Having fun with design

 

My littlest man, Beau, gave me something today.

“Mama, I made something for your flog.” (He calls my blog my “flog”.  I corrected him the first couple of times he said it, but now I let it go.  It may turn out to be entirely accurate) 🙂

This is what he gave me:

 

 

“It’s a whole room I made myself, just like you.  Only I designed it for my mini figure”.

“Beau Man,” I told him, “thank you so much!  This is awesome!  I know you worked hard on it!”.

He looked at me like I was crazy.  “It wasn’t work.  It was fun.”

Just like design is supposed to be.

Now, you guys know I’m still learning about this whole design thing.  Heck, every time I read about how to do Hygge in your home, the first thing I do is Google “How to pronounce Hygge” (Please tell me I’m not the only one!)  I can’t tell you how many mistakes I’ve made…how many holes I’ve put in my walls (twice from dropping mattresses down stairs when I was rearranging rooms! TWICE!!! Who does that?? ).  I’ve already painted our lower cabinets two different colors since we moved in this house a year and a half ago. In our very first home, I painted the walls in our living room a Ralph Lauren hunter green suede.  Michael, bless his sweet heart, didn’t tell me until after we moved that it looked like camouflage (entirely user error I’m sure).  Once, I thought that I would add “architectural interest” to our dining room by adding moulding on the wall above our small bookcases, then filled in the moulding with giant Cricut scrollwork appliques.  The effect was that it looked like I had two giant decks of cards on my dining room walls. Did I mention that I hung the moulding with liquid nails?  That was how I learned how to patch and repair drywall!

I can’t say that I’ve always had fun.  Especially when I was texting Michael pictures of the holes in the walls from the mattresses.  Especially the second time.

Mostly when I haven’t had fun, it’s been because I’ve been working too hard to get a look that either a) just wasn’t me or my family, but was something that I thought I should do or b) see a.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with my own design decisions.  Much less influenced by others, although I am certainly inspired by others daily.  And I definitely learn from others- hence my love of design books, magazines, and blogs!  But I don’t let them dictate where I want to go with design in my own home.  The whole process of design becomes so much more enjoyable that way.  In fact, that has made a HUGE difference in how much I enjoy the process.

Anyway, Beau designed every piece of this thoughtfully, down to the lamp.  Did you know, this little mini fig is a race car driver?  He is on break now with his dog.  He just needs a small place to relax.  That’s why he has a chair (his dog can sit there too) and a bed- although notice his dog takes up a lot of his bed?  Just like our dogs.  His uniform is in the closet, and he is watching TV and drinking a cup of coffee.  He likes bright colors, but notice the touch of pink in his closet walls?  He also likes pink, so Beau added that as well.

Beau really thought about what this little mini fig needed (function) and liked (form).   Then he just got down to it. And he had fun doing it. If only it were always that simple!