Dave and I picked up some cathedral prints in these 27″ square, very traditional frames from a hotel liquidator’s store. They were nice enough and fit with my “sanctuary” art, but I had an idea.
I have wanted to have a part of the Lord’s Prayer in my living room/sanctuary since I moved in. I have really come to understand and appreciate the beauty of how Jesus taught us to pray and am bowled over by the simple power of the words “on earth – as it is – in heaven.” I sometimes wonder if I should quit praying anything else but “The Lord’s Prayer” until I really get it, that it is THE prayer.
Anyway – I decided to paint over the cathedrals. I forgot to do a “before” picture. :[
So, I watered down some black acrylic to give it more of an “inky” consistency and just sort of wiped it over the prints in a pretty casual manner. Because I am hanging them near my religious iconic art (which are really pretty primitive), I figured the sort of “folk-style” lettering would work well.
I traced the lettering on using graphite paper (from a Publisher document I’d made) and then just painted the letters with quick swipes, not worrying about coverage or staying in the lines.
I wish I’d been more courageous and made my letters bigger and bolder. As is, I probably could have had the entire prayer, but I was afraid it wasn’t all going to fit.
I had been thinking about painting or replacing the mats, which were very faded, but after they were done, they seemed right.
On earth. As it is. In heaven.
I am praying that with You, Jesus. Keep teaching me…J
You know it is going to be an exquisite day, a day of sunshine and fruitfulness when the birds wake you up at half past four in the morning, already in full song, trumpeting God’s greatness.
I have finished planting the straw bales (3 are dedicated to zucchini and summer squash; one has a paste tomato and a tomatillo; one is the holder of the watermelon seeds – getting a late start, but they are on the south side of the house, so hopefully the bale and the sun will help me out. And the final two hold 4 unique and beautiful tomatoe plants. I sunk them in on Monday and I have never seen such happy tomatoes. Truly. They are just plum delighted.) Even the seeds I plopped in 6 days ago are sprouting very happily.
Dave is filling the pool.
I have completed almost all of my potted plants (still have a few things to buy).
I have planted more radishes and lettuce and peppers and beets (beets because of Dwight on The Office – more of a joke…hopefully we’ll actually find something good to do with them).
I painted numbers 1-5 in white on the little black grand-bebe breakfast bar stools. So cute.
I painted my cherry end table black (which I have wanted to do forever!).
I had lunch in the cool breezy shade with my amazing husband (who is tanning up nicely).
I sewed four new cushion covers for the patio chairs.
I got sidetracked a lot. And watched part of a crime show.
I helped Dave a little with the swingset/play thing he is building the grand-bebes.
Now I am off to birthday and celebration meal shop for Tredessa, who arrives home from vacation tomorrow.
Oh, that all days were as abundant…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Hang the “Our Father” prints, sew more cushion covers – tonight…??
I am not sure if there is a baby in the world who has ever been photographed as much as Averi (except maybe Jon and Kate’s 8)? Those cherub-cheeks just beg to be captured and her mommy loves to take pictures. Apparently everyone does.
Platte Valley Medical Center knows a good looking family when they see it.
When Averi was born, the hospital staff arranged for a photo shoot of her with her mommy and daddy. They have poster-sized black and whites of them in the hallways near and in the birthing wing there to this day. They have also used the photos in the hospital’s community magazine, mailed to every household around. This made Dave-the-Grandpa somewhat famous when he taught a computer class at the hospital a couple of weeks ago. Everyone said, “Wow! Those were your kids? Your son looks just like you!”
Kaela Green.
When Averi turned one, Kaela Green offered to do a photo shoot at their home and got some cute shots of Rocky, Jovan and Averi. Kaela, say my sources, is a mommy to young sons and a budding photographer. She has a very tectural style (that is not technical terminology – I don’t actually talk in photog, but I just noticed the very interesting color and tactile-ness of the pics). Very rich. There was a slideshow of the whole thing on Flickr which looks like it isn’t there anymore, but I just learned Kaela has a website, so maybe you can see Averi and the parents there, too. http://kaelagreenphotography.blogspot.com/. By Kaela:
Ellie Pickett.
Then just the other day, Ellie Pickett, who was having them over for dinner, asked if they’d come a half hour early so she could “practice” taking some pictures. Jovan was worried because she’d been garage-saling all day, but she still looks fabulous.
