I'm a wife and mother with all of the necessary domestic skills.
Cooking - I love to host dinner parties with fabulous guests sitting around a table filled with delicious food. The right combination of guests can inspire an entire evening of discussion on a limitless variety of topics. My husband says I lured him with fresh baked bread and my Grandma's Poppy Seed Cake...but I think he liked some of my other qualities as well.
Sewing - My great-aunt Anna was a couturier (that's French for "private dressmaker for individual clients") for Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller from the 1940's through the 1960's. She taught me how to sew when I was ten years old - and it was the best gift she could have ever given to me. I sewed nearly all my clothes in high school (until I discovered the joy of jeans). I designed and sewed my wedding gown and altered my bridesmaids dresses from off the rack in the junior department to fabulous cocktail dresses. I've made curtains and upholstered furniture. Not much time for that at this point in my life, but a fabulous roll of textiles will always get my attention. Sew it goes!
Gardening - I have a fabulous, lush garden that I've grown completely from clippings and plants that other people discarded. Okay, here's where the disclaimer comes in. I grow succulents, mostly, and drought resistant plants. Technically, that makes me a sustainable gardener. It also means I have an appropriate awareness of my limits.
Home Decor - When life gets overwhelming, I don't turn to addictive substances. I switch on HGTV. Then I go to Loew's to buy some paint. In other words, my only chemical dependency has an eggshell finish. When my sons were babies, I hand painted baby furniture that had ornate wood turned details. Every turn had a separate series of details - stripes, dots and geometric shapes - all in different colors. After they outgrew it, the furniture was passed on to other kids who enjoyed it for years...and when they outgrew it...etc. At one particularly stressful point in my life, I'd already painted everything in my own house - so I called a girlfriend and told her I was coming over to paint her kitchen. That was a real win/win!
Jewelry Design - At some point in their lives, every girl makes jewelry. I started while my kids were still young enough to need me around all the time - but not hovering over them every minute. I got lucky and actually made a (sort of) income from it. My girlfriends got lucky on birthdays and holidays. Now if I could only find the time to make some fabulous baubles for myself!
Scrapbooks - Paper is one of my favorite things in the world. I've been known to buy a 100-sheet block of paper because there were five or six sheets I just HAD to have for a specific project. I have all of the scissors and glues and pens and "embellishments" - I just don't have the time to ever finish scrapping the massive amount of photos of my kids from the pre-digital days when Kodak moments wound up in Martha Stewart boxes with calligraphy labels. I do, however, make them amazing complex cards on their birthdays...which is how I justify keeping all of that paper!
Altered Art - I've always had a tendency to collect ephemera and interesting documents. There is something so very liberating about the the process of taking an item that might be discarded and transforming it into an artistic statement that has a new level of value. The only challenge is that sometimes it takes up too much space to keep them. But that's part of the wonderful transitory experience of it all. Create and share with others!
Cooking - I love to host dinner parties with fabulous guests sitting around a table filled with delicious food. The right combination of guests can inspire an entire evening of discussion on a limitless variety of topics. My husband says I lured him with fresh baked bread and my Grandma's Poppy Seed Cake...but I think he liked some of my other qualities as well.
Sewing - My great-aunt Anna was a couturier (that's French for "private dressmaker for individual clients") for Saks Fifth Avenue and Bonwit Teller from the 1940's through the 1960's. She taught me how to sew when I was ten years old - and it was the best gift she could have ever given to me. I sewed nearly all my clothes in high school (until I discovered the joy of jeans). I designed and sewed my wedding gown and altered my bridesmaids dresses from off the rack in the junior department to fabulous cocktail dresses. I've made curtains and upholstered furniture. Not much time for that at this point in my life, but a fabulous roll of textiles will always get my attention. Sew it goes!
Gardening - I have a fabulous, lush garden that I've grown completely from clippings and plants that other people discarded. Okay, here's where the disclaimer comes in. I grow succulents, mostly, and drought resistant plants. Technically, that makes me a sustainable gardener. It also means I have an appropriate awareness of my limits.
Home Decor - When life gets overwhelming, I don't turn to addictive substances. I switch on HGTV. Then I go to Loew's to buy some paint. In other words, my only chemical dependency has an eggshell finish. When my sons were babies, I hand painted baby furniture that had ornate wood turned details. Every turn had a separate series of details - stripes, dots and geometric shapes - all in different colors. After they outgrew it, the furniture was passed on to other kids who enjoyed it for years...and when they outgrew it...etc. At one particularly stressful point in my life, I'd already painted everything in my own house - so I called a girlfriend and told her I was coming over to paint her kitchen. That was a real win/win!
Jewelry Design - At some point in their lives, every girl makes jewelry. I started while my kids were still young enough to need me around all the time - but not hovering over them every minute. I got lucky and actually made a (sort of) income from it. My girlfriends got lucky on birthdays and holidays. Now if I could only find the time to make some fabulous baubles for myself!
Scrapbooks - Paper is one of my favorite things in the world. I've been known to buy a 100-sheet block of paper because there were five or six sheets I just HAD to have for a specific project. I have all of the scissors and glues and pens and "embellishments" - I just don't have the time to ever finish scrapping the massive amount of photos of my kids from the pre-digital days when Kodak moments wound up in Martha Stewart boxes with calligraphy labels. I do, however, make them amazing complex cards on their birthdays...which is how I justify keeping all of that paper!
Altered Art - I've always had a tendency to collect ephemera and interesting documents. There is something so very liberating about the the process of taking an item that might be discarded and transforming it into an artistic statement that has a new level of value. The only challenge is that sometimes it takes up too much space to keep them. But that's part of the wonderful transitory experience of it all. Create and share with others!
CONTACTCATHERINE.CLINCH@ICLOUD.COM
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