of lately

Okay, so we'll try this blogging thing again and see if I can stay within the boundaries of who I am.

I love the cottage look but I also love the Alaska look and feel. For awhile there I became discontent with all my dark oak furniture, my mission style chairs, and all the Alaskan artwork. I yearned for color--more white, more cherries, more flower prints, more pretty fluff, more oversized chairs. I became engulfed in thumbing through cottage style decorating magazines and books, yearning for that life. But it's not my life, right now. It's not my life.... As I sit and type this, I'm looking around. My home is peaceful. It's calm. It's relaxing. It fits in with all the rain we get and the dark and dreary days. This is a perfect look for Juneau and a perfect look and feel for me!

I love thrifting. Ditch hunting. Antiquing. I had become so envious of all your great thrift finds. Lovely pieces you find at the local thrift store or antique shop. Sadly, we don't have that here. We have a couple thrift stores but, honestly, most of the stuff should just be taken to the dump. Residents are huge contributors to these places, so where does it go....? I know I've contributed so many wonderful things but I don't think they ever make it to the shelves but are probably taken by the volunteers. We have one very teeny tiny antique store downtown, that's only open during the summer, during tourist hours and for tourist convenience.... it's not somewhere I shop because it's never open when I'm in the area. So I got caught up shopping on-line. Buying buying buying from all of your Etsy shops and your on-line sales. I had to stop visiting because I couldn't stop shopping. Everyone had something I needed, or wanted, or something I knew my daughter would love. I had to stop shopping because, simply, I don't need any more stuff. Too, envy is not a good thing. It makes us discontent; it makes us anxious; it makes us feel our life isn't good enough. I will no longer envy your homes.

Gardening has always been a love of mine and one I've been fairly proud of. People comment on my "Martha Stewart garden." Yet, every day I would visit my garden blog friends and admire your yards. Yearn for something similar. I think mostly it was the sunshine that was evident in all the photos. Sunshine is not something we have much of here so naturally it would attract me and naturally it makes everything look so much nicer. My gardens my not be picture perfect, but considering where we live and our weather conditions, it's pretty amazing. I will take what I can from your ideas but accept that we live in a different climate and one that may not be conducive to down south gardening ideas.

I love crafting but don't do much on my own anymore. I had become so in awe of all the creative people "out there." Your talents are incredible and the fact that you have time to do them amazed me. Yet, I know that your lives probably aren't any more incredible than mine. I have a good life and I need to be content with who I am and what I do.

Blogging is a whole nother thing. It has arms and legs and little fingers that sucked me in. My days were consumed reading every one's posts, commenting on your posts, and writing my own. That was no easy task as it took a lot of thought as to what I wanted to write and then I had to coordinate pictures to go with it. Way too time consuming! Nothing else was getting done so I had to shut down that aspect of my life for a short while, to get myself back on track.

So that's just a little of what's been going on in my life, why I've not blogged.