Ellie is a designer, musician, and artiste in almost every sense of the word. I think these photographs are aewsome! Ellie is running the art gallery for Heaven Fest. She has her card/announcement design biz (http://thephotocardchef.com/) and, I just found out, a photography site (http://lilacphotography.com/).
House of Photos.
When Rocky and Jovan buy a house, they are going to need some major sky-high walls to hold all the photos of themselves – just the really super fantastic ones, I mean. And there are a lot of them!
I think they are beautiful – the whole little family.
I am the momma/nonna, what can I say?…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: How to choose the best of the prints for the hallway gallery?…Determine – soon.
Today is Gavin’s birthday ~ what a day to celebrate!
Six years? How is that possible? That is when I first became a grandparent. Time flies and the days get richer!
Gavin-the-Gardener
Gavin wanted garden plants for his birthday. His mom specified that they should come in a pot that he could tend to himself (as I did not raise a gardener in Steph…yet). Well, how could I refuse that? Gav is my garden helper. He plants and waters and listens to everything I tell him about growing things. Flowers are OK to him, but veggies (especially tomatoes!) are better: truly a man after my own heart.
So, last week on a beautiful, sunny day, we took Gavin to my favorite garden center just outside town (Horiuchi Brothers Nursery – great stuff and generous-they always give me free stuff!). Gavin was so excited as we were turning into their drive. He told us, “My mom and dad never take me to the garden center. I always want to go here, but they say, “No – let’s just go to church.'” Hahhahahhha!
I hope he is not somehow equating a passionate indulgence in gardening as a sin or some opposition to good church-going folk??
Anyhow-he’d have turned his entire backyard into the garden of Eden if I hadn’t made him choose just a few favorites!I ended up with a bunch of specialty pepper plants in my own 4 x 4 because he just had to grow them!
Oh the miles of smiles you’ve brought me, Gavin! You are my heart’s joy and delight! You opened the door that turned me into a Nonna! You are exuberance and curiosity. You are a good-finder and glee. Your love and zeal for all things family and gardening and learning at school and Wii and Xbox and cartoons (especially Spongebob) and your sisters and cousins and building and running and jumping and playing? Inspires me! I want to enjoy life like you do!
You’re 6 now, Gavin! Happy Birthday!…Love, Nonna
pictured: Gavin with his 2 birthday pots; a pot of flowers for the front porch (marigolds, purple petunias, purple salvia and white wave petunias which will soon cascade down the side of the black Malaysian pot; a grape tomato plant for the patio with a couple of marigolds to keep it company.
If you are just start your large beds for square foot gardening, you really need the giant 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite. It will loosen your heavy soil and improve drainage. But these days, I only need a small bag per year to get seeds going (vermiculite is like a sponge and keeps moisture right around that seed where it needs to be!).
Several people e-mailed asking where to find it. I used to get the big bags at Home Depot annually, where the garden manager told me they only ordered 4 per year. Now you should be able to find the smaller bags for about $3.50 at Home Depot, Lowe’s or WalMart – usually in the houseplant area. However, Home Depot has let a lot of people down this year providing only Perlite which is not as good and looks way less natural in the soil. But Lowe’s has it in stock.
Weird, but true find
I was passing by the winter clearance at Lowe’s, as well and found something labeled “Realistic Ash Bed.” It further explained:
For vented logs, place realistic ash bed material in burner pan and completely cover burner. May also be used to decorate fireplace floor.
And guess what it is??? That’s right folks: vermiculite. It doesn’t say it anywhere on the bag, but trust me: I know my vermiculite! It was about 99-cents a bag.
Good luck on the search…J
VERMICULITE: A mined mineral that expands when heated. Resembles mica in appearance. Great for seed germination, a clean, suitable source for rootings and cuttings, and good to use in potting mixes.
Remember how I told you not to worry about the garden and how you weren’t behind and everthing would get done little by little, 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there?
WHAT WAS I TALKING ABOUT??!
Just before mid-May, the time you should really start the planting your head off here in Colorado, Dave and I spent the better part of a week in Estes Park. But I was calm. I was cool. I thought all the better – now when I garden I can be sure it isn’t too early.
Then I came home and got butt-kicking sick (sinus infection, cough like a sailor, bronchitus – yuck!). Eleven days now of I-don’t-feel-good-I-can’t-breathe-nose-blowing-raspy-voiced yuck.
