The Nesting Place: It Doesn't Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful Hardcover – April 13, 2021

I am or was the perfection (ha) mother, home maker and wife for 59 years. I love the Lord, and my husband, children and six grandchildren. I'm a wreck. Unmade bed heaven forebid. My mom always said what if in an accident, got sick and some brought you home what would they think. Maybe I was sick. That didn't get laughs. I (ok don't laugh) vacuumed 3 times a day, car cleaned every week and garage every month. It was exhausting but hey it looked great. My daughter is very much like you and is happy. It took the death of my son that God made look at everything differently and I am better. Keep writing your book we all need to its ok not have perfection and it wasn't perfect anyway.Learned a lot reading this terrific book.Thanks

Myquillyn Smith and her husband have lived in 14 homes in 18 years, so she’s had plenty of practice in figuring out how to make a house (or apartment) into a home. But what I found most inspiring about this book is that she’s not a perfectionist. In fact, she talks about not focusing on perfection, but making your home a place that welcomes and nurtures you and your family. She even shows a pair of photos of her own office, one staged for a magazine shoot, and one the way it normally looks: messy, used, and lived in.And she really understands that fear of doing it “wrong” is what holds a lot of us back from doing anything at all to our homes. She encourages her readers to take risks, whether it’s to go ahead and paint that $8 yard-sale side table, or moving the sofa to another wall, or putting up a bunch of photos and/or art. I had to laugh when she says there are 83 nail holes in her gallery wall – 83 that aren’t currently in use and that she had to fill in, that is! I’m one of those people who is scared to put up the pictures, because what if I don’t get the arrangement right? In fact, I am so afraid of making bad choices when it comes to my house that I haven’t really done anything in years… and it shows. But the two rooms I actually designed about 10 or 12 years ago – my office and Robin’s bedroom – while both currently cluttered and full of too much stuff, are pretty and inviting when they’re cleaned up. So what am I afraid of?Myquillyn’s style isn’t mine; she uses a lot more painted furniture than I want to, while I’m more into the beauty of the wood. But she embraces the personally meaningful and the whimsical in her style, and both of those are things I want to highlight as well: family treasures, things that have personal meaning or wonderful memories, and things that reflect my passions (reading, knitting, fantasy creatures.) Reading the book inspired me to bring up our oversize dragon cookie jar that has languished in the basement for the last 12 or 15 years. We don’t need to eat a lot of cookies, so instead I filled him with Luna bars (power bars.) He’s green and yellow – not the colors I would have chosen – but he’s also cute and whimsical and dragonish, and I love him.The real test of a how-to book is in whether you actually follow through on the inspiration and ideas you get from it, and I can’t really report on that yet. It’s only been a week or so since I read it, after all. But I found some sections of the book and some of the quotes inspiring enough that I decided to buy my own copy so I can refer back to it whenever I get discouraged.Wish me luck!REVIEW ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED on The Bookwyrm's Hoard blog.

I ordered this book after happening upon Myquillyn Smith's (the author's) blog. I read quite a few of her posts and knew her general style which is a mix of a loving Christian wife & mother and a believer in quirky, shabby-chic style of decor. She's a thrifter with a few One King's Lane pieces thrown in. Her style includes lots of DIYing and a little hoarding. Christianity plays a pretty important role in her life because it helps explain a lot of her frustrations away (He has a plan...). She believes limitations, especially those that a renter faces, such as not being able to change tiles or repaint a fireplace all actually help us turn our rentals into unique places as long as we look at them positively and get creative! In a way, her blog thenester.com is a great preview for this book, so if you're on the fence, just pop over and take a look and decide for yourself.Overall, she tells us to stop obsessing over the pretty houses in the magazine because her own house was in magazines and it often doesn't look like the pictures they snapped. I enjoyed her snapping us back to reality by showing us her office cleaned up for the shoot and her office after.If you are very bothered by seeing faith used in a book (He takes care of us, He has a plan etc) then this book might seem preachy, and in a way, since it does play a large part in her life and general contentment, it is definitely present. I wouldn't say overly so, but you might have to skip over a few bits here and there.If you approach this book for decorating advice, you will be disappointed. This book is not about what colors go in a room (a lot of her rooms are intensely neutral), or what object d'art looks good on a coffee table, or even how to spray paint. This book is about how to look at decorating (as something fun and enjoyable), how to love your home (by lowering your own standards of perfection and seeing that it's a place where life happens), and some parts about her own experiences renting and experimenting with low-budget decorating.I purchased this book at $10, new, and it gave me several interesting hours of reading as well as a fun hour of photographing, so I don't regret it. In all honesty, a lot of what she says here is on her blog, very little is new material. Many of the photos repeat and she tends to change things around (as we all do in our home) and take pictures of the changes, so it feels as if you keep looking at the same photos. I like her style, I love her bedroom and I like some of her ideas which I have started incorporating into my own home, so I'm fairly happy with the book.This is an excerpt from the book:" In 2004, Dove launched a Campaign for Real Beauty to help broaden the definition of beautiful among women... After a crew attends to her makeup, hair, and lighting, the model is photographed and she looks great. But wait, it's time for the touch-ups, we watch on the screen as her lips are digitally filled out, her neck is stretched and elongated... and her shoulders are manipulated and slimmed...I didn't know whether to be happy that even models are heavily photoshopped or mad that even models are heavily photoshopped..."If this excerpt made you laugh, nod you head vigorously or happy that someone gets it, then this book might very well be worth $10-15 for you. If you didn't understand it at all or were ambivalent, then maybe not.