Perfectly Zen

I have told my husband many times that to curb my consumerism I only need perfection. Take my family room, for example (pictured below). Since renovating it, I have never felt the inclination to do anything else to it again - not add anything, change anything - just curl up on the couch and read a good book (off of one of my perfectly decorated bookshelves). Oh please don't roll your eyes. Can you not see the logic here? When something truly becomes "us" - whether it be our clothes, our space, our food, etcetera, we discover a peace and inner balance that wasn't there before. We love ourselves, our lives seem good again - if only in that outfit or that room or whatever.



Over the next two years, hubby and I are going to do some extensive renovations to our cottage. Hubby built it with his dad so I have been told I absolutely cannot knock it down which, of course, is exactly what I want to do. This limitation has caused me much consternation as I absolutely HATE the current building - it's too close to the water, the ceilings are too low, the layout is awkward - and you cannot change any of those things unless you knock the entire thing down. It's a limiting factor that elicited some serious whining from me because I just couldn't imagine my zen calm without creating a whole new space. But I am a reasonable woman so I have decided to move on, to open myself up to the challenge - and to make a very imperfect space feel (almost) perfect. To toast my new attitude I decided to decorate the front porch (which won't be the front porch when I'm done with it) with some lovely planters and Canadian winter fauna. Ahhh. So zen.



I know. I know. The door needs some paint...