I have never been very good at selling. Even when I had my own shop and needed to put food on the table, I used to almost die with embarrassment as I recommended furniture or encouraged my interior design clients to spend more money on my services. I didn’t believe in my own worth (still struggle) and could never quite accept that people might just trust my opinion long enough to WANT to spend money on those things I KNEW would improve their lives… Which is why this post is going to be difficult for me to write and why you should know that I am pink with humiliation as I sit and  type here for I am going to ask you to spend money today on something I believe in wholeheartedly: something I am certain you will adore, and something I KNOW will vastly enhance your well-being…
Leonie Dawson used to be my guilty vice. I would shuffle around her site with my head down, embarrassed by my yearning to be in the on-line company of a woman I would have once considered a little too airy-faerie crunchy for my tastes in female friends. How arrogant is that? Madness when so much of me wanted to up-sticks and move to Australia, just so I too could exist in her turquoise aura and absorb a little of her spirit through osmosis or delivery by the angels…
Every time she wrote, a little bit more of her spirit un-furled  and each day I prowled around her site, never daring to stick my head above the parapet yet  falling that little bit more in love with her. Not in the head over heels, love at first read way I fell in love with Sarah Ban Breathnach, but in a slow, organic way, impressed with the woman I saw growing before me and inspired by her courage and absolute determination to be the best she could be.
A few years later and Leonie Dawson’s instructions, purple and jangly as they might be, are starting to add a little more shape to my days. Her story throbs with honest to goodness joie de vivre and it is always a pleasure to see a post from Leonie in my reader for I know that at the end of reading it I will turn away from the computer inspired yet again to keep on keeping on creating a life I adore. Her aesthetic may not be mine, but she has, though she does not know it, become one of the mentors I have long sensed I needed.  Last year I took the plunge and became a  Goddess and not for one minute have I regretted it, for there in my subscription is a wealth of gorgeous, do-able inspiration that sits beautifully well with the puttery, home-centered life I have created for myself here.
This then is the first year I have used Leonie’s Create Your Incredible Year Workbooks and Planners and using it was one of the greatest pleasures of the week between Christmas and New Year, as I sat down with a glass of elderflower bubbly, night after night, to say goodbye to 2012 and to make friends with 2013, listing my hearts desires in a 100 wish long list of requests to the universe.
My list surprised me for on it appeared things I didn’t even know my soul needed and yet there they were: 100 things I want to do, be and feel in 2013. From the simple, purely functional do-able-right-now tasks like order a set of Moo Cards for BrocanteHome (Done! Tick! Go me!) and find a bookcase for the bedroom,  to the esotoric, ethereal wishes, currently without shape like fly somewhere and the vague, but desperately important instruction that is  feel safe…
For the first time in my life I feel the twelve months in front of me has some purpose: not the wishy-washy might not happen intent of a resolution but a list of to-do’s to shape my year. To-do’s that need ticking off one by one!
Oh Readers it feels good!
And that my dears is why I am positioning myself and BrocanteHome right behind Leonie Dawson’s Goddess Circle: not because as an affiliate I will earn a commission if you sign up, for after all there are a thousand and one affiliate programmes I choose NOT to be a part of even when they are proved to be successful, but because I WANT YOU TO FEEL GOOD TOO!
Ok enough with the over-excited exclamation marks. The simple truth is that sitting down with one of Leonies workbooks is life-enhancing. Doing her Goddess Haven course will alter how you keep house (this I promise you) and becoming a fully-fledged Goddess will keep you up to the eyes in all the inspiration you need to gently shift your focus on your world at large…
Heck you know what? That didn’t feel embarrassing. Sharing something else I want you to enjoy too, felt a teeny bit wonderful…
Create your own Brocante Life Book, plan Christmas, set up routines and rituals or live life the BrocanteHome way with my guided workbooks and planners.
In last months Country Living, Alexandra Stoddard urged us to "Frame a picture of yourself, when you were young and adorable to remind you of your identity and promise…". And so here I am: arms around a little girl I don’t recognise,…
It is a beautiful day. All early spring sun light and washing lines. You know when I started BrocanteHome nearly eighteen months ago I saw it as an opportunity to document my way of life: to show other women that quieting the…
Hello Darlings, can I tell you how reassuring it is to return here after a week off for half term with Finn, and know that you are still reading: that alongside real life, there is this utterly scrumptious virtual one I miss…
Sometimes it’s the teeny tiniest of changes that make all the difference. Yesterday instead of adding cold water to my raspberry jelly mix, I used rosewater (99p in the Indian groceries section at Tesco in the UK) and created something swoon-worthy… Jelly…
Isn’t kerfuffle a wonderful word? When I’m not having dramas, I am almost certainly caught up in some kind of kerfuffle, the kind of thing that can occasionally escalate in to a calamity, but more often than not causes nothing more than…
Do you know what a Surprise Ball is? No neither did I until I happened across them somewhere on the internet and now I am thoroughly charmed and desperate for an occasion to gift someone with a crêpe paper wrapped little ball…
Alison,I bought the Create Your Incredible Year Workbook after you mentioned it in an earlier post. It’s been very inspiring and helpful in getting unstuck and starting a new project that I’d been dragging my heels on for a while. Thanks for recommending it.
Yes, you hauled me in to the Year Workbook via an earlier mention and I am eternally grateful. I am psyched for the coming year!!!! Leonie is a completely new and amazing world to me.
Yes, you hauled me in to the Year Workbook via an earlier mention and I am eternally grateful. I am psyched for the coming year!!!! Leonie is a completely new and amazing world to me.
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Just got mine Alison, thanks so much Alison x
Just got mine Alison, thanks so much Alison x
Alison,I bought the Create Your Incredible Year Workbook after you mentioned it in an earlier post. It’s been very inspiring and helpful in getting unstuck and starting a new project that I’d been dragging my heels on for a while. Thanks for recommending it.
Yes, you hauled me in to the Year Workbook via an earlier mention and I am eternally grateful. I am psyched for the coming year!!!! Leonie is a completely new and amazing world to me.
Yes, you hauled me in to the Year Workbook via an earlier mention and I am eternally grateful. I am psyched for the coming year!!!! Leonie is a completely new and amazing world to me.