Wrens need to have a home that is beautiful. We need to love our nests. We need to build and grow and design and update and absolutely glimmer with beauty in every detail.

To design we work in one two three. This means something matches two things and one thing. The object in the center matches the two and other two or three objects next to them. This is math. Be a math major in your beauty design. Be precise with color but be rich and lovely.

Your house is a rainbow collection of art and beauty. We like jewel colors. Our walls are terra cotta (soft apricot), soft green (topiary tint), turquoise, hyacinth blue, soft rose and medium rose, soft lilac and mocha or soft coffee. We use the second color on the color choice sample sheet that you get in the paint supply store. We pick out the prettiest ones.

Our upholstered furniture is from World Market. We buy accent chairs, club chairs and wingbacks. Our jewel colors are hunter green, kelly green, indigo blue, deep blue, rose, burgundy, deep turquoise, soft violet, soft turquoise and floral if its petite and pretty.

We like different styles of chairs, love seats and couches but we like wooden feet. We like braided chenille rugs on etsy. We like rocking chairs and we don’t mind a little brown wicker or bamboo.

We use a lot of wooden cabinets, farm tables, plant stools (on amazon), corner cabinets, hutches, glass and wood curio cabinets, corner desks, writing desks, old wooden chairs that are comfortable, upholstered dining room chairs in jewel colors from World Market, masonite shelves, book shelves, small wall cabinets, hand designed wall shelves with scalloped edges over old sideboards or washstands in the perfect size for the wall to put our pottery and porcelain and pitcher collections and bowls and teapots on, stained glass windows, art tables (on amazon), architecture desks and small and medium sized, round, square and rectangular end tables available from furniture stores online that sell the bigger pieces for about fifteen hundred dollars or more. We mostly don’t get wood on amazon. It’s too cheap. We can also get our pieces from Mennonites and antique malls or have them custom built by carpenter stewards. These don’t cost nearly as much. We like furniture with butterfly screws and little warps on the shelves and knots and other features considered flaws that make them uncollectable by antique dealers.

We mix new and old and our style is simple but beautiful. Old-fashioned, hearty, sensible and straight forward yet with something special to the design/Mennonite is our theme. But not that style that is called Amish. We like different color stains on real wood- pine, cherry, and walnut. We like pieces with character that some mason made for his wife. These are inexpensive.

Every surface in our home is an altar. We keep everything very neat and perfect all the time. We never leave out mail or papers. We don’t clutter. And we make the bed.

We spray Method wood cleaner on our wood and water with cedar, frankincense, myrrh, lavender, and lemongrass essential oils in the right combinations for us on our upholstery and linens for our beds. We use Wood Method and Murphy’s Oil Soap on our pretty wooden floors. We use the other Method on our linoleum. There are some good environmentally friendly counter cleaners on amazon.

We use quilts and down alternative duvet covers in our soft jewel colors. We like some cottagecore accents in curtains and lace, embroidered and sheer curtains, too. We like good quality blinds. We like pretty shower curtains and towels.

Our dishes are porcelain like old fashioned grandmother’s dishes (vintage porcelain dinnerware sets searched for on ebay by color or flower name), pottery from etsy that is reasonably priced, McCoy Mesa Canyon from ebay, and new from amazon in pretty porcelain florals and pottery-like designs.

We like vintage pyrex baking dishes, dansk pans, sake sets, teapots, vintage pottery stoneware vases and mugs and pottery wine glasses. Some of us like art glass, too. We like vintage stainless steel rose patterned silverware. We like vintage utensils and new ones.

We like new and old pots and pans. We like vintage 1950’s glasses and 1970’s ones, too. Some of us like glass pitchers and cups and carafes with lemons, oranges, strawberries and tomatoes. If you like these you can accent with yellow but you should have hyacinth blue walls. We like etched wine glasses and champagne flutes and brandy glasses. We like pottery tumblers. We mix and match on ebay, etsy and amazon. We also shop at antique malls.

We look up tree paintings on ebay and we like vintage flower still lifes. Our dishes don’t have to all be the same.

We like new glass containers with plastic tops that are not pyrex to put our leftovers in and some of us like old tupperware. We like tablecloths that are embroidered and plain in nice colors, pretty fabrics for altar cloths and cloth napkins.

We like ruffled pillows and accent pillows in pretty colors. We like knitted shawls and chenille throws on our furniture.

We accent with birds nests from amazon and nature on altars and hung with a little wire on walls next to paintings, essential oil and unscented candles of different kinds, salt lamps, little statues and trees, stained glass, hanging crystals, suncatchers, tassels on doors, succulents, lucky bamboo, orchids, snake plants, spider plants and seasonal flowering plants like bulbs and paperwhites in pottery tumblers and wide glass cylinder vases.

We collect feathers to put in wooden vases from ebay. We have big pottery and glass vases full of fresh flowers and little vases with dried statice and other pretty things like berries, pinecones, dried flowers in bowls and colored rocks and crystals. We can save our roses that dry from our flower arrangements and our daffodils, too and place them on pottery trays and in little bowls in our bathrooms.

We like lidded pottery bowls and trinket dishes. We can use utensil holders from amazon for flower pots. We can use pottery cookie jars as utensil holders by our stoves.

We like little birds from ebay and amazon. We have Tibetan prayer bowls. We have zen stacking rocks.

Our books do not overtake our house and we only have the ones we love like Andy Goldsworthy, Remarkable Trees of Virginia, our cookbooks, our crystal books and our herb and garden books. We let go of the ones we no longer read or need. Books can be noisy companions like papers.

We like blue tooth speakers. We don’t like televisions. We just use laptops and desktops computers. We hate entertainment centers and easy chairs.

We like tiffany style lamps and lamps with paper shades and pottery lamps and wooden lamps. We like floor lamps and copper faerie lights and decorative light strings and paper lanterns. This is our beauty way. And it makes us sing with joy to experience it daily. Are you a beauty steward now? I am. And I love it.