come along to luvocracy

a peek at my luvocracy page

I'm having so much fun over on Pinterest these days gathering inspiration and recipes and dreaming of creating more white space and finally creating the bedroom I long for. So, today, I'm really excited to introduce you to a new site that is a bit like Pinterest meets Amazon...but an Amazon that sells just about anything on the web, including handmade.

Meet Luvocracy.

On Luvocracy, you create collections (similar to Pinterest boards) of your favorite product recommendations. Then when friends and family (or blog readers) ask you about your favorite clothes or the items you would gather for a home retreat or your little one's favorite things, you can send them to your Luvocracy page. It's kind of like curating your own little shop of goodness.

When you are looking at someone's Luvocracy collection and want to buy an item or two, Luvocracy will actually handle the transaction for you. So you just have to give one site your credit card information and they do the rest including finding sold out products and handling contact with the retailer if a product doesn't arrive etc.

And here is one really fun aspect of Luvocracy: When someone buys a product you recommend, you are rewarded with a small commission of the sale. Love that they want to reward their users in this way; literally rewarding the users who are building the site through their participation and word-of-mouth advertising.   

Last month, I went to a dinner with some of the people who are working to grow this site. It was so interesting to get to see first hand the excitement people have when their startup is about to launch. They really are dreaming about changing the way we shop online and it is going to be fun to see how it all unfolds.

Luvocracy is just getting started, so those of us beginning to explore the site have the opportunity to give them really great feedback as they grow. I think about how fun it would have been to be one of the first few thousand users of Pinterest giving feedback.

Join me over on Luvocracy here.

trusting my way to enoughness

Today, I'm in my studio as the rain falls on the roof as hammering words into lockets. The thoughts are tumbling a bit in the spaces between. I'm thinking about how so much of the work I do invites me to hold hands with trust.

When the fears and the not enoughness pushes through all the other thoughts, in those moments when I am so good at doubting and wondering if there is an audience for what I'm sharing or wondering why this happens and that doesn't and comparing and getting caught up in all that does not serve me, I'm trying to say to myself, "Come back home, to your wisdom, to what you deeply trust."

And then I find myself in that space where trust becomes grace becomes the magic of enoughness.

It isn't always easy to find that space. In fact, it often feels like trudging through a sticky mess. So this is why I think of it as a practice.

I practice creating that space when I take a deep breath before I pound "Stand in Your Light" into lockets. I practice creating that space each time I choose love over what should get done. I practice creating that space when I look in the mirror in the middle of the day and choose to deeply see all of who I am looking back at me.

I practice what trust, what grace, what enoughness might feel like and then I find myself again walking tall on the path that is home, that is me.

***

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i'm thinking about you..

The above quote is from my video post below. The video is a little letter from me to you today. 

video URL: http://vimeo.com/53613292

In the video, I read the poem "For strong women" by Marge Piercy (from The Moon Is Always Female, you can read the poem here).

Thank you for being out there sharing your light, your stories, your you.ness.

Blessings,
Liz

PS The poem has a couple of words that might not be okay for little ears. 

emails to myself

(dreaming in my red smash book)

Last night, I was in the midst of working on a blog post for Chickadee Road after everyone else was long asleep and my daughter Ellie Jane started coughing in that way you do when you have a chest cold. After a few moments passed and it was clear she needed me, I went into her room and gathered her in my arms to rock her for a while. She kept coughing, so I suggested that we go into the bathroom and run the shower because the steam would make her feel better. 

We took her blanket and her favorite big Mickey stuffed animal and into the bathroom we went. With just a small light on so it was mostly dark, we cocooned in there with the shower running until water ran down the walls and she stopped coughing.

As we sat there and I could feel the steam expanding my lungs too, memories of doing this as a child tapped at the edges of the moment. After Ellie went back to sleep, I headed back out to my spot on the couch to finish working in what had become the middle of the night. I closed my eyes for a moment to recenter. A mama running her own business working in the minutes she can catch here and there. A little girl experiencing her first chest cold and how different my life is now that a little one relies on me to "make it better" and know what to do. Memories of my own bouts of bronchitis and pneumonia as a child and how the coughing would hurt my whole body. 

And then I thought about my mom and those moments tucked in next to her in the little bathroom in that home on Garland Circle. The shower running and filling up every space with steam. I wanted to capture the whirling thoughts and opened an email and wrote, "This moment: Feeling thankful for the hours my mother sat with me in the bathroom until I stopped coughing as the shower steam ran trails of water down the walls. Did this with Ellie Jane tonight and I wish I could hug my mother's younger self and say, "One day she will have a child and she will know."

