Happy Birthday, Domythic Bliss!

Today is a momentous occasion....Domythic Bliss is exactly one year old!  In some ways it's hard to believe it has already been a year.  In other ways, I can't believe we haven't been sharing together for far longer!

I feel incredibly blessed to have received such a wonderful response in the last year to this blog. I could go on and on about the warm welcome and sense of community I have received, but I think I've already done so in other posts, so I'll share a few Domythic cakes with you instead!

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To help celebrate our first year together, celebrating the Mythic Arts and their role in our daily lives and surroundings, I've asked a few special guests to share their thoughts....

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Domythic Bliss is a beautiful site, and has brought together a lot of artists and writers (both living and dead) that I love very much. Including you.

- Delia Sherman (Mythic fiction author whose novel The Freedom Maze is coming soon from Candlewick Press)

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So often the dramatic that attracts our attention is of the dark, the obscene, the bleak, or the sensational variety. If the whole world's a stage, it seems mostly to be stuck in the Jacobean mode, or maybe in Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol: big, splashy,  sordid, with plenty of screeching and a high body count. The media pounds us with ugliness. And, to be honest, there's plenty of ugliness to pound with.

But there is beauty here too, though it can seem elusive. I would say "beauty enough to combat the horror," but the kind of beauty I mean doesn't need a martial metaphor. It is more invasive, more insinuating, more subtle than that. It is the kind of beauty that illuminates you like sunlight, or draws you through a doorway into possibility, into starlight or the heart of a lily. Drama rages in this kind of beauty: fire and winter, wings and sly things, in the urgent act of creating, most painstakingly, pockets of reckless gorgeousness and banquets for the senses to revel in.

Domythic Bliss is one such doorway to beauty. It is a rabbit hole to Wonderland, a star chart to Neverland, and the white hart that leads you into Fairyland. I think its readers will emerge from the images and insights it offers with a sense of astonished enchantment, pervaded by beauty, and galvanized to scatter their own small splendors like breadcrumbs for the rest of us to follow. 

- C.S.E. Cooney (Mythic fiction author and poet)


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Domythic Bliss is always visually appealing. Add in the added bonus of varied and interesting content delivered in a likeable voice...well. really. What's not to like? Here's to many more years!

- Charles de Lint (World Fantasy Award-Winning Mythic Fiction author whose new book comes out in March)


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I and my husband, Charles de Lint thank Grace Nuth for giving us a year of beauty through her Domythic Bliss site. She has shown us places, art and gorgeous a way of living that is truly something to strive for. Through Domythic Bliss, magic graces our screens and we feel inspired by all that Grace and her readers share with us. It's a great big circle of deliciousness that nourishes the spirit. Thank you, Grace, and congratulations! The world is a far better place with Domythic Bliss in it.

- MaryAnn Harris (artist, musician, lovely wife of Charles de Lint)


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How can you not love a blog devoted to finding -- and creating -- moments of beauty and enchantment in the everyday world? Grace Nuth looks at the world with a true artist's eye, and with a wonder that comes through in every post on this charming, inspiring blog.

- Carolyn Turgeon (whose new book comes out in August!) 


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I have long thought of myths and fairy tales as maps—as collections of images, angles, and marvels that if arranged properly, might lead us home, or help us make a home anyplace we find ourselves. I feel the same way when I look at Grace Nuth's blog, Domythic Bliss, where she assembles and presents such excellent variations of wondrous things with generosity, good humor, and delight.

- Ari Berk  (Professor of folklore and mythology, and author of NIGHTSONG and The Undertaken Trilogy.  His new book comes out in February!)

Castle Gaiman and "The Price"

Well, sometimes I could slap myself upside the back of the head when I find out about an exciting project well under way that I should, as an avid enthusiast of the Mythic Arts, already know about.  Therefore it may not be new news to many of you that Neil Gaiman's short story, "The Price," involving a brave black cat who battles the darkness to protect Gaiman and his family, is being turned into an animated film. 

