HOMECOR RECIPES
I never knew I’d get into DIY. When I started watching my mother sew when I was very young, and when I saw her decorate my rooms beautifully, I never knew how important DIY would be to me the older I became. Just the idea of making beautiful things with my hands was daunting, but a love I became more and more obsessed with as I grew up. My mother was always sewing, and creating things with her hands. Watching that — her decorating everything, and her always making and building things —, inspired me to begin on my own. Do-it-yourself projects started off with jewelry, went to clothing, and now I’m making home decor with my bare hands. Without my mother inspiring me, I wouldn’t be creating what I create.
I guess the artist mentality was handed down to me.
In a way, it all started when I moved into my own apartment during college. It was decided that, having my own place, would be better for my mental health. I was one of the lucky ones. After two disastrous roommates, I was able to begin living on my own, decorating my own way.
This was my very, very vintage phase. It was also the beginning of my love for thrifting. Everything in my home was thrifted, upcycled, or found outside. There were collections of oddities in every room. Back then was when I had Vintage Hollywood Lifestyle. I know, I know… that is nothing how I am now, but who I am now was built over many, many years. Now, my influences are my stays in the hospital — which taught me how to create things out of nothing to keep my head on —, my mother, and my grandfather.
My grandfather is an engineer, and the more I listen to his stories, the more they adhere to my psyche. The way he looks at life is that, if there is a challenge, there must be a way to overcome it. Everything he does, whether it’s with tools or his mind, is with the idea that ‘any fool can improve on something’, as is one of his favorite phrases to use. Every story he ever told me has stuck with me and molded me in some way. Even when he repeats the same stories, I’m learning something new. There are many ways to interpret the same thing.
Because of that, I know his ideas of upcycling, and creating beauty out of what you have at hand, will stay with me forever. Even after he’s gone, his lessons will still exist, and his lessons will still have taught me something.
As he’s taught me, there are easy fixes to everything. There are also easy ways to decorate, sometimes even the simplest tweaks changing everything in a room. Think of the following articles as ‘recipes’ — not to cook up food, but to cook up decor and organization in your home. Each project will be written in a way that will echo recipes for food. It’ll be, if hits as planned, read as a cookbook instead of as a bunch of stuff randomly created for the act of creating.
Everything has a purpose. Some things, you need to find the purposes for. Other things, it is much, much more obvious.
I hope you join me in this journey of cooking up things for the home.