I emailed this note to myself with the subject "this moment november 12."

So often thoughts like this come to me in the quiet in between spaces where I am shifting from one role to the next, and my mind feels so full of stuff that they sometimes get lost. Last night, as those words arrived, I wasn't sure where I wanted them to land. I might want to send them in a little note to my mom or record this memory in Project Life or even write a poem about it all. And today, I'm so glad I gave those words a place to stay contained, so I could read them again this morning. I think I might start sending more emails to myself when this happens, using the subject "this moment" so I can easily find them.

*****

I shared this story with my newsletter subscribers earlier this week and felt moved to share it here with you today. To receive notes like this one about my real stories about self-care, sign up for (almost) my weekly newsletter.

prayer flags (now in the shop)

"i am home" hangs in my studio . in the shop

It's been six years since I had the sudden urge to make prayer flags to give as gifts to a small group of women I spent a weekend with in Seattle (that feels like a lifetime ago). Six years since I began to gather favorite fabrics and words and bits of trim and other good things to sew together into wishes and blessings that would float into the world whenever a breeze whispers through your home.

When I opened my shop is 2007, these were my favorite things to make. The look has changed over the years as I began to collect more vintage sewing bits and rescue old quilts and vintage linens. And I became somewhat obsessed with vintage handkerchiefs. In 2010, I began creating flags inspired by a little story I created about Ada Mae, my great-grandmother I never met. (I share the story again at the end of this post.)

"she must begin" . in the shop

The first sets of handkerchief flags made back in 2008 went to a dear friend who shared them with her friends. I loved them so much but found myself in a "just collecting the handkerchiefs to one day make flags instead of creating with them" mode as I bought beautiful vintage hankies at rummage sales and antique malls.

"she opened her heart" hanging in my studio . in the shop

A few years back, a friend I met in Susan Wooldridge's class at Artfest sent me a wonderful box full of the handkerchiefs she'd been collecting for a long time. After I moved into my new studio in late summer, I made a new set of flags for my new space. That inspired me to go through all the handkerchiefs. I kept some for me (and Ellie) and decided it was time to start creating with them, so this is the first time the handkerchief flags have made it into the shop.

"she let the truth surround her" . in the shop

They really are such fun to make. The sets in the shop today were made with Mumford and Sons singing and a little girl coloring, playing, twirling beside me as the rain came down outside our windows.

I know that some of you who've seen peeks on Instagram have mentioned that you'd like to make some. My dream is to gather in a cabin together for a weekend of sewing where we would make these special flags and fill them with our prayers and poems. Until that dream becomes a reality, I'd love to make up a few little kits of either handkerchiefs or linen squares + bits of ephemera and my favorite things I use. If you are interested in a kit, send me an email.

a peek of "bluebird in her soul" . in the shop

The Story of Afternoon Tea with Ada Mae

When I find myself surrounded by vintage sewing bits and buttons and paper and fabric, my mind turns to the stories of the women who came before me. One of these women, Ada Mae, died just before I was born. Sometimes though, I imagine that great-grandmothers just might live forever and that Ada Mae lives just a bike ride away. We would have family dinners on Sunday and I would take her for her weekly hair appointments. On Friday afternoons, she would take down her Fostoria crystal tea cups and saucers, and I would bring pastries from Dainty Made Bakery. Some Fridays I would share my newest vintage finds of fabric, buttons, quilt squares, trims…and she would tell me stories about her childhood and wearing skirts made of feed cloth and sleeping under patchwork quilts during her covered wagon adventure from Pennsylvania to Nebraska. 

Whenever I find myself surrounded by vintage buttons and fabric and flowers that once adorned Sunday morning hats, I am inspired by Friday afternoon tea with Ada Mae.

Thank you for being here and sharing in my stories...

Love and blessings,
Liz 

where the forest meets the sea (a new collection of soul mantras)

This past spring, Somerset Life published one of my articles about the sea and how it calls to me and how I feel at home there. It was paired with photos I've taken on the Oregon Coast, and the beautiful way these photos were shared really pushed me to own that I am a photographer.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

I stand with my toes sinking into the sand with my senses enveloped by the push and the pull of the crashing waves in front of me. The water pools around me as I find my breath. I notice how my mind begins to slow as my breath expands the space around my heart. The seagulls soar overhead and the plovers rush back and forth along the shoreline. The sun bounces light off the sea; I spot bits of blue peeking out behind the clouds; and I begin to find a rhythm within that pushes me to just be right here.

