Hello there,
Yesterday we launched the new Facebook page and started selling our Wishing Globes to a really great response. It feels wonderful that so many of you are like me and love making wishes!
Wishes have many names. Hopes, prayers, dreams, it really doesn't matter what you think of them as or who or what you say them to, I firmly believe in the power of wishing for great things and I've found that they really can and do come true when you're wishing for things that are positive. They become sort of your mantra or inner voice in your head if you wish them long enough.
This wonderful place, The1870, started out as just a wish for me. I saw an ad on Craigslist under real estate, which I had never looked at before, since we were living in our little dollhouse in Middletown, just a half a mile away from my grandchildren. But I saw this ad for an old church for sale, clicked on it and from the second I saw the pictures, I really did start wishing that there might be some way we could get it.
Morton was at work when I first came to look at the old church. There were lots of things wrong, lots of things that I imagined he would not be happy about, but luckily when I showed it to him, he loved it too. Then the wishing started. We had to put the money together to purchase it, which it turned out was the cheap part, then the day came when we had settlement and it was really ours.
Then my wishes turned to notebooks full of lists of things that needed done, work, lots of work that needed done, and a mountain of money that we didn't have. Sigh! Where was my Wishing Globe when I really needed it to sit on my dresser to look at at wish on, holding all my wishes, waiting for them to come true?
About wishes coming true, they can and do so much easier if you're prepared to work for your wishes. Make them a daily part of your routine. Don't think they're silly or faraway. Your wishes are so much closer than you can imagine and you need to keep them in front of you.
Like I just said, my wishes were held in a notebook, about fifty pages of drawings, new lists, priorities that HAD to be fixed and let me tell you, with a project this big and a budget so small (about $200 to $400 a month), it was so easy to feel overwhelmed. The wish of restoring this beautiful building to be our home, my studio and workshop and a place where friends could come and feel the peacefulness, was something that has felt very far away at times.
My notebook was always close to me. As things happened and ideas were gathered, they were written down or sketched. The first year of cleaning, having the very leaky roof repaired, battling the leaky bell tower that still remains a priority project, water leaks, electric issues, thousands and thousands of staples sticking out of the wooden floor, endless painting of walls and a ceiling that is twenty five feet tall and so many other issues of serious work behind this wish of a wonderful place, that notebook became really heavy. Not physically, but mentally. It was sort of making me feel like the list would never end before the happy part could really start.
Then about a year ago, something clicked. I started inviting friends over without the warning they might get hurt on a staple, stack of lumber or organ pipes laying around and I started creating things in this magical place. I think it started when my stained glass studio got set up behind the beautiful wooden cabinet that use to live in the organ loft, out of sight and blocking the huge leak that had been in the bell towers for years before I saw this place. My stained glass supplies had been packed away since moving to the States from Scotland, over ten years ago.
Creating my first couple stained glass pieces I felt a bit guilty. There was so much cleaning, painting, remodeling, outside work, inside work and the list goes on and on of things I SHOULD be doing, other than making windows and mermaids. But I knew that if I started creating art, working on crafts that I've been able to earn a living on selling for decades, we could have more money coming in for all the repairs still to be made.
Huge hunks of money are needed for things like the bell tower, which will cost thirty thousand dollars, minimum, to properly repair. The old slates on the roof are at the end of their life. It's another thirty thousand dollars to have a new roof put on. A kitchen, a proper kitchen and not just my fifteen dollar fridge and electric skillet I've been using, is a luxury that has to wait until after the bell tower and roof, so I feel sort of like a college kid cooking in a dorm room sometimes when I'm making a meal here.
But the money will come. Not just because I'm sitting around wishing for it. I'm doing things to earn money with my arts and crafts. Workshops, commissions, selling things online that are semi-easy to ship around the world, all between doing things like painting walls, scraping floors and doing the physical work to turn this place into a wish come true.
So my wishes for The Wishing Globe are simple. I wish people buy them to wish on, to give to a friend to wish on, to send them as gifts to people that could use a good wish! The funds, like all the other funds I earn, are all going to be spent on things like paint, repairs and the never-ending list in my notebook, that is now tucked up away in my craft room. I only get it out now to leaf through and look at how far we've came in two years.
This place is special. There is no denying the thousands of wishes, hopes, prayers and dreams that were said in here by generations of hard working people who were the people who made this wonderful little village of Locust Gap the very special place it is. The old building needs us, I can feel that. I love making things in here, creating arts and crafts is so natural here and feels right.
Every single Wishing Globe I make inside The1870 makes me smile, thinking about what wishes are in store for it. Who is going to buy it? What are they wishing for themselves and others? As I sculpt the bases of the natural clay, I know that a little of the magic of this place, which is a wish come true, is going in to it. They look so lovely clumped together and take me back to my carefree childhood days of making wishes on dandelion down before blowing it to the wind. They take me back to the clay I'd play with for hours on end behind our house, embellishing with a marble when I could get my hands on one, to make a Wishing Globe.
As spring arrives and the lilies are sprouting, the outside is getting green and we have lots of exciting things happening in this incredible space, my wishes are simple. Happiness, health, friendships and watching the miracle of nature happening right before my eyes outside the windows.
If you want to learn a little more about The Wishing Globe, I've added a page on the website, just click here.
Thank you sincerely to all who are reading this, watching our progress on this big project and making wishes come true by buying a Wishing Globe or two for you and a friend! After all, wishes are the best when they include others.
Happy wishing! ~ Priscilla