Hello lovely soul! I’m so happy to share the wonderful news with you: Our dream home is finally ours!! Look at this happy girl in her lovely garden! Hubby took this pic right before we tackled wire fencing for the first time ever (we did pretty well!) and I have a feeling I’m going to be painting walls as well as canvases in the coming weeks…

We haven’t moved in yet (less than a week to go!) so I’m still in this “in-between” I was telling you about in my previous post, and I thought this would be a great time to share a little bit of the magic that has made this dream come true. And believe it or not, it all starts with my art journal…

In 2018, my word of the year was HOME and I created a page about it in my Book of Days. For some years I have become aware that the feeling of home is absolutely key to my wellbeing and to my creativity. And even though we were not actually planning on buying a house of our own so soon (and not just any house, but our actual dream home), this longing was definitely in my heart as I let the page come to life very organically. Here is a short video showing you how I created it:

As I was building up the layers with collage, paint and words, my compass was this feeling of home. The feeling, not the look. And it became so deeply infused and anchored into the page that every time I look at it, I instantly feel it. And that’s powerful: because aligning to the feeling of your dreams and desires is the surest way to manifest them into reality!

In that sense, the page has become like a vison board, telling the Universe exactly what I desired. And the moment we stepped through the lovely front door of the house for the very first time, that feeling came rushing back. It instantly felt like home. We only visited one house and that was it.

Laly Mille - Moments at Home - Art Journal Page

We also got plenty of little winks from the Universe telling us again and again that this was meant to be. For instance: the week before creating this “home” page, I had also created another one about gratitude, which was already infused with this dream. I even put the picture of a little art shed on it, and guess what we found when we entered the garden for the first time…

Here is another one: Roses are my favorite flowers and I love to paint them (I even have a class dedicated to them), so of course I had to put roses on both journal pages. And then, guess what beautiful surprise awaited me the first time I looked up at the ceiling of the room that will soon become my new studio…

These roses probably date back to the time the house was built (1901) and legend has it that they were commissioned by the lady of the house, to remind her of the castle she used to live in. I’m so grateful that over the years, the roses have remained intact as the painters have made sure to mindfully work around them whenever it was time to give the ceiling a fresh coat of paint...

Of course, the Universe also has quite a special sense of humor: You might know I’m currently preparing a new class all about abstract art. One of the lessons, called Layers of Time, will be all about finding inspiration in imperfection, layering texture to create wabi sabi effects, with a warm-up photo activity about “found abstracts”. Well, it looks like the house wanted to be featured in the class!

Today, after we found a leak in our living room, I spent most of the afternoon hammering at rotten plaster and quite literally peeling back the layers of time, right down to the old stones… And for now I’m going to enjoy this bigger than life “mixed media” abstract!

Thank you so much for sticking with me during this special in-between time. Social media is still taking a step back but for now, this blog feels like home. I look forward to sharing more with you after we’re all moved in (the garden, the studio, the trees, the birds and… the future art barn!!!)