What I've learned

Kaleidoscope

acrylic and collage on canvas

Its almost been a year since we left New York, can you believe it? I know that its still hard for me to understand that 11 whole months have passed and as I enter the season in which we spent our last month there, with all of the goodbyes and the leaving that we did, I can't help but reflect on how much I have learned in the past year. When we left Brooklyn I thought that the move was such an excruciating, heart wrenching, experience that we would move through and once we were settled in a new place, that life would get back to normal and we'd go on much as before... but really I had no idea that our move would be just the start of continuing huge changes for us.

I see now that the difficulty of the move prepared me for what was and is to come, living through our move showed me that you can leave all of your friends, the place that you have lived for 15 years, the home that you renovated lovingly where you birthed your children, you can leave all of the places you know and everything is going to be OK.

This passed year has also taught me that,

You can move your family to a new home, new city, new place that you have only visited two times. You can make a life changing choice for your family, act on it and move to this place 800 miles away that you just felt was the right fit, going on faith, and everything is going to be OK.

You can meet new people, make new friends, stretch outside of your comfort zone and everything is going to be OK.

You can find out that you are pregnant for the 4th time, something that you feared because you did not know if you could handle the changes that it would bring to your family and yourself, and realize that everything is going to be OK.

You can have your health insurance company decide that your pregnancy is a pre-existing condition and review whether they will continue to insure your family, including your children, and everything is going to be OK.

Your father can be diagnosed with a dreaded degenerative disease, and everything, no matter what the future holds with this, is going to be OK.

Your parents can announce to you that they are moving to the same city that you just moved to, after you have not lived close to them for the past 20 years, and everything is going to be OK.

Your family of origin can implode. Issues that have been dormant for 30 years or more can come up, you can have a falling out with your brother's wife and stop talking to your brother, one of the most dear people in the world to you, and everything is going to be OK.

You can begin to have high blood pressure for the first time in any of your pregnancies, threatening your choice to birth at home, and everything is going to be OK.

Your dear cousin and his wife can loose their baby, a child that you had hoped would grow up with your new baby, and through the sadness, everything is going to be OK.

Your computer and your phone can break separately in the same day (this happened to me a couple of days ago!) and everything is going to be OK.

Everything really is going to be OK, and not in a "lets just ignore all of this way", no not at all. What I have really learned this year is that I can dwell within all of these things, I can be present within the discomfort, I can feel the sadness, the anger, the confusion, and I can still wake up every morning and greet myself. I can say thank you for my precious human life. I can know that as long as I am right in my heart with my small family, my husband and my kids, everything is going to be OK. I can say that even without knowing what that means, because one thing that I keep learning again and again is that I can not know or control the future.

I can pray, I can rejoice, I can revel in the beauty that is all around me. I can exercise, and sweat, and practice Yoga, and eat nourishing foods, and feel how all of this helps my body to get through all of the things that I can't control around me. Each day I can do what I can, to relax, to speak calmly to my children and to forgive myself when I am rushed and impatient.

Each day I can start anew, because each day feels holy. Each day feels like a blessing. Each day we must be gentle with each other because everyone is walking a hard road. Each day, everything is going to be OK.

Crossroads

This summer I feel like I've been unusually quiet here on my blog, and not for lack of things to write about. No, there have been lots of adventures to write about, but probably more quiet times than I can remember in quite a while too. More times where I've felt that I needed to be more the hermit than the extrovert, more times where I have needed to simply sit and digest.
In fact, after leaving our life in NYC, leaving our whole life there and moving here, I think that one of the hardest things for me to get used to was the quiet. Once we settled in at the beginning of this summer, I don't think our home phone rang for months. Almost everyone that we knew, or could run into, lived far away, and so began a long summer of learning how to live in Charleston. It has been fantastic in so many ways, Frank has loved this new beginning, the kids have been thrilled to make new friends, and I have been drinking in the natural beauty and sunshine that we are surrounded by here in our new life.
The hardest thing for me is just feeling so constantly "out of my skin", I keep looking for a comfortable place, like a dog turning around and around to find the perfect spot to settle in.

