Have you been invited to a vision board party?  Ringing in the new year seems to have brought with it the practice of getting one’s friends or co-workers together to create vision boards.

What exactly is a vision board? A vision board is a collage of images, affirmations, or quotes that represent a person’s dreams and desires for the upcoming year.  It is believed to assist in the manifestation of these things into one’s life.

I am not new to the practice of creating boards.  In fact, much of the interior design curriculum involves gathering images, drawings, plans, fabric swatches and material samples and placing them strategically on a board.  These boards were usually made of 1/4″ white foam core and the act of placing things on them involved many hours of wrapping, pinning and gluing small fabric swatches around additional small squares of that same white foam core.  The key was always to find and use the adhesive that worked best based on the type of material that I was trying to place on the board-rubber cement for fabric, spray glue for paper (floor plans and catalog photos) and a hefty double-sided tape for vinyl coated wallpaper samples. Of course, white foam core has given way to the technology age and the act of creating digital boards is now as convenient as saving images (even images of fabric samples) to computer desktops and uploading them into a Photoshop collage template.

But enough of that..after all vision boards aren’t really about the images, quotes or materials used to create them – they are about the VISION. The vision that when focused upon, brings up the feelings of joy (aka happiness), love, security and abundance.  When I want to conjure up these feelings, I focus on how I would like my life to go-the places that I would like to visit (or have visited and want to spend more time in), the things that I would like to surround myself with and the adventures that I would like to experience. I also think of all of the people in my life and in the world as thriving and realizing their own dreams and desires.  

Vision boards are personal.  Maybe too personal for posting to a blog (much less a blog that is posted to my business website).  But I am going to do it anyway…

I included this quote by Elsie de Wolfe at the top of my 2020 vision board.  Elsie de Wolfe was one of the first American interior designers.  For many years I have carried another one of her famous quotes, “I make everything around me beautiful.  This will be my life”, as the background wallpaper on my iPhone and computer.

Why does this quote speak to me so much?

For as long as I can remember, I have always wanted to live a beautiful house in a beautiful setting.  This is the first memory that I can recall having as a child.  I suppose I would consider this my ultimate goal.  Not that I have not lived in beautiful houses or in beautiful settings already because I have and do.  This is different…this is the house that I have been building and decorating in my imagination and in my heart.

The house of my imagination is set somewhere along the American coast of the Atlantic ocean.  This is a photo of Beacon Rock in New Hampshire and the first photo that I placed on my vision board.  I came across this photo on YouTube and immediately recognized it as the house I have been building and decorating in my dreams.  In fact, I was so inspired by this house and its setting that I designed a girl’s bedroom around it.  Design below ⇓

As a side note:  many of the coastal homes along the New England seaboard are given names.  These names appear on placards that are typically hung above front doors or windows.  I have named my coastal home Daffodil House (hence the text at the bottom of the photo – Summer at Daffodil House).

Speaking of daffodils…I added the flower truck photo to be reminded to always allow enough time to stop and smell the roses.  I know it is cliché. But so what…flowers are more often than not present in the beautiful settings that I create in my imagination and they speak to the importance of nature in cultivating well being.  I envision having more of this (time with nature and in recognizing my well being in 2020).

The photo of the Les Indiennes wallpaper, oil painting with white frame, radiator and fan are reminiscent of the simple interiors of houses by the sea. This particular image fills me up with warm feelings of comfort and bliss and memories of past summers spent there.

The girl in the gingham dress is my wish for my body. It involves how I want to feel about how I look all the way down to the clothes that I envision myself wearing. I think often of beautiful clothing and accessories and dub it as “decoration for the body”. While our external appearance has little to do with the beauty that is within us, it does feel so good to feel comfortable, even incredible in our bodies – clothes have made me feel self confident.

This postcard of the Eiffel Tower, landscape painting of South Carolina and photo of the campus at Virginia Tech represent some of the places that I would like to travel to this year. The most interesting of these may be the photo of Virginia Tech. Why do I want to go there you ask? My son is going to graduate from high school in May and Virginia Tech is his number one (it is THE school that he wants to get into and will attend when admitted). Note my wording here – “will attend WHEN not if he is admitted”. This is the reason that I’ve included it on my vision board-to put it out into the universe that he gets an acceptance letter from Virginia Tech (insert a thumbs up emoji here).

This brings me to the final image – the celebratory crowd in the yellow truck.

It is here as a reminder to celebrate everything and as representation of my desire to have many, many celebratory events in 2020!

Now, I’ve come full circle and it takes me back to the Elsie de Wolfe quote-“A house that is like the life that goes with it” means to me to actually live the beauty that I see in the vision of my house by the sea. It means that every life event and adventure be viewed as beautiful and that I act with beauty in every encounter that I have with others. While what is thought of as beautiful may be different for everyone (it is in the eye of the beholder after all), I think that there is a universal recognition that we know it when we have the experience of it. This is how I have come to interpret, “A house that gives us beauty as we understand it”.

My interpretation of the last line “and beauty of a noble kind that we may grow to understand”, is that there will always be more and different desires and dreams that will arise simply by my living in the fulfillment of everything on my vision board. The value of having expanded so much that my life experience is greater than it was before, simply prompts me to dream bigger, create more beauty, maybe even host a vision board party in 2021!

So there it is…my vision- my list of desires and dreams for 2020. I am looking forward to writing about all of the things that came into being in my life this year and I am sending a special thought to all of you who read this post – that you too will realize your 2020 vision!

If you have created a vision board, send me a comment and tell me about it! I love to be inspired by your ideas and aspirations.