I can't believe that it has been a year since my trip to Mexico City with Arts Aftercare.  These paintings are a few of the collection I took with me.  In 2 weeks I'll be attending their art therapy training conference in Seattle and am really looking forward to it.  Do what you love to end what you hate.

I want to believe you are a hoarder.

I am the kind of broken that you don't put in the garage sale box.
I am the kind of broken you don't sneak into the donation box
cause I would make you look bad.
I go straight to the trash.

I want to believe you will fix me
but it is more likely
that like me
you put broken things in a cupboard next to the phone books and pencil jar and batteries.

They get burried.
They wait to be fixed,
until in a moment of frustration; clarity
losses are cut and things get "cleaned out".

I am the kind of broken that is labeled AS IS.
I am the kind of broken that has a disclaimer.

I want to believe you are a hoarder.

After 6 months of quiet here is a post that was inspired by an encouragement from a friend.

People who work with their hands are laborers.
People who work with their hands and their heads are craftsmen.
People who work with their hands and their heads and their hearts are artists.

If that is true, my hope is that in all I do I am an artist.

BE who you are.

New Shoot

Here are some photos I did for some friends.  (Same location as the last! :) What can I say it is a great spot!) In other news my indie bandita show went really well and I am glad I made myself do it and I am glad for all the people who showed up.  If you're one of them THANKS!

Upcoming Holiday Show

Please come see my work and the work of many other local artists on Sunday, November 27th from 10am-8pm at the Bainbridge Island Commons.  This is NOT your typical Christmas Bazaar!  Fun quirky work for sale many with holiday themes, but certainly not all.  Do some LOCAL holiday shopping instead of buying imported goods.  For more info check out the website indiebanditas.com

what to wear

"I've only got one thing to wear and it's got Made by Jesus on the tag and the purity of Jesus lies over a heart and His transparency burns the cataracts off the soul." - Ann Voskamp

Humbled by this this morning and not having a lot of words about it, but wanted to share it none the less.

The Twits

"If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face.  And when that person has ugly thoughts every  day, every week, every year the face gets uglier and ugllier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it. 
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly.  You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." -Roald Dahl


Eli, Jonah and I just finished reading "The Twits" by Roald Dahl.  I have a great affection for his writing as it is British and he doesn't candy coat things.  He writes children's books but people die and he uses large words and the boys still sit captivated and quiet as I read.  Any way I liked this quote from the book and thought it was poignant as I am working on living a life of gratitude.

Side note:  Eli is playing with a tonka rescue helicopter in the back ground and singing the MASH theme song.  What well rounded children I will have...

losing our marbles

I'm trying a new method of discipline.  The deal is that each morning the boys put 4 marbles in their pockets.  If they are good little boys they get to keep all their marbles.  If they are wicked little boys I will take their marbles one by one for each wicked deed.  At the end of the day they get to put any marbles left in their pocket into their jar.  When the jar is all filled up they get a special date with mama or daddy.

Now I'm hearing you ask..."Are your boys only wicked 4 times a day?"  No it isn't that literal.... I don't have that many marbles even in the big jar...  It is for disobeying or talking back or physical violence toward each other those sorts of things... that they would lose a marble.  Really the same things you or I would lose our marbles over.  They are very excited and a bit confused I think cause Eli asked as he put his marbles into his jar tonight before bed if he gets his treat now.  I had to remind him that he had to fill the jar completely before he got that special date.  It may take some figuring out.

I tried to pick the pint sized jars and not the quarts, but it still may have been an overshot.  In any case we're on our way and what is different from the sticker charts we had been doing is that we don't have to be in the kitchen at the moment of praise or reproach which widens our scope of life quite a bit.  Hopefully this won't scar them in any way for the future regarding marbles.  They are one of the finer things in life and I would hate to be responsible for the tarnishing of the marble association in a young child's life.  I guess only time will tell.