The production blog, here, just shared the original teaser film that tells the whole short story in Gaiman's voice.  (direct link to watch the video is here...watch it soon, it's only up for a limited time!!)

Anyway, in another blog post, the director of the film, Christopher Salmon, talks about how he realized as he was shooting video footage of Gaiman and his house and life that another film was developing: a documentary about the magic with which Gaiman surrounds himself.  And so the idea was born for Castle Gaiman...a documentary that, from the teaser video, should be incredibly beautiful with wonderful production value.

See the blog post here.

I believe Neil Gaiman's home is featured in an older book called The Faces of Fantasy.  Since I have yet to get ahold of this book, I'm not sure if the inside of his charming home is featured, or just the single image of the outside on the front cover of the book.  But in either case, this new documentary will feature the very essence of Domythicity. 

I'm quite eager to see it!

In the mean time, some images from the above blog post and the accompanying video.

Castle Gaiman

A collection of figures sitting in a windowsill at Neil Gaiman's home

Stairwell at Castle Gaiman.  Yes, I see you, William Morris print wallpaper border ;)  And that figure on the landing intrigues me...a jester of some sort?

In The Bleak Midwinter...

Christmas is over.

This is a rough time of year for me.  Right around this time, the weather shifts from moderately cold to downright uncomfortably freezing here in central Ohio.  I look ahead to at least a few more months of the frigid weather, and on top of those things, I now "have to" take my warm and festival and glowing and cheerful Christmas decorations down.  ("have to" in quotes, because I do know people who leave them up for a significant amount of time longer, but generally and socially speaking people start taking them down about now)

Winter is a difficult time for homes to look enchanting.  When the snow is coming down it can be magical, but soon the snow turns to slush, gets dirty, half falls off into frigid heaps.  Ninety percent of the plants in the garden are nestled under their blankets of mulch and snow and hibernating until spring, so you're left with very little to adorn your house's exterior besides a few empty urns, trellises, bare arbors.  Taking down the garland and Christmas wreath, it can be hard to decide what if anything you can put up in its place to give yourself at least SOME kind of festive feel during the bleak months of winter.

My goodness I sound despairing.  My point is one of comfort though...because just because you have to take down your decorations, it doesn't mean your house has to look plain and cold.

The basic concept is simple, and I mentioned it previously in my post on wildcrafting: take down the overt Christmas stuff...the red glass balls, holiday lights, ribbon, light-up candy canes...and leave the greenery where you put it.  The holidays may be over, but the beauty of evergreens against the white of snow can be enjoyed all winter long.

This excellent blog post from Nell Hill's, one of my personal favorite sources for interior decorating ideas, gives a few more wonderful tips.  For instance, she nestles a gazing ball above a bed of evergreens inside a planter or urn for her front porch.  Simple, magical, wintery.

I may not have an entry this grand, but the basic look is inspiring...a great example of a beautiful, wintery and not at all Christmassy entrance.

Another great article on Midwest Living about winter decorating for your home's exterior.

This idea intrigues me especially....I have no idea how easy or hard it would be, but isn't this lovely?  A fruit mosiac in your birdbath...

I also love this arrangement with soft bent willow branches and pine cones in the center.  The base is a planter turned upside down.

I like this example of a front door arrangement that's magical, wintery, and not Christmassy.

If this looks too green for you, you could celebrate the starkness of winter by putting bare branch items on your front porch too.  Here's a lovely example.

As far as the inside of your house is concerned, it's amazing how taking down Christmas decorations that were only up for a little over a month can suddenly make your house look so much emptier.  But, again as pointed out by the Nell Hill's blog, you can turn this negative into a positive by looking at it as an opportunity to look at your decor in a new light.  Change things up, move things around, create new arrangements, even shift some furniture!

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Before I go, I have to say a most overwhelmed and wholehearted THANK YOU to everyone who responded to my previous blog post with  my goals for 2013.  I do feel that as I move forward with the eventual goal of creating a hub of a website, I will have all of you there to support and encourage and assist me!  Thank you so much.

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