has finished its run, or that someone has burned their pot roast?

I’d give up sarcasm, but that would leave interpretive dance as my only means of communicating.

Faced with photos of vacationing in a glass-bottomed villa in the Maldives, wondering where one can buy that down-filled jacket the everyone is wearing, and why our desk doesn’t look like a Pinterest board, we naturally feel sub-par.
Our minds run wild with comparisons. If we are always measuring ourselves against others who broadcast a more exciting life than we could ever imagine and our lovability by the number of “Likes”, how are we ever to be content with our lives?

And who exactly, gets to decide you are or are not, beautiful?

In our always-connected digital world, many of us have become accustomed to the idea that we are the architects of our days. We make our appointments and set our schedules, all the while kvetching that we are just too busy. Our overscheduled lives proclaim to the world and ourselves that we are super-indispensable. Gosh, we hardly have time to thank the barista for our morning coffee, never mind making time to share it with a friend.

We have books like, “25,000 Places to Pick Olives Before You Die”, people claiming the necessity of walking the five major routes of the Camino, running with the bulls in Pamplona, throwing ripe tomatoes at tourists in La Tomatina, or learning to dance the flamenco…

Gee, some of this sounds like fun.

I’ll be right back.

Okay, I’m back. Seems like I was a little late for some of them.

Now where was I?

Right. FOMO.

Now, there are five approaches to this.

One. To fall into its eudemonic Venus trap causing yourself immense agony, as you feel that somewhere else is where you should be, somebody else is who you need to be, and something else is what stimulating and beautiful people are doing – the ones who have exactly the life that should be yours.

Many people start this process with the disadvantage of having recently been at an Ikea store, itself an emotionally destabilizing experience filled with anxiety.

I mean most of us can barely work the toaster. Do you put the bread in first? Or do you push the lever down first? Like, what if you do it wrong?

Two. Understand that is it rampant to listen to the heart of one’s friends, learn to cope well with being alone, appreciate the consoling power of nature, and be able to talk with a eight-year-old child.

Consumerism and noise beleaguers us at our every turn. The art of stillness is harder and harder to attain, and for some, often terrifying. What adds fuel to the fire is the difficulty to ever be sufficiently alone in order to sort out our thoughts and feelings. We can, for example:

Let our thoughts merge with the grandeur and scale of an ocean.
Visit a graveyard that helps us remember the brevity of our lives.
Spend some time in a desert to realize that we are but a tiny element in something far larger.
Or look up to the stars.

One can miss out on extremely important things if one is rushing a little too intently searching to find excitement elsewhere.

First, we have to know what is missing in order to find it.

Is it an experience, a change of vocation, a new sofa?

All of our actions are tapping into the same central question: What do I want to do with my life right now – today? 

It is fine to be stirred and inspired by one another, but it’s another thing to compete and compare ourselves against these Photoshop expectations.

We need to value our unique and different abilities. We also need to be aware of our particular propensities, unlike the person who shows up with her famous casserole that is famous for all the wrong reasons.

It might sincerely be possible for someone to decide not to take the higher paying job, not to buy an expensive car, not to seek political office – and to do so not because they didn’t have a chance, but because – having surveyed the externalities involved – chose not to have them.They may have instead, with no loss of dignity, opt to become a little poorer and a little more obscure.

Everything has its price; the relevant issue is the value of the article and whether you are going to haggle over its price.

Think of your life as three buckets.

The first bucket is called Vitality, and it’s about the state of your mind and body.

The second is Connection; this one is about relationships.

The third, Contribution, is about how you contribute to the world.

The fuller your buckets, the better your life. When all simultaneously bubble over, life soars. That’s what we’re aiming for. But the flip side is also true. If any single bucket runs dry, you feel pain. If two go empty, a world of hurt awaits. If all three bottom out, you don’t have a life.

It is not only the young that can be creative or those we deem as creative beings. All of us have each other’s permission to be creative and to think outside the box, to see what in the world needs to change, and to work to change it.

Jean Vanier says that his work is never about changing the world; it’s about changing ourselves.

