Each year, Emma and I take some time to evaluate A Beautiful Mess … where we are, what’s working and what we want to improve or evolve.
This year, we were looking at our business: the blog, social channels, our team, our day-to-day work. And the truth is we have a lot of different things we love! And to us they all go together, but it also occurred to us that maybe we needed to make this more clear to you all. To us, the thing that ties all of our work together is that it’s all about creating a happier life every day. And, for most of us, a lot of that time is at home! So we want to lean in to the homemade aspect of what we do and hopefully encourage you to enjoy a little homemade happiness too.
We are making “Stay home + make something” our mission statement. We’d love to encourage you to make something like:
Bake some cookies.
Sew a skirt, or a quilt, or a pillow.
Make your first weaving.
Take a beautiful photo.
Write a blog.
Mix a cocktail.
Braid your hair (or your daughter’s).
Decorate your space.
Emma and I grew up spending a lot of time at home making stuff. Our parents always encouraged us to get creative and just have fun making things, no matter our age or skill level. Ha. Actually our mom wrote a beautiful post last year about raising creativity you can read here. As we’ve gotten older, we’ve realized that the role of making things has helped us grow as individuals. It has taught us confidence, the importance of hard work, working through mistakes or failures, and that being yourself (being unique, because we all are) is valuable. Taking time to make things and express yourself as an adult is no different—plus it’s FUN! No matter if you’re a professional artist or consider yourself the least creative person in the world, we hope that A Beautiful Mess will inspire and encourage you to stay home and make something. 🙂
We are excited to share more of what this means to us as the months go on. We’re proud homebodies … Homebodies for life! xx
Credit//Author: Elsie Larson. Photography: Darling Juliet. Edited with A Color Story filters.
28 Comments
Writing a blog (self-explanatory) and baking cookies/cakes/whatever are my favourite home activities! Particularly nice on a rainy day. 🙂
Charmaine Ng | Architecture & Lifestyle Blog
http://charmainenyw.com
I love your suggestions, everything is really enriching 🙂
xx from Bavaria/Germany, Rena
http://www.dressedwithsoul.com
Thanks so much for sharing your mission statement! This is my second year doing One Little Word, last year was Adventure, and Adventure we did, but this year with baby #2 on the way and the inner need to care more for the house we LOVE, we picked HOME as our OLW! Happy a company like yours can be my daily reminder to check back in to my word.
Homebodies for life! The more I stay home and make things the more I want to stay home and make MORE things. It does feel quite full and satisfying and I always love the inspiration I receive here from team ABM.
Thank you for these suggestions. I really enjoyed making my own clothes so I should get back into this.
Debs @ https://tiger-mint.com
I love this idea. It fits perfectly with my “new beginning” after a really tough season in life. Looking forward to inspiration. Thank you for all you do to enrich our lives with creativity, beautiful living and simple joys.
Thank you so much for celebrating creativity and being a homebody. As a millennial, I feel constantly bombarded with the message that you need to be a world explorer/well-traveled to have a meaningful and enlightened life. Truth be told, while I do enjoy the occasional adventure, it’s too expensive, and I often feel like I live a boring, simple life compared to my peers. I know I’m not alone in this. Your blog is always uplifting and gets me excited about being creative and loving my own home. Thank you!!
THIS!!!! Thank you so much for constant inspiration! My favorite thing is to stay home and create! I always felt like I wasn’t “cool” because I would prefer to do that than go out and party. Each person is different- seeing this post made me emotional because I felt like I belonged? Hard to explain but THANK YOU! <3
OMG PLEASE WRITE A BOOK ABOUT HOW TO RAISE CHILDREN TO BE CREATIVE and give lots of input from your mother’s perspective!!! I would totally buy that book. Speaking of which, happy first mother’s day, Elsie!
Hi Victoria! You’ll love this post Elsie and Emma’s mom wrote— http://abeautifulmess.com/2017/08/raising-creativity-lessons-from-mary-poppins.html 🙂
That´s exactly what I love most about this wonderful blog: the homemade aspect. I loved it, “in the old days”, when you shared easy DIY of making a collage to the front of your notebook, for example, simple things that we, not-so-skilled people, can do and be happy abaout!
This blog has always been an inspiration to me. Keep up the great work.
love it! I’m a total homebody too!
I loved chatting with you today for the podcast AND I love this mission statement. YOU GALS ROCK.
My favorite way to spend time, at home creating something. It’s fulfilling and opens space in other areas of my life too.
i love the post, you described wonderfully. Thanks to you give a nice idea.
I adore this, staying home and getting creative is definitely something that should be encouraged more – especially now it is so easy to stay home and order lots of things or go out and spend lots of money! I can’t wait to see this years content, love the direction you are taking it in!
Holly from The Art of Being Holly xo
I really love this idea, especially since it resonates with my own homebody inclination!
I love this! This is a really beautiful statement and idea ????????????????
I really love this statement and I am so thankful for your blog! It has been a happy place for me for years! Thank you!!
Oh my gosh, I love this! I’m a total homebody and often feel guilty for not going out more. Why can’t I just embrace who I am…that I love to be at home and that I love to create too?! Looking forward to hearing and seeing more in the future!
We totally relate to this!!!!
I LOVE that as your mission statement. Your blog has inspired me many times to stay home and make something…. or dream about doing so 🙂 Thanks for the continued inspiration, and keeping your content fresh, but authentic to who you are. XOX
“We hope that A Beautiful Mess will inspire and encourage you to stay home and make something.” You do. Every day.
This is awesome. I’ve been struggling to articulate what’s missing for my blog for a little while now. My blog is growing, it’s all going really well – but I have this nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite there; not quite defined. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head with a “mission statement”. I love this idea, and I’m now off to brainstorm ideas for one of my own. Thank you!! – Mike.
What really draws me to ABM is the homemade craftiness. I love creating things, making things, adding positive vibes to my life and to the lives of those I love. I still maintain that the best gifts are homemade! Great post, ladies!
love this! i’m a full-on homebody, but i do need to work on the “make something” part. i have so many of your DIYs saved! now to do them!
loved it, there is no better place than home sweet home!