Now – I am behind in the garden. I know it is my own standard, but if I don’t have absolutely everything done by June 1? I have failed. It makes me crazy!
I will not have everything done by June 1. I am drowning in the swirling pit of my own failure in the garden. Please feel sorry for me.
Gardeners the world over have left me behind…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: maybe 15 minutes in the morning and 15 minutes in the evening will help me get it all done before I leave for Kentucky…
pictured: Gem Gem the Garden girl-just after we harvested a bouquet-full of Red Belle Radishes
I am losing the battle to tame the garlic chives that insist on not only seeding themselves e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e, but that are growing heartily…very heartily – despite my best attempts to subdue them.
If I can stay steady before the flowers (and the obvious seed heads from those) bloom, maybe I can win.
Farmer Wrex, the King of the Show-Goats, brought me 7 bales of straw. Yaaaaaaaaay!
I can’t grow my tomatoes in their usual place because, well, the word is out to all pests that I have great tomatoes there. This year I have to confuse them. The problem is I don’t have space to create another garden anywhere – what with trees and bushes and green grass for the dog to poop in (that does seem to be its’ main function, sadly) and grandkids swingsets and slides and the pool. But I can tuck in a bale of straw here or there and grow something.
I will basically treat them like I am square-foot-gardening, just doing it in a smaller area. So, I’ll do 2 tomato plants per bale, 2 zucchini or squash plants per bale. I may do 3 or 4 pepper plants in each. I don’t know. I had originally just wanted to do tomatoes, but then I found out you can grow anything and everything. I am so confused! In a good way, though.
I am sure my neighbors have the phone in their hands, ready to report me to the HOA for having straw in the backyard. But oh, they’ll change their tune when I share my bounty late summer! Oh, yes, they will.
It’s green, it’s environmentally friendly, it’s guilt relief (when you end up throwing away a drawer full of rotting produce you forgot to use). It’s rich and warm for the roots. It breaks up the hard mountainous soil making way for air and nutrients. It’s the most important soil amendment possible, at least 1000-times better than peat moss. And, unlike peat moss, it is readily renewable-fast! But the magic word? The word that makes it all seem to make sense? Or-ganic. Organic!
God composts, you know.
God? Yes. In a thick, green forest, when leaves and needles fall to the ground and are undisturbed, they decompose and enrich the soil below. They become their own mulch and then compost and then fertilizer for the trees above (and the roots below). Ashes to ashes, my friends.
In suburbia, we rake leaves up as soon as they fall (or vacuum them now sometimes, geesh). Then we go buy chemical fertilizers trying to make things look healthy, lush and green. We want healthy, lush and green – we just want to control it. Or, in my case, my homeowner’s association wants to control it.
In my last house, I had no association giving me ‘friendly suggestions’ AND I had a giant backyard. I had a compost sytem made of pallet wood. Wondrous!! I found this example recently. (This one is really nice and the blog post totally worth the read! Great tips!)
Paying Hundreds of Dollars to Decompose My Scraps
For the past 6 years, I have had to buy it. Buy it! Compost-rotting stuff! So I have been looking into these composters you can buy now and you have to add so much of their product (worms and starter and generating powder, etc.) it is ridiculous. What a scam aimed at middle-American, white-collar, home-owner-associated, bourgeois suburbanites. (It takes one to know one)
Homemade Compost: Back to Compost Basics
I am thinking of trying the poor man’s version, but keeping it pure. You can, you know! I found this possibility out there on the web: a homemade composter made of an old trash can. Hmmmm……Imagine, a useful and actually very valuable place for old coffee grounds, crunched egg shells, saw dust, dryer lint, untreated grass clippings,shredded newspaper, straw or hay, prunings, leaves, old plants, banana peels, really any fruit or veggie peelings…and etc…
Don’t know though…may have to wait to start until after Heaven Fest – maybe late August…stay tuned.
Warning: loooooooong post :} But it’s only the second half of the month-I promise!
Family Dinner on a Monday night~
For Steph’s birthday we just sorta decided to “take over” this itty-bitty family-owned hole-in-the-wall spot in Brighton: Marisco’s Mazatlan. Steph simply adores their chicken fajitas so we warned them and we showed up…bunches and bunches of us, using about 89% of their total table space.