Most people with new ideas and innovations are almost always rejected by mainstream society. Martin Luther King, Frida Kahlo, Schopenhauer, Marcel Proust, Walt Whitman, Georgia O’Keefe, Louis Riel, Ghandi, James Dean, Rudolf Nureyev, Rosa Parks, Lenny Bruce, Apostle Paul, Mary Wollstonecraft, Vincent van Gogh, Galileo, Harvey Milk, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer…who Einstein called “geniuses in the art of living.”

Our fear of change, of the unknown, of humiliation, of being judged or ostracized; all fears that can lead us astray from our creative and whole selves.

We cannot change the world. We can’t fix everything. It’s not even our job. All we need to do is our part. Maybe just one thing.

Could we not be too busy to cheer a weary soul, give some words of reassurance, a small gift, an act of service, or the gift of our welcoming ear?

Sr. Simone Campbell – lawyer, nun, poet, and a bit of a religious rock star as the face of the “Nuns on the Bus”, calls this “the walking willing.”
It was Roosevelt who said that in any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning oneself.” -Friedrich Nietzsche

We need to take the initiative to make our visions a reality.

Which brings me to Christmas tree decorating.

Yes, that was quite a leap. But I’m not generally known for beating around the bush, or tree.

So. The tree.

It is difficult to replicate the experience of pulling on long johns, three pairs of socks, ski pants, trail gaiters, the hand-knit reindeer sweater you got from Aunt Mabel last Christmas, Sorrel boots, a down-filled parka, toque, two scarves, a pair of gloves stuffed inside wool mitts, and rummage through the bowels of your basement to upturn an axe and some rope. You warm up the car, drive 57 minutes out to the country – getting lost twice – and then trudge through knee-high snow for another hour painstakingly searching for that one special ‘Charlie Brown’ Christmas tree.

Sweating profusely while engaging in a goodly amount of profanity, you slowly drag it back through the dense bush, suffering minor scrapes and bruises attempting to retrace your circuitous steps. With turgid fingers, you manage to rope it to the roof of your car and stop no fewer than four times along the road to re-secure it.

Now if you think outside the box, or better yet, inside a box, you can go into a big box store and in under five minutes, bring home either a white, red, pink, blue, silver, or purple tree. Lights included.

And the extra benefit? You can still imbibe from your whiskey flask while decorating. Although now you don’t need it to thaw out your innards and out-ters.

And the tree pretty much stays upright. Even if you are having trouble.

Which brings me to decorating the tree.

Do you really want to, yet once again, drag out those old and faded, cracked and crumbing, red and green decorations?

No? Then think outside the box.

Or inside the box.

Augment those decorations of sentient and sentiment, the others that have been passed down through the generations, and even – yes, some red and green ones – and then buy some ‘new’ antique ornaments, the ones you had as a child back in 1658.

Now given you may actually want a green tree, you can decorate it with irreverent, I mean irregular, colour combinations of no more than three or four colours. Vary the shapes, sizes and textures of the decorations and fill it to overflowing.

I know. High in optimism, low in reality.

If you are now more than overwhelmed, sufficiently unconcerned, or have a tendency to break things that you did not think could be broken, I can innocuously pop by and decorate your tree, just like these Trees I Have Known and Decorated for clients thus far this Season.

Or be a non-conformist and use “out of the box” ornaments, like a tree decorated with Matryoshka dolls, balsa-wood fish, handmade fabric dolls, feathers, ceramic flip-flops, hearts, starfish…

Be impecunious with a tree laden just with holiday lights, making your life low in stress and high in meaning.

It’s a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than “Try to be a little kinder.”       ~ Aldous Huxley

Despite living in a small northern Alberta town, we had a large class. Approximately 110 students started in Grade One, and with a couple of exceptions, the same 110 were there in Grade Twelve.

In first grade, there was one boy who was quieter than most. In the interest of confidentiality, his name will be “CHRIS”. He was small, shy, unobtrusive. He wore the same nondescript clothes we all did. He said little and did nothing that made him stand out. He was never late, or early – and probably never missed a day. He did not have any distinctive features or mannerisms. Except for one thing.

Chris was a non-white. Metis. The only “visible minority” child in that whole pod of 110 children. In fact, the whole school.

So he came to our school and was our classmate. And in all those years, I don’t remember anyone being mean to him or treating him badly. In fact, we were kind.

