i have been really drawn to all things blue and white lately, as you can see by some of my recent estate sale purchases...

 a couple weeks ago, i found this bright blue vintage pleated skirt, and lovely blue & white handmade linens, and bought them without a second glance (at 25-50 cents each, you can't really go wrong). i got them home and discovered stains. but i loved them so much! so i decided to work on patching over the stains on the skirt with one of the napkins, also stained, and then cover those stains with some lace, which also ended up being stained... some buttons were my final touch, and finally all the stains were hidden... but then my sewing machine stopped cooperating, and i gave up. here's how far i got:

 and below is that project this weekend. do you see the spiderweb attached to it???! yeah, that made me decide it was time to get back into the studio and create (coupled with the fact that jason took joey to his parents' house for the day ;)!

so i got back into my Misty Mawn Open Studio class, and started... painting!

 above: the underpainting; below: the final painting (amazing how much the same painting can morph into something so different! i'm actually not sure which i like better...)

 i have been doing this first week of assignments basically in order (on day 3 now, finally!). i think it's too much of one thing at a time, though, so after i finish week 1, i think i'm gonna go week-by-week. so i'm not writing (and you're not seeing) all poetry for forever, and then all portraits, etc. capiche?

and now for some more things i have been thankful for the last few weeks:

66. fever snuggles
67. people like elizabeth esther and sarah markley who share their stories and struggles online, making so many feel less alone.
68. photoshop, and the potential to learn so much more
69. acrylic paint
70. bright color
71. muted color
72. black and white
73. cardamom
74. fresh basil
75. the pairing of sweet and salty/savory: chicken & waffles, s'fa, salted caramel hot chocolate
76. TUMS
77. hearing the baby's heart beating strong

estate sale spoils

 i got so many texts asking what treasures i found this weekend estate saling, i thought i'd better let you all have a glimpse...

this old propeller was my favorite find - how could you go wrong for a dollar??

sewing basket and all its contents

handmade afghan

 the inside and outside of a sweet little hand-crocheted clutch

another great find: hand-carved wooden block stamp (the guy who sold it to me for a dollar said it was from india in the 1920s and he thought it was to pattern wallpaper :)

beautiful napkin ring

nightlight

prettiest little teacup and saucer i ever saw

 all those came to a grand total of $13!! i love estate sales. they are so much better than yard sales because they sell EVERYTHING. the junk most people wouldn't put out at a normal yard sale 'cause they figure no one would want it (but i do!! drawers full of rusty old tools and bolts?? yes, please!) AND the most precious beautiful stuff, too! at this estate sale, they were selling a vintage refrigerator (50s-70s?) that was upholstered in aqua, green, and gold fabric; and had a beer tap coming out of the side! the person who bought it (while i was deliberating) hauled it away for $12.50!!

i also scored a bunch of vintage clothes, which i plan to get posted for sale on my etsy site this summer (so i won't tell you how much i paid for them ;)... here's a little glimpse from my favorite angle to shoot clothes :)

p.s. there's an estate sale in whittier this weekend that's put on by my favorite (read: cheap) estate sale hosts... 13946 trumball st... come join me if you're in the area, and let's see what we can find!

in that house...

the LAST assignment from Day 2 (of 25) of my class!! find a picture of yourself, and write a story about the person you see in the photo... i suppose i could have created a fictional account centering on one of these details, but i love the truth of these little scattered memories i could recall from age 4-8, when we lived on Bakeman Lane. 

(there are, of course, many more, but i want to save some to tell you about when we get to know each other... or when i write my memoirs ;)

in that house...

My dad taught me trigonometry at age five, describing imaginary triangular planes stretching from me to him to the mantel above the fireplace. Sitting on his lap in the orange comfy chair from the 70s, I saw it.

