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Create Harmony
This is a podcast about setting an intentional rhythm, savoring life’s blessings and learning how to use our imagination as a way of listening to God. If you want to learn more about how to bring stillness and gratitude into your life you’ll probably find a lot here that you love. To find out more about what's going on in the Create Harmony world, check out www.mycreateharmony.com.
Create Harmony
Finding Harmony in the Spaces We Create
What happens when you transform your surroundings? From backyard construction chaos to finding tranquility in evening swims, this episode reveals how physical spaces shape our daily experiences of joy and harmony.
I'm sharing the journey of adding a pool to our backyard—complete with expanded porch space, a grill island, and a pergola with adjustable louvers. While the construction process stretched our patience (and felt endless at times), the finished space has become a sanctuary for everyday moments of peace. There's something magical about slipping into the water as the sun sets, creating a transition between day and evening that wasn't part of our rhythm before.
Beyond the pool, our home continues to evolve. With help from a professional organizer, we've tamed the chaos of our laundry room and mudroom. The fruit trees planted by previous owners—figs, cherries, pomegranates, apricots—have blessed us with unexpected harvests. Each of these elements contributes to a sense of harmony and connection with our living space.
Looking ahead, I'm thrilled to announce our Peaceful Pathways Seasonal Series launching November 1st. Each seasonal box contains thoughtfully curated items paired with guided meditations designed to bring moments of peace into everyday life. Our first theme, "Cozy Time," features meditations inspired by fireside warmth and comfort—perfect for gifting loved ones or treating yourself to regular self-care. With limited quantities available, you'll want to mark your calendar to secure yours.
Whether you're contemplating your own home transformation, organizing a closet, or simply seeking small ways to incorporate more joy into your surroundings, I hope this episode inspires you to notice and create those tiny moments of harmony that make everyday life beautiful. Join me next week as we continue exploring how to create more peace and joy in our daily experiences.
To learn more, go to mycreateharmony.com
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. So our focus here is joy, and it's all of the joyful things that are around us all the time and they're just nestled down into little things. It's the sun coming through your window in the morning, or the smell of dinner cooking on the stove, it's the smile of a friend or the feeling of safety and wholeness you feel when you get home. It's the way the rain sounds when you have a summer rain shower. It's the laugh of your child, the softness of your bed when you lie down each night. Each of those things is holding one tiny little piece of joy and it only takes a moment to notice it, and we're doing that together. So this is episode 141. And I'm your host, sally Burlington. So last week we covered an overview of basically who we are and what we're all about. So hopefully you learned more about us by listening last week. If you missed that one, you want to go back because it's really great to understand our story more deeply. And this week we're still talking about who we are.
Speaker 1:A last spring we added a pool to our backyard. We worked on it all through last winter and first of all, let me say, doing a project of that magnitude. I mean it's quite something. It's an ordeal. It seemed like construction was going to go on and on and on and on and there have been quite a few moving parts, both figuratively and literally a million loose ends. We not only did we do a pool, we also expanded part of our porch. We opened up the way the porch connects to the backyard and we expanded that out, added some square footage, I guess, to our porch. We put together a grill island square footage, I guess, to our porch. We put together a grill island. We ordered a grill island from Wayfair and it came with like literally a hundred steps and my husband mostly was the one who put it all together and got that going. And we ordered a pergola, which is a shade thing and it has louvers so they open and close. It took a very long time for that to come. We had to get a little bit of new furniture. We tried to use things that we had had before, but we did end up ordering a new sofa and a couple of new chairs and all that process was just quite something. It was a big deal.
Speaker 1:So, even though we were still pulling things all together throughout this summer, we have loved it. We've loved having a pool to cool down in. It's been hot here, so it's nice to dip in right in the middle of a steamy summer day. We're getting used to the rhythm of having our own pool and we've learned that it's also nice to get in. Here's my favorite time to get in it's after dinner or in the evening when the sun is setting. I mean, it's just so peaceful and quiet. And since it's warm here in the early fall, we're still enjoying our time around the pool and we're still able to get, you know, put our feet in and get in it and enjoy it. And as we look forward to cooler temps, we've got some new places to enjoy outside as well. We already had a solo stove, but we put a little area around our solo stove so we can use that when it gets cooler. We added a gas fireplace under the pergola, so we're going to. The vision is that we would use that for, you know, football games and fall gatherings. And we're learning how to use our pool throughout the seasons. Last year it was a mud pit, it was a lot of construction debris, but this year it's pulled together and we're learning how to use it Now inside our house, we've tackled a few organization projects as well.
Speaker 1:We reorganized some stuff in our garage, which I mean. My mom came to help me and I said it looks like if we were trying to have a challenge of how disorganized it could possibly be might win. So we've gotten a little bit of a handle on that. Better, I hired a professional organizer to help with my laundry room and mudroom and it was the best thing ever. She works for a local company, called everything orderly and it was phenomenal.
