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Creative Nest Studio

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Timmins, ON
Creative Nest Studio

Small-house, small business and big love at the lake. One story, one project, one day at a time. 🤍 Caring for your Nest

10/03/2026

Ahh, autumn. The season of sparkling lakes, burning maples and the time of year when pesky cobwebs pass as decor. 😂

My sweet Jack painted this sign 7 years ago. We didn’t know it at the time, but that would be our last fall season in the shop. We were gearing up for the holidays. October through December was a marathon like no other. It was draining. It took all I had. But goodness, it was magical. As if the decor alone didn’t make you want to stay, sip hot chocolate and watch the downtown action from our big windows with a front row view to March Street… but it was really the people that made The Nest what it was. You saw something in us. And you gave it life.

This time of year has me reminiscing and reflecting a lot about that place. It was our second home. My children did a lot of growing within those walls. There were tears. Lots of learning. Paint spills, glittered tables, rooms of stacked lumber, piles of receipts and evidence of small business ownership passion in every corner. But most of all, there was laughter. There was creativity. There was you.

Thank you so much for the love you poured into us during that season of our life. Thanks for including us in your most treasured celebrations, for trusting us with capturing precious details, for filling our studio, trusting our vision, and allowing us to find our creative spark right alongside you. I hope you still think of us when you decorate with the pieces you made at our tables. And I hope you know how much your kindness and support still carries me even all these years later. xo Diana ♥️

09/18/2026

All the feels this morning. 🍂
From 2021…

09/13/2026

August brought a new job and a different (much needed) structure that steadied my mind. And in all that good busy-ness, our 4-year camp-to-home anniversary slipped right through the pages of our calendar.
Four years ago, life looked a lot different. We had just made our move to camp, mid-reno. So luxurious, living right next to the water, right? Oh boy… plywood in place of back-ordered windows, squeezing past box towers + vapour barrier curtains that hung where walls begged to be installed. Add in a frenzy of human emotion and, well…
From the outside, anything can seem lovely or terrible. But it really isn’t until you live in it that you FEEL it. And sometimes those feelings are a lot different, unexpected, weighted, than you anticipated.
What I will say is four years of small house, remote-ish living really increases one’s threshold for inconvenience + discomfort. Is it great to walk 10 steps from door to shore? Absolutely. Is it breathtaking to watch autumn’s sunsets, the blue heron’s wingspan, dwell in the privacy of the birches? You bet. But 40-stairs worth of hauling firewood, groceries, snow… freezing ‘til you start your own fire + using every last shred of creativity you have to make do in a new, much smaller footprint? It’s not the worst thing, but definitely no walk in the park.
I think the stress in our first 3 years here aged me by at least 10. I’m a different person, in mostly good ways, I think.
Life notes as I sip my morning coffee…
* We need FAR less than we think.
* There is peace in practiced rhythms + routines.
* Our story doesn't need everyone's approval to be worth telling.
* We often want immediate. But good things grow slowly.
* Just when we think all hope is lost, there is often a suddenly moment.
* You’ll never regret leading with love.
* There is growth in learning your limits, accepting them, and realizing we don’t have to become someone else to be enough.
* Our bodies carry us through more than we realize. Simply being able to move, breathe, walk and live freely is something to be so, so grateful for. If you’ve made it this far in my ramblings, please hold this one against your heart. 💛 Wishing you the best Sunday. xo Diana

08/18/2026

Five months ago when I didn’t know what to do with myself… restless and unsure… my default was to paint.
I found myself alone in the lumber aisle… a car full of plywood, pine, wood stain, paint + brushes. Mitre saw on the kitchen floor, frames and stencils laid in rows across the counter.
And somewhere in the middle of all that making, I painted these words.
I didn’t know how much I would need to believe them.
In waiting, I threw myself into serving my home in the ways I knew how. I tidied each corner. Made lunches and muffins and loaves of bread. Folded laundry mountains, drove loved ones to appointments… kept the routines moving, sometimes through tears, sometimes feeling and fearing I was incapable of anything else.
There were days when I wondered if I was doing enough, being enough… enough at all.
But I also remembered past seasons when life moved so quickly I would collapse onto the couch, longing for exactly what I had now: a little more quiet. A little more ordinary. A little more time to simply be home.
There are seasons when our most important work is quiet. When nobody is applauding. When the work is simply loving the people in front of you and caring for the little life you’ve been given.
And maybe that counts for a whole lot more than we know.
Maybe we spend so much of our lives trying to become someone that we forget we already are someone.
And maybe some of the most life-changing work is the work that happens within us… taking shape through the laundry piles, in the kneading of dough, love poured out within the walls of our own home… in a million beautiful ways that may never, ever carry a title at all. 💛 xo Diana

