Creating Home {It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful}

As a young wife, creating home initially seemed simple to me. I lived with my parents until I got married, where I lived in an 8 foot by 10 foot bedroom until I was whisked away on my honeymoon.

Upon settling into our newlywed little rental house, I quite simply unpacked my new wedding gifts, setting the decorative items around the house on rescued-from-the-curb end tables, brown particle board bookshelves, and a borrowed chest of drawers or two.

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And then……my mother-in-law gave me stacks of home magazines that she hated to just throw out (by stacks, I mean multiple banana boxes full of glossy, dreamy pages to make a new housewife drool..and maybe become just a bit discontent with the small brick home in the middle of corn and cotton fields in a curve of the road in the corner of the county, tucked away in northeast Mississippi.) I began looking through the magazines, and for the first time in my life, I realized that I wanted a beautiful home. I wanted it SO. BAD.

As a bookworm and study-aholic, I knew that there was no way that my left-brained, mathematically-inclined mind could possibly create something so artistic and stylish on my own, so I planned to copy and re-create in my little rental home exactly what I saw on the magazine pages.

I tore out magazine page after magazine page and planned to purchase the items when I could. The only way I knew to create the home I dreamed of was to buy it.

Fastforward a couple of years, and I am living in a new little unfinished house — adventures in major DIY construction (also another story for another post..). We have less than 500 square feet of livable space, and even in that space we set our feet down onto OSB subfloor when we get out of bed in the mornings. We use cardboard boxes to store all our kitchen items (no cabinets yet), and our furniture is all used, old, and mismatched.

I completely quit trying to create a beautiful home. Until I could have a beautiful space in which to work — a perfect space to be able to create magazine-worthy living spaces and bedrooms — I figured that there was no use trying to create a home or to even work with the space that I had.

And then, one day in 2008, a facebook friend shared a link to The Nesting Place. I hopped over to Myquillyn’s site (aka: Nester), and I spent the afternoon (and every afternoon thereafter for weeks) devouring this beautiful blog with its incredible message: It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful {idhtbptbb}.

It clicked:
I could create beauty in the imperfect. I didn’t have to wait until my home’s floorplan was magazine material before indulging this God-given desire to create a beautiful and welcoming home. I could create home with a hot glue gun, some spray paint, and a box of straight pins.

With Nester’s book release this week, I have been looking around my home today, realizing how God graced me to find her blog at a time in my life when I really didn’t know what to do with the space in which God had placed me. My husband, little boy, and I now live in military housing on an Army post (and you know how charming, cute, and quaint on-post-housing is known to be…ahem.. 😉 ), and Nester’s principles and encouragement for creating home are as timeless for me as ever.

It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful.

From elbow grease and coats of paint..

To a “did-I-bite-off-more-than-I-can-chew?” slipcover project:

My magazine-perfect, buy-the-look mindset transitioned to:
“I can create a home by loving on it a little harder.”

I aim to mistreat windows with the best of them.

With Nester, I have discovered my “style” and what I love:

And I learned to love what I already have:

Of course, bringing a precious little boy into the home has made creating home so much more fun than I ever dreamed. And so worth it.

Not only has Nester guided me in the HOW of creating a beautiful home, but she has taught me that magazine-perfection is not the goal — creating beauty, investing your heart and love into your family, and simply learning and trying are the goals.

I’ll never have a house that is a full compilation of all those glossy, colorful magazine clippings. And, truth is: such a home does not exist. But, better than any perfect, roomy, customized house are the knowledge and abilities I have gained following along with Nester for the last six years — and how I learned to fall in love with my own home.

So, I’ll keep reading Nester’s blog, devour her new book, and work with this little rental house and its white walls, tan carpet, scuffed tile floors, and shiny gold light fixtures to turn it into a welcoming and inviting home for my husband, my little boy, and friends and family.

With a lot of love and admiration for Nester, I am eagerly awaiting my very own copy of The Nesting Place: It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful.

Thank you so much, Nester. I know that it will inspire and encourage me to offer up a work of gratitude and thanksgiving to God as I serve Him in creating a beautiful home.

Purchase your own beautiful copy today!! <3

<3, amanda

Bless Your Heart and Home is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

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..This post is happily shared with Sundays at Home, Works for Me Wednesday, Raising Homemakers, Titus 2sDay Linkup, Living Proverbs 31, Fellowship Fridays, Family Fun Friday, and Essential Fridays..