Getting There

We are slowly progressing putting P’s bedroom together again.  On Thursday, DA laboured alone cutting and fitting the trim.  He did his best to clean up after his work but was a bit pressed for time so it still needed a fair bit of doing when I got home from work.  Tired as I was, I was eager to get at it.  I had a willing helper in P.  We vacuumed and scrubbed and then set about reassembling his bed.  P ran out of steam before I did but even my enthusiasm couldn’t keep me going.  Turns out I’m fighting some sort of bug that has sapped me of my strength.  Still, we are making progress.  Here’s the part of the room that could be photographed:

The boy now has a bed, a desk, a bedside “table” , a lamp and some hockey wall art to adorn his room.  There’s a partly assembled fish tank by his bed that will one day hold his pet snake.  He’s diligently saving for it and at the current rate it will only be a few more weeks before he can afford a ball python.  I’m not overly thrilled about it but it should fit in nicely in this very masculine looking bedroom.  As long as snakey stays in the very masculine looking bedroom, this mom should live to see this project finished.

Experimenting

I’ve been wanting to experiment with my new camera but it’s been difficult.  There are always more pressing things to do and the people I most want to immortalize are not exactly lining up for the process.  A couple of days ago, in a rare moment of quiet, I decided to try and capture some of my Christmas angels.  Indoor lighting has traditionally been a challenge for me.  There never seems to be enough of it to get good quality shots.

She’s so pretty I felt that she deserved a Piknik frame.  I’ve decided to go with red as my predominant colour this year and this angel certainly is red.

Here she is a little closer up with a slightly less bluish cast.  I’m still finding it difficult to get crisp shots in low light.  There is a way; I just haven’t stumbled on it yet.  As for the colours, it’s kind of nice to have a camera that can adjust them.  Emphasizing blue or gold in a shot can really change the feel of the picture.

I overexposed this shot but it gives this white angel a kind of dreamy feel.

I also took some shots of my fireplace mantel which is loaded with pretty things.  I really like these little birdies but I was a little off in my focus again.

I also like to add some height to my display.  These candlesticks do the job nicely.  It’s all very traditional in my living room but it seems to suit the feel of the place.  Again, the low lighting proved tricky and the shot didn’t quite turn out the way I had hoped it would.

I had to wait four hours yesterday while my van got some much needed work done on it.  Even though I had just spent three hours pounding the sidewalks delivering papers, I decided to spend some of the time going for a walk.  I wound up at Home Hardware and found these pretty red star napkin rings in their bargain section.  They found a place in my heart and will grace our Christmas table this year.  I feel that I got the focus better in this shot.

I can’t ever take just one shot of anything.  That’s the beauty of having a digital camera.  You can go snap happy until you get a shot you’re happy with.  Again, I was pleased with the improved focus in this photo.  Practice makes perfect.

This decidedly different shot was taken by D.  He just couldn’t resist all the buttons on my new baby and pressed away.  I don’t know why, but there’s something about it that I really like.  Maybe I need to let him experiment a little more.

That’s it for now.  Hopefully, I’ll get outside sometime soon and find something I want to take a picture of.  It’s pretty challenging this time of year when everything is brown and dead looking.  Ah well, I trust it won’t be brown for much longer.  Sooner or later God will get his white paintbrush out and I’ll see how the Nikon d3000 likes that.

Decorating, A Matter of Perspective

I want to enjoy my home.  I spend a lot of time there and it’s important to me that it’s a place I can live with.  I’m always tinkering trying to make things better.   I believe in working slavishly to try and get rooms that I like.  I’m still at the stage where I’m trying.  I expect that one day I’ll get to the place where I feel that I’m succeeding.

One of the hurdles to success is that I always feel compelled to work with what I have.  I won’t spend a dime if I think I have something from who knows where that I can make work somehow.  It’s kind of like a disease, I think, and I’m not sure it’s curable.

Here’s the zero dollar attempt at the main level bath:

I had to step into the shower to get this stellar shot. (LOL!)

I lined my crazy collection of “silverware” art with various green paper (which I have a lot of) and some gift tags I got at the Dollar Store.  It sort of pulls them all together even if they are hung a little crookedly.  (I’ll try to fix that later.)  I then added some of our growing collection of nutcrackers to the mix.  We get a new one every year and I magic marker in the date on the bottom.  To simplify my life, I now buy the first one that goes for half price at Zeller’s.  They always pick one to go on sale in November.  I don’t know why we started this silly trend.  I think it’s because the boys find nutcrackers kind of cool.

