stephanie lee - Semiprecious Salvage

Wild pony goes to Nashville

Everyday I am so deeply grateful that the Allthatis gifted me with these two beautiful, powerful, intelligent daughters and everyday I hope to be the kind of mom who invites them to stand in their divinity. It feels like a feeble offering considering how much they inspire me to remember that the world is a safe and beautiful place just by way of being who they are. 

See this here kid? This one is my oldest. She's a whole box of firecrackers. 

She has this earthy thing about her that might be easy to miss on account of her mad hair-doing, glamming up skills.

Her soul is deep waters.

Mysterious, wise, quick, wild, funny, devoted, and kind...with an edge that keeps you on the lookout for leprachauns. When she was little, she could sneak up on a bird in the grass and nearly catch it. She'd scootch slowly on her belly, patiently waiting for just the right moment to reach out and catch her new friend. I asked, in wonder, once how she does it? She said "I just suck all my energy in so it doesn't feel me coming. Except I'm not scary about it." This was at a time in her life when she didn't quite yet know how to tie her shoes. From the mouths of babes.

She also found four leaf clovers by asking the grass to make her see them. At one point she had quite a collection pressed in the pages of books.

This girl - my "Wild Pony #1" came into this world singing and hasn't stopped since. I've heard her bellow her own homespun tunes in muffled, back-of-the-car, road tripping, pillowed beds and gloriously echo-y public restrooms. She leaves a humming trail wherever she goes and if you tune in, it will take you to the Emerald City.

She wants to go to the National FFA Convention next month something fierce...and she wants me to come with her. She. Me. And 5 farmer/cowboy types (some of whom have never be out of state) will stuff ourselves in a suburban + plane + van to get ourselves to Lousiville, KY and Nashville, TN to take in sights we've never seen.

The thing she's most looking forward to? Setting foot in the Grand Ole Opry house to take in a live show. See, she has it in her mind that she'll someday get on that stage and offer up her song to the rafters to join the decades of artists who have gone before her. I think it's a most beautiful dream and for her to get the chance to FEEL what it's like to be in that room, to breathe the air and feel the lights and imagine her boots clipping along that stage...well, that seems like the best way to feed that dream that I can think of. It'll put the real feeling in her bones. It will make it as real in her mind as it is in her dreams.

I know that, in you, I have a huge network of miracle workers and so, if you are inspired to share and support in this way, I would love for you to check out Melissa's Gofundme project and read her own story of this adventure!

As a thank you, all those who donate will receive a professional recording of one of her original songs -recorded and filled with gratitude and love, just for you. To hear a sample, click on the play bar below:

A Time Too Many Sample

She has many more up her sleeve + in the works that I can't wait to share with you in the near future!

If you're feeling particularly generous and would like to support the whole group's fundraising efforts - not just Pony's, you can check out the other campaign we have going here. 

Thank you. A thousand and one thank you's to all who have donated already and for the energy of support you have shared with us privately both in words and in donations. We are so, so grateful. 

 

 

Raise your upper limit, baby

Let me ask you something. 

What’s your limit? How much are you willing to take? How bad does it have to get before you pull the plug?

“I can’t take this anymore”, in and of itself, doesn’t really mean anything in terms of real change. It just means I’m tired, I’m afraid, I’m hurt. Rarely does it actually mean “I’m going to do whatever it takes, right here, right now, to change this.” 

Why? Because it’s risky and what we have going on is evidence of what we think we deserve unless we challenge that. I know you’ve heard this before…and you’re probably rolling your eyes or wanting to stab a pencil in mine. But hear me out. It’s not always as direct as it’s presented.

If you’re in a toxic relationship, I’m not implying that you think you only deserve toxic relationships. Or if you’re treated unfairly at work, it’s not that you think you only deserve to be treated unfairly. To assume such things would be isolating these experiences separate from the whole of who you are and the life you are making. Our belief of our deservingness doesn't always show up where the belief is rooted.