Saying goodbye

I did some family portraits for some sweet friends this weekend.  Even though we've only known each other for about a year we will sure miss them as they head on to their new chapter in a couple of weeks.  Here are some of the photos from Saturday.  The light was so tricky being a beautiful sunny morning (I'm not complaining!)  so some of the technical quality I wasn't thrilled with, but it helps that they all look like movie stars. :)

More monsters

Here are some bad images of encaustic paintings I've done this week to further the theme of the monsters.  It is wildly freeing and fun to make these and I am going to keep it going for a bit I think.

my little monster

Eli started preschool this past week and has since turned into a little monster.  He is CRAZY before and after school and finally today I asked his teacher if he has been behaving and she said he is totally calm and normal at school.  So he is saving it up for me.  I'm sure it is adjusting to a new schedule and routine, but honestly I am dealing with a lunatic.

He listened to the boxcar children audio book in it's entirety (2 discs) back to back yesterday until 10 pm.  Today he got to listen to it once and that was it!  I took it away for bad behavior part way through the first disc and made him earn the rest of it back.  He wakes up and turns it on.. He goes to bed listening to it.  I'm losing my mind.

So this evening I decided we needed some structured activity time and we sat down to do some stitching together after Jonah went to bed.  I traced some of his monster drawings from the weekend and we began to embroider them.

He is not done with his, but I managed to finish mine.  I'm dying they are so cute!
He did absolutely get lost in the process though which I've got to hope is burning some mental energy.

Sometimes even monsters can be sweet.

I'm not counting anymore.

I'm not counting anymore.  I probably should be, but I'm not cause I'm working on be-ing.  He-he-he. Anyway I thought you might enjoy the interchange in the car on the way home from church yesterday between Eli and myself.  It is paraphrased here but still VERY close to the real thing.  Slightly shortened cause I can't write as fast as he can talk. Enjoy.  I hope your thankful for it, cause I know I am.

“Can I go shoot guns with Uncle Ronnie and shoot a deer and cut off it’s head to put on the wall in the living room?  

“No.  You’re not old enough.  Why would you want to cut off a deer’s head? Then the deer would be dead.”

“OK.  I’ll just cut off the pokey parts.. what is that called on top of it’s head?”

“Antlers.”

“Ya, Antelers.”

“Wouldn’t that make you sad to think of a dead deer every time you were in the living room?”

“OK. Can I shoot a bird with Uncle Ronnie and cut off it’s head to hang on the wall in the living room?”

“No.  You’re not old enough. Why would you want a dead bird in your living room?  That is disgusting.”

“I just want it in my heart mamma.”

"Can I save my money in my piggy bank to buy a squad car when I am 18?"

"Yes.  I think that would be a great thing to save your money for."

"It will have a gun on it and then I can go in the mountains and shoot birds and deers and monsters in my squad car with the gun."

"Awesome."

-Eli age 4

-Mama age 31

24,25.

24. Little boys with long eyelashes and mischievous looks in their eyes.

25. Seeing someone having fun totally uninhibited.

23.

So apparently I got it all wrong.  I've finally gotten to read more of the book because I finished the other book I've been reading that had to go back to the Library.  It was, on a side note, called "The Midwife's Confession" and was very good.
Anyway now I'm dedicated to 1000 Gifts and feeling simply nourished by it.    It seems as though I am getting too specific with things that are over arching and need explanation.
The author of 1000 gifts begins her list with simple things that she is enjoying in her day.  The way the light hits the wood planks of floor in her bedroom.  The way her kid's lisp sounds at dinnertime prayer.  I think I'm stressing out about how to write something profound and insightful about each "gift" when instead I should be absorbing joy in my thanksgiving.
So i will continue my log, but with new freedom and simplicity.  I could add a paragraph afterwards or just have a few words.  That is one thing Ann Voskamp does beautifully.  She paints word pictures with tiny phrases that tell a whole story or show a whole landscape.  Obviously I would recommend the book.
SO here is 23.
23. holding sweet, sticky, little hands after picking berries on our wooded trail.

