The Bee Cottage Story: How I Made a Muddle of Things and Decorated My Way Back to Happiness
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Overview
Inspired by Frances Schultz’s popular House Beautiful magazine series on the makeover of her East Hampton house, Bee Cottage, what began as a decorating book evolved into a memoir combining the best elements of both: beautiful photos and a compelling personal story.
Schultz taps into what she learned during her renovations of Bee Cottagedetermining how each area in the house and garden would be used and furnishedto unravel the question of how a mature, intelligent, successful woman could have made such a mess of her personal life. As she figures out each room over a period of years, Frances finds a new path in life, also a continual process. She comes to learn that, like decorating a home, our lives must adapt to who we are and what we need at different points along the way.
The Bee Cottage Story is part memoir, part home decorating guide. Frances discusses the kinds of useful, commonsense design issues professionals take for granted and the rest of us just may not think of, prompting the reader to examine and discover her own “truth” in decoratingand in her life.
- ISBN-13:
- 9781632204950 9781632204950
- Publisher:
- Skyhorse Publishing Skyhorse Publishing
- Publication date:
- 07/07/2015 07/07/2015
- Pages:
- 160 160
- Sales rank:
- 217,372
- Product dimensions:
- 8.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.90(d)
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Bee Cottage Story
How I Made a Muddle of Things and Decorated My Way Back to Happiness
By Frances Schultz, Trevor Tondro
Skyhorse Publishing
Copyright © 2015 Frances SchultzAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-63220-495-0
CHAPTER 1
A House, a Heartbreak and How Did I Get Here?
Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it. — Brené Brown
I'd planned to make Bee Cottage the perfect place to begin my second marriage. I'd bought it with my fiancé's blessing. It was great for us and for his two sons. Though the house was old and needed work, I relished the prospect. If only I'd been as optimistic about the marriage, but the story of Bee Cottage begins, I'm sorry to say, with heartbreak.
After the wedding invitations were sent, after gifts received, after the ridiculously expensive dress made, after deposits paid, after a house bought ... I called it off. I wish I could say he was a jerk and a cad, but he wasn't. He was and is a great guy. For purposes of our story I will call him G. The relationship failed because we just were not a fit.
And there I was with a house and the dawning that everything I had dreamed it would be would now be something else entirely. I cried, I hid, I hated myself. I stared at the walls, gazed forlornly at the non-existent garden, moped at the fifty-year-old refrigerator, sighed at the stove that didn't work, and fretted over the roof that needed replacing ...
Looking back, I reckon many of us get to a place like this at some time or other, a spot that illuminates the space between where you are and where you thought you'd be? Sometimes an illness or loss jabs you into awareness of what you haven't done, where you haven't been, who you haven't become. But for many of us it isn't as clear as a single momentous event. It is more a culmination of experiences that turn out differently from how we expected — in a sort of climax of existential mission-creep.
In my Great Muddle of 2008, I had more questions than answers. One answer I did have, though, was that I loved this rundown little house with the blue shutters and the quirky rooms. I loved what it could be. I knew (more or less) what to do with it — more than I could claim in other areas of my life. I wondered if I could pull the house — and my life — back together at the same time. I would find love again, I told myself, and when I did I would give it a good home.
In my sea of fear, self-loathing, and self-doubt, amid heaps of mistakes and mis-steps, the belief that I could make the house lovely and welcoming, that this was something I might get right, gave me a glimmer of confidence and a glimpse of joy. My desire to create a beautiful, harmonious environment was a place of clarity for me in an emotional morass. Embracing that desire began to bring me around to who I was and what I could be. It was a point of light in a big dark room, but it was something.
In many ways mine is the story of any decorating project, fraught with ups and downs and fits and starts. What surprised me was how the decorating process became both metaphor and means for personal discovery, and ultimately, for healing. I came to see how inherent in my love for decorating were the very insights and analogies that loosened the knots in my spirit. I think this holds true for everyone, be their passion for sport, art, literature, science, cooking, or teaching — whatever the calling, career, or hobby. All are rife with metaphors that point to our particular truths and what is authentic for us as individuals.