I had to laugh when D and P told me it was kind of weird peeing with four little guys staring at them.  I hadn’t thought of that.  They’re only in my range of vision when I enter the bathroom.  Decorating is a matter of perspective.  What was quaint to me was weird to them.

Everyone is liking this cute Christmas addition.  I had to ditch two houseplants this year and didn’t know what to do with the pots.  Stacked and turned upside down they seemed to make a perfect stool for DA’s Christmas Kermit.  You can’t help but smile when you see this dapper fellow on the stairway.  So far, all perspectives agree.

Me Having Fun

Everywhere I go it’s starting to look a lot like Christmas.  I’m liking it.  Though the weather has been fantastic as of late, I’m finding the lack of colour a bit dreary.  Maybe that’s why I’m so drawn to the reds and purples and turquoises of all those ornaments out there.  Since it’s my day off and it was a little drizzly outside and I have some Christmas stuff that I picked up last year after Christmas, I had some fun and started Christmasfying the house.

My orange dining room got a red tablecloth added to it.  I really like red and orange together.  I also like that my new camera is more truthful than my old one.  My dining room really is this colourful.  I plopped a creamy cake plate on all that joyous red and topped it with a wreath I put together last year from Goodwill bits and some of the many candles I’ve had for years and haven’t lit.

It makes a festive centerpiece.  Can you tell I’ve been lighting the candles?  Leave me a note saying something like, “Good for you!”.

Here’s our candlelit meal.  I really like eating by candlelight, even if it’s just the boys and me.

I took the red idea and carried it to the living room.

It could use a little more but already it’s looking more perky and less subdued.  Looking at this picture, I have to admit that I’m sorely tempted to paint that brick surround and replace that brassy fireplace with something that isn’t so…hmmm…brassy?  I love the artichoke heart walls, the creamy furniture and the brown accents and I can live with the punchy reds for the next few months but that pinkish brick and that goldish fireplace look wrong.  I’m not going to bother though.  Never in a million years will I convince my husband.  Can you believe that when I moved into this home the walls in this room were purple?  I’m not talking eggplant here, I’m talking more like magenta.  Yeah, that had to go.  Anyhoo…I digress.

Christmas.  It’s coming.  When it does, I’ll be ready for it.

Yup.  That’s me.  This is what I look like when I’m having fun.  I’m a plain Jane wearing a sweater that exaggerates my hips but with that camera in my hand and some changes to my home to take pictures of, I’m happy as a clam.  I haven’t at all figured out how to best use my new camera but I’m going snap happy everywhere my children aren’t trying to learn its secrets and enjoying every minute of it.

 

 

 

Old, Meet New

This is my new baby, a Nikon D3000 dSLR, photographed by my aging one, a Sony Cybershot 7.2.

And here is my old camera photographed by the new one:

There’s quite a difference between the two.

I admit that neither of these shots is amazing.  The old Sony can’t handle indoor lighting and the new Nikon has an inexperienced person as its owner.  I’m looking forward to playing with my new toy and getting to know it a bit better.  It’s a steep uphill learning curve but I believe that the view from the top will be worth the effort of getting there.

 

Card Making

I have a friend here who is into making cards.  I haven’t seen any of her designs yet but I thought I’d try my hand at making a card for her.  She’s walking a difficult road, one that is all too familiar to me.  A little over a year and a half ago, her husband died of cancer treatment complications.  She is now raising their four year old son on her own.  It’s hard.

I found a quote on-line that was the inspiration for my card.  I really wanted to find a great picture to go with the quote but as hard as I looked, I just couldn’t find what I was looking for.  Frustrated and disappointed, I sat down and drew out my own design from my head.  I NEVER do this.  I thoroughly expected to get even more frustrated and disappointed but somehow I turned out a drawing that I kind of liked.

Here’s the front of the card with inspirational quote on it:

Here’s the part of the design that I like the best:

Hands are tricky to draw.  I was very pleased with how this hand turned out.