Kind – by completely and cruelly ignoring him, day in and day out, year in and year out. I do not recall even one person speaking to him in all those years. Not one person ever made him his friend.

One day upon returning from our Christmas holidays, our Grade Four teacher made us each of us stand and tell the class what we received for Christmas. Today this request seems like something out of the Dark Ages. One by one, we dutifully obeyed – some of us with bravado, some of us with trepidation.

Then it was Chris’ turn.

He slowly rose from his desk – and stood there. Silent. Unspeaking.

After two uncomfortable minutes, the teacher asked him to sit down.

And then — one day he was gone.

That was it. No tragedy, no big final good-bye.

One day he was there, next day he wasn’t.

Why then, decades later, am I still thinking about him?

I lament what must have been his unimaginable loneliness with this deliberate alienation. And at the same time, I now marvel at his composite bravery to show up day after day despite it all. I often wonder what he has done with his life. Did he succumb to the despair of living in and through those times, or did he become a most courageous person? Was he really that strong, or were his parents stronger by insisting he continue in the face of these circumstances? Did they even know? Was there any other choice? What was the kindest thing?

Here’s something I know to be true.

What some of us probably most regret in our lives are our failures of kindness.

There have been perhaps, moments when another human being was in front of us, suffering, and maybe we responded… sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or maybe we didn’t. We ignored them. It was kinder. It was easier.

So, a question. Who are those people that you remember with the fondest memories?

I garner it was those who were the kindest to you.

Kindness has been given a lot of press lately. Like it’s something new that has just been invented.

Bumper stickers saying “Practice Random Acts of Kindness” because for some reason we need to be reminded. We buy posters and teeshirts with inspirational quotes, and deluge social media with posts of what should be unheralded occurrences.

In our culture kindness has now become a sign of weakness. It looks old-fashioned, indeed nostalgic, a remnant from a time when we recognized ourselves in each other and felt empathy because of our kind-ness.

Kindness is now seen as a virtue for losers – someone who can’t make the mortgage payments or has a lot of extra time on their hands. Practicing the art of kindness sounds bizarre, even eerie. It may be praiseworthy, but it is not that normal.

Putting oneself in someone else’s shoes, as the saying goes, can be very uncomfortable. 

I am astonished that people are astonished by the deep pleasures and rewards of kindness.

It seems that kindness has virtually gone underground. It has become a forbidden pleasure. Nowadays when we extend a kindness to someone, they somehow feel they are entitled to it, oblivious to the giver.

Common courtesy and reciprocation have gone by the wayside. Our culture deems that we need to be kind to our family, but not necessarily to other people, or even ourselves.

All children are born kind. What happens to our natural state of kindness as we grow older?

Whatever disagreements we may have with religions, they do not stop trying to encourage their followers to be good. They remind us of how kind we want to be. Dismissing the goodness of religions, we now may have thrown out the baby with the holy bathwater. Maybe that is why we continue to download inspirational sayings – we constantly need to be reminded of our better nature.
Kindness, it turns out, is hard —that is, the ability to bear the vulnerability of others, and therefore of oneself.

(However, given what we’re really like deep down, we should spare others too much exposure to our deeper selves.)

It is this paradox that we are never as kind as we want to be, but nothing outrages us more than people being unkind to us.

But by denying our own kind impulses and making ourselves vulnerable enough to be kind, we also deny ourselves the powerful pleasure that our acts of kindness can produce.

Kindness — the foundation of all spiritual traditions — is nonetheless one of the most satisfying pleasures we will ever possess.

We’ve grown so good in some areas (landing on the moon, the faithful return of Starbucks pumpkin spice lattes every Thanksgiving, making sure our internet connection works on our hopeless little screens, etc.), we’re still ever less able to deal with things that still insist on going wrong – like traffic, American presidential elections, other people…

Kindness is a way of knowing people beyond our understanding of them.

Kindness, like most things, is about action.

Kindness is about what you do with that kindness.

So the question is always: what can we do

What if this season we focused on affairs of the heart?

To lean in and listen. Generous listening, holding space for another. Because anyone can have any size of heart they want.

What of we were to press beauty out into the world?

Small gifts. The kind that are contagious.

