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Dayna Edwards makes the best walnut bath caddy I have ever seen.

Dayna has an artisanal approach; she is a skilled craftswoman, using traditional methods with a focus on high quality and attention to detail. All her creations are handmade and involve specialized techniques or expertise. She is an amazing artist who uses her creative expression to create practical things for the home.

I met Dayna at Art Crawl and was super impressed with her humility, gentleness, simplicity, and innocence. I told her what I was looking for, sent her a few pics and I was blown away by the bath caddy she made for us.

A bath caddy, also known as a bathtub caddy or bathtub tray, is a practical and convenient accessory designed to enhance the bathing experience. It is a flat, usually rectangular, tray or platform that spans the width of a bathtub. Bath caddies are typically made of waterproof materials like bamboo, wood, plastic, or metal. The primary purpose of a bath caddy is to hold various items and keep them within reach while you relax in the bathtub. It usually features multiple compartments and slots to hold items like books, tablets, beverages, toiletries, candles, loofahs, and mobile phones. Bath caddies are adjustable to fit various bathtub sizes, and they often have extendable arms or adjustable sides. This adaptability ensures that they can fit securely across the width of your bathtub, providing a stable surface for your items. Bath caddies are not only functional but can also add a touch of luxury and organization to your bathing routine. They offer a convenient way to keep everything you need within easy reach, so you can fully relax and enjoy your bath without worrying about accidentally dropping or splashing your belongings in the tub.

Dayna made a bespoke bath caddy from walnut wood. She measured the width of the bathtub to determine how long the caddy should be. She got the wood, sanded it, stained it, prepared the resin, added pigments, poured the resin, remove air bubbles, added decorations, and cured the resin. applied a waterproof finish and gave it to us with a candle. What a true consummate professional. I was fascinated with her approach and sat down to talk to her.

I really like your resin art on wood. Talk to me about it and what drew you to it.

During 2022 I had to take time off from work due to illness. Between doctor’s appointments and learning how to care more for my health, I found myself needing an outlet much like during the 2020 lockdown. I originally did acrylic pour work back then, but while watching some videos for inspiration, I found resin. Being a person who loves trying new techniques, I loved how versatile and beautiful resin was, and it wasn’t long before I found videos of resin on wood and fell in love with the idea. It’s just a gorgeous combination!

Where do you get your inspiration from?

I get a lot of inspiration from watching videos online, but even more inspiration simply from my friends! They’ll say: “Have you tried…?” and then just think up how I can really make that idea pop during the creation process.

On social media you talk about being diagnosed with EDS, help me understand it.

Last year I was diagnosed with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder (HSD), which may soon just be categorized back into the Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) category. HSD and EDS are a group of connective tissue disorders that can affect all parts of the body. Very basically, the glue that holds my body together doesn’t work as well as regular people. My joints and tendons can sublux (partial dislocation) or sometimes fully dislocate. This disorder also implies many other chronic health conditions are present and can affect daily life. Once again, this is just a very basic explanation, but I highly encourage people to research it! The more awareness we have, the more diagnoses will be made, and more doctors will be looking into better treatment options.

You have been through so many challenges. I find you joyful and innocent. Walk me through how you manage to achieve this state of mind.

I’m glad you find me joyful! It wasn’t always this way, especially because the vast majority of my life I had no idea what was wrong with me. Even when I finally figured out what was wrong, I had to wait two years on a waitlist for a doctor to confirm it. Health conditions kept piling up, and there was a lot of “why?” I was asking. But, I’m extremely lucky to have very supportive friends and family to help me through. My artwork actually is what has helped keep joy in my life. I also got deep into meditation and spiritual work, and I found that it really helped me see things from a different perspective. I discovered that I didn’t want to be this miserable person who brought people down. Instead, I strived to be someone who brought others up. There’s more than enough negativity in this world, and it’s time to change that!

I love your charcuterie boards, acrylic pours, coasters, and bath caddies. Are you open to a unique order from a client?

I am always open to a unique order from a client! I would never just want to do the same things over and over again, hence why I named my business “Mix It Up Artistry”!

