Live Life Beautifully.
A creative mantra that has shaped my life since I was 20.
I’ve been a creator for as long as I can remember.
As a little girl, I used to get stove and refrigerator boxes from the local appliance store downtown—big, sturdy cardboard boxes—and transform them into dollhouses. I’d make tiny furniture out of scraps, wallpaper the walls with leftovers from real rolls, and carpet the floors. I don’t even know how I knew to do all that—I just did. Creating was instinctive.
I drew and sketched through my school years, filling notebooks with doodles and dreams. But somehow, I never took a single art class in high school. Looking back, I wonder why. Maybe I didn’t yet see what I had as something to invest in.
I got married young and moved into a small rental home—and I loved that little place. I loved decorating it. I even loved cleaning it. (Yes, truly.) Around that time, I found a book called Live Life Beautifully and devoured every page. It wasn’t just about aesthetics. It was about honoring the everyday.
The author encouraged readers to make everything beautiful—from using real dishes instead of paper plates, to storing laundry soap in pretty containers instead of cardboard boxes. She believed that beauty didn’t have to be expensive or extravagant—it just had to be intentional.
That book changed me.
It gave language to something I already felt in my spirit: that art isn’t just a thing you hang on a wall. It’s how you live. It’s the way you arrange a room, set a table, fold the towels, love your people. It’s the way you see the world.
I’ve carried that mantra ever since:
Live Life Beautifully.
Now I’m 55, and I still live by it.
It shows up in my home, in my conversations, in my art. I paint to create beauty—not just to decorate walls, but to invite people into a way of seeing. A way of being. If you’re someone who loves to create beauty yourself, I hope my work inspires you. And if creating isn’t your thing, that’s okay—maybe my paintings can hang in your home and quietly remind you that there’s still beauty to be found.
And that life, no matter how ordinary, can be lived as a work of art.