And suddenly, without warning, I feel like I am at a bit of a crossroads. I can't even pinpoint the day but recently I noticed that I no longer feel so uncomfortable. Inside I feel myself relaxing, places that were tense are easing up.

All summer long I have taken a break from making my work, in past times of great stress I know that I have been unable to paint, so I knew that would happen this time as well. I prepared myself for this break. During my flurry of new paintings this spring and as I was packing up my studio I wondered how long the break would be. We moved and then settled into this time of integration. All summer I've felt myself processing, integrating the new and old, the leaving and the meeting, opening up and debriefing in a beautiful stillness. All while looking forward to beginning to work again, and finally, yes finally, I feel my creative process slowly coming on again.....I've begun envisioning paintings, ideas are germinating. I can't tell you how good it feels!

During this summer of stillness Danielle LaPorte's post on productive rest came at the perfect resonant time for me. The quiet, in between, times are still ones that I struggle with, but after this summer I feel more familiar with those places inside myself, more able to sit and be calm with them.

Studio clean out

I know it might not look like much but above is where we started, and here is where we ended the other day as our studio clean out continues....

Can you see our progress? It is slow and steady, as with most of the work we stop to photograph it, or reminisce about what was happening when we made each piece. It is hard to decide to throw pieces away, but I know in my heart when I am ready to let go of something, and I feel light as a feather when I surrender to that.

With Frank's help I was able to let go of some of the work that I created before I applied to Grad School 11 years ago,

I saved my favorites from each bunch along with the stretcher bars, so that I can go on to reuse them when I am able to work large again, I loved working so large! I was also able to go through and review more recent work, figuring out what I want to add to my shop. There are some great pieces including the large butterfly one here,

With a lot of my older work I found that there are passages within the paintings that still speak to me, colors and patterns with a lyrical flow like poems,

You can see that back then I was using actual pressed petals within the paintings and including sewn elements like beads and stencils and stitches in the canvas.

In an old box during the clean out we discovered a treasure, Frank's grandfather was an artist and we found his old sets of pastels,

A riot of color that I know the kids will appreciate in a few years, we carefully packed those away.

All of this sorting is getting us ready for a big art show/sale/goodbye fiesta that we are planning as a last blow out here in NYC before we move. We are planning the party for the night of May 7th, I'll be posting full details once we have made all of the plans. It will be at our studio space, with drinks and small bites, so if you are in New York we'd love for you to join us!

Before and After: the front door, and conclusion

Here we are, the last and final post of my Before and After series on our Brooklyn home! The front door of our house was, of course, one of the first things that we noticed about the house seven years ago when we bought it. Here is the house the day we closed the deal,

After taking down those brown awnings that covered both of the entrances, the front door was one of the first things that we knew we wanted to replace, but, as we worked on larger and bigger projects, eventually renovating the whole house, we got tired of having work done and since the front door worked we simply painted it blue and left it. For seven years. It had gotten to the point where we still talked about replacing it, but really I hardly even noticed it anymore.

Then, in January, as we did the final renovations on the house in preparation for putting it on the market, we knew that the time had finally come to replace the front door. We just knew that a new door would make the house "sparkle".
It felt darkly comedic when we found out that the day the crew could come to put our new front door in was going to be one of the coldest days of the year. Note to self, do not ever replace a front door in the middle of winter! During the installation it felt like our house was having surgery,

Those guys really were so good to work outside in that cold! Once they had installed it, then Frank got to work finishing it off, sealing it and painting it. So, after a few days, much work and many coats of paint. Here is our new front door,

Again, before,

and after,

Frank and I both feel like the new front door is the cherry on top of the house, the finishing touch, the icing on the cake. We love the way it looks, and it feels like it ties everything else together, and gives major curb appeal.

