A Spring Flower Offering?

My kids were playing in the back yard yesterday, and when I peeked to check on them, I found this! Oh my gosh, it was so beautiful, I couldn't stop taking pictures. It looked like it was a world away from our sodden Portland spring. Maybe an Indian flower offering. I'm hoping it will usher in spring in our part of the world.

The kids thought the flowers that had already fallen from the camellia tree were so beautiful! Miss Mae even called the really dead one in the middle, "the golden one". I think they have the right outlook on life. Just because these blooms are not in their prime on the tree doesn't make them any less beautiful. In fact it makes them MORE beautiful. More interesting. More full of character... I took about 1000 photos, but trimmed them down to add to flickr if you'd like to see more.

Tea Party Invitations

A graphic designer friend I used to know used to say, "I'm the best because I only use the BEST art, and the BEST photographers. Now I can find both at istock. I adore this site. Everyone most likely knows this, but it is the BEST resource for original art out there. Everything is very affordable, too! (although when I started using it, everything was $1, and now some are as high as $25! shocking!) I usually stick to the vector illustrations and the photos. These are some of the vector illustrations I found that I thought would be fun for a tea party. I used the comp versions to play around with layout - old fashioned cut and paste. Miss Mae thought we should make ALL of them, and send each friend their own. I convinced her it was a better idea to go with one. This is the one we decided upon:

I can honestly say I have NEVER seen a sweet little girl wearing a teacup skirt with a saucer hat standing on a sugar cube, while catching tiny sugar cubes with her spoons. TOO great. The card is a yummy off white, and the envelope Miss Mae's favorite: PINK.

spring is here

If you ask my Miss Mae when her birthday comes, she says, "when the cherry blossoms bloom!" and look! they are blooming! These are actually plum blossoms, but they are pink. And they are blooming! Portland in the spring time is wet and blustery and cold... and often grey. But the trees start blooming and it is like there are these sparkling globes of pink and white and purple everywhere. The gorgeous blooms will eventually start to fall, and left are pink and white and purple puddles splashed all over the grey sidewalks and streets. Sometimes I feel like we have jumped into one of Mary Poppin's sidewalk drawings.

It means the days are lengthening, and the warm weather is around the corner. And so is Miss Mae's birthday! This year we are having a dress up tea party! I'll post the process over the next few days.

Gorgeous. Art.

Isn't this STUNNING? My dear friend Shannon, sent me to this artist on etsy, and OH. MY. I could just stare at it for hours. There are more, too, that she sells as prints. The originals are: Paper, Pencil, Ink, and Digital color. She calls them illustrations, so I imagine they have stories to go with them. Don't you create your own story with every image? I do. WOW.

I blog on another site that I belong to - I've written about it before - Mamapreneurs. I posted there, about my plan of attack for keeping this house and this family together and working towards our common goal, similar to my blog post here. After the follow up post, a really incredible woman wrote on HER blog about MY post and added the best information. I think the attitude adjustment is a daily reminder! I feel like I'm doing great, and then we start to tilt and slide. Then I bolster up the other side and we start slipping the other way.

I had a really great talk with a dear friend the other day, and we were talking about this point in our lives. She said she felt like all of the big moments in life had already happened to her: falling in love, getting married, having babies.... And that her life was pretty much for the kids now. It made me think about my reality. I think it is SO easy to get overwhelmed when we are in the moment. Some days I feel like I missed the part where I signed up to be a cook and housekeeper. I want nothing more than to stay home with my kids, but frankly the other part of it stinks. I imagined playing all day with the kids, doing craft projects, going for walks, spending afternoons at the art museum meandering through the lovely installations. In real life, I'm lucky if we make it out of the house more than just to drop off or pick up someone from school or go to the grocery store. No one comes along to clean up the crafting messes and spend hours scrubbing the paint out of the kids' clothes. No one has dinner ready when we stroll back in after a day at the museum.

The only way to make it through these times is to hold on to the fleeting seconds of wonderment, the lovely smiles and belly laughs that bubble out of my kids even when I'm carrying a giant tower of laundry. I know they are going to be big and gone so fast. I know I am SO BLESSED to have them. I know the fact that Miss Mae just shoved a pencil through the front of her dress is going to be funny some day, and I'll wish I had my baby girl to hold on my lap while she cries about how much she loves her little ruined dress.

It is so easy to think that what is happening right now is going to be my reality for ever. It isn't. Just like those difficult days when Mr. H. was a baby seemed like that WAS my life are gone now. He is 6 1/2 years old already!!

I simply have to focus. I have to step away from the computer and JUST PLAY. I have to allow the mountain of laundry to sit quietly in the corner and not loom and jeer at me. I have to not obsess over how much I am NOT accomplishing, and realize that my accomplishments are THEM. And I'm not going to get a second chance with them.

So here is to living in the NOW! Here is to letting go of all of the voices telling me how I'm not doing enough. Here is to realizing how quick this time in my life really is, and that I'm not going to get it back here is to MY attitude adjustment!!

I am a HUGE fan of Denyse Schmidt. She is a RISD girl - I just love saying that... and so immensely talented and gifted. She makes quilts perfect. Not perfectLY, but makes them PERFECT. She is hosting a new batch of classes that I would adore attending - alas, making it to Bridgeport, Connecticut for a class is a bit beyond my capabilities at this point. If you are closer, GO!

My mom gave me this book when it was first published, and I went through and did a good number of the projects.

I'm not a fantastic sewer, and I learned SO much by working through them. I think they are still relevant today - isn't it funny to think they wouldn't be 2 years later? Seems things really come in and out so fast these days.

Gorgeous.

This woman is insanely gifted! And who would have thought a person could make desert bars for a living?! DREAM. JOB. They are simply stunning. and they are DESSERT BARS. Oh my.

Check them out:

Amy Atlas

and make sure you check out her portfolio - click on eye candy.

I can go to bed happy knowing these tables exist.

St. Patrick's Day A Little Early

Word To My Peeps...

My father-in-law loves Peeps. Every year, my mother-in-law buys a couple of packages, opens them, and puts them away until Easter. Easter morning, they are crunchy - sort of like a Lucky Charms marshmallow - just the way he likes them!

I received this book from my dear friend Susy for my birthday - I LOVE IT! It is SO well done - who knew Peeps could be used in so many ingenious ways?? She uses the funny little marshmallow candies beautifully, and really, the recipes are great - Peeps or no Peeps! We'll be pulling this book out every year for our Easter celebrations.