Speaker 1:We love plants around here, so there are lots of things still growing. You might remember that I planted some elevated planters in the spring with my herb garden in them around our pool deck, and most of those will probably die back in the fall and winter, but I have thoroughly enjoyed that. It's wonderful. We have so many beautiful herbs growing and I'm trying to decide am I going to plant something in those planters or just leave them dormant through the colder months? Not sure. But you also may remember that we have lots of fruit trees on our property.
Speaker 1:The people that lived here before us had bees and so they had a lot of fruit trees, and we don't have any bees and we don't want any bees, but it is so fun to have fruit trees. I would never have thought to do that, but we inherited it a fig tree, a cherry tree, a pomegranate tree and an apricot so there's also a small plum in the front yard, but we didn't. We didn't get any plums off of that this year. We also have some small grape vines growing in our side yard, so we've had some fruit off of all of those. Our apricot tree during the season was so covered in fruit that the limbs just dipped down and one one on one of them actually broke off. So another year I have a plan. When I'm not managing a major construction project, I would love to come up with some ways to use those apricots and to use these trees a little bit more. Our fig tree still has lots of figs on them. We've we've enjoyed those with some goat cheese and some crackers, and we, our grapevine, had a ton of grapes, but before they even got ripe they mostly are gone, because we also have some friends that are crows and they've come and enjoyed those grapes. We do have a lot of pomegranates on our pomegranate trees and they're getting close to coming into ripeness. I think there may be 10 pomegranates on there, so we're getting ready to start enjoying those, and that's just so exciting.
Speaker 1:So I have a few things to tell you about what's next here, now that we've finished those big projects. What's next for us? So this winter we had tried some raised bed gardens in the back corner of our yard two growing seasons ago and they ended up having a lot of drainage issues and just problems that we had to completely disassemble those and scrap that whole project and start again. So this winter we will be re-grading and re-drainaging that area and then reassembling those beds and and then by next spring I'm really hopeful that we will have some raised beds that I can grow tomatoes and cucumbers and various things. So you'll hear more about that as it unfolds. In addition, in the Create Harmony universe, I wanted to share some exciting things that we had planned. If you listened, last week you heard me say that we have some exciting things planning to launch this fall, closer to the end of the year, and I'm going to tell you about that.
Speaker 1:One of those things we often collaborate with a local mental wellness boutique called Petal and Pink. So our newest collaboration is what we're calling our Peaceful Pathways Seasonal Series. So I want you to imagine this you receive a box and you open it each season, and inside you'll find an assortment of cozy treasures. Each one of these treasures is carefully chosen to match the mood of the moment. Each one of these treasures is carefully chosen to match the mood of the moment, and here's what makes this box different from any other box you might receive. Tucked inside is a link to five guided meditations, and these are designed around whatever that season's theme. But they aren't just meditations. They're immersive experiences that invite you to step away from stress and step into a moment of peace. So Create Harmony is supplying the meditations. I've done all new content for this, recorded all the meditations, and they're ready to go and so exciting. And Petal and Pink is supplying the gift items.
Speaker 1:But let me say more about gift items. That term is not really adequate to describe the types of things that you will receive. I'm talking about specially curated items that were selected to help reinforce. So when you're listening to the meditations, each of these items help reinforce the calm and the peace that you will get. There are so many possibilities on how you could use this. You could use each one of the items individually and match them with a meditation. You could do it once a week. You could do it over and over again.
Speaker 1:So this theme, this fall's theme, is cozy time. That's what we're calling it. So all of the meditations are inspired by fireside warmth and the scent of baked bread. This is the perfect way to treat yourself to a moment of self-care. Or another idea is to surprise someone you love with a thoughtful soul, soothing gift. And the best part, this is just the beginning. There are three more boxes to follow, so you'd get Cozy Time this fall and winter, and then you get one more each season of the year. So when spring arrives, you'll get a brand new surprise and it'll be filled with fresh, uplifting treasures and new meditations.
Speaker 1:So I know you're getting excited and you want to know when can I get this? So all these cozy goodies will be available for order starting November 1st. So the great thing about this is you can get a head start on your holiday shopping and you can give everyone on your list a season of peace. Who does not want more peace in their lives? So mark, mark your calendars, make sure you don't miss it. We're starting out with a limited quantity, so you're going to want to order on day one. You're going to want to make sure that they don't sell out, so just know that that's coming. It's coming down the pike and you will love it.
Speaker 1:So for our closing today, I want to share a blessing from a book called House Blessings by June Kottner, and I thought it really fit our Create Harmony vibe. If there's righteousness in the heart, there will be, and this is inspired by Confucius. So thanks so much for joining us on this update episode. Hopefully that you enjoyed hearing what's been happening in our home, and our hope is that, as you hear that, you might feel inspired to reflect on your own lifestyle or your own home. Maybe you want to plant a fruit tree or reorganize a closet or simply make a small change that brings more joy into your everyday life, and we hope that you'll come back next week and join us again as we continue this journey together. And don't forget, mark your calendar November 1st for our Peaceful Pathways seasonal series. And until next time, peace.
