Hola, beautiful ones...
I'm back! I hope you all had a fun and festive weekend. We had a lot going on at our house. Like so many other households, on Sunday afternoon our home was filled with many family and friends who came over to hang out and watch the football game. While David and I are not that into football (I confess, I didn't even know which teams were playing!) we're always game for a party, so we spontaneously decided that we'd open our home to whom ever wanted to spend the afternoon with us.
Our little gathering quickly turned into a big event, and to our delight...we had over 50 people join us for Superbowl Sunday. It's my joy to bring people together, and to create the space for people to relax and have fun, celebrating the little things in life that we sometimes are too busy to truly enjoy (see my last post here).
It warms my heart to see our home overflowing with people I hold dear, and to catch a glimpse of the kids faces each and every time the doorbell would ring, and another friend would appear. They would squeal with excitement seeing their friends from school, and quickly run upstairs to welcome them to their rooms.
When David and I first looked at the house that we moved into last January, we both felt like it would be the perfect place to host our ever-growing "Picone Parties". Be it for Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas,Superbowl, Birthdays and Slumber parties, or weekend barbecues thrown without reason, we hoped that our new home would become a place of comfort and fun for our friends and family who would spend time with us here.
This time around, I was a little "iffy" about hosting a party because there are several things around the house that I had hoped to finish before we had another big shebang. Despite the unsightly crumbling sheetrock and the exposed beams of our covered back patio that's still in need of repair (thanks,Hurricane Ike!), and a garden whose weeds are needing my attention, too...I decided those things shouldn't be a reason not to host a party, and just said, "What the heck, why not, we'll just do it anyway!"
Most of us all have those little projects here and there that make us feel like, well...a little embarrassed or even a little insecure. You know, the window sills that might be layered with a thick furry dust? Maybe it's the peeling paint, or the rugs which were accidentally stained when the kids faulty sippy cups leaked that very unforgiving red juice, or the chipped up trim, dinged up furniture, the kids writing on walls, the frayed corner of the couch that the cat has claimed as her scratching post, the baseboards that are hoping for a good spring cleaning, or all the other dark corners of our homes that fall under our frustration list. You know, all of those things you've been meaning to get to before you invite 50 of your closest friends and family over to your house for dinner?
The truth is...I have found that by "putting myself out there" (the way I really am) and laying out the welcome mat, despite the things that I find incredibly annoying...is that people don't really care about any of that stuff. They really and truly don't. And even if they do, guess what? They are probably not the kind of people I hope to keep as friends, anyways.
The people I want around value connection. They hope to have fun, and to be real. They are willing to look beyond whatever surface stuff might be hanging around. They want to celebrate, talk, share a good meal, confess the craziness of their own lives and laugh about it all...together.
They want to get silly, giggle, and dance...maybe even do a tricky, spider like back-flip down the stairs (Woahhh Stacy!!!).
They want to see the *realness* of your home, and your heart. How you really live, not just what you want people to see.
One of my favorite spontaneous moments of our party was when my soulful cousin Lauren, and I decided that we'd share the bindis that she brought back from her recent trip to India. What started out as an intimate heart-to-heart talk that my mom and cousin where having while tucked in a quite corner of our guest bedroom, soon blossomed into an impromptu Goddess circle of all the women who were still at the party after halftime.
As we all jumped on to the bed, we curled up and began to talk. We connected, with hands being held, and laughter filling the room. We created our own casual ceremony of receiving the bindi over our third eye, and had fun doing it! We offered silent cleansing prayers as Lauren and I placed the bindi on each Goddess's forehead and danced in the smoke drifting from our sacred burning wood. We dimmed the lights, turned up the music, and floated in the moment. It was surreal to have my neighbors and friends doing some pretty woo-woo stuff in the middle of a Superbowl party!
I stayed up pretty late doing dishes & getting the house pretty again. In just a few days my cleaning fairies (aka my housekeepers) will come and all will be back to *normal* again....just in time for the weekend to roll around, when we will again open our doors (and our hearts), to the blessing of welcoming a house full of family and friends.
In love and laughter,
~Elizabeth <3
PS. Check out those orbs hanging out in the room with us, right after our Goddess circle! Soooo much love and light swirling in that sacred space....
Comments