It’s only kindness that matters. The smallest seeds of kindness from strangers, from neighbours, from a friend, can heal the world a little bit at a time.

A single act of kindness has a ripple effect, spreading from person to person and growing as it goes. Heck, it may even make you happier.

All it requires is PRESENCE.

Have a conversation with one stranger every week. Give them 5 minutes of time you don’t think you have.
Thank someone older and younger today.
Make a donation of any amount to something or someone.
Tell someone that you love their smile.
Let that car merge ahead of you in busy traffic.
Wave at the mailman.

Start your own Kindness Revolution. Powerful, and culture-shifting.

Kindness can expand to include . . . well, everything.

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

– Naomi Shihab Nye

Some hold the questionable belief that Christmas decorating should only be embarked upon from the middle of December. Or like the Nordstrom stores who have a policy of “No decorations before Thanksgiving — it’s a hallmark of Nordstrom.” (American Thanksgiving).

They clearly have Strong Opinions.

I happen to be one of those people who love Christmas. But even more than loving Christmas, I love decorating for Christmas. (This should not come as a complete surprise.)

And I decorate earlier than Nordstrom. This is partly because I have one daughter born in the middle of November and another in the first week of December, so it always just seemed more efficient to decorate for Christmas in the middle of November. (It took them years to realize that fresh pine garlands on the dining table was not de rigueur for a little girl’s birthday party.)

The other reason is that I Iove the smell of fresh greenery, the twinkle of fairy lights, and low-fat eggnog. But mostly it’s because Christmas trees are so hilariously expensive that having one for just two weeks feels like a Saturnalian decadence.

Some of my clients feel exactly the way I do, which is why I’m starting two Christmas decorating jobs next week.

But who can afford to give their home a completely new look every year? Not many of us. But there are ways to have a beautifully decorated home every year.

I start a new Christmas decorating project by first selecting the decorations that I want to use from the client’s existing stock. (whereby my first two words are usually, “Good Lord!”)

I then source a stock of new decorations for the tree, fireplace mantle, tabletops, bannisters, exterior; whatever areas we decide upon. These decorations can now be used year after year; their original investment depreciating substantially with every passing year. (My math skills cannot be overrated.)

I often go back each Christmas season using these self-same decorations, sometimes adding, or not using a few items, augmenting with fresh greenery for any interior and exterior areas.

Sometimes clients start with a set budget the first year (yes, designers do use that word), and then I purchase more decorations the next year, and then the year after that…
Sometimes they feel they can handle it themselves after the first year as they now have a cache of well-selected and colour coordinated decorations.

If you dream of a stunningly decorated home this Christmas, give yourself the Gift of Time and Beauty, so you can spend your precious holiday time stress-free with friends and family. After all, Christmas is about celebrating with the people we love.

From the simple to the sublime. It’s bespoke styling just for you. The gift that keeps on giving.

I look forward to making your home a solace of comfort and grace – the best and most beautiful Christmas you have ever experienced.

Did you ever have one of those days where you wonder whether you should have made arrangements for your future care?

Today I had my car stolen out of my garage.

Well…it turned out that it wasn’t exactly stolen.

I just kinda forgot where I left it.

It was like this.

My regular route of walking to Starbucks through the park with the two dogs was impossible, as it was under reconstruction with the planting of trees, smashing of ground, and digging of trenches. Instead, I put both dogs in the car and drove to the end of the park to walk the long way around.

On the way I called one of my daughters to see if she had time to meet us at Starbucks. She did.

While waiting for her to drive over, I saw a Pour Over Brewer and Mug that my friend had been looking for, so I texted her to see if she wanted it.

She said yes.

She asked how much it was. I told her.

She said that was fine.

I asked her if she wanted me to buy it since I was there.

She said yes.

I asked her if she wanted more than one.

She didn’t.

So I bought it for her…as well as a package of iced passion flavoured herbal blend mango ice tea, one short extra hot cappuccino with light whip and a dash of cinnamon, one tall not extra hot soy latte, and no muffins. I went across the street to buy the muffins because Starbucks really doesn’t have…

These really aren’t excuses. I’m just trying to come up with one.

In the middle of our coffee and our much better muffins, my daughter was called to a job site, so all four of us jumped into her car and she drove us home. Arriving to my house, I opened the garage door to find it – empty.

