Lucy Bowman - Making Room: How to Create Soul and Style in Your Home

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Copyright 2019

Making Room

How to Create Soul & Style In Your Home

Lucy Jo Bowman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN: 978-1-7338091-0-8 (print), 978-1-7338091-1-5 (epub)

Photography: Lucy Jo Bowman
Publishing and Design Services: MartinPublishingServices.com

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book to my husband and three daughters. Home is for them. I know I am not easy to live with, but they love me as I try.

M y dear Joanie , thank you feels too little for the love, encouragement, time and work you have offered me throughout this process. This book would likely not exist without your talent for believing in and encouraging others. Your listening ear and genuine interest will forever be a gift to me.

Tiara , your insights as you read the book made it so much better, just as you have always made me better by being my friend.

Mom, Holly and Jamie , thank you for the many phone calls asking for your opinions and suggestions. Thank you for your confidence in me and your endless support.

Susan Streckland , I was convinced you wouldnt find worth in my writing and instead you gave me the exact words I needed to keep working on this book. Thank you for your expert editing and helping me feel like there is value in these pages.

Kate Irwin , being accountable to you for getting things done is a true privilege and is only overshadowed by the friendship and good humor I have enjoyed with you over the last year.

Melinda Martin , your attention to detail, design skills, knowledge,
patience and kindness have elevated my book to a place I only imagined. Im so thankful you share your talents with authors and the world.

Cody and my daughters , so many days you watched me sit at the computer and so many days you watched from a far believing that something would come from the work that took me away from you. I hope my actions and words will be an additional testament to my love for each of you.

I wrote this book because I believe with my whole heart that design can elevate your life. Not only do you design where your new sofa or new wall will go, you design a home that fosters a happy life. Creating a beautiful, peaceful and functional space is about helping you, your family and everyone, live well; it is about making home a heaven on Earth.

It is your calling to make room in your home, family and heart for the things that matter most to you. Are you paying attention to the success of your home? Consider this quote by David O. McKay: No other success can compensate for failure in the home. The world is competing for your time, and if you are not intentional, the world will fill your home with things you may not agree with and swallow your soul without hesitation. Making Room s purpose is to guide you to invest in home, family and personal development now and forever, because you and the people who live in your home matter.

My greatest hope for you, my reader, is that you feel uplifted and inspired from reading this book about how to create soul and style in your home. I like to picture you closing the book, standing up and saying, Yes! I can do this! And you can!

Best,

N othing was right when we moved into our first home. The wall colors were dark, there were traces of the seven children, two dogs and rabbits sprinkled amidst the house and we had a tight budget to use for repairs and changes we wanted and needed to make. We were going to paint the entire house in a week and furnish every room in a month. As we started to tackle projects and monitor our bank account, I realized that improvements were going to take a lot longer than I had anticipated and our old furniture was going to have to be good enough. As a stay-at-home mom, my home was my everyday workspace, and I was depressed by the slow progress.

After a month of trying to update our home between naptimes, work and our regular life, I went to my bed crying because I still did not have a complete living space. With two young children and a busy, hard-working husband, my house looked like a storage unit instead of a home. There were boxes in every room of the house, and I longed to have a space that reflected my style. The walls were green, dark brown, red and baby blue; these colors were not what I would have chosen. Move-in ready is not how I would describe the house, outside of it having running water and some curtains left behind. We even had to buy a fridge. On top of all of this, the house was large 2,466 square feet, and even after Cody, my cowboy, welding engineer husband, took a full week off work to help me paint the upstairs, the house was a wreck and the flaws jumped out at me every day.

While I was upstairs in my chaotic bedroom feeling sorry for myself, I heard Cody building something. I slowly walked downstairs and peeked around the corner to find him putting together a desk I had recently bought. He knew I was struggling with our home, and he was staying up late, after working all day, to bring me a bit of comfort. When he saw me come downstairs, he noticed my red, splotchy eyes, and told me to go back to bed. I obeyed with guilt because I truly was exhausted in every way.

Cody stayed up until nearly 1 a.m. putting together the desk so I could wake up and have one thing right. I knew when I saw it in the morning, everything would be okay, not because the house looked just right or because it would all be done soon, but because I had a husband who loved me. We could work on turning our storage unit into a glorious home filled with children, love and memories we cherished. This book is about the lessons, intangible and concrete, we have learned as we have tried to embrace home and family as the central, most important part of life. Through trial and error, we have made rooms that speak our story and made room for our priorities, bringing us joy and peace.

As a young girl I ripped out pages of my InStyle magazine and taped them to my walls like wallpaper. If the color or design of a page struck my fancy, it got ripped out and displayed for my daily pleasure and to impress all who saw my well-curated style.