It consumes me and I do my best to keep it at bay. But those of you that LOVE something should love it unconditionally, thoroughly, at all times. This is me with ANY love I hold near and dear to my heart and design is no different. (It tends to love me back so that assists in our relationship).
I take my classes at the local community college, eventually hoping to get a degree in it, but knowing its not necessary to hold a degree to do what you love (aside from such things as practicing medicine-you may want a degree for that). I take any workshop that I come across that can assist and let my imagination run wild. I avidly watch HGTV and DIYnetwork. I read all my magazines from Architectural Digest to Flea Market Finds. I am constantly thinking of ways to arrange and rearrange and revamp and give new life to either the rooms my family lives in OR bookshelves that line the walls of the rooms my family live in.
However...
(and this is not be taken lightly)
We currently live in an apartment and it's not as though I have adequate amounts of space to make room for baby. I have succeeded in accomodating the rest of the household. But baby?!?! ....
It's not my first rodeo (nor baby) so I am completely aware that infants do not come with the load that some might deem necessary. (That load comes later on and we are hoping to be in a house by then). I am organized. Obsessively organized. I love orange, green, brown, golds, dark reds. Colors from the old country (hehehe)
Nothing strikes panic into the heart of a decorating diva like the arrival of a little brood of chick(s) and ensuing bushels of plastic that seems to ooze from every container. Little plastic, big plastic, munchkin-size plastic furniture and playground equipment-there's no end to the size and variety of the kiddie accoutrements. And the primary colors they insist on coming in clash horribly with every tasteful color scheme I am trying to maintain here. Just how does the playmat dangling with farm animals incorporate into my electic Old World meets French Country living room?
I have done a good job of maintaining my homes--enough so to appear that Elle Decor and the photography team has just left upon my visitors entrance. I have heard remarks like, "I am amazed a toddler lives here" or "How do you do it with the kids?" Howbeit, when cramped for space I am assuming that bins and crates and storage cabinets are now highly placed on my "things I cannot live without" list.
I suppose I can manage. As soon as the arrival I will bend (instead of breaking) to ensure that every base is covered (and hopefully not consisting of spiddle or that ever present stickiness that comes with little ones).
Our lives are museums of private experiences and at worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived. :)
The next couple of months, while entertaining the "nesting period" of the pregnancy, I look forward to coming up with new, inventive ways to continually maintain a clean, streamlined, happy home full of "stuff" and love :)
In the meantime...I must bake some brownies