We all sat there staring.

Well, the dogs weren’t that interested.

Someone had stolen my car and my wallet! (I know my wallet was stolen because it was in the stolen car. As well as two and a half pairs of gloves, a set of booster cables, and a box of pistachio nut chocolates.)

In a panic, I phoned the police.

In the midst of giving the calm and patient officer my vital statistics and a few extra, I suddenly remembered where I left my car.

Horrified as to my immediate and future capabilities, I profusely apologized, put a leash on the dogs and walked the full length of the park to retrieve my stolen car.

Please discuss this because I don’t even understand.

I know. You are no longer making the effort to roll your eyes.
But the day wasn’t a total miscreant, as on the way back to my car, I saw some great carved pumpkins and houses decorated for Hallowe’en. 

Then I thought – what better way not to add another misery to my already burgeoning day, than to write about carving out a space for yourself, or at least a pumpkin.

Now there are some salient coring principles involved when undertaking such a fundamental endeavour.

Number One: Ours is a culture that measures our worth by our efficiency, our decisions, and our ability to decorate great pumpkins.

 Number Two: Allow yourself the luxury of changing your mind.

We live in a culture where one of the greatest social disgraces is not having an opinion, so we often form our “opinions” based on the latest Etsy products, Facebook posts, or how Anthropologie is decorating their store this year, without investing the time and thought to come up with our own ideas.

Cultivate that capacity for negative capability. Just say, “NO”, and take your God-given poetic licence to ask someone else to carve the pumpkin this year.

I mean, once you start overachieving, people expect things from you.

Number Three: Expect anything tasteful to take a long time.

It’s hard to capture something so fundamental, yet so impatiently overlooked as decorating the best pumpkin, yet the myth of the overnight pumpkin success is just that – a myth. Thus our present definition of success needs redefining.

For example, no matter how arduous a task it may be, it’s a good idea to be honest with oneself. (You do not want to sit next to someone at dinner who will not admit this.

Well, that’s all I have for today, unless you want to know about attaching metallic studs to pumpkins and I’m going to assume that’s a no.

Basically what I’m also saying, is that there may be a minimum of 6,403 more interesting things on the internet today than this post.

We are in the season of gratitude, and thank goodness for that.

I don’t remember exactly how I got the idea. It could have been from Sarah ban Breathnach, Oprah, Jesus, or the Aga Khan, but all I knew is that I had to do something.

In 2000, I had been forced to be the major breadwinner for my four children and myself, so I picked up my interior design career after a fifteen-year hiatus, while continuing to navigate an ever-escalating mountain of school and sports activities.

Adding to the milieu of soccer balls, badminton rackets, swimsuits, diving towels, gymnastic mats, field and floor hockey sticks, track shoes, rugby cleats, skates, riding pants, basketball uniform, volleyball shorts, both kinds of skis, and dance costumes, there was what was to become, a harrowing and lengthy divorce that rivalled any entry in The Guinness Book of Records.

At the same time, whether it was Blind Luck, Destiny or Divine Intervention, the Land of Bright Ideas found me pioneering a new industry – Home Staging.

And if this wasn’t enough, I once lost my corkscrew and was compelled to live on food and water for several days.

So I began a gratitude journal.

I knew not what else to do. I needed help and there was nowhere, nor no one I could turn to.

Thus every night before bed, I diligently listed five things for which I was grateful.

At the beginning it was difficult. I could only come up with something like, ” I was grateful for…the sun today…or my four girls…or another new client.” Or “the gift of another day.”

Not that these are things you shouldn’t be grateful for, but they were pretty secular and the same things tended to be repeated – a lot.

Sometimes the best thing that happened to me that day was finding the lid to a Tupperware container on the first try.

Or for the first time my hygienist didn’t tell me I needed to floss more.

Or when I finished my laundry and all the socks matched up.

It wasn’t easy, but that’s the point.

“Intentionally bringing into awareness the tiny, previously unnoticed elements of the day.” – Mark Williams

It’s easy to be grateful when things are going well, its definitely more difficult during trials of life, rejection, and failure. But by bringing gratitude to your crosses, is one of the best ways to get through them.