Some people might say your work is expensive. Tell my audience the work that is involved when you make a bath caddie compared to buying one from Walmart.

Yes, the work is expensive, but so much more goes into it than one may think! Especially when the wood is involved. So much time goes into just sanding, filling in any flaws, and even more sanding to ensure everything is flat before I even think about laying down my outline. You also need to time layers of resin properly so paint doesn’t float up from the wood, make sure it doesn’t leak into what you’ve routed out and really know your chemicals! I also need to have the proper PPE for the resin, sanding, and when applying the finish. It can get very complicated! And if someone has requested a very specific design, I have to make sure that all of these things work together properly in order to achieve that. I’m not sure if the bath caddies you find at Wal-Mart go through the same process!

Talk to me about your city and what is so unique about it.

I’ve only been living in Hamilton for three years now, but I can honestly say I love it a lot more than I did living in Toronto! There’s a lot more nature and trails that are accessible here, and my dog definitely loves that! There’s almost more of a sense of community here, and I think that’s also what’s going to keep me here for a long time

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In a world that often celebrates perfection and conformity, the most profound strength lies in embracing your true self. “Just Be You” is a gentle reminder that authenticity is not only enough—it’s everything.

This post delves into the transformative power of self-acceptance, encouraging you to shed the masks and expectations that society places upon you. By embracing your unique qualities and quirks, you unlock a life of genuine connection, inner peace, and fulfillment.

Join us as we explore the beauty of living authentically and the profound impact it can have on your well-being and relationships.

Please tell me what is Debs Decorative Life all about? Who is the audience? Why should we visit it?

Deb’s Decorative Life is about helping busy moms to be less stressed by offering household and life hacks so they can spend more time with their families.  Deb’s Decorative Life inspires and encourages you to “Just Be You, Your Own Unique Self”. I want my busy moms to lead their own decorative life whether it is trying a new recipe or DIYing their own party decorations.

My audience is mainly busy moms with kids.  The single, millennial working woman also follows Deb’s Decorative Life for fast, practical, easy, simple ideas to help get her in and out of the kitchen faster.

You should visit Deb’s Decorative Life if you want to be less stressed in the kitchen and in life.  Anyone can lead their own decorative life if they apply my tips, tricks for DIY, recipes, gift ideas, and family fun. 

How did the blog come about? How is everything going so far?

After years of everyone asking for my household advice, I decided to share my expertise with the world.  If I can lead a decorative life, then, you can too!  People are too stressed and I want to lessen the stress of running a household.

I am happily experimenting with ideas and projects to help run your household in a simpler effective way.  I love it when I get an email from my readers asking me for help.  I am so happy to support them. 

Explain to me the challenges of blogging?

The challenge of blogging is coming up with more new, easy, simple, innovative ideas to keep your household running smoothly.

I am also working on a book or two while I am blogging.

I am also a busy mom and my family depends on me.

I am also a VIP Juice Crew Brand Ambassador for Old Orchard Brands so I always trying to come up with new ideas and recipes to share with my audience.

My website loves to give me tech problems that started over the last 4-6 months.  Updates can cause images to disappear.  There are days when I can barely work on my website and it jumps all over the place when I hit the enter key.

I am determined not to let that challenge get to me!  Somehow, I always manage to get posts on my website.

What does women empowerment mean to you?

When I think about women’s empowerment, I think about strong, confident, determined women who are willing to learn how to run a business.  These women offer help and support to other women in business so that they can both succeed.  Women’s empowerment is about women putting themselves out there so that they can lead, achieve and thrive in business and in life.

We all go through challenges in life. Name a specific life challenge you have been through and how you dealt with it?

I remember, last summer, when our college son got severely sick with migraines that made him sick to his stomach every day for a little over a month.

He was in and out of urgent care about 3 or 4 times a month.

I also had to re-schedule his graduation party because he was so sick.  He even almost missed his 2nd graduation party because he was still sick.  He refused to let me cancel his party and re-schedule again.

