It took me a really long time to figure out the style I wanted for my home. I’ve never had much of a personal style, as I was reminded recently when a school friend from home posted pictures recently from our middle school days (Thanks, Asch!), nor have I ever really had a decorator’s eye so I never really imagined my home would ever really be a place that I would enjoy looking at. A place to lie around and drink a cocktail? Yes. But as far as the aesthetics were concerned, I figured I would be lucky to get a laminated poster taped up. Then Pinterest was born and was quickly followed by Instagram so you couldn’t avoid feeling bad about how your home looked anymore. As the years went on, I discovered that my eye was constantly seeking out the homes that were light on stuff but heavy on nature elements. Slowly, I have been working toward bringing that feeling into our home. As it turns out, the bonus with decorating this way is that it’s usually pretty cheap (if not free) and it very rarely creates waste.
The first year or two of our kids’ lives are spent with them sleeping in the reading nook attached to our room. For the girls, I never decorated the space because, well, to be honest, I wasn’t in a very good place emotionally and mentally and decorating for infants who didn’t care was the least of my concerns. But I’m no longer just trying to survive and thought a mobile type thing above Elias’ crib would make the space more inviting, give him something to look at, and can be used even when the crib is finally moved out after taking up that space for the past 4+ years. So I took the kids out to “the back 40,” shooed the chickens out of the way, found a stick and some feathers, came inside, found some shells we had from Florida, drilled some holes in them, hung everything with jute twine and voila! A free, nature provided, zero waste wall decor. Originally, I thought I’d make a hanging mobile above his crib but when all was said and done, I didn’t trust my skills enough to hang that sucker from the ceiling above his bed and feel good about it not falling on him in the middle of the night so it got hung on the wall instead.
What’s my point in all this? Use nature to decorate! It’s free and zero waste!
