Story and Photos by Rachel Knight
After you read this paragraph, close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and think of what it means to be happy. Next, picture a space in which you are surrounded by the things that make you happiest. When you’re finished, open your eyes and keep reading.
Shelley Wilson, a retired teacher who currently works as an associate at Home Goods in College Station, is one of the kindest, most inspiring people you’ll ever meet. She lives in Franklin, and has more hidden talents than “the happiest place on earth” has hidden Mickeys. It’s no surprise that her happy place, or Shelley Shed, is the perfect space for her creativity to flow.
“It’s a place that I can go and I can do whatever I want to do,” Wilson shares. “I can sew, I can craft, I can do paper things, I can paint. If I’m not done with a project, I can close the door on the project behind me, and it still will be there ready to go when I’m ready to go back. I love that part. I even have a sign that says it’s my happy place, and it is.”
A happy place is something Wilson says she feels blessed to have. Her happy place is part of a barn that she and her husband turned into her Shelley Shed. It is a personal space where Shelley can simply be — or allow her imagination to engage in creative projects that make her happy. “Everybody needs a happy place,” she shares. “Everybody needs to go somewhere where they can say, ‘I’m good. This is a good place for me.’ … I think everybody needs to have, even if it’s in your mind, a place to go to separate from the world, because sometimes the world is a tough place to deal with.”
Wilson’s Shelley Shed is full of old treasures that have been given a new purpose in her life. For example, the desk she used for 26 years as a teacher in Franklin ISD is now her sewing machine table. “No one else wanted it, and when I retired they gave it to me,” Wilson explains. “The first year I was there, they gave me this desk and I thought, ‘Those people hate me. They gave me this old, awful desk and no opportunity or option for another one.’ Then I started to use it, and I realized I don’t ever want any other desk. It’s a part of who I used to be, and I get to turn it into a part of who I am now.”
Happy places should be like an ebenezer, or a reminder and remembrance, Wilson says. Every detail in her Shelley Shed has meaning to her. She even incorporates pieces from projects she has done in the past into the room’s decor. As an example, scraps from paper projects that once brought her joy have been turned into decoupage on a door.
Sewing and crafting have been part of Wilson’s life since her grandmother taught her to sew as a young girl. She says she loved sewing so much that she made clothes to wear to school as a kid and her bridesmaids’ dresses as a young adult. Having a room for those activities to take place uninterrupted allows Wilson to pour herself into what makes her happy. The inspiration for her happy place even came from a portable sewing nook that her grandfather made for Wilson when she got married.
Wilson’s advice for others looking to find or create their own happy space is to toss out any preconceived notions of what it has to look like.
“A closet in your house can be a Shelley Shed, a corner in a bedroom could be a Shelley Shed if you don’t have the space to do a whole room,” Wilson says. “Be open to the possibilities of where and how you can create the space. Only allow things in it that bring you joy. Don’t think that you have to copy somebody else’s. Make it yours. Make it what brings joy to you, and you’ll want to be there.”