My blog suffered!  I was barely paying any attention to my blog.

My son needed me and I wanted to be there for him.  He was miserable, in pain and vomiting every day.

After he got better, I refused to look at my blog stats and my social media followers.

I just concentrated on getting myself back on my feet with the blog and social media.  I wrote blog posts, social media posts and concentrated on getting followers.

I was super focused for a month and wore myself out trying to play catch up.  After a month, I finally went back to my usual schedule.

How do you come up with ideas for your blog?

I picked 4 areas of concentration for my blog DIY, Recipes, Holidays/Events, and Family.  I give household and life hacks for these topics in my blog posts.  I also share my experiments, hints, tricks, and tips in a blog post to help lessen my audience’s stress of running a household.

I want you to give yourself some advice on 26 36 and 46?

At age 26, I would say that if you are living with your parents, follow their rules but go after your dream now.  The risk isn’t as risky because your parents are providing you with a roof over your head and will always have food for you.

At age 36, I would say that you shouldn’t let your kids or family life hold you back from doing something for you.  In the long run you loose yourself and end up feeling empty with regret and anger.

At age 46, I would say that it’s never too late to just jump in and do what you want to do in life.  Go after it!

I want you to give 5 pieces of advice to women under 35?

The sooner you follow your dream, the better.  Don’t wait so you don’t regret it.

You have a lot of time ahead of you.  If you fail, get up and keep trying until you get it right.

Don’t overspend. It only hurts you in the long run and the challenge of paying off debt weighs on you until it is paid off.

You are going to attract or repel people, either way, there is nothing you can do about it. Accept it.

Practice getting out of your comfort zone. That is the key to a more fulfilled and successful life.

How has food, faith, finance, and family made an impact on your life?

I find myself taking pictures of what I eat or make for social media or the blog.

I have a lot of faith and I believe you are on the path that you are meant to be on in life.

My family survived when my husband was unemployed 3 times in 2 years.  It was extremely rough but we got through it.  My household hacks, couponing, DIY, and budgeting really helped.

Family time is important to me and I enjoy coming up with lots of ideas for family fun.

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Suzana Serravalle talks about essential oils.

Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and entrepreneurs are the foundation and essence of the Canadian economy. Women entrepreneurs continue to face barriers in the ecosystem like gender bias, systematic discrimination, and access to mentors, support, services, and financing.

Suzana Serravalle is an Independent Wellness Consultant with doTERRA International which deals in essential oils. Suzana has shown ingenuity, tenacity, and resilience and continues to grow her business through all the challenges.

Sue, please tell me a little about you?

My name is Suzana Serravalle. I’m a McMaster University graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Kinesiology.  I have been married to a wonderful man and business partner for 17 years.  Together we have a daughter and son ages 14 and 12.  We live in Burlington Ontario and just love this city and the people in it.  My husband and I are Entrepreneurs.  For the past 10 years, we have run our own Electrical Contracting Company together.  We started this business from the ground up and are proud of how well we have done.  For 16 years I also worked as a Registered Massage Therapist.  I loved being fully self-employed as it afforded me the opportunity to work from home and take care of my family.

About 4 years ago I embarked on a new venture that fit my true passion in life, natural health care.  I am an Independent Wellness Consultant with doTERRA International.  It is my absolute pleasure to educate people about the quality and effectiveness of doTerra’s essential oils and other natural products and how people can incorporate these into their lifestyles to improve their overall health and wellness.  In short, I’m a mom, a wife, and an entrepreneur with a great passion for natural health care and essential oils!

Wow! So, you quit massage therapy to pursue your dream of owning a business. Tell me about the process and how does it make you feel like a successful person? 

As much as I loved being a Massage Therapist and helping people with their various muscle, and tissue concerns, relieving stress, and other physical conditions, I felt that there was always something more I could do.  Half of my clients were on anti-depressants, all of them were under extreme stress and people were sick all the time.  My role with doTERRA has allowed me to educate and empower others to make healthier and proactive choices regarding their health.   I’m successful when I’ve helped just one person, and to date, I’ve helped over a thousand with essential oils. That’s true Success!

