the small stuff

Hi guys!!

I'm not sure if anyone comes over here to this little corner anymore.  Not that I would dream of blaming you, I know this space has been pretty.darn.neglected.

I'd love to say I'd like to come over here and blog more often, but I'm really not sure if I can hold to that.  I really struggle with the duality of blogging - how much I enjoy it, and want to keep a log of memories weighed against how much of a time gobbler it is; and how much blogging is saturated and often self serving, ...how I don't really have anything to offer that you can't find anywhere else.

I would like a better camera.  I think I would post more pictures here that I couldn't easily post on instagram. Anybody want to buy me a DSLR?  *crickets chirp*  Anybody??

Fine.

But I'm posting for a REASON!  I just wanted to spew out some of those thoughts before I got around to this reason.   Our sliding barn door thingy has been featured here on House Logic.

It's pretty legit.  I had to sign legal terms and every-thang.   ;)

It's funny the things that the internet community draws on to that you wouldn't otherwise think would be popular, but this red barn door is responsible for most of the traffic into this little blog, and one day I traced my traffic back to about 1000 pins of this thing on Pinterest.

I have to say, I hope people out there are doing this.  It seems like a small thing, but without this and similar projects I just know I would have never been able to help make our home to what, (I feel), is beautiful.  For some reason it is one of the most important things to me as a mom and wife.  I know some of us express themselves in the home through cooking, others take special interest in being immersed in homeschooling, for others, it's gardening (and on and on) - all admirably so.  For me,  it has been fixing up a home.  Even as a child, if kids were picking on me at school - I would cheer myself up by coming home,  make new art and clip out pictures I liked from magazines - specifically for hanging on the walls.  As a teenager, I would do a more grown-up version of that - and rearrange my room.  But then, as an adult, somehow I convinced myself that we needed a lot of money to make a home we could cherish - let me tell you if you don't already know: it's a very defeating frame of mind for those of us who do not have a lot of money.  And it snowballs.  It's a big, ugly, defeating snowball thingy that'll run you over and stuff.

But, when I started seeing all these little DIY projects on the internet, I came back to understanding (as I did when I was a child) that all we really needed was a little creativity and work to make a home beautiful.  I can honestly say our home and our lives would not have been the same without it, and as desperately silly as it is - I am indebted to bloggers and DIY-ers everywhere for it.

I just don't think these things are so little.  Fleeting? Yes.  Material?  Ultimately, yes.  In the end, every stone must be thrown down and, as it is said - we can't take it with us when we die.  But as long as we keep that in perspective, is it really small?  No, I don't think so.

And just to kind of make light of things, here's a little Dwight to usher us out.