The music stand

This lovely lady is quite the fashion model. Not sure who's clothes she's wearing but the head is my Raggedy Ann and the scarf was mine, crocheted by a neighbor I think. Her bone structure was my music stand. This same music stand also was used as a painting easel occasionally which gave it a nice modern art look with multi colored paint splatters. It was also great for drying socks.  In addition it was actually used for a music stand for most of my growing up years.  This however was it's finest moment.

Kitchen downsizing

After living with a much smaller kitchen for a couple of months this island is the one thing I miss. I can do just fine with less cabinets and drawers, less overall counter space, no dishwasher etc. but this huge expanse of counter was wonderful! I spend lots of time while working in the kitchen here trying to figure out how we could possibly get an island area in that space. I've pretty much decided it wouldn't be worth the effort but it's nice to dream while rolling out dough or finding places to put cookies on cooling racks.

I have no idea how the whole Thanksgiving thing with hundreds of rising butterhorns thing is going to work. It will take creativity!

Cause and Effect

This was fun. Too bad we didn't have color photos back then, it was such a lovely combination of purples and yellows. My sister wouldn't even look at me, backing into the bedroom when it was time for bed and notice how she's sitting behind me in the picture.

School playgrounds used to be very exciting. We had the swings that went ridiculously high, slides that were at least a mile up, tether ball where there was always the chance (and a pretty good one for me) that you'd get smacked in the side of the head and everything with a nice hard asphalt surface underneath. The monkey bars were my favorite and I'd wear shorts every day under my dress (which was mandatory for girls) just so I could flip around on them and not flash the world.

The day this happened I had perfected my no hands spin around the bar (holding on with my knees). That was fine and pretty safe. But then I decided to try a one handed version. I didn't really think that through or I might have realized that that one hand would pull me to one side. Unfortunately that side was the side with the vertical bar which my eye met quite nicely. I don't remember a whole lot right after that except that the doctor kept looking for glass in my eye no matter how many times my mother explained to him that since my glasses were not at all broken there was no need. I got some lovely stitches, a tetanus shot and nice bandaging and off I went to impress everyone with my shiner. 

And now all the we have are nice, safe playgrounds. Boring.

Girl Scouts

Last night I had no intention of buying Girl Scout cookies. I'd already baked cookies earlier in the day and didn't need more temptation hanging around the house. The Girl Scouts were out in front the grocery store but I just went in the other door and ignored them. They were putting quite a bit of effort into it, singing to a karaoke machine quite loudly (and badly) which showed initiative but not enough to guilt me into buying.

After the shopping and a side trip for sandwiches next door, I came back across the parking lot. The girls were still singing, still really out of tune but with great enthusiasm. This time though, they were being devious. They were singing "Sweet Home Alabama".  Out came all my Robert E. Lee High School class pride and off I went to buy Girl Scout cookies.

So, now I have way more cookies than I need, Sweet Home Alabama stuck in my head and no cash in my wallet. Girl Scouts are evil.

Love

I came home from my walk the other day, turned around and saw this. It only lasted a couple of minutes but wow, what an amazing sunrise!

Things like this remind me that God loves his children. He loves us enough to want us to have beauty to enjoy even on hard days. A God who thinks that way is a very personal, loving father to me. It is easy to pray to someone who cares so much about my happiness.

Life is hard, the world is not always a good place and we struggle on a daily basis. However, when we take time to look up from the daily plugging away and see the amazing beauty in the sky that is there for everyone to enjoy, the trials seem to shrink to their proper size instead of being the huge issues that wipe out all our happiness. Joy can come to anyone in any situation from a Father who's purpose in giving us this earth was to bring us happiness.

Disasters of the kitchen variety

Not too long into our marriage, we discovered that pancakes were a source of marital discord.  We each have very definite opinions about how they should be cooked which is a problem but I also had rather intense reactions when things did not go right with them (sticking to the pan, falling apart when turning etc.). It has made for many rough starts to the day throughout the years.

One day I got mad enough to just fling the offending pancake across the room.  Unfortunately it went into the window sill where my glass swans sat.  One of the swans got hit and ended up in the sink, in pieces.  This, of course, caused more angst and it was just a lovely morning all around.

The picture above is a morning when the whisk attachment for the mixer decided to have a minor break in one of the wires.  Eggs whites went all over the place in the time it took me to figure out what in the world was going on. Amazingly enough I was able to just laugh this one off.  Maybe I'm finally growing up!

Grandmas and Quilts

I have always admired my Grandmothers.  One I always thought of as very cultured and educated.  She always looked very classy and proper.  I admired that but couldn't imagine quite being able to pull that off.  My other grandmother was more what I thought the classic grandmother should be. Her standard outfits were the polyester pants and blouses that pretty much every older woman I knew back then wore.  Her hair was what I thought the standard grandma style should be and she had wonderful wrinkles and age spots that I thought were just plain cool.  She also painted, crocheted and quilted.  This was what I wanted to be when I grew up!

