by Natalie Biles

 

Shine has been my life and work theme for the past, well, ten years now.  It started with making homemade soy candles.  It was creative therapy for my post-design job self.  I had decided to leave my full-time interior design job at a high-end residential firm.  Consuming antacids like candy, exhausted, no light left to shine.  Many of you know the feeling.  Burned out. Snuffed out.

When you take away oxygen, the flame of a candle dims and then dies. But for a little while a little ember glows. Return the oxygen, and the fresh air allows the flame to grow.

As I cooked up candles, I worked through the concepts of shine. I began blogging and writing. And designing again.  It was reenergizing to gift to others something hand-crafted, something personal.  It was fresh air to step back into people’s homes and encourage them as they worked on their projects.

Over the years, things and circumstances have taken the fresh air away. Last year, when my third son was born prematurely at 24 weeks, the 5-month NICU journey pretty much snuffed my flame out! Being a mom of three busy boys and starting a business and new blog can sometimes make the flame flicker a little!

But there are things that have been the “oxygen”; my faith, friends, and family.  Little steps at a time. Taking online blogging courses, reading, learning about business, leadership, and design.  My husband never misses a chance to encourage me to shine a little brighter, a little bolder.

Sometimes shining a light exposes things that aren’t too pretty in us and around us.  My eyes have been opened to those around me who may have had their light snuffed. There is opportunity to connect the creative with constant needs around us.

You may not feel like your little light is very shiny right now. Your light matters—give it oxygen and let it grow, and let it SHINE!  

Hi, my name is Natalie.  I’m an interior designer, blogger, pop-up shop owner. I’m married to an architect and mom to three energetic little boys.  My background is interior design, but God has stirred in my heart a passion for connecting a creative lifestyle with helping others.  Through shine design, ideas for design-based service projects have been planted and prayerfully will continue to grow over the course of the next year and beyond.  Shine Design Blog is a place for learning and encouragement for designers (professional or self-professed!), creatives, and those with an interest in design.

 

By Suzy Oakley

“The good Lord made only so many perfect heads; to the rest he gave hair.”
– ancient Chinese proverb (or some bald guy)

Bald is beautiful, or a husband’s chance to shine

Hey, it’s better than a comb-over

I can always count on my husband to come through for me, and being the subject of one of my harebrained blog posts is no exception.

I had already written a good chunk of this post about bald being beautiful – Bruce’s shiny head in particular – when he, unbeknown to me, decided to shave his head for a big race last month. I didn’t notice until we got home from dinner one night.

“Did you get a haircut today?” I asked as he pulled off his baseball cap.

“No. I’ve been working on it.”

He turned to show me the back. “Working on it” meant using this razor blade thingie – a device I hate – that he employs when he doesn’t feel like going to the barber shop. (I thought I had broken him of this unfortunate habit.)

I looked at the butcher job he’d done this time and said, “You need to go get somebody to fix that. Someone who has the right tools and knows what he’s doing.”

Not to worry, wife.

“I’m shaving it all off.”

Gulp.

He hadn’t shaved his head since he turned 40.

“Why?” I said.

“Aerodynamics.”

Ah. The big race.

To be honest, I was surprised he hadn’t tried this before. This man is a fast runner and, if he hadn’t been sidelined by Crohn’s disease for a few years, I have no doubt he could be among the elite runners in Arkansas, if not beyond. When he trains for a race, he’s a man on a mission.

I and my husband are are the turtle and the hare. (One look at us in motion and you can tell which is which.)

Even at age 55, my sweetheart is superfast, and this race last month was supposed to be his day to shine.

He was going to try to run a mile in under 5:10. (That’s 5 minutes and 10 seconds, my friends.)

He had been feeling pretty healthy of late, and he apparently wanted every advantage. So, the day before the race, all the hair on the back and sides his head was gone. (He kept his beard.)

To test him, I suggested he shave his legs, too. (My man is hairy. Arms, legs: fur.)

Apparently the head was enough, mainly because aerodynamics wasn’t the only reason for the shearing. He likes to shake things up every once in a while, just for something different. (For me, it’s a new nail polish or a new lipstick. For him, it usually means shaving his Vandyke or starting a beard if he’s clean-shaven.)

I hadn’t realized how big this race was to him.

BIG.

