Hello and welcome! I am Jennifer Chatman, or Jennifer The Beholder. I’ve started this blog as a repository for my love of all avenues that lead me down a creative path and the eternal quest to find and contribute beauty in the world around me.
I am obsessed with beauty. Now, I’m not talking about physical, human beauty, although that’s nice too. I’m talking about the beauty that surrounds us everywhere. I crave it.
Did you see the DreamWorks Animation movie, Rise of the Guardians? It came out in theaters just before Christmas of 2012. It’s the one about Jack Frost and The Boogie Man. My very favorite scene in the movie is when Santa, called North, pulls Jack Frost into his “office” and asks him what his center is. His Center: the thing that is the core of who he is. Jack, like many of us (and when I say “us” I mean me), did not know. He had never thought about it. North goes through a beautiful explanation of who Santa is using a really cool, albeit very personal, set of Russian nesting dolls.
He peels away each layer or characteristic: Mysterious, Fierce, Caring….. And the smallest doll, his core, his center, was a tiny baby with very wide eyes. Eyes, he explains, that are full of wonder; the ability to see the wonder in everything around him. That was his gift to bring to the world.
This scene totally spoke to me. (Tortured me, is more like it.) What was MY center? What was at the very core of my soul that makes me who I am? It’s funny to me now, because I thought about this for some time (as did Jack, by the way, in the movie). Why I find it funny NOW, is that it was on the very surface of me all along. Not buried and hidden from the world. It was the very thing that I thought about every single day of my life; the search for beauty in the things around me; in everything around me.
It just goes without saying that I would be obsessed with glitter, flowers, holidays, home décor and the like. It explains why I MUST pull all of the wrinkles out of a made bed, why I will stop to take a picture of a flower when walking by, and completely explains away why I FREAK out on my kids and hubby when the clutter begins to pile up. (See Babe, it’s a medical condition. I was born this way.)
But let’s not forget about the beauty in our other senses…taste…smell…sound. Ask anyone who has known me for 5 minutes and they’ll tell you how much I love my baked goods, coffee, and scented candles. Throw some good music behind all that and a soft sweater, or cashmere socks (trust me), and I’m in heaven.
I’ve created this site to share what I think is beautiful and help others to see that beauty comes in varying degrees of perfection. You don’t need to live as if your home is going to be photographed for Dwell Magazine at the next ring of the doorbell. (Although I would love to live that way and secretly pray for that….OK, truthfully any magazine.) From the picture perfect Martha Stewart glitter covered baubles, to the thoughtfully handmade ornament created by my 8 year old. There is beauty and perfection in all of it. Sometimes it is the comparison and contrast of the two that can deliver goose bumps like no other combination. And there, in those goose bumps, I find excitement, I find creativity, I find joy, I find the beauty of life.
With my degree in clothing and textiles, years of experience in the apparel industry, lifetime as a maker and crafter, and obsessive love of interiors, I hope to inspire you to create, experiment, explore, and express your own style and creative acumen and to open your eyes to what is simple and lovely around you. Remember, beauty is in the eye of The Beholder and this world has many, different eyes. We each behold beauty very uniquely, BUT we behold it. And that, my friends, is beautiful.