Pottery Barn Hack

So....we had a duvet that was black cotton. It was a magnet for Willow's white dog hair and there was so much hair everywhere that she might as well have been sleeping in the bed with us.  So I decided to get a new one, but duvets are super expensive, unless you get one from IKEA, and their styles are limited to solids and geometric patterns...no flowers, stripes, polka dots, unusual solid colors, nothing.

This, and my budget led me to Pinterest, where I found a pin called, "Make your OWN damn duvet!" (haha) and I was inspired.  So I bought 2 pewter colored king size flat sheets from shopbedding.com out of which to make my own. Then they said they were fresh out of pewter after the fact, so I picked gold instead. Not my favorite, but when you ask Seth what his favorite color is, he says "GOLD!" *eyeroll

I decided to mimic the pintuck duvet sold by pottery barn.

Here's how mine ended up turning out!!

I'm going to get a big frame (maybe with gold on it, lol) and put a picture of the three of us in it and put it on the wall behind the bed.  You can't really tell from the pic, but the curtains in the background have gold lacing through them, so it was perfect! :) 

Internet Validation

I just read my cousin Elisa's blog post regarding sensational blog posts...check it out!

http://elisakatherine.blogspot.com/2014/01/sensational-web-posts.html

I love that. The other day on ksl.com there was this article about one young mom's journey toward accepting the fact that babies change your bodies and your life, and that it truly was okay. http://www.ksl.com/?sid=28431172

I kept thinking as I was reading it, "Duh, duh, duh."  Not to invalidate her process at all, but just that since her blog post had gone so viral and was making sense to so many women who read it, I just kept thinking, "Why don't you guys already know this? This sentiment is so in line with the gospel, and you're acting like you've never thought about this before; why is that? Why did this never resonate with you before?"

For her to believe her own feelings on a subject, she had to have online approval and be told others shared her feelings.

I wish people, especially youth, college age, or young parents could have the confidence and trust in their own spiritual growth that they don't need anyone to see it or laud it for them to know that it's right and feel good about their choices.  And this is part of the reason I got off facebook- because I felt the need within myself to feel satisfied with my own life even when public online approval and admiration were lacking.

I still have a blog, but I structure it as a way to share photos, videos and short stories with my family and friends, rather than as a forum to, even subconsciously, ask for approval.  And certainly validating each other is a wonderful way to encourage it each other.

And approval isn't inherently bad, but it's exactly like Elisa's widget said- I don't want to need my thoughts to go viral before I truly believe them and that they're right.  How do we give this empowering confidence to people? My opinion is that we need to spend a little more time with ourselves- meaning off the internet, less reading of blogs, internet articles, etc.

But are they all a waste of time? Obviously, I just read Elisa's post, and the KSL article, and I'm writing one- so I think the answer is to simply become extremely choosey about what we choose to digest on the internet, to change the purpose of our internet use to sharing the gospel, education, and communication, rather than surfing the web for entertainment.  This would also mean that we will have to change how we spend our free time- which will result in what I mentioned earlier- spending a little time getting to know ourselves; our strengths, our resolve, our true beliefs based on our actions. ;)