But, I’m sorry to say, he didn’t make his time goal on race day, and he was visibly upset. Talking about it over lunch the next day, he said it wasn’t so much that he was slower than goal but that he was so far off (24 seconds) that it made him question his ability to judge himself. (This is a man who normally can tell you within 1-2 seconds what pace he is running.) He had been spot on during training for this race, so it seemed (to me, at least) that he’d just had an off day.

It’s hard for me to get the frustration, but not entirely beyond my comprehension. I’m a fellow runner, after all. I understand goals and training and competition, even when you’re competing with yourself. I’m just not fast enough to win trophies, usually.

And Bruce did win a trophy that day, as usual. 🙂

My husband is truly the better half of us. Even when he’s upset, it’s often at himself. He gives others the benefit of the doubt, whereas I have extremely high expectations. He gives me a break many more times than I deserve it, more often than I give him a break. He drives me where I need (or want) to go, finishes my leftovers, cleans up after the dogs and tiptoes around the house when I’m trying to sleep. He hugs me when I cry (he has been there for more of my family’s funerals than I care to count). He sits beside me in church, even though he believes differently. He makes me laugh out loud because he’s not afraid to be goofy.

He poses for pictures for me – whenever I ask.

Bruce was bald when I met him, and I always joke that the extra space simply gives me more surface area to kiss. I don’t remember whether I thought bald was sexy before I met him, but I know it for sure now.

I’m not sure we were a match made in heaven (our wildly different faith backgrounds, you know), but I do know that he’s my shining star.

Suzy Taylor Oakley is a former copy editor (aka AP Style Nazi) with a BS in journalism from Arkansas State University. She’s a wellness coach, a running coach and Mama to the Spice Dogs (Salsa and Pepper). She lives in Cardinal country but bleeds Dodger blue. Suzy, Bruce and the Spice Dogs wag their tales in Batesville. You can find them at Suzy & Spice and To Well With You.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/OakleySuzyT

by Katharine Trauger

What in the world is a shiny window?

All my life I’ve loved clear, clean, shiny windows.

But not the job.

Oh, the work didn’t disturb me, but ick—I did not thrill at the insect mortuary in the windowsill I had to plow through every spring. Nope. And I did not like icky soap water running down (up?) my arms and soaking my clothes as I reached for the higher panes.

Sometimes I put it off until fall. Don Aslett preferred fall cleaning, right?

However! Once my children grew old and large enough to be trusted with large panes of glass and large masses of dead bugs, I decided I would pay them to do the windows.  They’d learn to desire an education that way, right?

Through the years, I’d developed a system and could do an entire window in an hour. That included removing and washing all storms and screens, cleaning out the bug mortuary, drying everything, polishing what needed it, and putting it all back, At the time, $5.00 per hour was minimum wage…

They’d seen me struggle, though. They were unsure. Until they did the math—Twenty-two windows at five dollars each, was more money than they’d ever received at once, and plenty to lure them into taking over my job. Yay!

One of the big blessings of owning children is being allowed to tell them what to do when no one else on earth can do so. Ha.

For a long while, I was surrounded by taller-than-me persons who could always use an extra $110. I loved it. These kiddos of mine knew my mantra: If it’s still dirty, it still needs to be cleaned. But they also loved me and knew I’d make payroll.

They did it for the payroll…

I reveled in their cleaning my dirty windows every year. It took them weeks, because of working around other activities. They reveled in the big bucks they earned. I napped while they struggled with screens and storms. I laughed at their huge eyes when they saw the bug mortuaries. I smiled benevolently when I paid them, knowing they had earned every penny and they were totally pleased to be filthy rich.

I grew complacent and lazy.

Then the creek dried up.

I am convinced that the main cause of the empty nest syndrome is that the mom has to do her own housework.

All of it.

She is the only one left at home in a building huge enough to launch a crowd of teens into the wilds.

We are up to 27 windows in our current house. The sunroom, alone, contributes eleven of them to entertain the cleaning personnel. Our kiddos have all graduated from college and found great jobs.

Now they own windows that need cleaning.

What’s a mother to do?

I began looking around for other teens to adopt—just for 27 hours—and I found one!

It happened while I was tutoring a friend’s child. I kept noticing she had all these chores to do and was brave enough to take care even of horses, but careful enough to love on baby chicks and keep them alive, too.