Number 22

So we are now at entry numbers instead of days cause I am so behind.  I am thankful that I can make up whatever rules I want cause it is my game.  :)  Not really... I mean yes, really, but that is not number 22.
I would say that I am thankful for the freedom to struggle.
A friend of mine has a prayer that he likes to say that goes, "I believe, help my unbelief."  That is where I have been lately.  I know what I believe, but I am still skeptical and still hesitant and still cynical.  That is why I need to document the gratitude.  Gratitude combats all that.  It makes the blessing real and acknowledged.  I am facing many of my looming inadequacies and I want to run and hide, but the challenge is waring them down and strapping power from them before they do it to you.  I'm not sure how that happens, but I do believe that gratitude has something to do with it.  I'll let you know when I have it all figured out.  But don't hold your breath, cause I'm pretty sure the other piece of it is that it takes a long time and that it is the point of the time.

Day 21

I am thankful for routine.  I know when I'm in the midst of routine I don't want it and I get bored, but when there is wild havoc every day I miss it.

Day 20... only 80 to go

I am losing my motivation and that makes me sad.  What does that mean?  It means I'm busy and preoccupied.  What does it mean in the grander scheme of things?  It still means that I'm busy and preoccupied, but on a deeper level as well.  If I can't be still in a day long enough to find gratitude in things that are more important than, "gee I'm thankful for my email..."  or whatever then what is my heart doing?  It is shriveling up that is what it is doing.  Slowing down doesn't seem like an option a lot of the time, but as fall approaches and a new routine emerges I am going to consciously put time in for quiet and meditation.  So I suppose I am thankful for seasons.  I don't want summer to end partly cause it hasn't really started weather wise, but also because it is a built in rhythm for our lives.

Day 19

It is getting hard to keep up.  I am sure I am days behind and feeling rotten about how I made this comitment and can't even do it for two straight weeks with out biffing it.  I am thinking a lot about forgiveness and what it looks like in different scenarios and finding it very difficult to grasp onto in a lot of ways.  So I suppose I am thankful that I am not responsible for "figuring it out" in order for it to work.  In that light if there are any readers out there, be patient with my inconsistencies.  Maybe you could even forgive me... that is... if you have it figured out.

Days 17 and 18

I am thankful that I can read. Literacy is huge and I often take it for granted.

I am in turn also thankful for good books.  Here are some that I've read in the last year.. or so...

The Midwife's Confession
The Help
Becoming a Woman of Grace
The Inkheart Series
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
Walk On
20 Chickens for a Saddle
Ursula Under
Margrettown


Some of these have only been read in part and others all the way through.  I wish I had the time to devote myself to books.  In another life I would like to be a librarian.

Day 16

I am thankful for my sweet, funny, surprising two year old Jonah.


He is independent.  He is deliciously sweet and kissable.  He has a twinge of total obstinacy and has since birth.  He is definitely in his own way a "Jonah" but that is also what I love about him.  He will be wandering around the house with a wire wisk, a lego man and book of poetry under his arm and woe to the man who gets in his way when he is on that kind of mission.  (Whatever that kind of mission is...?)

Today I was watering the garden and he came out in his basketball style shorts, a t-shirt he had taken out of the give away box, his rubber boots and a plush cow mask on.  He had his super- hero cape that I made him in hand and was asking me to tie it on for him.  He then proceeded to run around the yard shouting that he was shooting big bombs out of his watering can and getting all the bad guys.

They say that a little boy between the ages of 2 and 4 has twice the amount of testosterone of an adult male.  That answers a lot of questions in my house.  He wore the outfit around town this afternoon and got some compliments.

He is changing his clothes more often than an insecure girl in junior high these days.  I don't really even bother folding them to put them away cause he digs through the drawers so much each day that it is futile to stop it.  He is excited cause he can dress himself now and it was something that I worried about him being a late bloomer in cause he just figured it out.  Now I'm pretty sure he's making up for lost time.

He makes me laugh and he is infuriating in the same breath, but he is a professional snuggler and his kisses are better than a speckled puppy on Christmas.  I love him fiercely and thank God that in the midst of His adventure called parenting He built in some unparalleled rewards.