About

Slow living & crafty hobbies tie together.

Slow living is a lifestyle/mindset that encourages taking a slower approach to life. Crafting is a way to connect with your body & soul to slow you down.

East Coast Slow Living is all about slowing down and embracing hobbies that can help you slow down like knitting, crochet, sewing, and more!

Related Posts: What is Slow Living

About the Author

Hi, I’m Kate and I am the author/creator behind East Coast Slow Living.

I am a wife, a mother, and a homemaker. My most important job is creating a comfortable space for my husband and children.

I love coffee and cookies, knitting, sewing, and doing crafts with my kids. Our dream is to live in a rural town & homeschool our kids. But for now, we live in a busy area in the beautiful province of Nova Scotia.

My Journey to Slow Living

My obsession with living slowly has always been there, but it took me a while to finally grasp it.

While sitting on my deck one hot afternoon in July while my youngest was napping and my oldest was playing in our little pool, I sat there reading an e-book I had taken out of the library, The Praise of Slow by Carl Honoré.

Before I read the book, I had an idea of what living slowly was. I knew it meant taking control of your time and doing what you enjoyed.

Sitting there reading the book, I suddenly had an urge to look up. I looked up at the sky. It was a beautiful shade of blue, not a cloud in sight. The leaves on the trees stood still. Birds flew by, twirling and singing. My daughter laughed as she splashed herself and our puppy with the cool refreshing water. I put my phone down and stayed present in the moment. This was slow. While reading, my attention was half on the book and half on my daughter. I was so focused on trying to read this book as quickly as possible, that I was missing out on the true meaning of slowing down.

After having this moment, it had me thinking for a few days about my growing up. I was born in the early 90s, so technology was a huge part of my growing up. Luckily, I didn’t have my parents shove tech in my face was my first thought. Then I thought of our daughter. How my husband, a huge video gamer, introduced her to video games, and how we had gotten her a tablet the previous Christmas. I started to think a lot of things over.

Growing up Slowly

I always had a tight-knit relationship with my grandmother. She was an elementary school teacher and had me reading books since the age of 4. She pushed me to have a vivid imagination. Other family members were against my very vivid imagination, but my grandmother kept on telling me and others, this was what I needed. I was a child. She was a very creative woman, who also shared that passion with me every time we were together.

When my grandparents made a move from the city to a rural coastal town, I was ecstatic. Their home was built roughly around 1870, and boy did I ever let my imagination run wild. I would pretend I was a farmer’s daughter, tending to the animals in the yard, or planting in the garden. I loved the idea of living off the land. My grandmother would often find old glass bottles buried in the dirt in their cellar, it fascinated me how life once was.

I had always done things slowly growing up. I walked a little slower and I studied a little slower. Family and friends would always tell me to hurry up, but I just wanted to smell the flowers or listen to the birds a little while longer. My grandmother taught me to take life one step at a time, enjoy the moments you are given, and don’t take life for granted. To be slow.

Even after she passed away, I tried my best to still have her in my life the best I could. I tried, but life kept challenging me, telling me I was too slow.

Work, Work, Work

When I started working, it was funny enough, at McDonalds. Did I like it? No. When I decided it was time to leave and find a new job, many other companies were happy to see McDonald’s as an experience. Why? Well, it’s a known fact that McDonald’s is fast (Or it should be). Therefore, you learn skills to be working in a fast-paced environment. And companies that pay hourly, want that. They want you to be fast so they can get as much work out of you as possible.

The last job I had, before becoming a stay-at-home mom, was as a visual merchandiser manager for a… fast-fashion brand. That job was fast. We had to constantly be changing the store around to encourage customers to shop more, constantly changing the trends, and constantly putting out new pieces.

It was at this job, I was told I worked slowly. I tried my best, but I knew, this wasn’t what I was supposed to be doing. I was so lost in the fast pace of life that I became lost. What was I supposed to do with my life? Was working until I was so burned out that I cried every night to my boyfriend (now husband) about how much I hated my job and life.

And then I became pregnant.

Motherhood

When I became a mother, my life changed drastically. I finally felt like life was almost complete.

First, it began with me becoming more conscious of my waste. The thought of my daughter’s future made me want to be better for her. I was introduced to the zero/low waste lifestyle. I felt like I was doing better for my child’s future. We lived low waste for 2 years until the pandemic hit.

When the pandemic hit, we can all agree that all of our lives changed. It was during this year (2020), I experienced a very traumatic miscarriage. It was because of the miscarriage, not the pandemic, that I started to introduce old hobbies like sewing & knitting as a form of therapy. I started to slow down more and I realized, wow this feels amazing. I forgot what being slow felt like.

Thanks to slow living, I was able to be a better mother and a homemaker. Thanks to slow living, I was feeling like my old self again.

Because of the positive change that slow living has done to me and my family, I wanted to start this, a place for me to show how you can slow down to utilizing hobbies.

Join me on the journey & let’s get crafting.