Wabi-Sabi...

What?

I was surfing around on some blogs today and I ran across the term wabi-sabi on the Remodeling This Life blog.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature….It’s simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all.

This is how I have always felt about my home and my garden. I like the imperfections of my furniture and my home decor. It's one of the main reasons I like antiques so much. Antiques and old-things in general are imperfect and thus they are more interesting to me. In the garden, I like the cottage-style of gardening which is very informal and NOT perfect.

Now I can say that I am wabi-sabi. Now you can go impress all your friends with your new word! (-:

Found a new project...

I love primitive decorating and years ago I would tackle projects with a lot of enthusiasm and energy. Then with kids and a full-time job I have felt that I barely have enough time to do the daily tasks around the house. However, I'm going to be making time to do some projects because I need to get back to doing things I enjoy!

So, I went to Artichoke Annie's Antique Mall yesterday to look for some inspiration and to look for a clock for my new clock collection. I'll post a picture of that soon...got the idea from Country Living or Country Home. Anyway, there are something like 200 booths there and many of the items are real antiques and they are pricey!! Most of the items were from the 60's and 70's and go along with the new interest in art deco, retro and vintage decorating. I did find myself really attracted to all the displays of bright red and yellow pyrex bowls and glassware. Not my style at all really so I kept moving.

I finally happened upon a booth with primitive items that seemed reasonably priced. I'm always attracted to stitchery and I looked up and there is a cross-stitch sampler in a distressed black frame. I loved it! It did look really old but I thought it was just distressed manually. I picked it up and turned it over and promptly put it back. It was $295.00 and was an original from the mid-1800's. It was beautiful!! So, I think I'm going to work on one of these. The picture above is similar to what I saw and I may order this pattern. I particularly like the one on the left even though it may be a little ambitious for me right now!

Protecting His Cousin...

This week Angie told me that Mya has a boy in her class who is a bully. He is mean to the girls and this week Mya was in the line of fire for his mean-ness. Amazing that this happens in kindergarten. He told her some things like she is ugly and that he hates her, etc. Understandably everyone is upset by this. So, on the way home from school I told Kobe what had happened that day. His immediate response was, "If I ever see him I'm going to punch him in the face". Now, I'm not encouraging that and in fact I told Kobe that punching him wouldn't be the best solution (like he would ever do that anyway...Kyler on the other hand, I'm not so sure) and we talked about some other ways that Kobe could help if he ever witnessed anyone being mean to Mya or anyone for that matter. However, I thought it was really sweet that he immediately wanted to protect his cousin who he loves so much!