She’d tended our animals before and had done well. She needed 4-H money. I thought she might be good.

I proposed. She accepted. That was two years ago and we have become the dynamic duo.

This girl can wash the windows, sills, and screens, outdoors, faster than I can do only the insides of the windows. And yes, she’s watching and she considers me slow. Her innovation and determination caused her to invent ever-increasing methods for speed at window-washing.

She literally washes and dries two to four windows at once, including the sills and screens.

And she’s really good about not crushing foundation plantings, and not ripping screens.

She is so fast that what I’d thought would be at least a two-day job lasted only one morning. You won’t believe how shiny my windows are…

And at five dollars a pop, she’s feeling pretty rich, her only trouble being that she wishes we’d clean windows twice a year.

I’m thinking about it.

 Katharine Trauger is a retired educator and a women’s counselor. She and her husband spent 25 years running a home and school for children who would otherwise have been homeless and has worked 15 years as contributor and/or columnist for several small professional magazines, with over 60 published articles. She blogs about the rising popularity of “being at home” from a sun room on a wooded hilltop in the Deep South at Home’s Cool! and The Conquering Mom and tweets at Katharine Trauger (@KathaTrau). She is currently working on a self-help book entitled: Yes, It Hurts, But . . . 

This will definitely make you happy.

Lying on a gurney, I watch the bruise on my forearm expand.  Since my vein blew, a second intravenous line was inserted on the back of my right wrist.  I hate it there, it interferes with my writing.  I brought my computer so I could write but I know my time is limited.  When the Benadryl kicks in I will get sleepy and stupid. 

The viscous infusion of gammaglobulin accumulates bubbles in the line as the hours slowly pass.  Invariably, the pump begins to complain loudly about the time I get sleepy.  The obnoxious alarm awakens me and summons the nurse every few minutes as I start to drift off.  

I am hospitalized so frequently I drove myself today.  Usually, my dear friend Karen drives me.  Our time together is one of the gifts this chronic disease has given me. I don’t know if the sun is shining outside or if it is raining, nor does it matter. I will spend the day in my cubicle at the infusion center.  There are no windows and it feels like a cave. I ask the nurse to open the interior blinds so at least I can see them scurrying around the desk.

Since I cannot sleep and I cannot stay alert, I drink coffee.  It is weak but fresh and the supply is endless in the hospital.  In my grogginess, I see a couple of friends searching above the entryways for a room number.  I wave to them and they stay for a visit.  I first met them nine years ago when they moved here from somewhere up north. They are both professors at the university and whenever I am in their company I am acutely aware of my diction and drawl.  They trusted me to deliver their two precious daughters who are bright, creative and thoughtful.  Today, I am presented with two pages they colored front and back.  

The older sister painstakingly wrote my name in symmetrical block letters and drew a rainbow over flowers.  The flowers are smiling.  She signed her name in black crayon on the back and she wrote,

“Get well soon!”

Yeah, that probably won’t happen.  Myasthenia gravis is incurable, but the sentiment is thoughtful. The younger sister may have copied her design, but her rainbow is smiling in addition to the flowers.  She wrote,

“I drew this because I thought it would make you happy.  It is a smiley rainbow over smiley flowers.”

How could those words not make me happy?

The flowers are smiling, the rainbow is smiling and now I am smiling too.  It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow. And it definitely makes me happy.  The key to happiness is not perpetual sunshine.  The key to happiness is accepting the necessary rain to make a rainbow and knowing rainbows can smile – if you have a set of crayons.  Flowers smile too – if they get enough rain and sunshine. The key to happiness is focusing on the treasures, not the tragedies.  But sometimes it takes a tragedy for us to find the treasure; just like it takes rain and sunshine to make a rainbow.  The ultimate key to happiness is crayons, definitely crayons.  May the sunshine in your rainstorm and may your smiley rainbow over your smiley flowers make you happy too.

Proverbs 17:22, “A cheerful heart is good medicine…” (NIV)

Vickie Petz Henderson, M.D. practiced obstetrics and gynecology for twenty until her active life was derailed by a rare neuromuscular disease.  She has now been given her heart’s desire to write.
Facebook: Vickie Petz Henderson
Blog: My Right Side Up Life   www.myupsiderightlife.com
Twitter: @rightsideuplife