French Farmhouse Living: Letting Your Daughter March To Her Own Drum...

Happy Friday y'all...

One of the things I loved the most about my childhood was that I was given incredible freedom of expression. I think it was then that my love of decorating started.

My bedroom was like a constant evolving experiment. On any given whim, I would stare at my room and decide that everything needed to be rearranged. And I would do it in about 15 minutes, smile to myself, and think wow, you should have done that ages ago! {Oh the dramatics of an adolescent girl.}

I would often tackle other rooms of the house if I was bored. Once I even painted our dining room set without my mom's permission because I thought I could make it look better. She got home work and guess what? She agreed with me! I was always involved in the color choices and fabrics that we used to decorate our home with. I guess she trusted my opinion, even as a scrappy little adolescent girl.

So back to my childhood bedroom... I was allowed to pretty much do anything that I wanted to my room. I went through many colors on the walls, changes to the flooring, even the ceiling was fair game. But... I always knew to repair and spackle when I moved things around. My mom never told me "no." {Let it be known that I never went too crazy and painted my walls black or anything... usually what I did was pretty chic. With that one tiny exception when I randomly decided to throw different color paint splashes all over the back of my door. And no, I didn't get in trouble for that one either.}

Everything I did could easily be changed, fixed or repaired... so why not let your child's inner creativity flow? Why not give them that confidence and free spirit to try new things and take chances. That was instilled in me at a very young age and it follows me until this day. Take a risk, take a chance, try something new, be fearless...

So I can thank my mom for unwittingly giving me this supreme gift that I'm sure at the time she wasn't even aware of. She was probably just thinking she had much more important things to do rather than caring about what I hung on my walls. But I look at it now as a time that allowed me to dare to be bold, flourish and never look in my rear view mirror with regrets. Mistakes are good... they can be fixed, changed, repaired or learned from. I look at this now as a powerful life lesson and more importantly, a true gift that I was given as a child.

Here are some adorable adolescent girl bedrooms that I would have loved as a little girl. {Obviously these were done by professional decorators, but you get my point, right?}

Love the giant dog picture and the blues and greens.