But I have to say it was probably the single most important thing I’ve ever done, and the only thing I can attribute to getting me through some difficult, difficult years and trials. Literally.

Soon, listing things to be grateful for became easier and easier. In fact, I would have to stop myself at 10, then 15.

Then I learned that I needed to be specific and focus on exactly why I was grateful. For example:

Vague: ” I liked meeting Mrs. “X”.”

Specific: “I appreciated her manner, but wonder what I had done to deserve her company and how I might avoid her in the future.”

Yes, you say, keeping a gratitude journal sounds cheesy, too simplistic, too cliché. You say that you’re too busy. It’s a waste of time. That this is for the kind of people who religiously pin 50 photos on Pinterest every day, the kind of people who don’t let their cacti casually die on the windowsill, and the kind that make their own granola with 10 different kinds of organic nuts.

Even if you’re sceptical and think you lack the discipline, do it anyway. Even if it’s only once a week. The trick is what we learned in Finding Nemo – Just keep swimming.

Our lives are strung out between the merely imperfect and the truly awful.

The thing is, people aren’t hardwired to be grateful. Like any school skill worth having, gratitude requires practice. Gratitude is a skill and a habit you can cultivate. Just because it doesn’t come naturally doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.
Louisa Jewell, the President of the Canadian Positive Psychology Association says, “In the caveman days, we were always scanning the environment to see if there was an animal lurking. If a berry had made someone ill, an innate negativity bias meant humans could catalogue that information as a means of survival. Negative experiences weigh more on the minds of humans than positive ones, so much so that some psychologists have estimated it takes three good emotions to balance out a single bad one.”

The practice may just save you from defenestration. (The act of hurling someone out of a window.)

Gratitude is like a muscle that you have to keep exercising, taking baby steps to get stronger.

So after a while, I learned to add gratitude as demonstration. I didn’t have much money, but I had time.

I started to make a practice of sending little thank you gifts and cards to each and every person that I worked with or referred me.

Then I added the simple gesture of endeavouring to thank one person a day, whether in person or by email, letter, text, or a phone call.

The only secret is you must mean it. Faking gratitude won’t achieve the benefits.

It also turns out that small things and moments generate more satisfaction and happiness than large ones, but I didn’t know that then.In your gratitude journal, try subtraction, not just addition.

Consider how much better your life with is without something, rather just tallying up the good stuff. Be grateful for all that hasn’t happened — for all those close shaves with “disaster” of some kind or another, all the bad things that almost happened but didn’t.

The distance between them happening and not happening is grace.

The goal of gratitude is to remember a good event, experience, person or thing your life. For example, you could:

• Thank the barista that makes your morning coffee instead of staring at your iPhone and ignoring everyone around you. This doesn’t mean shooting off a perfunctory, “Hey, thanks”. It means a concerted and consistent effort to notice and appreciate what you have been given.
• Say a simple hello to a stranger on the street.
• Be grateful for every drop of water that runs from your faucet. 1.1 billion people have inadequate access to clean water and will never have this experience.
• Stop and really look at the clouds in the sky today. Make note how each cloud is different, the colour, the shape, the many nuances of weather. Open your eyes. Look at that.

Appreciate all the good things flowing to you. From the crunch of autumn leaves, to the azure sky to, yes – October snow.

Gratitude shouldn’t be a once a year kind of thing.

Gratitude can also help us temper our urges for instant gratification. Thinking of the good things in your life as gifts, guards against taking them for granted.
The best thing about gratitude is that when you really feel it, the first thing you want to do is share it.

When we truly understand gratitude, it helps us recognize our link to other people.

“I can live two months on a good complement.” – Mark Twain

But this is only half the story. While the person who receives the compliment enjoys it and feels valued, the giver can also bask in the connection.

But there is a downside to gratitude.

Like:

Loss of pity parties
Inability to stay stuck in a miserable state
Absence of limiting and soul-sucking beliefs
Lack of ability to blame your parents for everything that’s wrong with youYou know you’ve reached the crowning glory of gratitude, when you lay writhing on the floor in pain from food poisoning and say to yourself, “Well, it could be a lot worse. At least it’s not appendicitis.”

No matter how big or small, be thankful and embrace.

Gratitude just may take over your life.

Happy Thanksgiving!