Katherine Center's Blog, page 10

9 great things about my husband

It's my 9-year wedding anniversary this week.  (Nine years married, fifteen together.) And so, a nine-best ode to my awesome husband.  Here are nine great things about him — though, really, I could go on and on:

9.  The mustache.

8.  The pants. 

7.  The way he is so completely stoked to have a wife who's a writer.

6.  The way he wrestles with our kids.  And reads to them endlessly.  And plays soldiers.  And takes them to the library. 

5. The way he's completely exhausted at the end of the day...

something we got right

I spoke on a panel last weekend at the Texas Book Festival with the very charming Jancee Dunn, who has a baby.  Fellow panelist and Houston author Gwendolyn Zepeda and I wound up giving her parenting advice.  And while we were talking, I heard myself say something very true.  It can be so easy to second-guess the parenting choices you've made — but there is one thing I know for sure we got right: Audiobooks.

As babies, both my kids hated the car.  Like, any time I drove anywhere for the first...

more décor

Here's another before and after.

A really awesome mod chair from my grandfather's building materials company that I snagged from my mom's garage a few weeks ago:

And now, in my living room, freshly back from the upholsterer's:

I've kinda fallen in love with this chair, but it didn't happen until after it got its makeover.  When I first brought it to my house, I really couldn't see past the dust and the broken springs.  But I had a theory that the chair would clean up well, and so, out of...

gorgeousness

Last spring, the amazing Mary Swenson took these photos for me in response to a quote I sent her from Everyone Is Beautiful.  She broke the quote down by sentences, and took a photo for each one.  Then we ran the photos in sequence and made a video.  But the photos are so amazing, they deserve a place of their own.  In the video, they disappear fast and it's on to the next image.  I've been meaning to put up these luscious stills for months, and now that I'm finally doing it, I am completely...

water girl

For the record, I'm all for store-bought costumes at Halloween.  We've had many at our house.  But this year, I got inspired to create.  My son said he wanted to be Fire Man, and my daughter instantly said, "And I can be Water Girl!"  

And I just thought those were such rockin' superheroes for my kids to have invented, I wanted to do them justice.  Plus, it got my brain rolling.  How would you make a fire wand?  Or water hair?  

Creativity is so much about solving problems.  Having limitations...

kid-art wallpaper

So, as you know, when you have kids, you acquire a lot of kid art.  And a huge amount of it is completely awesome.  And the fact that your child made it makes it even more awesome–even if it's only, like, a scribble.

Last spring, I decided that I was going to turn our house into a kid art gallery and just put those gorgeous things up on our walls.  All of our walls.  Everywhere.  

And guess what?  With almost every wall covered in kid-art, the house started to feel a little, um,  jumbled.  

At...

this chair took over my life

A few weeks ago I fell into crazy love with a chair.  Like, I actually gasped when I saw the picture of it on Craigslist.  Gasped.

And then I drove across Texas with my mom to find it, buy it ($15!), and cart it home.  Things seize me like that.  In fact, that's how I get most things done — I feel pulled toward, or compelled by, or obsessed with and idea or a project or a story until I've bought, found, written, or made it.  I'm the opposite of methodical.  Which is pretty fun.

And this chair...

the mother of invention

I'm taking a little time off from writing.  Not a lot of time off:  just a couple of months. I just need to be creative in different ways for a little bit.  Like sewing kinda creative.  And re-covering old chairs kinda creative.  And cleaning up our house creative.  To the extent that you can call cleaning creative.

Some people have to write every day.  But I need breaks.  I need to paint furniture and sew and make collages.  I imagine my writing life like a bucket of water.  It fills up with...

how stories can save you

Yesterday, after 11 days home with a sick 4-year-old, I went to the school I where I attended Kindergarten through 12th grade to give a chapel talk.  It's book fair week at my old school, and this year, I am the featured author.  They asked me to address the question "Why read books?"  And I had 12 minutes to do it.

Here's a version of what I said:

I wrote my first novel right here, at St. John's, in sixth grade. 

 I was totally miserable in sixth grade.  (Though maybe if my history teacher...

everything's a story

So I inherited some lamps from my grandfather's office last week.  Or, actually, I just claimed them out of my mother's garage.  They came from this awesome building: my grandfather's building materials company.

My mom found the lamps in a storage room there a few years back, and she gave them a home in her garage, but they were pretty beat-up, and nobody really wanted them.

Actually, they were very beat-up:

But, inspired by the before & after pages at Design*Sponge, I got this idea that I...