Have you ever paused, amidst a whirlwind day, to savor a fleeting moment that sparked joy? On the Create Harmony podcast, I invite you to do just that. Picture this: a sunroom transformed from simple earth tones into a flourishing garden oasis, complete with a mural that celebrates the vibrance of nature. I recount the creative journey that renewed our family sanctuary, with hopes that it will inspire you to find and cherish the beauty in your own environment.
In the spirit of rejuvenation, I guide you through a practice designed to reconnect you with your senses, breathe in new beginnings, and exhale heartfelt gratitude. It's not just about the peaceful interlude; it's an invitation to weave these restorative practices into the fabric of your daily life. Join me, as we transform not just spaces but states of being—one glimmer at a time.
Have you ever paused, amidst a whirlwind day, to savor a fleeting moment that sparked joy? On the Create Harmony podcast, I invite you to do just that. Picture this: a sunroom transformed from simple earth tones into a flourishing garden oasis, complete with a mural that celebrates the vibrance of nature. I recount the creative journey that renewed our family sanctuary, with hopes that it will inspire you to find and cherish the beauty in your own environment.
In the spirit of rejuvenation, I guide you through a practice designed to reconnect you with your senses, breathe in new beginnings, and exhale heartfelt gratitude. It's not just about the peaceful interlude; it's an invitation to weave these restorative practices into the fabric of your daily life. Join me, as we transform not just spaces but states of being—one glimmer at a time.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Speaker 2:
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. This is a podcast about setting an intentional rhythm. It's about savoring life's blessings and learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. If you like to be creative and fun, you'll probably find a lot here that you love, and if you want to learn more about bringing stillness and gratitude into your life, there is a place for you here as well. In this place, we'll take a few minutes to celebrate those everyday joys and remind ourselves how to notice the good things all around us. Our topics include ways to raise your well-being, ways to refresh your life and things you can do to refocus you on peace and joy.
Speaker 2:
I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 71. Last week we talked about glimmers and how we can use them to bless ourselves and bless others. So, for a refresher, a glimmer is like a micro moment of pleasure, a micro moment of peace or joy, and this is something that springs up in our everyday lives to make us more content. These are your everyday good things that we often find ourselves just too busy to notice, but by noticing them you can fill your day with positive energy, and then that spills out into everything we do so. When I heard about Glimmers, I knew that this was something we needed to talk about, because this is what we're all about. This is our wheelhouse finding small pockets of joy that we can celebrate in our everyday routines. So a glimmer, as I said last week, is the opposite of a trigger. It's something that makes you feel safe and happy and whole. So, for today's episode, I'm going to share a glimmer that has been happening around my house.
Speaker 2:
And my hope is that when you hear all about this, you are going to feel inspired to find something like that right where you are. So if you followed along for a while, you know that we moved from one house to the other last fall and I also shared, at the time that I was talking about our move, that part of that process included some freshening up of our house. Our house is not new, but it was new to us, so it needed a little bit of freshening up of our house. Our house is not new, but it was new to us, so it needed a little bit of freshening. The color palette of the previous owners was mostly like earth tones and we are much more garden-y people. We like blues, we like greens, we like to have some color and make a place that has a look that's fresh and vibrant. That's just what we're all about here. So one area that we applied this concept is our sunroom. So in this house we have a sunroom that's right off of our kitchen eating area.
Speaker 2:
It's a pretty neat room because it's octagonal in shape and it has all these beautiful arched windows. It gets plenty of light, the windows have lovely shutters on them, which is really neat, and when we got here it had all those great features. It even has a fireplace in the corner. It has all those great features, but the decor in the room was it was pretty simple. It had beige walls and taupe colored tile on the floor and we really enjoyed that look, but we wanted something a little brighter. The windows I mentioned earlier that this has a lot of windows. The sunroom has a lot of windows and they look out onto our back patio. The ceiling is raised. There's a ceiling fan. So all that to say this is a terrific starting point and we and it's a place, it's a room that we're going to spend lots of time.
Speaker 2:
I've shared before that I like plants and I like to grow things. I really I don't have a super green thumb, but I do like having plants around me. So another neat feature of this sunroom is this built-in planter it has. It's like it's a planter box that's built into one opening in the walls. It's not the kind of thing, it's not a weird planter like from the 50s. It's like this cool built-in planter, so it's a nice place to create a plant-friendly space and so to make it match our decor, we needed to take a few steps towards more fresh and more garden-like Now.
Speaker 2:
The first step was to have the walls painted a light, airy blue color. Most of the rooms that surround this sunroom are pretty neutral, so I thought adding the blue would be good, and we didn't have a rug that came from our old house to go on the tile. So I ordered a rug and it's green. It's this verdant grassy green, not too bright, but just nice. Green rug solid color rug on the floor. Not too bright, but just nice. Green rug solid color rug on the floor.
