Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.  Helen Keller

The desire to adorn our bodies, homes, tables, gifts, yards, and cities has ancient roots. Beauty is powerful. Philosopher Tom Morris says, “We all intuitively know that beauty plays a role that can’t be duplicated by anything else in its impact on the human spirit.” Beauty helps reveal a truth about your inner being, so you resonate with it, receiving affirmation and revitalization.

Yet, the costs, time, and energy that it may take can overwhelm you. So how do you have beauty without stress? I’ve developed a concept called simple beauty. Start from the premise that you can have all the beauty you want. Practicing the art of simple beauty just requires thoughtfulness about four elements.

1. Choose acts of beauty that are straightforward and uncomplicated.

2. Keep costs trouble-free.

3. Do only that which inspires you.

4. Involve those you love in the creation of the beauty.

These are flexible concepts that depend on your time, talent and treasures. For example, what is a trouble free cost will vary by your financial situation verses someone else’s. What we have in common is that we don’t want buyer’s remorse or angst when the January bills show up for the purchases.

I tell a story in my book, Home – Inspired by Love and Beauty, about a woman named Susan. She is rich in creativity and has a great sense of visual design. She also has a limited budget. She practices the principles of simple beauty this way. Susan delights in creative Christmas decorations for her tree. She has different theme trees each year. She has had many themes Santa Claus, angels, Chinese fans and ceramic fish, poinsettias, and years with color themes. She rotates different sets of ornaments or artificial flowers or regroups them in new ways to make a different theme adding variety with minimal cost. For her this is simple, financially trouble free and her feeling of inspiration and creativity make the investment of time and energy satisfying and fun. Her family and friends are delighted with a surprise each year.

The Christmas before our 30^th wedding anniversary, we decided to give ourselves a special gift and solve a long-standing problem with a door in the middle of the living room wall. We solved our problem by designing a stained glass insert for the upper part of the door. You can actually see it on the spine of the book. My husband and I had so much fun designing that together and while it was a larger purchase of around $800, we had budgeted for it and knew we were making a lasting investment in our home and our pleasure. Every morning when I come down the steps into the living room the light from that window warms me and brings back that sweet memory.

Before you get caught in the rush and fall into autopilot, stop and ask, “Given what is going on this year how can I have simple beauty which will be straightforward, uncomplicated, not too costly, and be inspirational, rather than work.