How important it is for you to feed your kids healthy food?

This is so important.  Now, I’m not perfect by any means.  Being self-employed and working from home allows me to schedule a time to buy groceries and make homemade meals on a daily basis.  I love knowing what is in the food, I’m feeding my family.  It’s not just important for kids but for us all.  Our gut is the key to good health.  When our digestive system is messed up, it affects every part of our body including our mood, emotions, and mental health.  Along with healthy food I make sure we all take extra vitamins with our food to ensure enough nutrient extraction and absorption and to make sure our bodies receive a solid foundation of health.

How have essential oils made a difference in your life and the family?

It has made the biggest impact on our overall health and wellness as well as provided me with a career that I love!  First, we have completely detoxified our home and only use healthy and natural products.  You won’t find any chemicals that are harmful to our home.  This includes all our toiletries, cleaning products, and solutions for any and all health concerns in our family.  We’ve improved our internal health with doTerra’s vitamins and other natural supplements and addressed emotions and moods with essential oils. We are healthier than ever before and have a natural solution for everything.  As a family, we are better educated and make better choices.  Being a doTERRA Wellness Educator has afforded me the work lifestyle I want and opened the door to endless earning potential!  The sky’s the limit and I’m in the driver’s seat with essential oils!

Essential oils make a difference in our moods and our health please explain?

With essential oils, we have the ability to direct our own emotional traffic.  Each aroma introduced to the brain conveys information that determines the brain’s response.  Imagine having the power to change your mood using natural chemical responses.  Making sure you are using pure and tested therapeutic-grade essential oils from a science-based company can give you endless possibilities.  Overall, the essential oils give our bodies what they need to work at their optimal level!  It’s as simple as that!

How do you balance food, faith, family, and finance in the 21st century?

To be honest…. I don’t personally believe that you can achieve true balance.  The scales will usually be tipped one way or another as life is unpredictable and stuff always happens.  But we can most certainly try and that’s what I do.  I believe being an Entrepreneur allows me the opportunity to choose my destiny, to choose what is important to me, and make that happen.  I guess I started with the basics of eating good quality food and making good choices as to what we put in and on our bodies.  Faith, to me, is being good to one another and serving others.  I am blessed to do this with my family, friends, and a thousand customers that I have.  Family is what I live for and therefore they are my number one priority each day.  And as far as finance goes, I’m so glad you listed it last because when all of the first three actions are taken, finance is just a bonus.  Far too often people just focus on the finance piece and don’t realize how important it is to take care of ourselves, love one another and serve others.

The post How Essential Oils Changed My Life appeared first on Four Columns of a Balanced Life.

What is Advent?

Advent is derived from adventus which in Latin means ‘visit’ or ‘coming’ of something very important. Christians focus on the advent of Christ when He was born in Bethlehem and the second that is yet to come.

Advent Calendar

The start of Advent is exactly four Sundays before Christmas and it ends on Christmas Eve. Christmas starts on Christmas Eve and ends on January 6^th.

The themes of advent

Advent has purple, dark blue, and pink themes attached to it. The purple or dark blue represents royalty, nobility, repentance, and seriousness. Jesus was of royal lineage from the house of King David. Joy is a small motif in Advent and is represented by pink. Red, green, white, silver, and gold are linked with Christmas and the weeks leading up to it. White represents holiness, joy, and light and is the correct liturgical color for Christmas.

For Christians who follow Advent, the first, second, and fourth Sundays of Advent are purple and blue Sundays. The third week is pink Sunday. The jubilant color of pink is a reminder that Advent makes Christians eager for Jesus Christ, the Son of God who came to us the first time in the flesh.

Christmas is the celebration of the humble birth of Jesus Christ to the Virgin Mary in a barn in Bethlehem.  The angel appears to the astrologers and tells them to visit the newborn king. They bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh as gifts. Therefore, at Christmas in churches, you will see a barn, with Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus in a cradle, animals, and the three wise men. On top of the Christmas tree is a star. The angel that appeared to the wise men told them to follow the star and that will lead them to Jesus.