We THINK we have these separate compartments in life - love, work, relationships, money, body image - but the reality is that there is a giant happiness quotient that all those things reside within and we’ve inadvertently crafted that happiness quotient to be a certain size - big or small -  according to whatever amazing or not so amazing ideas we grew up having about ourselves and how much we deserve to feel happiness in life. If any of those compartments swell (with happiness and goodness and this-is-a-perfect-life-ness) to the point that it might exceed the size of our quotient, without knowing it we find some way, somewhere to shrink the happiness of something down to size to stay within the bounds of “this is how happy I am allowed to be.”

Sometimes we shrink the very thing that is growing the happiness. Sometimes we trim off of something else to make room for the growing happiness. 

Getting that raise turns to missing a deadline at work. Or getting that raise might mean picking a fight at home. Finding the real truelove of your life might mean picking a fight with that gift of a soul…or it might mean blowing all your savings on a romantic getaway. We work out and eat right for the first time in our lives, and then we get sick…or we choose the workaholic route to exhaust ourselves mentally and physically. We engage in meaningful work and then give our hearts over to the endless struggle to “find our passion”. An amazing opportunity comes along and we say “sounds too good to be true”. (How small does the good have to be for us to decide it’s an acceptable amount of good to be true for us?)

The happiness lives in our hearts as a single, whole entity. The ideal is to increase the size of our quotient, to raise the upper limit on what we think is the maximum amount of bliss we believe we deserve.

But that’s hard work and doubt plows in and we might find ourselves choosing cynicism as a means of protection.

For good reason.

We can find evidence a’plenty of people who have been tossed about on rough waters and we believe that it was just bad luck. We don’t see the belly of the whale where they wrestle with their own upper limits.

So how do we stay awake? How do we do the work of raising the ceiling on our happy quotient? When the sails of our hearts are torn and coming loose, how to we mend them so that we can reach the shores of brave, conscious living?

First off, ditch the cynicism. 

Stop wearing it like a badge of honor. I get that you’re wounded and afraid and unsure and for good reason. But is that who you want to keep being?

Resculpt that to be cautious optimism. It is far more reliable, generous, and empowering.

Cynicism assumes the worst and makes ‘bad’ end results if it cant find them in the thing itself. It’s a know it all. It raises a suspecting eyebrow to anything good - especially if that good is the very thing that might bump into your ceiling and cause you to reach your maximum allowed happiness. Cynicism says things like “it sounds too good to be true” because whatever “it” is has within it the solutions to resolving the things that are keeping you from busting through the ceiling and expanding your happiness quotient ten fold. 

Cynicism thinks it’s keeping your safe when really it’s just keeping you scared.

Cautious optimism is not blind trust. It is not just “leap and the net will appear”. It is not deceived, irresponsible, or dangerous.

It’s awake. It’s open. It’s smart. It considers all possibilities - without assumption - and then weighs them against each other for the specific purpose of examining how the happiness quotient can be expanded. Even if that expansion means going through a little temporary discomfort. It looks at the bigger picture.

We think that cynicism prevents us from risk but that is a lie too. It’s a lie told to us by fear and its goal is to keep us small.

In the best writing I’ve ever read about risk, Stephen Palmer says:

Cynicism keeps us blind and stuck and limited and afraid. It touts that what we have going on is the best thing out there and that anything that might build on that good thing we have going on, is somehow flawed because it wasn't our idea. We forget that when we open the door to a tiny bit of growth, other opportunities to grow even more will beat a path to our door. 

Why would we invite the realm of possibility to live in our hearts and then decide what belongs there and what doesn’t?

Cautious optimism removes the film of fear from our eyes and opens the door to greater vision because it WANTS growth, it INVITES expansion, it SEEKS the very risks that cause us to open to greater joy, love, abundance, and expression. 

Cynicism paints the ceiling to look like the sky.

Cautious optimism opens the front door so you can take in the whole, wide, REAL horizon.

So when I ask you “what’s your limit?” I’m really asking deeper questions. Mostly of myself:

How deep are you willing to go?
How high are you willing to raise that upper limit?
What risks are you willing to take to blow the roof of your happiness?