Speaker 2:
So the most special thing in that room what I'm leading up to this glimmer is we had a mural painted all around the room. So how this happened was I was traveling and I saw a mural that I really, really liked and I took pictures of it as an inspiration. It had a light blue wall as the background, just like mine, and it had lots of trees and birds and butterflies, and it felt just like you were walking into a garden. So we hired a local muralist named Denise Hughes, who used those inspiration pictures, and she created a wonderful mural all around our sunroom. It is fabulous. The trees look like they are growing in and around the arched windows and the flowers and the leaves are all on the branches way up overhead.
Speaker 2:
It has some special features. Like my older daughter really loves hummingbirds, so she painted some hummingbirds there. It makes the room feel peaceful and zen. We love it. It has been an absolute joy for us to see all of this unfolding and it sort of corresponded to spring opening up outside. So this has been great to have those things going on.
Speaker 2:
At the same time We've put plants all around the room to add the garden effect, and we have three. We live here with three pets two cats named Willow and Marigold and we have a dog named Honey. So even our two cats love it, because we have this little tabletop fountain on one of the tables and they think that the purpose of this fountain is to give them fresh water to drink. So they come into the room and they get up on the table, get a little drink and then take a little nap, and our dog loves to snuggle down in there too. Everyone feels at home in that room. So we're getting ready to host a few events at our house this spring for groups at church and people in our community and our hope is that that bright, crisp room, the feeling that is in that room, will touch people as they come in and maybe they'll want to hang around for a visit and enjoy the calming effect. If you want to see a visual of this project as it was unfolding, I did try to document and I'll be posting on Instagram at mycreateharmony, and sharing a little more info in my monthly newsletter. If you're not a monthly newsletter subscriber, it's free. You could. You can go to my website and subscribe to that so you can see the actual pictures of this beautiful room.
Speaker 2:
Now that I have described my whole sunroom project profile for you, I'm hoping that you can find somewhere in your life to create a glimmer. Maybe you won't take on a whole room, maybe it's just a small place on your desk or a section of your closet. You might decide to add a new planter on your back deck and enjoy what grows there, or just put a little bud vase on the windowsill for a plant cutting. Your project does not need to be grand and your thing may not be plants. Like me, it might not be gardening and plants, but it might be baking or running or tennis or knitting. Whatever it is that brings those glimmers, elevate them in your life and look for ways to share them with others. We can spark joy everywhere.
Speaker 2:
Now for our closing. Today we are going to do another spring inspired mindful visualization. We did this last week, we'll do it again this week, so it's time to shift into our mindful posture and you need to adjust yourself to make sure you're in your most comfortable position. Think about your body and see if you feel yourself holding any tension somewhere, and it's okay to release that tension. Let it go right now. If it helps, you can shake out your limbs a little, or your hands or fingers or toes. Take a deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude. Breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude and if it makes sense for you based on what you're doing right now, you can close your eyes.
Speaker 2:
Today we are going to connect with the concept of freshness, of starting anew. Picture yourself being like a white, fluffy dandelion you have many white seeds. So many possibilities exist in you. All the things that have already happened are released into the soil. Take a minute to let go of yesterday, let go of last week, last month, last year. Those things are behind you now. You have a clean slate. The world is open for you, full of possibility. You have a clean slate. The world is open for you, full of possibility, full of promise. You are bringing a new energy into this moment, an energy that is ready for growth. You feel the gentle breeze blowing. The seeds of your good ideas release from you and spread all over the meadow. They drift all over to bless others with your new, fresh ideas and your energy.
Speaker 2:
You share your gifts with the world in this way. Your gifts touch places far from you like ripples in a pond. Your gifts touch places far from you like ripples in a pond. Your influence is gentle but powerful, kind but courageous. Your scope is far-reaching. You can't even see how far the seeds will go. What will they create? How will they change things? You just open yourself to the breeze and let nature guide you. Now, with your heart open, begin to bring your awareness back into your body.
Speaker 2:
Bring it back to the podcast. Bring it back to the podcast. You can wiggle your fingers and your toes a bit. Let's take one last deep breath, breathe in possibilities and breathe out gratitude, and if you closed your eyes at the beginning, you can open them now. We're all back together on the podcast now and we feel that freshness of spring, so take that feeling of freshness into the rest of your day. I hope that this has been a source of calm and joy for you today. I am so grateful that you took time to listen. We are always welcoming new people into our community. Now, if you have an extra minute and want to leave us a review, this will help more people find us and join us in sharing glimmers. Hope you'll come back next week for more conversations on how to refresh your life. And until next time, peace.