The Effortless Girl

Julie Loven (left) Creates “Christmas Yarn Art” on Daytime Spaces, WJHL-TV

Meet The Effortless Girl By Karen Rieley

One of the High Country’s own, Julie Loven, also known as The Effortless Girl, knows something that many of us are coming to embrace this year. Crafting, creativity, growing and building the things you and your family need contribute to well-being. Especially this year, with all its uncertainties and in the midst of a pandemic, Loven’s simple lifestyle tips and ideas, which focus on cost consciousness, are bringing joy into viewers’ lives by making the place where they are spending so much of their time—their homes— beautiful.

“I focus on projects that use what you have on hand and that cost $30 or less to make,” Loven said. “Search closets or your yard; go to the discount stores to see what’s available. I encourage viewers to not let the intricate, expensive projects they often see in magazines intimidate them. I design projects that anybody can do.”

Some of her projects are original; some are her adaptations of projects that others have done. For example, when she saw a pumpkin decoration that cost $54.99, she found a way to redesign and produce her own pumpkin decoration for $6.

“I use a lot of spray paint,” Loven said with a laugh.

Loven is at heart a hometown girl. She grew up in Pineola, an unincorporated community in Avery County, NC, with a three-mile radius from the intersection of U.S. Route 221 and NC 181. Her three siblings and she learned from their mother how to be resourceful and creative.

“Living in a small, remote area meant we didn’t have access to lots of stores from which we could buy ready-made things, so we made and grew things from scratch,” Loven remembers.

Making their own products extends to the Loven family business as well. After graduating from college, Julie returned to Pineola to work with her father, Bobby Loven, and still does bookkeeping and payroll for Loven Casting & Construction Company. The business is an outgrowth of a sawmill business that her grandfather, Carey Loven Sr., began in 1938.

The Effortless Girl began as a hobby that Loven started sharing in a blog about seven years ago.

“I wanted to find a way to share recipes and ideas of weekend projects,” said Loven.

Then, in 2014, a television news director for WCCB Charlotte saw her post on how to make a dining room table centerpiece with pinecones, sticks and pine boughs and asked her to appear on the station’s Thanksgiving Day show. The show was so well received that she was invited back to appear on the station’s Christmas show and then the New Year’s Day, Valentine’s, and St. Patrick’s Day shows. The station hired Loven as DIY and lifestyle expert on WCCB Rising. What started as a personal blog had matured into The Effortless Girl.

Loven now appears every other Thursday on Good Day Charlotte and about every other week on Daytime TriCities and QC Life. During this time of COVID-19, she designs projects on the weekend and then presents them via Zoom during the week, all the while still working in the family business.

The future looks bright for The Effortless Girl. Loven is working with a media coach and looks forward to working with a publicist, both of who will help her move into bigger markets with larger audiences. Still, what matters most to Loven are the affirmations that she is helping to brighten others’ lives. She loves receiving photos and comments from viewers and readers who share their own results from following her DIY projects.

“I try to focus on the benefit of my work to my followers by sharing the things I would like to see in my own home,” she said. “DIY is a good outlet for families, especially now, and I’ve focused on adding kid-friendly projects to help parents with at-home kids.

“For many of us who grew up and live in the High Country, DIY is a lifestyle rather than just a hobby,” said Loven. “This isn’t what I do; it’s who I am. I’m fortunate to live in a place that appreciates and celebrates self-sufficiency.”

Learn more about The Effortless Girl and some projects you can do at www.effortlessgirl.com.

The Effortless Girl Presents: DIY Ice Globes

By Julie Loven

Winter is perfect for candlelight. I think candlelight is soothing and gives everything a beautiful, warm glow. Winter’s weather is perfect for making DIY Ice Globes. I love using ice globes in winter as outdoor luminarias. The globes in the snow are a creative welcome to guests and make a great marker for a snowy walkway. They are also a fun tabletop candle holder for a winter party. The globes cost about ten cents or less for each one so they make an affordable project that even the kids will enjoy.

Materials:

n Balloons n Plastic cups n Water n Tea Light Candles

You could also get really creative by adding food coloring to the water for different globe colors.

How-To:

To make the small, round globes: Fill a balloon with water until it is the size of the globe you want to create. Place the filled balloon onto the top of a plastic cup as a stand.

Put them into the freezer for a couple of hours. Once the water in the balloon starts to freeze/harden on the outer shell, cut a hole in the bottom of the balloon. Allow the excess water to drain into the cup. This makes the hole for the candle. Allow to freeze completely for several more hours.

Once frozen, remove the balloons from the ice globes. Be careful moving the globes once they are frozen, or else they will shatter if dropped. The final product will be a beautiful ice globe. Place a tea light candle in the center and enjoy the light!

WISDOM & WAYS

Walks in Winter By Jim Casada

Often thoughts on how to spend idle hours in the midst of a mountain winter revolve around themes such as curling up with a good book, snuggling beneath a quilt while gazing at a cheery wood fire, sipping a steaming cup of Russian tea or a toddy, or savoring a scrumptious meat-and-vegetable stew hot from the stove. All are undeniable creature comforts, but there’s a different, equally delightful side of winter which deserves special recognition. It’s a pastime which clears the mind, lifts one’s spirits, and puts the negativity associated with cabin fever (sometimes described with a wonderful Appalachian word as “mollygrubs”) in abject retreat. That’s the simple yet full measure of pleasure associated with walks in the midst of winter.

