Welp, it’s time for Part 2.

A typical house has four walls, a ceiling and at least one floor, a yard or two and some storage.  Within that space, anything can happen if you let yourself dream.  What would you put in your dream home? Now, it’s not about the size of the house or the elegance of the space, but of the beauty that can occur in any place. I mentioned this before– a dream home is sometimes just a dream. But sometimes… dreaming is enough.

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A Pillow Room

Blanket Fort?  Yeah, that’d be cool. Ball Pit?  Yeah, that would definitely be cool.

But I have always wanted a pillow room. A place where I could walk in and just collapse in a wave of comfort. A place to nap, to read, to dream.

I know I’m not the only person who has thought of this. However, none of these images I’ve found in the picture above are exactly right. The first shows a great place to JUMP and PLAY, but it is way too small.  The second is a creative space filled with interesting pillows where you can SLEEP, but I think those weird stone pillows would be weird after a while. The third is a great place to RELAX and watch movies and read, but there aren’t enough pillows! Fill the whole room!  The fourth is a beautiful place to SIT, DREAM, and IMAGINE, but it also needs more pillows.  This image below is almost it– but the room is too small and I’d like a little more variety in pillows.

I guess I’m just going to have to make my own pillow room.

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A Waterfall Shower

Now, if I had the ability to sneeze dollar bills, I would sprinkle pepper everywhere, get rich, and build this beauty of a bathroom.

Until that day comes, though, I would love to have this on a small scale.  I am picturing adding a layer of rocks to a shower-tub combo, adding some greenery, and maybe installing one of these:

I would love a place that feels natural and relaxing to sit or stand and enjoy the feeling of being in a waterfall, in a rainstorm, in a dream.  Beautiful.

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A (Never) Blank Room

I read a few years ago in one of my favorite books (Experiential Storytelling, by Mark Miller) a fact about Henry Ford. While I can’t find some authoritative source that guarantees this fact, I have seen in it a few other books.

According to these texts, Henry Ford had kept one of the walls in his office completely blank. He would sit and face that wall and stare at it for hours as he imagined and dreamed up new inventions and ideas for his company.

That idea gripped me when I first read it. But after some thought, I realized– “Most houses have blank walls!”  So I decided to rethink this idea– hence the (Never) Blank Room. This room has completely blank walls for the purpose of never having blank walls i.e. it is a place to draw, paint, scribble, doodle, write, create, and more.

If you search for “drawing on walls” you’ll find either articles on how to help kids stop drawing on walls or artists making use of creative space. And if there is a family with a house that has scribbles on the walls, the first assumption is either “Oh, these parents must be very modern” or “Oh, these parents don’t have control of their kids”– or “Oh, these parents are slobs.”

But I would like a space for kids and other people to feel free to create– there must be a rule, of course, that you can ONLY draw on the walls in this room, and it might be tough at times, but I hope that through this, people could come into my home and say, “Wow, Evan really values creativity.”  Or they might think I’m a slob, which is sometimes true.

Perhaps an answer is to fill the walls with whiteboards or canvas or large sheets of paper or card stock. Or maybe they have to use only a certain type of art materials. In the end, it’s a chance to create. Just imagine what this room could look like…

I’m sure there are a million other ideas out there. What would you like in your dream home? What could make it stand out?