My mom dressed up like a clown for my birthday, and we got to dance to music and jump high to pop balloons, filled each with a candy or little note, strung across the living room. She let me make up my own recipes, and try baking them (sometimes she'd help adjust my 3 cups of salt, or 100 degree ovens, but she let me make strawberry cake that was no such thing!)

My three sisters and I shared one of the two bedrooms. I had my very own desk, painted sky blue, turtle green, and baby pink. It held my treasures and was my own little world when I opened it to write songs or thank you notes on my rainbow hot-air balloon notepad.

We could play outside, swinging from the tree, collecting snails and seedpods for a penny apiece. But we couldn’t go past the telephone pole in front of Stuart’s house. We could smell the old lady’s many-colored roses but not touch them. There were dozens of bees on the tiny pink flowers on our bush in the front, a porcelain deer resting below.

My parents had a walk-in closet where Mom would spend some alone time with God each morning, and we knew we weren’t to interrupt. We also watched old home movies in there – using a reel and projector, lying on the floor all in each others' laps. And we drew pictures with neon crayons and took them in there to watch them glow in the blacklight.

We camped in the backyard with a tent made of sheets strung house to fence, and slept in cozy sleeping bags, and ate dry cereal when we woke up in the dewy morning hours.

It seems to me that it was a different person that lived those memories. When life was simpler, before I turned eight and we moved. Not that it got a whole lot more complicated quickly, but I lived in that next house through the rougher years, too; so the “me” I imagine there is older, more emotional, than the young me with pigtails I see in the house on Bakeman Lane.





woohoooo! on to painting!!!

thankful

one of the writing assignments from misty's Open Studio class involved writing a list of (at least 100) things we were thankful for, and then turning that into a poem. she encouraged us to start a "gratitude journal". which coincided perfectly with reading One Thousand Gifts this spring. i waited till i made it to 100 to write my poem. i decided to just pull out the ones that were about joey, and write a poem about him at this age. 

at two and a half

part whirlwind

blond curls and

fever snuggles

cuddly-jammied lullabies

I learn truth in the song

the paint you choose

One more book

Boy laughter floating

helping daddy

gentle delight in babies

worrying about your brother even before he is born

Kisses to “feel better, mommy”

routine-loving change-hater

kitchen-aid operator extraordinaire

sleeping all night

all-boy, healthy

trains, fire trucks, airplanes

you have opened my heart

reading this, i suddenly want to do this for all my kids (however many that is ;) every year. i used to be a crazy chronological record-every-moment-scrapbooker. and i have felt like i've missed so much these last 2 1/2 years of not recording faithfully the moments of joey's young life. but keeping little lists like this gratitude journal gives me a glimpse into this life as it's lived over days and months. i think this will not be a quickly-abandoned habit. also, instagram ;)

you've seen the first 65 of my list, and i'll keep adding them as time goes on...

poetry

The fern, it curls itself

Into the shape of my love

People ask me what it is

But I don’t tell them – not really

They think it’s a scorpion

Or some other many-legged thing

But, no.

All resin and wire

A bird winging its way behind

The wood grain

It holds eight years

Houses the memory

Of a day all soft and lovely

Resting on my chest

the assignment was to write a sonnet about a beloved "talisman"...
not sure i really have something like that, so i kept it simple and abstract :)

thankful for...
56. canvaschild, thelifeartist, anamcara, aholyexperience... that breathe truth to my jesus-seeker-lover-artist soul
57. a community i can engage with more than once a week
58. a husband who cares enough about the deep-heart-things of life to work through the sucky conversations it takes to get there
59. art awakening my soul to its long-lost shape and to the desire to create and love
60. kicks that are more than flutters - moving my belly visibly and warning of the active-boy that is to come!
61. the chance to sit quietly in a coffee shop and read, write, flip through art magazines
62. painting alongside joey
63. eight months of finally (after 2+ years) sleeping through the night before baby #2 comes
64. an invitation to fight for the hearts of women
65. the details - lace on a top, embossed tiny flowers on a mug, a flower in the hair