 

New Paintings

I've been feeling the itch to blog more regularly again. Thoughts are backing up by the minute...things I want to share. I've just returned from two weeks away from home and, with only two days between my return home and the first day of school, I'm sure you can understand that I'm still in re-entry mode. I posted on facebook today the following:

"Today is the first day of school...a.k.a "Momma's New Year that feels more like New Year's Day than the actual New Year's Day". 
This time brings intense urges to purge my home of unnecessary items, overhaul my office/desk area, rid myself of five million bits and pieces in my studio and the cobwebs they are hiding, set a hundred thousand goals to be accomplished by my next birthday, schedule in crazy fun vacations and plenty of lucrative opportunities in 2015, meditate for 6 hours a day to keep on track, and once and for all devote myself to re-learning Spanish + practicing the piano & guitar + learning cello + writing a book + weekly menu planning + growing a winter garden + read 5 mind-expanding books a week + finding my abs + falling in love all over again with waking up early every day to a new adventure.
I'm no over achiever but I think it might be smart just to start with doing a batch of laundry from start to finish today. Yes...me thinks this is a very good place to start."

It's true. This time of year awakens that part of me that is brought to life by new beginnings. I don't find it odd that my desire to dive into those new beginnings includes the urge to make room for them in any and all areas of life.

Incidentally, I actually did get a load of laundry done from start to finish - all put away and everything. I consider this worthy of a mini celebration.

As I work to resolve some slightly inconvenient Etsy issues I'm having, I'm offering a few paintings directly from my blog here. I've popped up here today to show them to you as well as some jewelry I recently listed on my etsy shop here.

Sweet little pieces like this porcelain boat necklace

 

or this leather and lace cuff that reminds me of a well loved arm chair perched next to a leaded glass window.

And if you ask me, one can NEVER have too many simple, elegant pearl necklaces to wear alone or layered with other necklaces. I like mine slightly left of traditional - hence the varied sizes and undulating color variations. I've created them in "sky", "river stones", "moss", and "cloud". 

You'll find other one of a kind pieces when you visit the shop and maybe, just maybe, something will speak JUST to you.

While I'm sorting all those backing-up-blog toughts, you can take a look at the paintings I have available here. Though I meant to list them before I left town, I'm just getting around to sharing them now. All paintings are ready to ship in 1 business day via UPS Ground (for shipping out of the US, please email me for details at stephanieleestudios at gmail dot com. To learn how to make your own one of a kind jewelry using my signature metalsmithing techniques, you can check out my Homesteader's Metalsmithing: Revamped eBook here.)

 

"They Walked Until Morning"

12" x 36" x 2"

Plaster, acrylic, encaustic on wood

***SOLD***
(thank you, M!)

 

"Good Sign"

12" x 24" x 2"

Plaster, acrylic, encaustic, metalic paint on wood

$250.00 + shipping

 

"Brambles" 

6" x 48" x 1.5"

(full image above, detail sections below)

Plaster, acrylic, collage, encaustic

$195.00 + shipping

 

"Moon Garden"

16" x 48" x 2"

 

(full image above, detail images below)

plaster, acrylic, collage on wood

***SOLD***
(thank you, L!)

 

All paintings can be hung vertically or horizontally and shipping prices are estimated at checkout for US addresses. Once I have your painting packaged and ready to ship, I will refund you any amount over the estimation but will not charge you extra if my estimation is low. 

*****

In other news, in just a couple of weeks I'll be in beautiful North Carolina to teach an intensive three day workshop where we'll dive deep into the exploration of plaster + paint + wax. Donna Downey and her awesome husband, Bill, are hosting me in their studio and I'm SO looking forward to being there among other creatives! There are still a few seats left in this workshop.
I've heard amazing things about Bill and Donna. They are incredibly generous, talented, and go above and beyond to facilitate all their workshop participants in immersing deep into creative play. Not only do they provide a wonderful facility, but

ALL MEALS AND MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED!!

Yep. You just show up with the clothes on your back and be hassle-free & ready to play!

(Talk about a true, creativity-cultivating retreat!)

September 18-21st, 2014

Go here where you can read all about this luxurious gathering!

I would LOVE to see you there!