The Before And After

Here is the Before...

Here, below, is the After. 

On Sunday afternoon I painted the frame of the old mirror we found for $5 (did I tell you the glass is beveled?) and yesterday I painted the hall table.

I love how they look together (my photos never do justice to Anything.

Someday I will slow down enough to learn how to take good pictures). But take my word for it--they look nice. Not only nice, but in a way, I look at them and our house feels twenty years older. I love it when that happens.

And more, the other (newer) mirror which hung there for years was smaller, so I'd walk down the stairs and could only see myself in its reflection (BOR-ing.). But now inside the old beveled, larger mirror, I see the window and the banister and the stairs and watching myself descend those stairs? It's like seeing a woman from another era walk out of another time, rather like stepping out of a mist, especially when my gauzy aqua robe floats along the stairs behind me.

At least, that is what my imagination tells me. (I like the sort-of eerie light on the stairs in this photo. Gives you an idea of what I mean.)




It was a relief years ago when I stopped complaining that our house didn't feel old enough and instead, began doing something about it. I started collecting aged things with a history, and I made changes to our 70 year-old house to make it feel older than its construction year.

People who all the time complain about what they have, or don't have or who whine, "I can't help it... things will never change... nothing good ever will happen to me," well, they bother me a lot.

So of course, I used to bother myself.

I can help so many things--it's just my imagination or my refusing to make room for hope which stops me. (And I'm not just talking about decorating, either.)

But it's a matter of wanting to change, to dwell on possibilities rather than on the negative and impossible and desiring to let God make all the changes in me freely, however He wishes.

After all, it's the Creator who knows best the finished product He pictured in His head from the beginning.


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(Click on photos to enlarge.)