grand opening celebration

I'm so excited to share that the Soul Mantras have a new home: www.soulmantras.com! 

Everything about this new site makes me so happy! The photos are big! It is easy to navigate to other sections of the shop and see all the bracelets at once and then all the earrings and the stickers and the pocket talismans. And customizing your Soul Mantra is now so easy. I'm seriously in love.

In the Limited Edition section, you'll see a handful of new necklaces from the Where the Forest Meets the Sea Collection, which is full of pieces that remind me of my adventures along the Pacific Northwest coast. And after lots of requests, there's also a new layered listing from the 1993 Collection.

To celebrate this grand opening, all orders placed today on the new site, Monday, October 27, will receive a free pocket talisman (up until midnight PST tonight). No coupon code needed for the talisman. I'll just choose one for you and wrap it up with love and slip it in with your order. 

Thank you so much for your continued support of my shop! My Etsy shop will remain open at least through the holidays and the first few months of next year, but any new items and new collections will be listed on the new website. This feels like such a huge move for me and I'm so grateful to be able to celebrate with you!

Blessings and light,
Liz 

and then something exquisite happens

Staying open to the joy, to the beauty, is a practice I turn to again and again. Especially on the days it rains or my Facebook stream is full of heaviness or I'm grumpy or it really feels like the impossible is in front of me. 

Today, try to open yourself up to noticing the joy that crosses your path. You might even want to make a list of the joy you find.

It will change you. For real.

xoxo,
Liz 

she's all her.

The questions about "who does she look like?" and "who is she like?" come up from time to time. Watching her at the fair last month, I just kept thinking about how she is such her own person. So brave. So ready for adventure. So ready to laugh as she spins and dances and twirls in this world. So ready to say how she feels and what she wants and what she doesn't like. So ready to just be herself.

Jon and I are more of the "let's sit down and read or just be quiet" kind of people. Well, I'm more of the "let's sit down and solve the world problems and laught a lot" kind. Neither one of us has ever been much for climbing and spinning and sliding down the tallest slides ever. Nope. And we both have histories of keeping our wants inside, not wanting to rock the boat.

And then there's Ellie. 

She is teaching us every day with her wild, stubborn, brave, light-filled ways. 

She is awesome.

(And I finally caught them both with their dimples. Yep. In that photo she looks like her daddy.)

pinned it. did it. {with doña}

Doña has done it again with another fun Pinned it. Did it. post! Love this idea. I can think of about three skirts I'd like to do this with and make some fun new dresses for Ellie. And her time-saving hemming tip might have just changed. my. life. Read on...

***** 

Recently a friend told me about the horrendous bridesmaid dress she refashioned for her daughter into something cute and actually reasonable to wear. If I recall correctly, the process involved removing the bodice, turning it backwards, reworking the waist pieces into a folded collar and changing the length of the skirt.

I was impressed. I love the idea of re-fashioning clothes (and hope someday to take a class from the talented Emily Falconbridge on this topic), but I just can’t seem to imagine how to take apart an item of clothing and see it as something else. Let alone make it.

So I was pretty proud of my accomplishment this month, turning one of my old skirts into a dress for my preschooler. 
 

Mind you, this is a very simple re-fashion, but it gave me more confidence to try other things. 

I bought this skirt back when I was pregnant, while visiting my grandparents in Canada, both of whom have since passed. Honestly, it never looked good on me and I don’t really know why I bought it. But I did like the fabric pattern and because of the connection to my grandparents it has hung around through several closet purges. But I knew I wasn’t ever going to wear it. One day I realized that skirt length on me equals dress length for my daughter – I could turn it into a dress!

I found a very simple pattern on Pinterest for a dress with about the same shape as the skirt panels, took some measurements, and started disassembling.

It turns out this skirt was quite well made, with French seams and lining. Taking it apart was the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole project!

Once I had the waistband off and the lining removed, I had to figure out how to shape the actual dress. The original skirt was made of six panels but I didn’t need that much width, so I removed two panels and sewed that side seam back together to make a narrower tube.

Then I followed the instructions and measurements to cut armholes and the neckline casing.

I recently made my first project from a Japanese pattern book, and I picked up an awesome tip. When you are pressing a hem or folding in and pressing a casing, mark an index card with the width you need for each fold and use it to turn and press the fabric. This is so much faster than the way I learned to do it way back in high school!

The old waistband piece turned out to be just long enough to make a nice tie, so I sewed the long edge together and threaded it through the top edge casings.

And that was it!

The final dress is a bit big for my daughter right now, but it should be perfect next summer, and may even fit another summer after that.

I could not for the life of me get a not-blurry picture of her in it, but she did ask me if she could get married in it, which I am happy to take as a complement of the highest order.

Have you ever taken apart a garment to make something else? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!

Doña Bumgarner is a writer, artist, mama and a craft project-collector from way back. She loves Pinterest and uses it to help solve a household dilemma at least once a week (see her “Pinned and Done,” Handmade Gifts, and What’s For Dinner boards). She lives in Santa Cruz with her partner, their little one and his almost grown one, and a collection of cats and chickens. She blogs at Nurtured Mama.