Unfortunately polyester pant suits went way out of style, my hair is still mostly brown and I'd look silly with a short grandma perm.  There is hope for the wrinkles and age spots though.  I tried painting and came to the conclusion that I have absolutely no artistic talent so that's out.  I can crochet but who needs more crocheted toilet paper covers anyway? But, I love quilting! I love the way the fabric come together to make a beautiful quilt top and most of all I love hand quilting.  I love that it takes a long time and is repetitious. I love that I feel close to my grandmother when I'm sewing those tiny stitches.

So, in my jeans and button up shirts and with my mostly straight, mostly brown hair, I make quilts for my children and grandchildren.  Then, unlike my grandmother, I take pictures and post them on Instagram, Facebook and all those other things she didn't even dream about.  Now if I could just find me some polyester...

Music and other forms of noise

We found two of these in the basement of my mother in law's house.  She used to be a teacher so I'm sure she's had her share of enjoying the lovely sounds a room full of 4th graders can produce with this simple thing.  I, on the other hand have especially enjoyed the lovely sounds a two year old grandson can produce.

Before I started the violin, the recorder was my first instrument.  My experience with the recorder came from my mother's Baroque Recorder group.  They were really good and had wonderful recorders made out of wood in the various sizes--soprano, alto, tenor and the really large bass.  They even had period costumes to wear when they performed.  The resulting experience was completely different than a bunch of 4th graders or an enthusiastic 2 year old!

God is in the details

Breakfast view from the kitchen table. This house may have a lot of deficiencies (single bathroom, drafty, crowded with stuff) but the view from the front windows is amazing! It makes up for a lot.

To me, beautiful sunrises like this one are a way that I know we have a God and that he loves us.  There are plenty of big, really important things that He does too, but this is something that seems to be just to make us happy because it's so beautiful.

Coexistence, sort of

You'd think deer and dogs wouldn't like to be around each other but from the deer's point of view at least, they're fine with it.  The deer in front here seemed to want to play with Duke, kept coming over trying to get his attention.  Duke, however was not so fine with his territory being invaded.  

I love having wildlife right in the backyard.  We get to see them wandering around every day.  We'll see how I feel about it when they're eating all my garden vegetables next summer though...

South Dakota, the unboring part

We lived in South Dakota for 8 years.  When we moved there my mom said she cried all the way across the state (to the south eastern, boring side) since we were moving there from beautiful western Oregon.  I think the farmland grew on her a bit over the years but it was still pretty flat and boring.

The other side of South Dakota isn't bad though.  We went camping in the Black Hills where this lovely picture of my sister and me was taken.  The thing I remember most about that trip is the really, really cold Lake (Pactola if I remember right). It was the kind of cold that caused intense pain when you jumped into the lake.  However, that didn't stop us from swimming.  Once the first shock wore off, it  wasn't all that bad.  The best part about the Black Hills area for westerners like my parents was the actual hills, a reminder of home after months on end of nothing but flat prairie.

Center of my world

This would be my parents when they were as old as some of my middle children right now. They were a rather good looking couple back then and they still are, in a more distinguished, mature way.  As far as the baby in the picture goes, I've been told I kept them up at night, scratching my mattress with my fingernails, that my mom got strep throat shortly after I was born and that's about it.

My earliest memories were a few years later when I loved my stuffed animals, the zoo and my tricycle, got chicken pox (didn't love that) and thought the world revolved around me.  Looking at this picture reminds me that there was a whole lot of other stuff going on while I was growing up that I was pretty much oblivious to.  My parents did have lives beyond me as did the rest of the world.  It's good for a while in life to think that everything is about you though.  That's what being a toddler is all about.  And a teenager or course.

A False Alarm--Thankfully!

A couple of months ago we had a rather impromptu family reunion when we all gathered in my mother in law's hospital room for what we thought could very likely be our last visit with her.  Children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and even a couple of great greats came in from all over the place, crowding as many as 30 of us at a time in her hospital room.  It was wonderful to see everyone and get so many wonderful family pictures along with memories.

But, this is not your ordinary 90+ year old woman.  She decided not to die, said that she explained to her deceased husband that he'd just have to wait a while longer and here we are two months later.  She is back in her home, doing her 20 laps around the kitchen and living room every day and still working on raising those children of hers.  She naps a lot during the day and complains about how old and slow she is but she's amazing!

So, who knows how much longer we'll have her around but I'm so grateful for both the fun reunion a while ago and the time I get to spend with this rather wonderful mother in law now.