here: deeply blessed

Ellie waiting for at the cardiologists on Wednesday. Wanting me to take her photo because "I look cu-ute!"

Today, I have the best news to share.

The best.

Ellie is off her of heart medication for good.

As in everything points to her heart being healed.

As in we don't have to go back to the cardiologist for a year!

(Although I don't really know how to be a parent who no longer takes her child to the doctor every few weeks/months.)

We are soaking up all this goodness over here and enjoying our time just the three of us as we settle in to watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade and then make a feast.

Sending you so much love and light today. Thank you for your support and kindness along the way and for all the support and stories you will continue to share. I adore you.

Blessings,
Liz

PS Kelly is sharing a beautiful free download of her art over on Chickadee Road through the weekend. Check it out here.

so i fly necklaces in the shop

I'm working like a little elf over here having so much fun updating the shop (and feeling so much gratitude for those buying handmade this holiday season).

a few of the new so i fly necklaces in the shop

This week I uncovered a few more butterfly and bird pendants in my studio and created a new collection of "So I Fly" necklaces. Last year around this time, a few words came to me that inspired this favorite soul mantra phrase:

When life pushes me beyond what I know
When the joy fills me up 
When the fear tries to settle in
When I am holding on to hope with each breath
When all this and more leads me to feel unsure of the next step,
sometimes I step outside, feel the warm sun upon my shoulders, look up at the blue sky, and decide it is time: 
So I fly.

I also added a handful of simple earrings and a couple of other necklaces.

For those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week, I'm thinking about you as you begin to gather with family and make final choices about your plans and menus and sink into the goodness and intensity that this time of year brings. Sending light and love as you find your way.

the true stories

This afternoon I was working in the studio and went into my storage area to grab a few shipping supplies and there it was. This box that I somehow still have in my home after thinking we had gotten rid of it on at least five different occasions.

When I saw it there buried under a box of tags I send with my jewelry, my mind whirled for a minute and then I said aloud, "It's okay to tell the true stories."

So here I am telling it. This piece of the bigger story I just keep unpacking a little at a time as I heal and crack open and mend.

This is the story of a cardboard box that holds the infant CPR DVD and inflatable infant "manikin" that they sent home with us after Ellie Jane was hospitalized at five weeks old.

She was only 7.75 pounds and we were trying to comprehend all that was happening with her heart. Trying to understand that she now had two unrelated heart issues and that she would be going on four medications.

I remember the moment when Jon explained that we had to watch the DVD before they would let us go home. I wonder if he thought I looked like a ghost in that moment when I looked up from holding Ellie who was attached to so many things and just stared at him.

So often during those five days, I felt like a floating head as I stuffed all my feelings into my big toe so I could be ready to make whatever decisions were coming our way.

This is why I started taking mirror photos of how I really felt...so I would know I wasn't disappearing.

When I read about other mothers nuzzling with their little ones who are just weeks old and how they are amazed at how fast they are growing, I think about that ghost of a woman who looked at the nurse and said, "Yes, we will watch the DVD. But I am not practicing on that baby in that box right now." I think about that ghost of a woman who was trying to heal from a c-section while navigating motherhood and all that newborn life brings, and I want to hold her gently in my arms and run my fingers through her hair while she cries herself to sleep.

The true story is that I ache every now and then when I think about the first year of Ellie's life. The true story is that we were sent home with an inflatable baby three days after our own baby almost died and all I could think about was if I didn't keep her alive all I would have left was that box. The true story is that the mending is messy. The true story is that somewhere between there and here I began to realize I need to gently keep mothering myself. 

Sometimes the triggers, the boxes buried under the everyday, become moments where we can just breathe in the truth of what we know and notice what comes up and honor all of it as we create the space to heal just a little bit more. 

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.

***

For my stories of my adventures in self-care, sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is really more like a note from my heart to you.

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