One obvious benefit of pedestrian meandering during the cold months involves the splendor of solitude. Byways and hiking trails which overflow with other humans during the wildflower glories of greening-up spring or the splendor of fall’s leaf-peeping time are virtually deserted. All of us, and that includes even the most gregarious of souls, need time alone to meditate or perhaps just enjoy a respite from the stressful hurly-burly of our daily world. Of course, for those already inclined to reclusiveness, perambulations with bitter chill borne by whistling winds or perhaps with a skiff of snow on the ground offer pure delight. Yet another appealing aspect of winter rambles, at least in the present time of coronavirus troubles, is that they offer a type of recreation and exercise which allows you to avoid human contact.

While winter walks are soothing balm for the soul, they also offer special treats for the senses. There’s something especially appealing in the elusive yet enchanting aroma to be sampled and savored after a newly fallen snow, a frost so heavy you could track a rabbit in it, or the passage of a cold front followed by see forever skies of purest blue. Similarly, the sounds encountered while walking in winter can entrance—the raucous cacophony of busybody crows, the cheery “pretty, pretty” call of a cardinal, the scream of a soaring hawk, or the eerie eight-note cadence of a barred owl all captivate in their special, unusual ways.

For all the appeal of these sensory perceptions, however, it is what winter walks afford the wayfarer’s eyes which must be reckoned most appealing. The opportunities for observation, especially if one pauses frequently to wonder as they wander, are endless and endlessly enjoyable. In times of bitter cold, various manifestations of sub-freezing temperatures greet you at every turn. Here are long, tapering icicles formed from seeps as mountains laden with sub-soil moisture unburden their inner treasure. Or maybe the ice takes the form of never to be duplicated natural architecture as spray from tumbling waterfalls or gurgling branches and creeks decorates overhanging branches, shorelines, and indeed any part of the landscape touched by water. Then there’s the fairly common High Country phenomenon of Continued on next page

rime ice which occurs when moisture-laden clouds freeze on trees and other vegetation atop ridges and mountains. Seen from afar, especially when highlighted by the sunshine of a chilly winter daybreak, rime ice appears to be a distant eternity of diamonds sparkling on the branches of tree limbs and indeed any bit of vegetation to which moisture might cling.

Another inveigling aspect of winter strolls involves all sorts of captivating little vegetative surprises. The cold months can seem almost monochromatic, with nothing but muted grays and grim earth tones found at every turn. Yet there are always abundant evergreens for relief, while one oft-overlooked blessing of the absence of leaves on deciduous trees is enhanced viewing. Landscapes which seem close and almost cloistered in the months of verdant foliage suddenly open up and allow for sights which are unseen at other seasons. But for me it is the abundance of closeup miracles of color or configuration which are most enticing of all. Who can fail to be awestruck by the vivid purple leaves of puttyroot orchids? Their flowers may be the least fetching of all the orchid family, but the puttyroot’s foliage is, as my Grandpa Joe used to put it, “a glory to behold.”

Similarly, leaves of the ubiquitous galax, so colorful they were once gathered and sold for Christmas decoration (those who gathered them earned the delightful name of “gallackers”), along with their basic green, afford hues spanning the whole spectrum of red—carmine and crimson, maroon and magenta, salmon and scarlet. Often galax grows beneath rhododendrons, a plant which has a particularly charming characteristic in times of bitter cold. The more bitter the weather the tighter rhododendron leaves roll up, cigar like, almost as if they are hugging themselves against the chill. Once temperatures moderate, the leaves open back up.

Of course for many the grandest of winter’s visual offerings comes in the form of snow. To walk a winter path after a soft overnight snow has adorned the earth and every limb with a cleansing coat of purest white is to know blissful inner peace. It is something better experienced in person than described in print. Moreover, for the nature lover or wildlife observer, such snows are in effect a tabula rasa where creatures great and small paint a picture. Here a deer of impressive size, judging by its prints, walked leisurely through the forest. Dainty tracings of bird tracks form wildlife graffiti atop the snow, while mayhap a flock of turkeys have wrought mayhem to the pristine whiteness as they scratched for acorns, beech nuts, or other tidbits. With persistence you can track a rabbit to its bed, a squirrel to its den, or simply enjoy the challenge of reading and interpreting the signs creatures have left to mystify or mesmerize you.

The message, in short, is a clear one. Winter walks offer wide and varied appeal, and to take one, be it a brisk hike or aimless ambling, is uplifting. Upon return to hearth and home you feel better about the world in general, relish a cup of mulled cider rich with the flavor of mountain apples, and suddenly discover that maybe, just maybe, you aren’t quite so beset by the mollygrubs as you thought.

Jim Casada’s latest book, A Smoky Mountain Boyhood: Musings, Memories, and More, has recently been released through the University of Tennessee Press. Signed and inscribed copies are available through his website, www.jimcasadaoutdoors.com, as is a free subscription to his monthly e-newsletter.