a small update!

 

Knowing that some people still visit here now and then...and knowing that I have no plans to post here or revive Small Meadow Press, I thought I would write a small update. I will keep this little blog open, for sentiment's sake and to keep the Home Learning Notes always available (in the left sidebar).

But if you would like to know what I doing and offering currently, you may visit the new website I created at lesleyaustin.com.

Just as it feels so good to pare down and simplify at home, I realized recently that it would feel very good to do the same online. So I've been letting go of what I can online and making the rest as simple and tidy as possible. 

The new website gives glimpses and links to my brand-new e-greetings site and Wisteria & Sunshine and also the two blogs where I plan to continue to write...at The Bower often and at my old caregiving blog when I can.

You can leave comments at the new site, or here for that matter, and I hope to always stay in touch one way or another. The comments left here are one of the reasons I want to keep it open. I am ever grateful for your interest and support over the years. 

See you in the new spaces and I wish each of you well with your own journey, with its bends and dips and rocky patches and sunny, grassy spots...

xo

Lesley

the door is beginning to open....

Just popping by to say that, as I mentioned in my last post, I am soon opening the door to my new endeavor. I've just created a page here  which explains it all and has a sign up at the bottom of the page to let you know when the doors will be flung wide open. I am hoping to be ready before the Twelve Days of Christmas have passed, which we are just beginning to settle into. Guests have returned to their homes and we are restoring ours to order and peace...and long, quiet days of creativity and rest.

Sending you good wishes for a Bright New Year!

closing a window, opening a door

 I know it's usually the other way round...but as Small Meadow Press feels so very insubstantial right now, and the possibilities of what I am creating online seem so spacious...it fits. Besides, I so love all that opening a door evokes. 

But first, to the closing of a window...

I've been uncluttering to the deepest level in my studio, and found yet another little stash of things, tho' this is truly the last of it. And as I have made the decision that I can't manage any printing and designing this year, including my calendar and planner-to-be, this will be all I have to offer in the way of papery delights. It felt so sad to come to that decision, but the relief that accompanied the sadness convinced me that it was right. I hope that the calendar making isn't over for good, so will wait and watch and see how life unfolds.

So in the next few weeks,

I will be doing a bit of cutting and folding, lots of sorting and plan to have a number of envelopes of Small Meadow Press miscellany for sale-here-in early December. Each envelope will be filled with an assortment of notecards, prints, little cards, bookmarks, letter paper, envelopes, Easter and Christmas things...all that I have found, parceled out into equal portions. It has been really lovely to have little piles and boxes of my old creations sitting here and there around the house. I am so fond of them and grateful for all they represent...what grew between me and each of you, in our common love of beauty and usefulness...

And I hope we can continue that journey when I open the door to my latest endeavor in the New Year. Just a glimpse I've shared above, a tiny taste of what I have been working on over the past months, sure to change as I continue to learn and figure out and play with words and images and ideas. I think...I hope...I am past the worst of the nuts and bolts part of it and can get on with the heart of it...the pages, the corners to fill and adorn, the tasks and topics to plan and arrange. And with any luck (not a word I usually use, but honestly, when it comes to computer-y things, it seems appropriate!), New Years Day will find me waiting by that door, ready to welcome you in.

If you are not already subscribed to receive an email when there is fresh news here, you might like to sign up in the upper left corner of this post. Then you will most easily and quickly be informed of the details of my last little sale and then more glimpses and news of the next chapter...

*the sale has now come and gone, but I've left this post up and will be posting about my new creation very soon!*

thinking, dreaming and doing....

 Back in February, when I last wrote here, I was realizing just how little I could take on beyond tending home and family and looking towards the Summer to figure out about Small Meadow Press. Well here is August speeding along and I see no sign of anything papery coming out of my studio...beyond my calendar that received a proper cover after my last post and goes with me everywhere now.

 I did alot of thinking at the beginning of the Summer and realized that my heart and mind don't go towards the making of "beautiful and useful papers for everyday life" any longer. The paper stays tidily stacked on the shelves and the printer is turned off and blessedly quiet. And I am content for it to remain so. I may still make my calendar, or more likely, a new version of it that will be slightly smaller and include lots of pages for planning and keeping things in order.

I am still pondering that possibility.

