Create the Space You Deserve

When it comes to designing your home, the old rules no longer apply. Many people work hard to make sure that their antiques are mixed only with other antiques and modern styles stay modern. However, there's no need to be so rigid. You can mix antiques with modern styles and create your own signature look.

That's exactly what Butler does in her cottage. In Creating the Space You Deserve, she chronicles how she redecorates her cottage to meet her needs. She mixes antiques with a more modern style and creates something truly personal that fits her and her personality.

Jill Butler creates a beautiful home by truly understanding her personal style and needs. After experiencing major life changes she created a space that could be a refuge for her and provide her with comfort and solace. At the same time, it has a touch of whimsy that truly fits her.

When you create the space you deserve, you'll find that you don't have to worry about decorating "rules" and can instead focus on what fits your needs. At the same time, there are tips and tricks that can help you turn something from looking hodge podge into something that flows from room to room and looks cohesive.

In Creating the Space You Deserve, you'll learn how to take your ideas and turn them into something concrete that you can enjoy in your home. Everyone truly deserves to have a home and a space that can be a refuge and expression of self.

When it comes to decorating your home, many guides help you to look at paint colors and carpet samples. However, few guides really help you to get to the core of what it is you want for your home - a true expression of yourself.

Create the Space You Deserve is about more that Butler's cottage renovation, it's about dealing with the major changes in her life and expressing herself through her interior design. It was written after her 16-year marriage ended as well as the death of her brother from cancer. Not only was she starting over with her home, she was starting over with her life.

Yes, Butler does give you photos and tips for how to decorate your home. But she also helps you to understand how your home is an extension of you and how you can express yourself in your surroundings. Creating the Space You Deserve is a guide that takes you beyond the wall color and speaks to your heart.

By recreating your home, you have the opportunity to recreate yourself. Renovating a room or an entire house is your opportunity to take a look at self and determine how you want to be expressed in your space. Everyone has to rediscover themselves at different points in their life - especially in times of major change. Creating the Space You Deserve will inspire you to rediscover yourself.

Jill Butler is an author, an artist, a designer, and a traveler.

She combines all of these attributes in her book Create the Space You Deserve: An Artistic Journey to Expressing Yourself Through Your Home. She's traveled all over the world and lived for 16 years in France, an influence you can see in her design.

After leaving France, Jill moved back to the United States and began renovating her cottage home. Her journaling about the process led to the creation of Create the Space You Deserve where this experience is chronicled. The book is about more than redecorating a home - it's about reclaiming your life. It is about the process of self-discovery.

Jill Butler is also the owner of JillsBirds'n'Words, a company that began as a project to help pay her brother's medical bills from cancer treatment. The company has continued to grow and is still giving back to the community. Jill is also involved in the York Butler Fund that is primarily used to help artists of all kinds in a time of need.

In addition to her latest book Create the Space You Deserve, Jill is the author of Paintbrush in Paris, Rendez-vous With France, and Wandering Paris. This French trilogy is based on her personal experiences living in France.

Planting seeds require patience. Impatiens only require shade.

So, the planting and tending the garden season has arrived. I wish for the season to be more forceful in it's appearance. Like, lets get on with the sun and some warmth.

This year in and around my garden, I've decided to focus on pots, planters and the like. An idea jumped at me at the entry to the River Tavern. Others along Main Street Chester have also created this idea. Must be a trend. The "Tavern" planted their decorative pots with pansies and different varieties of lettuces. This is both beautiful and symbolic. The Tavern is, after all, a restaurant that's focused on local farming, organic and home grown foods. Perhaps we'll be munching and crunching on these spring lettuces in the near future. I'll be watching the menu. In the meantime, I'm inspired. The local supermarket is offering a wide variety of lettuce start-ups so that's my choice for my seasonal pots; lettuce and whatever blend of compatible flowers that want to share my terracotta pots.

Seeds and lettuce seedlings. Simultaneously my neighbor came across the street bearing the overflow of her lettuce seedlings. Stephanie took a class this early spring on growing from seeds. This gift is now planted along with the pansies. Quite frankly, I'm not confident or hopeful. I cannot see what's going on. So far, I have no feedback, no signs either of growth or failure. There's barely a hint of anything other than weeds pushing their way through. Perhaps, I don't know the difference between a weed and a lettuce. In any event, there's little hope on my part of an eventual contribution to my salad bowl.

What if had I followed the entire process; taken the class, been educated in the process of preparing the soil, of nursing the seeds, keeping them warm like newborns? I'd feel more confident about these babies. As I didn't do any of that, there's another choice. Patience.

In-patience. In that like my favorite shade flower, impatiens, misspelled? I long for this favorite flower to be called in-patience as a reminder. Patience is not my natural strength. I'm continually reminded to take a deep breath and step back and slow-down. I've learned there is no other way having miserably failed with impatience. Impatiens need little attention as they are easy to grow and extremely forgiving,. I welcome them in great abundance in and around the house and especially here on the nearly collapsed potting bench.

Patience is not procrastination. Have I ever been patient enough to plant seeds. No. Well, maybe once. No wonder I've never been successful.
Patience is a life lesson. It's an art form that's requires living in the moment....right now. Overtime it becomes a muscle when well exercised. Patience is not procrastination. Procrastination is more about holding back and fear based. It's the 'what if I try this or that and it fails?' kind of thinking. Well hallelujah, I failed because I tried something new, not failed because I I didn't even try. That's the worse kind of failure. And furthermore, what determines failure? Just because it didn't make money? That's limiting. Maybe it's just the first phase that needs reworking like a first book proposal or a missal shot.

"Let-us" be patient and trust. Here it is. What we sow we reap.
Our work is like planting seeds. What we do today has ramifications for tomorrow. We're always planting for some future moment while living in the present. We all have our ideas and experience of what works or not. And if we don't, it's probably time we did. Why am I doing what I am doing? Right here, right now. We are creating our next season's harvest. As "they" say, "now IS the future". The trick is not to focus on the future but to stay focused on the now and to simply be aware of the seeds we're planting and trust what emerges in some future moment. .

So back to the seeds and the seedlings. I plant the seeds. I watch them grow or not. They, like ideas, are not all meant to be harvested.
I relax trusting and knowing that I've made the effort, taken the time to care for these new beginnings. I do not need to know the result because I'm busy creating the next new idea while gently caring for the new borns. As the seeds of our living grows, we create new confidence to draw on; experiences that can be applied and played with in new ways. We can revisit these seeds of ideas at a later time when they become exactly the right idea for the next present moment.

My Salad (dressing) Days. There was a time when I loved making salad dressings. Odd....perhaps. In hopeful anticipation of the yet to be know, I'm inspired to create a new salad dressing, or two. If all else fails, I'll barter the dressings for some of Stephanie's lettuce.........or consider harvesting outside at a nearby restaurant who's not guarding their planters.

Jill Butler is an author, illustrator, designer and creativity coach. Her product designs are specific to France as are her first three books. Jill now writes for women in transition and how the home and the personal transformation work hand in hand in her latest book, Create the Space You Deserve. For more, visit: http://www.jillbutler.com