Beautiful Living by Laurel T Colins

Morning coffee thougnts!

Yesterday I hung my winter art.

Every year when the light starts to drop I pull out the little jars of lights and start brightening the dark corners. The winter painting goes up. The crystal lamp goes on. The Buddha sits in his usual stillness and watches it all.

And apparently so does she.

He's been up there all year. Yesterday his family finally came home.

I see deer outside my window all summer. Having them on my wall through the cold months feels like keeping something I love close when the world goes quiet.

This corner says one thing to me right now: resilience. The light in the darkness. The beauty that's possible even in the coldest season.

What do you pull out when the season turns? 🖤

I knew it was holding me back.
I could feel it every time I walked into my room. The cramped closet with a curtain in front of it, stuff on the floor, beautiful things I loved completely buried. I knew. And I kept walking past it anyway.
Not because I didn't care. Because I had stopped making myself a priority. There was always something else, someone else, something more urgent than my own space, my own comfort, my own joy.
I wasn't thriving and I knew that too. I just kept telling myself I'd be ok.
This is my Gene Keys shadow. Entropy. The slow slide into disorder that happens when I stop tending to myself first. It shows up in my physical space, in my thoughts, in my energy, in my business. All of it connected.
Getting this wardrobe from Facebook marketplace, putting up the art by Julie Breton | Abstract Art I almost sold off, the perfect plant and pot from Bellaflora ,the fairy lights, the little chair I actually sit in now, it sounds so small. But it wasn't small. It was me finally saying: I matter enough to have a space that feels like me.
This has been my Thanksgiving weekend and I'm so grateful for the time to reset.
What have you been walking past and telling yourself you'd be ok?

BEFORE & AFTER
UPPER DECK TRANSFORMATION
Same View, A Whole New Feeling ♡

BEFORE / AFTER

From the grey to a warm modern farmhouse luxury covered deck. We love these amazing lights from Hudson Valley and all the styling products we sourced from Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, Hobby Lobby. Thank you so much to the amazing Laurel for the styling assistance — I had so much fun working on our team with you as our styling assistant, with all the finishing touches being placed in the perfect location.”

CONSTRUCTION Weiland Construction Team
PAINT Valor Painting
PROJECT DESIGN Deborah Weiland
Photo credit: Andrew Doran Photography
Staging Assistant — Laurel T. Collins

“Grateful for this amazing team! ♡”

I was sitting at my campsite when a stranger called. ChatGPT sent them to me. I couldn't help them, but I did anyway.

They'd been directed to me for something completely outside what I do, and the easy answer would have been to say sorry, wrong person, and move on. But I asked them to send me a picture of what they were trying to accomplish, and we figured out together who could actually help them.

That's just how I work.

If you call me with your problem I will do what I can to help you find the right person, even if that person isn't going to be me. I'd rather you find your way to the right solution than leave you more confused than when you started.

Peace of mind matters. Yours and mine.

I thought I was the one who couldn't follow directions. Turns out the directions weren't mine to follow.

Still 2021.

For a long time I genuinely couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. Why couldn't I just follow the directions? Why did every simple strategy become something more complicated in my hands? Everyone else in the coaching groups seemed to get it. The strategies worked for them. I'd try the same thing and end up three left turns away from where I started, doing something nobody asked me to do, that I couldn't explain, that felt completely right anyway.

Don't reinvent the wheel, just follow the formula. I heard that a lot. But the formula wasn't working for me.

And then I found Human Design, and for the first time I got an answer that actually made sense. I wasn't difficult. I was just built completely differently from almost everyone in those rooms. Of course I couldn't follow someone else's formula. I wasn't designed to.

That was both a relief and a revelation, and it made me think: if understanding my own design explained so much about why I worked the way I did, imagine what it could do for my clients, especially paired with Feng Shui and interior design, helping women see what their spaces were already trying to tell them about who they actually were.

I was figuring it out. Slowly. I was also posting pictures with my new found Canva skills and calling it a brand strategy, so there's that.

Trying to show up online although I didn't even know how to get a decent photo of myself yet. If I made a reel, it was practically a promotional video for whatever neighbourhood I happen to be in. That was about to change.

2022 is next.

I thought I was going to be a beautiful business coach with flowers in my hair. I was not.

In 2021, I joined a high-level business coaching group and knew immediately I was different. The very first group activity was everyone going around sharing what they were binge watching on Netflix and what their favourite thing on Amazon was. It was still Covid, people were mostly still indoors, and I had nothing to say. I sat there on that Zoom call feeling what I'd felt in a lot of online spaces by then: like a misfit, politely invisible.

The program itself was wonderful though. There were segments on branding, graphic design, and a virtual portrait session, and I fell completely in love with Canva. I started making collages of myself with flowers on my head and posting them like that was just a completely normal thing to do, which at the time felt completely right, or at least like the version of me I was trying to become.

That virtual portrait session led me somewhere I didn't expect. Straight into a self portrait program with that I'd end up returning to for years.

But here's the thing about 2021. I was taking all the chances, showing up every day, trying every version of myself online. Confident. Inspired. Completely lost.

I genuinely thought I needed to make myself look like someone that people would want to be.

I had no idea yet that the answer was already in the photographs.

2022 is next.

Two days short of six years ago, I did this photo shoot.

The woman I was going to be ran through fields of flowers. I had the dress, the hat, the incredible coach, and a very clear vision of who I was becoming.

The photos are beautiful. The coach was brilliant.

And I still couldn't figure out why I couldn't follow the directions and the plan laid out for me.

I had the best business coaching. I was doing everything I was told. I just couldn't repeat the model of success, and I had no idea why.

So why wasn't it working?

The deeper truth was going to reveal itself about 8 months later with another expensive coaching investment, and send me on a whole trajectory into Human Design.

More next time 🌸

📷 carmen, kootenay photographer

I want working with me to feel effortless. That doesn't mean it is.

When I source and shop for a project, I'm not popping into one store and grabbing a few things. I'm driving to Vancouver, visiting several stores, walking the floor with your room photos in my head, making decisions about scale and colour and texture and what will actually work with what you already have. I'm purchasing, loading everything into my car, sometimes staging it in my apartment first, then driving it to you, carrying it in, placing it, and seeing how it lives in the space.

If something doesn't work, I take it back. And taking it back means loading it up again, driving to the store, processing the return in person, and driving home.

I'm not telling you this to make you feel guilty for not knowing. Most people don't know, because making it feel easy for you is actually part of what I do.

But I've just put a proper service agreement in place that outlines exactly what's included, what's an add-on, and what happens with returns and travel, so there are no surprises for either of us.

If you've ever wondered what goes into "just grabbing a few pieces," now you know.

And if you're thinking about working together, I'd love to show you what's possible in your space.

DM me to chat. 💌