Here’s a terrible picture of the inside of the card:

Trials have a way of shaping us, don’t they?  It’s encouraging to know that God is taking the ordinary and using circumstances, even tough ones, to make us extraordinary.

Here’s what’s on the back of the card:

This little piece of art is not a rendition of some other piece of art.  It’s all my own.

I’m grateful for my artistic talent but at times it seems like the most useless talent ever.  I don’t want some portfolio stuffed with artwork that just sits on a shelf.  I’d rather fan the gift and hope that it can be used to encourage and bless others.  This card is an attempt at that.  Let’s hope that it does what it’s intended to do.

Another Art Attack

Ever since the fall fair, I’ve been indulging my old love of drawing again.  When I found an amazing shot of a soaring great egret in a magazine borrowed from the library, I was inspired to try and reproduce it with pencil crayon on light blue paper.

Here’s the inspirational photo with my rendering of it above.  The wings were so challenging to do, I almost gave up on the project.

I feel good about what I’ve produced.  It’s been ages since I’ve sketched with pencil crayon but it’s as fun and rewarding now as it was way back then.  I’ve already got two more quite different art project ideas in the works.  Stay tuned.

Christmas Thinking

I’m both fascinated by and repulsed with Christmas as I know it in my culture.  The artist/decorator in me oohs and aahs over the sparkle and the glamour of all those shiny ornaments lining aisle after aisle in practically every store out there.  I have to confess that I’ve already gone to Leons to check out how they did their tree and tablesettings this year.  There is someone very talented working at that establishment and I’m drawn like a bee to honey to their artistry.  I’ve also checked out Martha Stewart, that maven of all things beautiful, to see if she had any fresh offerings online for the upcoming season.  I’m not looking to buy.  I’m looking because I like to look at pretty things.

Pretty things cost money.  If I purchased even half of the things that catch my breath I’d be rather poor by now.  This is one of the things about Christmas that repulses me.  The expectation is that you’ll spend, spend, spend with reckless abandon on things that you don’t really need and on gifts that your loved ones don’t really want.  I totally believe in living my wage.  I also wonder if buying baubles and trim to deck the halls is the best use of the money I’ve been entrusted with.  The price I’d pay for a modest wreath could feed a child in and impoverished country for over a month after all.  I know because I’ve been perusing those gift catalogs.

So, on the one hand I really want to decorate for the season and on the other hand I don’t because I feel that my time and resources could be better spent elsewhere.  What to do?  Talk to my Heavenly Father about it, that’s what.

There are times I bring things before God and clearly get an answer.  Then there are those times where I present my questions and there is nothing but silence.  I can’t say that God clearly told me which hand to go with on this one.  What I did consider were my own children.  Sometimes I have clear instructions and expectations of D and P.  Other times I don’t and the boys being boys naturally go off and play.  They are unique individuals, my children.  Play for my eldest son usually involves something scientific.  He watches science programs on TV, researches science related stuff on the internet and conducts experiments in the name of science whenever he has spare time.  I don’t like the garbage trail he leaves in his wake but I must say that I do enjoy D being D.  When it comes to his science projects, there’s a twinkle in his eyes, a quickness to his step and an enthusiasm in his voice.  It’s obvious he’s in his element and I can’t help but smile.  P, on the other hand, likes sports in his spare time.  I can often hear him pleading with his brother to go outside with him to bump a volleyball, kick a soccer ball, play hockey or shoot some baskets.  He comes in panting from exhaustion after playing, his cheeks apple red and his smile stretching from ear to ear.  It brings joy to me to see him so enjoying himself.

I wonder if God enjoys seeing me play.  I’m not a science or sports type of gal.  Play for me is a walk in the woods with my camera along.  Second to that is decorating.  No one has to tell me to rearrange furniture, to try putting this throw over there, to hold up that picture against that wall to see how it will look.  Like D naturally gravitates towards science and P to sports, I’m drawn to making things pretty.  I like to think that God can relate.  One of the most wonderful things about walking in the big, wide world is taking in God’s masterpieces.  He’s a colour expert, the master at texture and His handiwork is more than just visual; it’s a feast for all the senses.  Like me, He’s always changing things.  We’re now fully into Autumn where God goes monochromatic.  Pretty much everything turns some shade of brown this time of year.  Soon winter will come where God will show us the beauty of white and what He can do with light and shadow as a medium.  He’s an artist too.