Like the Chinese saying about the longest journey beginning with one small step, so it was with Bee Cottage in beginning to hear my heart's song. This is the story of that process, soul-searching illustrated. I hope you'll find useful information here based on my years of experience with, and writing about, design for magazines, books, and my own blog, FrancesSchultz.com. I'm merely sharing my story and hoping something resonates with you if you find yourself in a similar place. Which I hope you don't. But if you do, whether it's a new house or a new chapter in your life (they often go together), my advice is to start from where you are, and begin with what you know. Because at the end of the day, that is all any of us have. And guess what? It's enough.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Bee Cottage Story by Frances Schultz, Trevor Tondro. Copyright © 2015 Frances Schultz. Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Editorial Reviews
05/04/2015
Publishers Weekly
Schultz, a blogger, author (A House in the South), and cable TV host, combines memoir with decorating in this illustrated tale of love and home. The author buys a cottage in the Hamptons, planning to live in it with her fiancé. When the relationship ends before the wedding, she turns heartbreak into headboards (woven, from Pottery Barn) and drowns her sorrows in an 11 ft. × 38 ft. lap pool with an installed fountain. In the process, she learns something about herself and her style: “I didn’t even know what help I needed. Help moving forward from a painful decision with hurtful consequences for people I cared about? Help digging out of boxes and getting organized? Help from a handyman? The answer, of course, was all of the above.” Schultz is the epitome of the successful woman who is unlucky in love until she puts her own house in order, which, in her case, means placing a bench from Katharine Hepburn’s estate in her bedroom and painting the guest bedroom with Benjamin Moore Galapagos Turquoise. The book is lighthearted, self-indulgent, frivolous, and likable—a good beach read, especially in the Hamptons. (July)
"Lighthearted, self-indulgent, frivolous, and likablea good beach read, especially in the Hamptons."
Publishers Weekly“Frances Schultz . . . has built a career on her sense of beauty, her storytelling genius, and her warm Southern charm.” Signature magazine
"The book is part memoir and part decor manual making it all the more worthy of setting aside a morning or afternoon to devour."
-The Simply Luxurious Life"Goes behind the scenes to explore the nitty gritty of the decorating process in an honest, candid and funny way."
-Maureen Feighan, The Detroit News"Like other great memoiristsM.F.K. Fisher, Frances Mayes, Elizabeth Gilbert, and Karen Blixen come to mindFrances has written a book that is more than just another memoir."
From the foreword by Newell Turner"Finally... a decorating book for people who aren't afraid of 'pretty.' Frances can make anything pretty, from a breakfast tray to a guest room to a garden. Bee Cottage is pure joy. Color, comfort, and Frances. It's the happiest house I know."
Stephen Drucker, journalist and former editor-in-chief House Beautiful Magazine"The Bee Cottage Story by Frances Schultz is a true delight. Every woman in America will love this witty, wise, and wonderful book. Absolutely charming from start to finish."
Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe"Through every page, the candor, wit, and soul of The Bee Cottage Story would have made me fall head-over-heels for Frances Schultz if I hadn’t already done that many years ago!"
Alex Hitz, author of My Beverly Hills Kitchen"The Bee Cottage Story is a refreshing memoir that defines the art of living well, uniquely illustrates Frances Schultz’s passion for aesthetics, but at the same times she gives us a window into her character. She reveals that she is more than just a woman of style: She is a woman of substance."
Annette Tapert, author of The Power of Style"I have said for years that in my next life, I want to be funny. Today, after getting to know Frances Schultz, reading her thoughtful and laugh-out-loud blog, and reveling in her marvelous book The Bee Cottage Story, I can amend my comment and say, 'In my next life, I want to be funnyjust like Frances Schultz.' Her humor is the down-home sort that I love, and resonates so because it is infused with grace, common sense, and humanity."
Carolyne Roehm, author of A Passion for Interiors and A Passion for Flowers“It is a rare bird that shares her failures and her successes and has you laughing hysterically at both. Frances Schultz is that rare, straight-talking Southern belle of a bird.”
Charlotte Moss"The Bee Cottage Story is an affecting and eminently readable memoir of love and loss, forgiveness and discovery, the healing power of decorating, and the self-knowledge gained by creating a home. I loved reliving the author’s journeyroom by room, experience by experience. The design tips are swell; the life lessons even better. Schultz’s voice is at once insightful, funny, self-deprecating, wise. Reading this book is like having a revelatory chat with your smartest, dearest friendin very cozy surroundings."
Julia Reed, author of But Mama Always Put Vodka in Her Sangria; and contributing editor at Garden & Gun"The Bee Cottage Story is laced with laugh-out-loud dry humor as Frances Schultz peels back the onion of her mercurial journey through cancer diagnosis, recovery, and lost and regained love; whilst dispensing well-honed decorating advice. Her beloved Bee Cottage is the laboratory for re-shaping her life, both inside and out."
Nina Griscom, designer and lifestyle expert"Author and interiors expert Frances Schultz is like the Julia Roberts of the design world. Or at least Roberts’ character in 'Eat Pray Love.' In Schultz’s case, a series of personal mishapsfrom cancer to a failed engagement and a surprise new loveunfolded just as the magazine writer and blogger bought and renovated a cozy Hamptons hideaway. Ultimately, both Schultz and her beach home had happy endings. And the journeywallpaper, wainscoting and allhas been lovingly chronicled in the new memoir, The Bee Cottage Story.”
David Kaufman, NY Post"Certainly one of the best books I have read in a long time."
From the Publisher
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