I come to the sea to remember there is magic around me as I watch light shimmer, dip, and twirl where water and solid ground meet. As the tide moves closer and then back again, I think about the conversation the sea has each day with the moon as they keep time with the light and shadow dancing around them.

I come to the sea to remember my stories. It is at the sea that I hear my grandmother’s laughter, see my parents holding hands, feel the joy of finding a whole sand dollar, and remember the first time I was brave enough to wade all the way out to my waist, gripping my grandfather’s hand with each bobbing step.

I come to the sea to let go of what no longer serves me as I ask her to take pieces of grief and all that will not be out with the tide. I imagine all of it tumbling with shell fragments and driftwood until it entwines with the seaweed that sways farther than I can see.

I come to the sea to remember me…

A few weeks ago, I was in the midst of one of those days that was thick with "stuff." I found myself longing for the clarity the sea brings me, especially those sacred places where I'm able to stand right where the tall green evergreens of the Pacific Northwest meet the water.

I was in my studio hammering a few custom lockets when phrases about this sacred place and the wisdom found there began to float through the air. I decided to catch them in lockets and on soul mantras as they appeared. Then I gathered a few of my favorite beads that remind me of the brighter sunny days at the sea and then ordered a few gemstones that remind me of the cloudier days on the coast.

And through hours spent curled up in my studio and in the family room while everyone else was asleep, the "where the forest meets the sea" collection came to be.

 

This is the first collection I've made in a while where I listened to intution instead of thinking about what would sell. Each piece truly calls to me, and I hope you love them as much as I do. You can find these and more from the collection here in the shop.

On Tuesday, I'll be sharing more about the prayer flags sets I've been making that will be in the shop Monday evening. If you'd like a sneak peek, head over here to this Flickr set. (And if you want me to reserve one for you, just email me.)

here

hi.
took this after an awesome conversation with hannah about feast.
this headband is my new everyday look. need about five more.

Thinking about :: Jumping in this year and creating a December Daily album. Right now I'm leaning toward this Simple Stories 6x8 binder (with these page protectors) because I can use so many of my Project Life pieces and that is where I'm comfortable when it comes to memory keeping right now. (Learn more about December Daily on Ali's blog.)

Planning :: After your comments and emails about my last Project Life post, I'm planning to share more about my experience with it in some shorter posts about what's working for me, keeping me going, and the simple stuff I'm using. 

Loving :: Fran's dark chocolate sauce. Seriously. It might change your life.

Enjoying :: Cooking. And thinking about cooking. For the former, I'm turning to The Cook's Illustrated Cookbook and making comfort foods like roasted chicken. With the latter, I'm soaking up Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef's Thanksgiving recipe (with videos!) goodness + diving in Tara's archives. And I'm pinning recipes again.

Reading :: The Way It Is by William Stafford and Mary Oliver's new one A Thousand Mornings are on my nightstand. Last month I devoured The Night Circus and A Discovery of Witches (and its sequel). Those books are creative, magical, smart fun! (And it's possible that I'm reading the Richard Castle books. Maybe. You know when I can't sleep in the middle of the night.)

Singing along :: Walk Off the Earth and their oh my goodness some kind of incredible videos (via Jen).

Playing with :: We're having lots of tea parties over here and baking "heart cakes" (she puts a bowl filled with these hearts inside her play oven) that are, of course, "mac and cheese flavor." And decorating her watercolor/coloring journal with Hello Kitty stickers (her friend at school loves Hello Kitty so it could easily become all "ello kit-teee" all the time over here). And reading Don't Cry Big Bird on repeat (a favorite of my brother's that is now ours. Out of print but available at Powells. Totally about how Big Bird is sad because he is too big to play with his friends and then they realize this and figure out ways to inlude him. Lots of good conversations happening about feelings.)

How are things over there in your corner? What are you reading, playing, loving these days?

in this moment: mornings

This month on Chickadee Road, our theme is "In This Moment: Mornings," and we're inviting you to play along by sharing your photos + words that give us a glimpse inside a moment of your November mornings. You can share your photos + words over in our Flickr group. See this post to read a bit more.