But my heart hasn't lost any of its fascination with Everyday Life. Quite the opposite...and all that I used to pour into papery creations-the simple beauty, the celebration of the seasons and banner days, the nourishment to be found in books and poetry, the particulars of homemaking and staying connected with others and the earth...well, I am pouring all of that into the making of a lovely online place. A private and lovely place of inspiration...and beauty...and gentle tasks...that will add up over the days and months to what I know so many of us are longing for....more simplicity and peace and contentment in our homes and our everydays.

 

I've been dreaming this for years...remember telling my dear customers about it at my very last show in December of 2009...and have been working on the nuts and bolts of it for the past few months, with much more work to do. But I shall write here again soon, with more news and perhaps some glimpses. If you are not already signed up to be notified when I post here (top left column), you might like to sign up now, so you will know just as soon as there is news to tell. 

I wish you very summery end-of-Summer days...and please leave your thoughts here for me to find. I miss you all!

making do

Just wanting to leave a little note here
for you to find should you come visiting. Life is flowing on with its gentle ups and downs, and I know well and truly now that any Small Meadow Press creating and offering will wait until the summer.

There is so much to fill my days, guiding my younger son through his last months of study at home, helping my elder son who is experiencing all the normal challenges of life in this complicated and confusing world, holding my mom's hand (literally and figuratively) as she makes her way through her much-smaller-but-just-as-confusing-world, tending friendships and our home and so much more...you know?

And more than ever I was needing a place to hold and keep all of my thoughts and plans and scraps and appointments. Last year I had made a mock-up of a planner with my calendar pages (made smaller) as the heart and many useful pages and dividers behind them. It was my intention to make a complete version for myself for 2011, with a vintage book cover on the outside and all of the pages I wanted to stay organized on the inside. And then to make some for sale (it has a name! and each section planned out! and I bought reams of paper for it two years ago, before life started making detours!) But several hours into wrangling with the margins the printer would allow for the smaller version (not the margins I would wish for, of course!) of just the first month in the year, I knew I didn't have the patience or the time to see that project through to the end....however nice that end would have been. 

So I gathered together some of my regular calendar pages left from all the trial-and-error that goes into printing, hole-punched them, added some pretty, blank pages, a cover from a misprint and a pocket at the back made from an old sign I used to use at show, bound them together with simple binding rings and-voila! I hole-punched the back page/pocket incorrectly the first time, the pocket scallops are not precise, the pocket itself is really too short, and the whole thing is too floppy...but...it is a helpful and pretty (if not perfect) planner to see me through until I can spend the time and find the persistence to bring my vision into reality. Maybe this summer. Maybe not.

I am learning not to press. And that is very different from the old days, when I would stay up until all hours to see a new creation through. But that doesn't work for me any more and I am learning to make do. Sleep is more important now than perfection. And having a place to slip my son's new prescription for contacts for safe-keeping there at the optometrist's office, or to immediately jot down the next appointment at the dentist's office has made me feel quite friendly towards my makeshift planner.

Friendly towards making do in general.

the sale is over....

...and I send deep thanks to everyone
who ordered.





I will be making one last batch of calendars,
and continuing with the packaging up of all
the orders and sending them on their
merry way to you this week.



And it will probably be awhile before the
next sale...as I knew when I took a hiatus when
my mom came to live with us, it is a bit of a press
to take good care of her, homeschool my boy and
everything else. Tho' I am so glad I had the sale!
It is wonderful to experience again all the familiar
rhythms of making and designing. And it makes
me happy to think of my calendar companioning
so many of you throughout the year, and the
cards being sent out these Winter days with
love and hope.


By next summer, my son will be graduated from
our homeschool, the addition for my mom will be
long done, and I can imagine a new season
of homelife (not that I want to imagine the
part of it without my son here each day...I am
having to play Scarlett in that area and will
definitely think about that ages hence!)
with more time for making.


But for now, I again send my gratitude
and also my dear wishes for a lovely
month ahead for all of us!

all good things must come to an end....

....and this is just a note to let you know
that my Advent sale will be ending at midnight
on Tuesday the 7th of December.

Tho' many of the one-of-a-kinds have sold out,
the "shop" (the post just before this one)
still has some notecards, Christmas cards
and A Calendar of One's Own filling
the shelves.