Today, Invisible Friends, you’ll meet a fabulous lady.  Connie from Living Beautifully is a true old-fashioned lady.  A stay at home wife, mom and nana to four grandkids, she spends her days making the world around her more beautiful, from her home to other people’s lives.  She’s like the neighbor you wish you always had, always ready for a chat in her comfy living room with a porcelain tea set and homemade cookies.

Let’s chat with her, shall we?

How did you get started blogging?  How did you come up with your title/ name?

I started blogging because I wanted to write or rather chronicle and/or journal things in my life without having to use a pen and paper. I’m much faster at typing then I am at writing in long hand. I thought I could contribute something to the blogging community. Silly me! But now I do it because I absolutely love it. It’s part of my “creative process.”

My name, connie-livingbeautifully, comes from a book I read more than 22 years ago by Alexandra Stoddard called Living Beautifully. It changed my life. It is truly a life-changing book, and I have given many away as presents to women I love. I even wrote Alexandra once and she responded to me. I kept that card from her and laminated it but sadly it was stolen on a trip to California when someone broke into our car and stole my planner and some CDs. I miss my planner greatly but the CDs were from the 60s, 70s and 80s so the thief was probably surprised when he got the CDs to play. But I could replace them. I could never replace the things in the planner: a letter from my granddaughter when she was 16 and the note from Alexandra.

What does being creative mean to you?

Being creative to me means a couple of things. We can be creative in our daily lives by observing the things around us that tweak our brains to do things that bring beauty to the home. Home is the most important thing to me and to most people. Home is my celestial place on earth where love is spoken, ideas are brought to fruition and where we always want to be no matter what. I create when I write, when I try to paint my feeble little roses, when I create a particularly cute vignette in the house, when I grab just that perfect photo with my camera or when I make a birdhouse with fabric or sew a special apron. There are so many ways to create for me I doubt I’ll ever get to do them all. But basically it means that all the ideas I have stuffed into this brain are brought to life when I think upon it for awhile and then bring them alive.

Why do you think it’s important for women to balance creativity in their daily lives?

Most women I know are homemakers and take care of their homes. If we have no outlet for our creativity, we’ll stagnate; whether it’s sewing for the little ones or yourself or arranging flowers or painting. I believe it’s a must for most women. It also helps their children to become more creative.

What kind of creative things do you do every day?

I “create” everyday, whether it’s a blog post or arranging items in the house or decoupaging jars or simply taking photos. This is something I MUST do daily.

Tell me about your family.

My hubby and I have been married 48 years in June of 2009. We married after only four months of knowing each other! We had a daughter within a year and then a son within another year so I had two under a year old! We’ve lived in California most of our married life until we decided to leave the rat race and move to Idaho in late 1991. We now have 4 grandchildren: granddaughter 29, grandsons 25, 20 and 12. Our kids and grandkids are very good to us.We’ve traveled a lot but I refuse to fly anymore so we only go to places we can drive to now: California to visit kids and grandkids there and to Seattle area to visit our granddaughter.

What’s your favorite food?

My favorite food is pasta or more specifically—fettuccine Alfredo—and fish. I love shrimp and fish. I could eat pasta or fish just about every day.

Favorite song?

My favorite song is actually a hymn called “Love One Another” and I cry every single time I hear it and sing it in church. It’s a beautiful but very, very short song.

Do you like to dance?

Dance? I hate it! I just am not comfortable doing it. I’m a stay-at-home gal and hubby is the party animal! How we got together is a mystery except that we love each other passionately…...

If you could go anywhere in the world with anyone, where would you go and who would you go with?

I’d take a trip to a bed and breakfast along the northern California coast with my hubby. He’s truly the person I want to be with more than anyone outside of my kids, and having been to B&Bs along the coast is my idea of beauty.

But someone once asked me who are 3 people you would love to talk to and I came up with these names immediately: Jesus Christ, Alexandra Stoddard and Alexander Solzhinitzen. Fascinating would be those conversations.

What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given?

The best gift was a pair of diamond earrings given to me along with a pair of ski pants and a flashlight many years ago. Hubs likes to camp and I don’t but the flashlight showed he cared because it was a small one to light my way to the toilets when camping and the ski pants kept me warm when we winter camped.

What’s your favorite pet?

Pet? I’m not a pet person but if I happened to ever get one it would be a papillon dog. I’ve seen them with people and they are a “one person dog” and I was fascinated by one I saw with a woman at the airport once. Just beautiful, loving and loyal.

There’s an enormous present for you on the kitchen table.  What’s in it?

My present would be a silk dress. I love silk dresses.

How did you get started in the domestic arts?

I wasn’t very domestic as the kids were growing up. I worked and for the years prior to my retiring I was the highest paid woman in one of the top 60 Fortune 500 companies and was on the fast track when the SF 1989 earthquake hit and separated my hubby and me for several hours. We then made the decision to move out of Calif. I sat in my office one day and decided I wanted to bake cookies. When I told my women’s group I thought they were going to blacklist me! We then moved to Idaho within a year and I started being “domestic” and staying home to take care of our home and my husband. Best decision I ever made and I’ve never looked back. It’s when I decided to stay home that I became so interested in my abode. It boosted my creativity and was the best choice I ever made. Being in an office isn’t creative and I’ve always had a creative side that was stuffed down because of my acumen in business.

Where did you get your love of roses?

I’ve always loved roses. Who doesn’t? I’ll have them around me always.

What do you want to achieve with your blog?

If there is one reason I started a blog it is to share the anomalies of design. Do what you want and in the end makes you happy, not someone else. Plus a bit of humor doesn’t hurt. It’s my most creative outlet.

What are your favorite projects to feature on your blog?

My favorite things to feature on the blog are my birdhouses and aprons. They are designed by me and no two are alike. That gives me the greatest satisfaction. But I also looooove to feature what I’ve done to my home……with a bit of humor.

Imagine I’ve given you a brand new house with nothing in it.  What would you do first?

A brand new house? I think first of all the walls would be painted pink and then the sofas would start appearing. I love sofas!

If I gave you a blank wall and a gift certificate to a craft store, what would you do?

Beautiful shelving and netting. I love having shelves to put things on and netting is a very cheap decorating tool.

What have you learned since going domestic?

Mostly that a house can be filled with the most expensive things money can buy but if there isn’t a sense of home, belonging and love then it’s all wasted. When we leave this earth we take nothing with us. Not money, things or anything. NOTHING. We leave with one thing only: clothing.

Favorite pie?

Coconut cream pie.

What do you want to achieve with this blog?

Make people smile and say “I’m glad I know this chick.” Show them that they can absolutely be happy with less in life than then think they can. After all, it’s all “fluff”!

For more, visit Connie at her blog!

Stay tuned, Invisible Friends!  We have a week full of whimsical fun coming up!  New stories, new tasty treats and more!