Wow, I love seeing these before and after pictures all together here, I have enjoyed writing about our "before and after tale" so much! It gives a good idea of the scope of the project that we took on with this house. When I look back at the before pictures I tend to feel just how we really didn't know how much work we were getting ourselves into. I remember thinking, "Oh, a little demolition and then we'll just bring in what we want.", if only life were that simple! I think it's a good thing that we didn't have an idea of just how much work was involved, because we might never have started the project. This renovation has been one of the biggest, and most fun, projects that Frank and I have collaborated on. As I mentioned way back in the first part of the tale, renovating a Brooklyn brownstone was one of Frank's dreams. I'm so glad that I joined him in fulfilling that dream.

There are quite a few "old timers" who live in our area. People who have spent their whole lives living right in this part of Brooklyn, who have seen the neighborhood evolve and people come and go. One of them was recently talking to Frank about our house and he said, "You brought that place back to life man.". Which is a quote that I will always treasure. I think we did, I think we brought it back to life after years of neglect. We saw its shining core underneath years of dirt, dust and bad aesthetic choices, and we had the courage to do the work.

It has been the perfect place to live, and start a family. I will always be especially connected to the house as Carys was literally born in it. Even as we will go on, to live and grow in different houses, I will always think of it with deep and abiding love.

Before and After: our garden level

Today we are going two floors down from my last post about our bedroom on our top floor. We are going down to the garden level of our house, which has seen many incarnations since we moved in. On this floor we had to pretty much gut out everything and reconfigure it all, as you'll see in the before pictures it was dark, dingy and uncared for. After our initial renovation I used this floor as my studio (such a nice big space!) until we needed some extra income, so we started renting out the garden level as a separate apartment. Our house is a legal "two family" residence, as many brownstones are in Brooklyn, which has been really nice for us to be able to rent out our bottom floor and have an income from our house. It has a separate entrance, underneath our front brownstone steps, so it is fully separate from our top two floors of the house, but we do have a stairway that connects the two floors which we can open up if we choose. Here is a view of the entry way on the garden level when we bought the house,

and here is the same view today,

In preparation for selling the house we stopped renting out the garden level last December, and we have started using the whole building for ourselves again. You can see the stairs in the above picture that head up to our kitchen and parlor level. We converted the front room on the garden level into a playroom, which the kids are thrilled about. Here is the front room before,

and after,

another view, before,

and after,

and, since I think that the playroom is just about the cutest thing ever, here is another quick view...

At the back of the house on this floor we now have our guest room, which was another pretty scary looking kitchen when we bought the house, here it is before,

and here it is after, this is the part of the room that was the kitchen for our rental unit,

another before of the same space,

and after,

here is where we have our guest bed, on the other side of this large room,

and here is a before shot of the bathroom on this floor,

and after.

I'll be back with the before and after pictures of our new front door in my next post!

Before and After: the master bedroom

The "before" shots of our bedroom are confusing, because to create all of our bedrooms we gutted out all of the walls on the top floor of our house, and then reconfigured the whole space. In the top photo you are looking through to where the kids room now is, from my last post. Where that door way is we put a wall and added our walk-in closet (one of my favorite additions to the house!), and then behind that our bedroom. Here is Frank's recently finished painting of our bedroom, he posted about it on his blog here,

You can see the back wall of our bedroom with the closet beyond that, so the painting is a good "after" shot from the same view as the first picture. During the staging of our house as we've been getting it ready to go on the market, our realtor asked us to reconfigure our bedroom furniture, to make it feel like more of an "oasis"

Here's what the staged version looks like now,

One of the ideas that our realtor is really trying to use for our house is that you can live in a civilized way with kids (I really can't write that without smiling), and part of that was making the master bedroom feel really inviting, like you just want to fall into the bed. They asked us to get all white sheets, to make our bed feel "cloud like". Now, after having the all white sheets for a few weeks I am in love with it, it feels so clean and inviting, and makes the space feels more streamlined and relaxing. 

Next up in the before and after series, will be the playroom on the garden level of our house.