08/08/2026

Grandma is 91. She’s the kind of woman who takes care of the people around her. With her heart, with her hands. She still scrubs the floors on her knees because it makes her feel good when they’re shiny. She’d pick all the apples and blueberries and strawberries in the world if you gave her endless fields. Then she’d bake you a pie. When she was a young mother, she took the bus to clean houses when grandpa wasn’t free to drive her. Sometimes, she’d bring some of her six babies along for the ride. She cared for her parents… nurtured their Nestorville farm and made sure they were warm and fed. In the winters when they were aged, she’d bring them home to stay with her in town. Grandpa would keep the woodstove stocked and she’d cook, then work, then come home to cook again. She’s hung her clothes on the line to dry as long as I can remember. Out back, behind the house and up the wooden platform. When owls or bears visit the yard, she’ll tell you all about them. And when the red roses bloom in her garden (the ones she used in her wedding bouquet back in the 50s), she’ll call to remind you to come dig some up to plant in your own yard. Because they matter. Because you matter. She still bends down to pick up the ‘pretty rocks’, tosses them into the lake and tells you to go get them. Then she laughs, right from her soul, and looks you in the eye with a love so deep, you’ll never question the way she feels for you. Today, we drove her down to the water’s edge… skipped stones picked by hands with pink-painted nails. And when we reached the end of the shore, she said, “I just want to go down and touch that birch tree.” White and grey paper, uneven ground beneath her feet. A woman and a life of service that’s carried its share of hard things, no doubt. And still, there she was… reaching for a simple tree. Maybe it was its beauty. Maybe, a little turnaround point before we walked back to the car. Maybe, she was drawn by a memory from her past. Or maybe, at the end of the day, wisdom looks a lot like knowing what’s worth reaching for, and realizing how little we really need, truly, to be happy. 💛

08/06/2026

And the water said, “I’ll have what the sky’s having.” 🧡

07/29/2026

Like a child running to the window at the melody of an ice cream truck, I bolted from bed and found myself barefoot on the dew-stained deck, pajamas and a slept-in braid draped at my neck. Now, I wouldn’t call myself a train enthusiast, but this morning was different. Four years of lake living comes with its own set of rhythms. The chant of the peepers, marking winter’s thaw. The fiery skies of autumn. The return of juncos in spring and the unique smell of wood burning from lakeside chimneys signalling a settling in, a hibernation of sorts. Today though, nearly the end of delicious July, it was the sweet, familiar whistle of the Agawa. Sometimes, it isn’t the thing itself that stirs up excitement in our bones. It’s what the thing represents. A passage of time, a sense of place, the privilege of witnessing something fleeting. Or maybe, after the longest, darkest season, it’s the heart of summer boldly announcing, “I’m here.” 💛 xo Diana

07/28/2026

Hard to believe it was 4-5 years ago that Andrew + I were creating these multi-layered depth maps in the basement of our home until the wee hours of the morning. Andrew would spend hours pulling bathymetrics for hundreds of lakes to design each piece with as much accuracy as possible. Do you have one of our originals? Let me know! 💙

07/26/2026

A little full. A lot loved. 💜

07/24/2026

She was just a little girl when she decided she wasn’t creative.
It wasn’t really about the circle she couldn’t cut, jagged construction paper edges dressed as inadequacy. It was about the story she began to believe… that she wasn’t enough, that beauty belonged to someone else, that she should run, run away.
So she did.
For years, she lived from that place, becoming someone she thought she had to be, while the person lovingly created remained hidden beneath shame.
Until, little by little, He called her back.
Not simply to art, but to herself.
Creating became the language of healing. Each word, each design gently unraveling an old lie and making room for something true.
All this time, she thought she was forgotten.
But she was never abandoned.
Her story was being rewritten.
The wound that once whispered, 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦, became a life spent reminding others that 𝙬𝙚 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙢𝙖𝙙𝙚 𝙩𝙤 𝙘𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙚.
Friends, the thing shame taught us to hide may be the very place we find our purpose. xo Diana 💛

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