Did You Know this is a Lifestyle Blog?

Did you know my blog is a lifestyle blog?

Me either!

I’m kind of reeling from the shock of finding out recently that I write a lifestyle blog.  I thought I just had a blog to which I would periodically, infrequently, haphazardly post things. Some of the things were about plants, some about crafts, about foods, about my family, about emotions, about my travels, about literature, … none of it connected or thought through to tell a bigger story. How can that be a lifestyle blog?

Apparently, it can be a lifestyle blog quite easily. So easily in fact, that I didn’t even know I wrote one!

Now that I do know this about my blog I’m terrified!  I suddenly feel obligated to up my game and post accordingly – the pressure is on! A quick google search of the top five lifestyle blogs of 2017 (so far) showed me that I have a long way to go to be able to blog with the big girls (yes, they are all female bloggers!) Nonetheless, I am going to examine my life in light of this new information and then try to assess its attendant style. On top of that, I’m going to try to teach, share and show things pertaining to my life and my newly discovered ‘style’. I will no longer just thoughtlessly exist, occasionally taking up valuable cyber space. Wish me luck!

To that end, I present to you my first ever intentional lifestyle blog post (somebody cue some music …)

Three years ago, a few weeks after my husband’s death in September, we had his memorial service at our/my house on a hot and dry Southern California Fall day in early October. So many of our/my dear friends and family took care of everything, (and I mean everything!) in organizing, preparing and pulling off the enormous job of a memorial service at home. It was a massive undertaking and they all, to a person, did a magnificent job.

One friend had two large wreaths made to my specifications for my recently installed vintage pedestrian gates. The gates were my last gift from my husband and I wanted the wreaths to be hung on them for the service. Not only that, I wanted them to be made out of herbs, rosemary and bay specifically, for their herbal significances and traditional usage at funerals and memorials. I was, however, in no shape to make them myself even though I used to teach wreath making. I was a basket case. So my friend and her husband took care of everything, they gathered the herbs, had wreaths made from them, beribboned them with “somber green” ribbon (color per my request) and then hung them up on the gates before people began arriving that afternoon.

They were perfect! And they have been hanging there ever since. I can’t bear to part with them even though, three years later, they have seen better days. Each time I traverse through the gates to get the mail, more and more needles fall off the rosemary and leaves fall off the bay. I could make new ones, but I have lost so much lately that I don’t want to lose these two gifts yet. I’m not ready to let go of them emotionally. It’s clearly another little known “widow problem”. I wanted to find a way to eek out some more time from these wreaths, so I …

… I went to Michaels and bought teeny tiny spray cans of gold and silver paint (on sale! The paint cost less than 4 dollars and I wasn’t left with cans of paint I would never use again and some new ribbon). I took the wreaths down, left the old ribbon on and sprayed them, ribbon and all, on some cardboard in an out-of-the-way place and left them to dry a few hours before adding a big new bow to each, right over the old ones, and hung them back up!

I really like how they look! I hope they last another few years! Emotionally I have gilded more than some decaying wreaths. This is how I am going on with my life, making this …

… my life-style.