The time-honored customs of Christmas that include feasting, lights, mistletoe, giving gifts, and the Christmas tree have no biblical roots and are secular. Santa Claus comes from Saint Nicholas of Myra, in Greece who was known for his generosity towards the poor people.

The look of Santa Claus comes from Germanic folklore and Scandinavian religions that existed in Northern Europe. The Dutch pilgrims who came to the United States in the seventeenth century brought Sinter Klaas the Dutch legend and this became the American version of Santa Claus. Americans adopted this concept into Santa Claus, who comes from the North Pole on a sleigh and gives gifts to good boys and girls on Christmas Eve.

For Christians, Christmas embodies the spirit of giving. It is a time to celebrate with family, and friends and to give money and time to charities.

Advent Wreath

The artifact that represents Advent is a wreath. It is a circle of evergreens. There is one white candle in the middle, surrounded by four candles, three purple, and one pink. The wreath is in the shape of a circle that reminds Christians about the unconditional love of God and his endless mercy. Hope is represented by the greenery of the evergreens.

Advent Candles

The purple candles are lit on the first, second, and fourth Sunday. The pink is lit on the third Sunday. The white is lit on Christmas Day. Once the candle is lit, then certain scripture is read from the bible about the coming Messiah. The previous candles are also lit. So, on Christmas Day all five candles are lit.

Origin of Advent

The historical origin of Advent is from the fourth century. The Bishop of Turin in 415 AD and the Bishop of Arles in 502 AD mention preparation for the birthday of Jesus Christ. It became official when a synod was held in 581 AD at Macon in France. The synod proclaimed five Sundays but was reduced to four Sundays by Pope Gregory VII. Various synods came later regarding rules and regulations and the final one restricted the celebration of marriage during this time. In 1720 AD at the council of the Ruthenians, a fast was ordered for Advent.

Christmas

Christmas is Christians celebrating the all-powerful enigma of God coming to earth in human flesh.  God becomes a man and dies to save mankind from sin and death. Christmas is twelve days to focus on how Jesus Christ revealed Himself to mankind.

December 26^th, 27^th, and 28^th are called witness days. In Acts 7:54-60 St. Stephen is the first Christian Martyr. He was stoned by a crowd. December 26th is in honor of St. Stephen. December 27th honors St. John who was an Apostle and Evangelist and who wrote the Book of St. John in the Bible. John was the closest friend of Jesus and the disciple who was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write the book of John. December 28th is in memory of the baby boys killed by King Herod in his endeavor to kill Baby Jesus.

The three do not have anything in common but help Christians understand Christmas better. St. Stephen died willingly to defend and preach the gospel.  Apostle John endured hardship, exile, and persecution because of the gospel. Innocent kids were killed by King Herod. These three days remind Christians that we live in a broken and sinful world. Christ was born to save mankind. He suffered, was crucified on the cross, and died for the sins of mankind. It is also a stark reminder of how powerful and dark Satan is.

The Eighth Day of Christmas is a tribute to the circumcision of Jesus Christ as per Jewish law. It is at the circumcision that he is given the name of Jesus formally. This is important for two reasons. In the Book of Genesis 17: 1-13, circumcision is a clear sign of God’s promise to Abraham and his progeny. When the flesh is cut and blood is spilled it is a prediction of Jesus Christ dying on the cross for the forgiveness of sins. The second is in Matthew 1:20-21 where the angel tells Mary that her son will ‘save people from their sin’.

The birth of Jesus is mentioned in two of the gospels and by the 4^th century was celebrated on December 25 in the Julian calendar and January 6^th as per the Gregorian calendar.

Photo Credits:  Waldemar Brandt Vidar Nordli-Mathisen Julian Hochgesang  Kelly Sikkema Debby Hudson Carolyn V Jon Tyson Mateus Campos Felipe  Sandra Grünewald  Gian Reichmuth Max Beck Dan Kiefer Nine Köpfer  Ben White Jude Beck  Aaron Burden

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