mosaic monday

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blessings

I’ve never made a blessing journal but I’ve decided to make that my spring art project (she says looking out the window forlornly at the freakin’ snow!) and I think I’ll do it in the form of an altered book. If you’ve never seen one, an altered book is when an artist takes a book and turns it into a mixed media work of art. You do this with collage, paints, folding, glue, stamping…etc. There’s a set of altered books on flickr and this artist has a cool portfolio. They are sold in galleries or just used as personal journals or scrapebooks. I’ve never “violated” a book before like this, but I think it will be a good creative exercise for me. Click on the blessings poster if you want to make your own, happy spring, I guess I’ll go shovel the driveway now!

best of youtube

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Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much…the wheel, New York, wars and so on…while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man…for precisely the same reason. ~Douglas Adams

spring quiz

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You Are Blooming Flowers
You are an optimistic person by nature. In even the darkest times, you are hopeful about the future.You feel truly blessed in life and can sometimes be overwhelmed with emotions.You have an artist’s eye. You are always looking for beauty in the mundane.You have a good sense of aesthetics, especially when it comes to shapes and color.

What part of spring are you?

skywatch friday

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Shot this a few minutes ago out my bathroom window, my Bradford Pear tree is budding, getting ready to officially announce spring. It’s sunny and fairly mild today, when it warms up a bit I think I’ll go walk around the yard and look for more signs of spring, maybe cut back some of the plants I didn’t get to last fall. I feel like I’m a little out of balance lately. I think I’m watching too many cable news shows and worrying too much; about the economy, about Meagan and baby Brooklyn, about how my dad is dealing with being alone, about my ginormous Visa bill…etc.  Things that are basically out of my hands (except my darn Visa bill, if only I’d actually kept that card out of my hands in the first place!). Worrying really is just a bad habit, isn’t it? It accomplishes nothing, changes nothing. I remember my mom doing her spring cleaning every year when we were kids, washing walls, wiping away dangling cobwebs, cleaning out closets and moving furniture so she could vacuum up the hidden dust and crumbs that accumulate after a long, dark winter. I feel like I need to that with myself this spring, cut away some of that cluttered old growth and give my spirit a good sprucing up:)

I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which never happened. ~Winston Churchill

winning wednesday

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Mr. Bookbabie dipped his germy little fingers (he’s home with a nasty cold) into a hat (yes, I really do it the old fashioned way!) and he pulled out a winner. Drum-roll please…..the winner of the March Madness Book Giveaway is Ti! I’ve sent you an email asking for an address, as soon as I get it a new, hard cover copy of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will come your way directly from Barnes & Noble. Congratulations Ti, hope you enjoy the read:)

grandbaby bump

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I did some new baby bump photos of the kids last week. I’m having fun planning the shower, we’re using the photo on the right for the invite. We had a slight scare yesterday when Meagan developed pelvic pain. Her doctor determined that it’s not preterm labor (a huge relief) and we’re hoping that the pain goes away soon, she still has 100 days left to incubate our little granddaughter! I love how women today wear tight tops and bare their beautiful tummies at the beach when they’re pregnant instead of trying to cover them up under tent-sized tunics. Perhaps Demi Moore’s controversial Vanity Fair cover taken by Annie Leibovitz helped spark the belly-proud movement. Now, unfortunately, we have that photo of Octo-mom’s giant baby mound, which definitely falls under the category of too much information and is enough to make any woman give up the idea of motherhood altogether and get a puppy!

Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~Elizabeth Stone

skywatch friday

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My son took this photo on a trip to Mexico. He and my daughter-in-law went for long walks every day venturing far outside the property lines of our resort. My son has a good eye for photography, he’s less traditional than mom and likes to find the unexpected, which in Mexico isn’t hard to do. Every day, not far from this abandoned gate, they saw a lone man with a submachine gun standing guard. What he was in charge of protecting they never could figure out and they had the good sense not to ask (or take his picture!). When I think of Mexico, I can’t help but think of contrasts; the lush tropical landscapes, treasured ancient ruins, and the rich, colorful culture of its people contrasted against a history of poverty and the horrific drug war that has recently escalated.  My daughter and I were just talking the other day about light and dark, good and evil and whether one can exist without the other. It’s always an interesting debate, isnt’ it?

Where there is much light, the shadow is deep. ~Johann Wolfgang Goethe