My sectional is ten feet long on one side and six feet long on the other side and in that vast expanse of vintage green velvet I have chosen a spot that is mine. It’s where I can put my feet on the coffee table because I live in a feet on the coffee table type of home or I can stretch them out on the chaise part of the sectional. It all depends on how I shift from my spot a few inches in either direction.
My apartment faces south to a line of trees but from my chosen space I look to the west and see downtown sparkling in the distance and I can watch the sky turn pink as the sun sets over the water that I know is just past the glistening high rises. Pink skies are my religion and every night as I sink into my spot to unwind from my day I can pray.
Last night I put my feet up and sipped tea from my vintage Hudson’s Bay mug I found at the thrift for a dollar and I thought about my Aunt Renee who worked there for 42 years in ready to wear and lingerie and how she had a 25% staff discount so that is where we shopped my entire childhood for back to school clothes and the annual white sale and how she and my mom would drag us out of our turkey/chocolate coma so early every boxing day to buy their wrapping paper and cards for the next year because they got an additional 50% off. Sitting there I thought about something I read on Sarah M. Broom’s apartment therapy tour that said:
“All of my family and the women who compose me are here. Everything you see—just the detail and the care—that’s my grandmother Lolo and my mother Ivory Mae in every single moment in this house. These were the women who taught me what it means to make a place and how to create warmth. They taught me to collect beauty.”
and how that line “the women who compose me are here” will live in me forever and I know it was my Aunt Renee who taught me to collect beauty.
The spider web pillow has a little beaded spider on it and while I don’t like spiders to live in my house it reminds me that as a child I was wildly enchanted by Charlotte and her ability to keep Wilbur alive and make him famous. I still have my original Charlotte’s Web book from when I was young and that pillow is an homage to her brilliance and my love of anthropomorphism.
The round velvet pillow I found a yard sale and I chose the deep red small one from a table full of velvet pillows in different colours and sizes (wish I had bought more) and the lady I bought it from said her grandma used to sit and watch tv at night and sew these pillows from fabric scraps and it is one of my fave yard sale finds ever. I wonder if her grandma watched Lawrence Welk on Sunday nights like my grandma did and I wonder if she hummed along as her hands worked the needle and thread and I don’t know how I know but I know that pillow was made with love. I can feel it.
Practical magic lives in discovering the words and the pieces and the times of day that remind me I am in my life and it is small and beautiful and full of extraordinary moments of beauty and prayer and remembering and comfort and missing and love that has no timeline.
Practical Magic is life being life and knowing that no one can live it or love it exactly like you, and your own wisdom and innate style.
You just have to know where to look.
If you want to discover the practical magic in your own life I invite you to join Isabel and I in BEWITCHED, our summer long course on practical magic + real life enchantment.
Come and collect beauty with us.
Thanks for hanging out with me.
Live wild. Stay gold.
Renee xx
(day 14 of Effy Wild’s blog along)