Registration for her popular 21 Days To A Peaceful Holiday class, designed to help you create a simpler, more intentional holiday season, is now open. You can read more and register here.

Note from Liz: Over here in my corner, I'm focusing on how to "use Pinterest for good." I really see it as a community of people trying to see the beauty and possibility in their lives. I'm continuing to add a few new features here on my blog inspired by or directly about Pinterest as a way to invite others to look for this beauty within a social media community. Connect with me on Pinterest here. Read other "Pinned it. Did it." columns here.

you can choose

One of my favorite guided meditations (or images to think about during yoga) is to notice the space that you create inside you as you breathe. You focus on the expansion of your breath on the inhale and see if you can notice that feeling of space inside you. Because the simple act of taking a breath with intention and noticing this space can be done at any time, it is one of my go-to practices. And then I like to finish this meditation thinking about how I choose what enters this space. I choose. Every single day.

I hope this practice can become one you slip into your soul care toolbox to pull out when you need it.

inhale love, exhale peace

the inhale love, exhale peace necklace

I'm going to share more stories behind the jewelry in my shop. I've been having so much fun with gemstones and how the stories they carry become representive of ours. The gemstones are becoming their own Soul Mantras, and this makes me so happy.

One of my favorite simple but profound meditations is this one:

This necklace is your reminder to connect to that meditation - to the peace, compassion, and love within and around you. And to, when it feels right, send that goodness into the world each day.

An amethyst gemstone is used to promote peace, rose quartz is used to support love and compassion, and clear quartz is used to help support you as you give these gifts to yourself and the world.

You can find it here in my shop.

because...

Because sometimes your five deep breaths have to end with a little shake it out.

Because there are so many stories I want to tell you but when I come to this blank page I get quiet.

Because I'm trying on rest and recharging after the Fill It Up Buttercup Retreat.

Because a few ideas are simmering but the next move hasn't presented itself.

Because silliness is actually a very good companion to stillness.

Yes.

Hope things are full of joy and light in your corner.

(I used Instagram's "embed" feature to share this little video. I think it is so odd that the likes are recorded but alas, I don't know any other way to quickly share it. And it makes me happy. So there you have it. Oh and I made it using the PartyParty app.)

saying "yes" to this moment

Registration is closed at this time. Thanks for coming along! Another Yes, This round will happen this winter!

Come along and join me for 10 days of saying YES to this moment.

This FREE online adventure begins next Wednesday, September 24. Each day you'll receive an email from me in your inbox that will be a note from my heart to you. The email will include one of the ways I practice being present in my day-to-day life and an invitation for you to practice "saying yes to this moment" with a prompt each day. 

My intention is to invite you to open yourself up to the beauty and the realness and the joy that surround you each day.

Note that after our 10 days ends, you'll continue to receive stories about saying "Yes to this moment" through my (almost) weekly newsletter. You can opt out at any time.

You can join Yes, This at any time throughout the 10 days and you'll receive the next day's email. It will come with access to all the practices and previous emails. And if you've joined in and have Gmail and can't find that day's email, try your Promotions folder. Sometimes they hide there.

A little more about Yes, This 

Each morning, when I sit with my cup of tea and toast and begin to curate the messages, inspiration, true stories, and good things I'll be sharing over on Pinterest and on my blog that day, I think about you over in your corner beginning your day and I wonder what stories you might need to read to remind you that you're not alone.

Of course, the reality is that some of my mornings look more like me sitting in the middle of my bed with my daughter playing an ABC game on the iPad and toast crumbs everywhere and our dog resting her head against the bed hoping for a snack. The laundry is in a large pile in the hallway waiting and my to-do list seems to grow by the minute. 

And even in the midst of the messy reality of the everyday, I try to find that space to take a deep breath and see the beauty of this moment. The beauty of just being right here with the rain tapping on the roof and the smell of Earl Grey tea and the look in my daughter's eyes when she says, "I think it's cuddle time." 

But it's taken me a lot of practice to create space to see the beauty of this moment.

So I'm inviting you to come along for a deep dive into noticing that beauty as I share some of my favorite "being present" practices that help me say YES to this moment.

A Community of Yes

More than 3800 people have taken Yes, This since I began offering it a few times a year. And each time, we really do form a community of Yes!

During Yes, This, each day you'll be invited to share your response to that day's prompt through Instagram (and Pinterest) using the hashtag #yestothismoment so we can find one another. We'll also be meeting up on my Facebook page each day.

Instagram (and Twitter) :: If the post inspires you to capture the beauty and joy in your world through your camera lens, especially your cell phone, we’ll be connecting using the hashtag #yestothismoment.

Facebook :: Each day during the course I'll be sharing inspiration over on my Facebook page where you can share your experience with the Yes, This prompts and connect with other like-minded souls.

Pinterest :: You might even want to make a "Yes, This" board with images, quotes, and other good things that are inspiring you. Tag your pins #yestothismoment so they will show up in searches. 

Come Along

This is your invitation to come along and begin to trust that you're not alone as you experience the beauty and the hard stuff and the joy that is part of each day. There will be a community of like-minded spirits practicing alongside you. It is going to be so good!