Since I’m not getting any clear instructions regarding Christmas, I’ve decided I’m going to play.  I’ll pull out what I already have in the way of decorations and have some fun with that and maybe even purchase a few of those shiny things that so catch my eye.  Whatever I spend for myself, I’ll be sure to at least double for those who haven’t been as blessed as I’ve been this year.  I hope that my Heavenly Father will see me having fun and that He’ll smile that his daughter is so enjoying herself.  I’m not sure Christmas is so much about right and wrong.  I think it’s a lot more about bringing joy to my Heavenly Father.  I can’t help but think that He’ll be pleased with me being just silly old me.

Filling Myself With Beauty

I trotted off to church alone today and came home to bickering boys.  That’s a sure sign that they are feeling better.  They are pretty capable of taking care of themselves now so I turned around and headed outdoors.  There’s no other way to describe today than gorgeous.  The sun is shining.  The sky is blue.  There are no pesky bugs to irritate.  I decided to go for a short walk out back.

I believe that every day holds beauty and I actively seek it out.  I didn’t have to go too far today before I spotted this western conifer seed bug on my mums.  Some day I will have the proper equipment to photograph these guys up close.  They are truly amazing.

Only a few steps further was this lovely ladybug.  Doesn’t he just pop against the blue of my garage door?

I ventured into the woods behind our home.  The forest floor is ankle deep in leaves and with all the light that now penetrates past the tops of the trees, those woods are like a whole new world.   Milkweed seeds are blowing all over the place this time of year and I couldn’t help photographing them.  I have fond memories of those little parachutes from my childhood.

I’ve become a big fan of mushrooms and fungi since moving out here.  I’ve asked DA for an identification book for Christmas.  I’d love to put names to some of the beauties I find.

Isn’t this pretty?  Some of the forest floor is flooded.  The sun shining through makes the neatest shadows and exposes some of Autumn’s more saturated hues.

Look at the dogwood trees in the background.  It’s hard to believe that these red beauties are around all year.  They get kind of hidden in the summer but really add colour in the fall and winter.

I can’t go for a walk these days without taking multiple pictures of my shadow.  I liked this one because my legs look a mile long.

I can’t tell you how much walks like these help me.  Letting my senses drink in beauty enables me to be full of it and we all can testify that out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.  I can choose to focus on my sick, quarreling children but that’s just going to fill me with irritation and what will flow from my heart to my mouth is complaining.  Sick, cranky kids are a reality right now but I don’t have to let it get to me.  There’s still plenty of beauty around me that I can take in instead and that in turn helps me to be a better mom to those sons who really need a contented mother to carry them through some low moments.

Life Without the Boys :(

Normally, I look forward to Saturdays.  It’s the day the boys usually help me deliver newspapers.  I get a bit of a break from walking and I get to enjoy the company of D and P.  I drop them off at starting points and pick them up at finishing points and in between we ham it up with delivery stories that I suspect will one day be passed on as “horror” stories of when they were young.  We laugh a lot and usually celebrate the end of the fun with a lunch out at some fast food restaurant.  D and P never say “no” to that and always seem appreciative that I would pay them for delivering and take them out to eat.  Normally, I really enjoy the time I get with them.

Today was different.  P called me from school yesterday asking to be picked up; he wasn’t feeling well.  He was white as a ghost when I got to Ardtrea and crawled into bed as soon as I got him home.  D came home on the bus but announced as soon as he entered the door that he wasn’t feeling well either.  Very uncharacteristically, he didn’t jump at the chance to get on the computer or watch TV.  There were no science experiments or BB gun target practices either.  He quietly stole upstairs, closed the door of his bedroom and presumably joined his brother in the Land of Nod.  They emerged around dinnertime but both declared they weren’t up to eating.   They sat in front of the television, pale shadows of their usual selves, and without even being asked found their way back to their beds early in the evening.

Both got up to tell me that they were sorry but they didn’t think they could help me deliver today.  So off I went by myself.  The weather was pleasant enough and there were no problems to report but it wasn’t the same without my boisterous boys helping out.  I missed them and all the laughter they bring to an otherwise mundane job.  Let’s hope that there aren’t too many weekends where they are under the weather.