Be Who you are!

Reflecting my 'inner soul' ..... but, first I ate some Junk Berry Pie from Royers Round Top Café.

Waking up before the sun, my friend and I headed from Mason to Round Top, Texas for a special Private Bloggers Luncheon at Royers Round Top Café. The calendar reflected that this was the biannual Antiques Week show in Round Top and the surrounding area. Once we turned off of Hwy 71 and started to travel from LaGrange, Warrenton, and onto Round Top, I found my heart beating faster and my eyes darting in every direction trying not to miss any of the vintage displays.

Royers Café and the Dallas Market Center (the world’s best wholesale marketplace and supplier of vintage products) were our hosts. There were about 50 hand selected group of vintage and interior design bloggers invited for this luncheon.

At last year’s luncheon I first learned about Dwell With Dignity and they were here again. It’s inspiring to hear about this Dallas non-profit which “help families escape poverty and homelessness through design.” They do this by working in conjunction with other local charities to help people — usually women and children — get back on their feet after some serious setbacks. With vintage donated items and extreme creativity and strong design sense they pull together comfortable and safe home environments for those with little monies.

The excitement of being in the area during the biannual Antique Week, meeting and hearing from the Dallas Market Center, Dwell with Dignity, and sitting down to a fabulous Royer’s lunch, well, life was feeling pretty good. But the real treat was meeting Carol Hicks Bolton and to hear her inspiration and design philosophy. Shabby chic and country interior designer, Carol Hicks Bolton has her new showroom the Antiquities Laboratoire de Design in Fredericksburg, Texas…just 42 miles south of Mason and 30 minutes from Mason’s Covered Wagon Guesthouse.

Carol Hicks Bolton at Bloggers Luncheon at Royers Cafe

“God wants the best for his people”, came the words from the soft spoken Carol Bolton. She spoke about being authentic, real, living from your soul. Our interior space, our living areas, our bedrooms reflect our inner soul and thus…we feel safe. Life is messy. The world can be scary. We want and need to come home to relax, recharge, in a safe place, a safe haven.

Carol encouraged us to design our environments in our way or style. In a way that brings our self out and reflects our inner soul. Karen Royer said it best when she added that creativity drives your soul. Carol painted a picture of a cleaner, none cluttered look. Display pictures, rocks, items, not purchased from a generic store, but selected items collected that evoke memories. Stories and memories that bubble to the surface every time you glance at it. Surround yourself with items that speak happy times.

Then Carol Bolton starting tossing out descriptive words to emphasis her point:

Good bones… down to earth….simplistic yet a luxurious quality…motivates… inspires….gives you a good feeling to be around….clean…non-pretentious…elegant…tough…strong…perhaps a little raw/rough around the edges at times…authentic…

Was she speaking about interior design or qualities of a person? I suddenly felt I had ‘opened my personal kimono and the world was seeing my soul’. Those words or phrases have been used to describe me at one time or another.

This luncheon was about a call for me to be more authentic and real. In ending the time together Carol Hicks Bolton said “Be who you are!” It was a gentle push to move forward, without hesitation to the next chapter of my life.

Bud Royer mentioned that in life there were those who told you what to do and then there were ones who were willing to show others what they were doing.

Life is Good.

Life is Exciting!

P.S. I loved the dessert!