It was THE hottest day of the year so far and their air conditioning, combined with a zillion skillets of steaming fajitas, plates of chimis and enchiladas and mounds of steamy beans and rice couldn’t quite keep up with all of us.
Then it was back to the house for strawberry shortcake and presents and stories and letters about and to Stephanie. The predominant theme seemd to be tied to the meaning of her name: a crown or garland, a festooning. So we celebrated the woman she is and we festooned her with praises (Yes, we had just had strawberry shortcake for Tara’s birthday, but once is never enough!)
Celebrating Stephanie was such an honor. She really is, without at all being a soccer-mom-typical-suburbia-type-woman, a virtuous woman/wife/mommy in the Proverbs 31 sense. She is anything but cliche, but she is a woman to be praised. I love and admire her with all my heart. She is the family festooning! Good times.
Zoo Day and Farewell to Kindergarten~
Gavin and his whole class got to ride the big yellow school bus to the zoo for an end-of-the-school-year celebration. Riding a big yellow bus was one of the main reasons Gavin wanted to go to school in the first place. Imagine his surprise at the bait-and-switch when we loaded him up with school supplies and then – he had to ride in the car. Bummer.
But for his patience, he was rewarded when they went to the Denver Zoo. He was assigned a group with his 3 best friends and their mommies chaperoned. The mommies beamed, I hear, when told they had the “rowdy bunch.” I am so glad they can appreciate youthful joy and delight – even if it does get a little loud and crazy, at times. Steph said the boys shared their lunches and watched out for each other, holding hands when the crowd was thick.
Who knew you could have such true friends in Kindergarten?? Gavin will be attending a school closer to his house than mine next year, but I hope he will always remember the great friends and the running and jumping playtime they have enjoyed together. Good times.
Estes Park for writers
Dave and I got to go spend some time in Estes Park where Christian writers annually gather for inspiration and opportunity. I just go for the scenery and the food. Even though we’re only an hour from home, being in the mountains is an important hour!
It is refreshing and simple and lovely. I get to meet all sorts of interesting people and be with Dave, besides all that (he is pictured here with critters and with Robert Liparulo). Lots of walking (all uphill), holding hands and talking dreams like you can only do when you’re “away.” Good times.
Hang-out Time with Hunter
This is an amazing kid. When his mommy and daddy travel for ministry, they try to take him along. He is a globetrottter! But sometimes he has to stay – like the days DP and Tara went in to Mexico to do ministry this month. And I cherish the moments I get to be with him. Hunter told Stormie “I love school with Nonna because it’s all about letters and grass. And I love those things.” These are good times.
Memorial Day and a red-headed boy and a red-headed girl on another Monday~
Gemma turned 2 on May 23rd. Gavin will be 6 on June 2. With traveling schedules and all that summer brings, we decided to celebrate them on Memorial Day Monday, early in the day.
I wanted to do a 7-tier Fancy-Nancy cake full of boas and streamers and bejeweled to the hilt for Gemma, but her mommy said, “Let’s go simple…maybe do a ‘Gemma-face’.” So for her I just did an oreo-cookie, strawberry and real whipped cream ice cream cake. I tried to replicate Gemma’s very zealous full-face-and-eyes-all-squinchy smile, as that is the one she flashes at any hint of fun. I don’t think her exuberance can actually be captured in ice cream, but there it was, nonetheless. My attempt.
Gavin has asked for a Batman cake pretty much once a week ever since his Transformer party last year. I think he may have been thinking that I’d do some full-fledged, standing-upright-cape-blowing-in-the-breeze Batman like the Optimus Prime from last year (read more about that scary experience here). But with 2 cakes on one day, again with the simple. I just cut a man with bat ears out of a chocolate half sheet and covered it in fondant. Black fondant. A great icing for the grandsons. They relished baring their black teeth and tongue after the eating. Good times.
Friends and family far and wide
May is one of those months. Anniversaries and weddings, graduations and school year’s ending. Everytime I turn around, there seems something to celebrate, to rejoice in, to recount the faithfulness of God and His favor on lives. So happy dancing-and-joy to all celebrants! Congratulations and best wishes for you! Despite the economy and bad news we get bombarded with, these are, indeed, good times.
“You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance.” Psalm 65.11 NKJV
God is great, God is good…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Develop a much, much, much more grateful heart and awareness of the abiding love of God in my life. My times are His hands…