Before and After: the kid's room

It has been ages since I posted the before and after renovation tale of our Brooklyn home. Now, as we are preparing to sell it, I really wanted to finish the tale and let you see more of our renovation. This one is particularly shocking, as when we bought the house there was actually an old scary kitchen where the kid's room is now. Here it is before,

and after, 

another before,

and another after,

It is so different that it is hard for me to even remember it as it was before the renovation, even though I lived through it!

Here is a view of the opposite wall, before,

We covered up that doorway (looking into what is now our bedroom) making it into one of the walls in the kid's room, that I have decorated with special photos, art and keepsakes. Here it is after,

Next up will be the tale of our master bedroom renovation!

Shifting

So, for the past two weeks Frank and I have been working on our house almost daily. There are so many little details to take care of before we put it on the market next month. Much of the work has looked a lot like this,

Frank has been hard at work on the details, but, as he calls it in the decorative painting industry we have finally come to the "visual" part, where many of the details have been completed and now we can see our progress.
I feel so fortunate that our real estate agents are old friends of ours, a couple that I feel super comfortable with and love their sense of decor in their own home. In preparation for selling our home, they did a walk through with us and talked about how we should setup or "stage" our home to show it at its best. Little things like painting, plastering, decluttering, shifting furniture.
The process of staging the house for a sale is really about the psychology of the sale, which was fascinating to talk about with our realtor friends. As they walked through our home they helped us to see little details that we should change, things that we should move around to shift the energy and usefulness of the space, they also saw things that we had thought we should change but they actually liked (like the old painted wooden staircase going downstairs that bends a bit and we thought we'd carpet over, but they loved the original quirky detail).
The first room the we've really set up in it's staged state is our living room which, along with our kitchen, is the heart of our home. I snapped this picture the other day so you can see what things generally look like around here daily after some serious playing,

Now here is the after, the "staged" version,

One of their focuses with staging our house is that they want it to show that you can have kids and still live in a civilized way (heh heh), so most of the toys were moved downstairs to our new playroom, that I'll show you in the next post!

They had us move our couch and television cabinet over by the windows, to create a cozy section there, notice the fluffy white rug that I am now obsessed with. They also had us get a beautiful modern white desk that we placed between our bookshelves, to create a useful spot for doing homework or working on the computer. I love the new desk and I think that it will end up in my new studio after our move.

On the wall opposite the desk and book shelves they had us move our Ikea storage shelf, which is one of handiest things for toy storage. I just bought some simple neutral canvas bins to go with the straw ones that we already had,

Now, after the daily serious playing happens, its easy to just throw all the toys back in the bins and have a clean space again.

This is just the beginning, there's lots more staging to go. The really fun thing about staging the house for me so far has been that I like the way their ideas have freshened up our space, I feel like I am learning things that I'll be able to take with us and use when we go on to live in a new space.

Rearranging our shelves

The other day, after dropping Jasper off at Kindergarten for the first time, I came home and started rearranging our book shelves.
Seriously.
I took everything off of each shelf and then put the books back on in color order, sometimes rainbow, sometimes black to white, or blue to yellow, what ever worked for each shelf.

I was completely absorbed with the task, as Carys played beside me. It wasn't until Frank walked through the living room and jokingly said, "Uh oh, Mommy is color coding the books.", that I realized that maybe there was more to my behavior.
Truthfully, arranging the books by color was something that I have always wanted to do, after seeing it in magazines and admiring how it transforms and orders the whole look of the space. I had hoped to do it someday, but the time never seemed right for such a frivolous feeling project.

What I realize now, a few days later, is that I was also doing just what I needed to do that day....to organize my thoughts as well as the books, to keep my mind focused on the beauty of this transition for our boy (instead of the mama sadness in my heart). Our lives are being arranged around this new school schedule, so now the time feels right to rearrange other things as well...it is amazing how that happens. To me this is evidence of how things really do open up at just the right time.
Besides, who really couldn't use a little more beauty on their bookshelves?