Beauty All Around (My 100th Post!)

     When I started this blog in June of 2011, my life was, for many reasons, in a state of transition and unrest. I was writing my thoughts almost constantly, allowing the flow of words to anchor me as I figured things out. As I figured me out.

This is a page from one of the many notebooks/journals I filled that year.

      I have blogged before and was drawn to starting a blog again, but, knowing the commitment of time and energy that keeping a good blog requires, I had to ask myself if it was worth it, and why? The answers I came up with reminded me that I really did have much more figured out than I thought.

     I blog because I find the blog to be a medium, and the blogosphere to be a place, wherein words and images are essential to one another. Yes, an image may speak for itself and words may paint a picture, but, when balanced, whether serendipitously or purposefully, to complement one another, their combined power is unlike any human-made influence I have known. And I cannot separate my inclination to express myself both verbally and visually. I never could.

     I blog because I, like any mere mortal (okay maybe a little more than most), need validation. Immediate feedback and gratification. And admittedly, I blog (at least a little) to self-promote. To build a platform for my writing, to sell my stuff. To let the things I love to make and do do a little making and doing for me.

    I blog because I have finally figured out that I am happiest when I am creating--whether that's creating in a literal sense with pen and paper and paint and camera, etc., or creating beauty and joy in my family and in the world through kindness and service and love. Expressing my joy and gratitude through beauty is my gift.

     I blog because, even in the lowest, darkest times of everyone's life there still is, always, in some small way, beauty all around. And I want to share the beauty in my everyday and to inspire others to see the beauty in their lives as well.

     Thank you gentle readers, for reading and commenting. If I have given at least one of you a little hope, a little inspiration, a little smile or laugh, then I am happy with the written musings of my handmade, vintage, pretty life. My life of beauty all around. Won't you stay for the next 100 posts?

xo

p.s. For those of you who don't follow either me (@amberjunek) or @portabellopixie on Instagram: the couch in that last photo has quite the story. Stay tuned...

Pennies From Heaven

   I think I am finally old enough--or maybe I have just finally listened long enough--to get the meaning of that song. Pennies From Heaven: Even though it's raining, the rain is a blessing; in an April-showers-bring-May-flowers kind of way, but also in a how-can-we-know-happiness-if-we-never-know-sadness kind of a way.

 
Be sure that your umbrella is upside-down...

   Recently, I feel like my little family has been stuffing our piggy bank with the currency of blessings from Heaven. Like we are participants in an economy of kindness and service, and hopefully we are giving as much as we are being blessed (so blessed!) to receive.

   A few days ago, for example, the electric range in our house (which had, for some time, been not so much 'standing on its last legs' as sort of propped up with sticks because it had no legs left to stand on) gave up the ghost. Rain. Yet, not two days earlier, I'd been talking with my visiting teaching companion, a sweet lady who lives just down the street from us, about her kitchen remodel and her new double-oven range she was so excited about and she just hoped she could find someone who could use her old one, because it still had some years left and she'd hate to see it go to waste. Pennies from Heaven.

   Around about the same time, I was secretly, silently lamenting that fact that my vintage fabric stash was getting woefully low (rain), when my amazing and generous friend Stella texted to say she was cleaning out her late mother's sewing room and would I like some fabric? (Pennies from Heaven).
   And then Laurelei and Riley and I were out and about and ran into the owner of the gym where the kids used to take gymnastics lessons... just chatting it up in the parking lot of Lowe's when she offers the kids a three-month gymnastics scholarship in repayment (she says) for some way-back long-ago photo job she feels they never finished paying Brian for (I thought we were all even-stevens.Rain I hadn't even noticed!). So, hooray for gymnastics and the plink-plink-plunk of more Pennies from Heaven in the piggy bank.
  There are so many more stories I could tell; so many blessings I could count. But do you know what the best thing is about receiving blessings from God at the hands of others? The way it compels us to want to give something in return. Our time, our talents, our resources...a smile, a kind word, or a helping hand...the way those blessings take us from feeling like we have nothing to give (or what can I do?), to feeling like we have so much to share and give.
   
   Don't ya know each cloud contains Pennies from Heaven? I know it. How could I not?    

   (I'm kind of in love with this Pennies From Heaven cover I found on YouTube--doesn't she have a cool voice?)

Count your blessings, blogland beauties. I count you among mine.

xo

  

Kindness

It takes a lot to make my blogroll. If you look over there, on the right side bar, you'll notice there are only five names listed under Beauty in Blogland. Those aren't the only blogs I read, of course, and they are obviously not the only blogs I consider to be good. I read dozens of blogs each week that are fun, entertaining, stylish, pretty, inventive, unique...and other light, but generally positive adjectives. Those on my blogroll, however, are the blogs that speak to my soul. When I read posts (or see the images) from these women (they are all women at this point) I am moved and inspired to let go of things in my life that don't matter; to be a better, truer, deeper me. And I don't need long to know when I've found a blog worthy of the Beauty list or not. Usually, it's love at first click. Just like the books.

And yesterday I discovered a new one.

It happened like this: I was checkin' the tweets when I saw this from someone called @kindnessgirl:

"What will this day be like? I wonder..."

So of course, I had to jump in there and reply:

"What will my future be? I wonder..."

To which @kindnessgirl responded:

@amberjunek "You knew. We must be soul sisters."

I immediately had to read her blog. And, it turns out, Kindness Girl was exactly what my soul needed. A little less worrying, a little less stressing and scheduling, a little more thinking about someone other than me.

After reading through her last dozen posts or so, I called up my BF and we set out to the library to do this:

(these are photos from kindnessgirl.com. We could sneak around our small library with post-its, but I think a camera would have been noticed.)

The point was to leave notes of encouragement and, well, kindness for others to find. Notes that would, hopefully, be just what they needed. We included our kids in this, to their delight, and it was strange....as I wandered around looking for just the right book to put just the right message in, every now and then a book would sort-of jump out at me, and I knew that was the one. That the person who would find that book would be the person who needed the message I would put there. And it felt good.

So, I hope this post doesn't come off as too blog-stalkerish, but I want to thank you, Kindness Girl, for what you continually do, and for reminding everyone in blogland and beyond:

xo