Your acts of kindness are iridescent wings of divine love, which linger and continue to uplift others long after your sharing.
This is a painting I recently created. It’s a replica of a picture I found on Pinterest. I usually like to create art I can connect to emotionally. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I often talk before I think and feel both love and pain with deep intensity. When I love, I love deeply. When I lose someone I love I literally fall apart. I am loyal to a fault. It may seem like a good character trait to have but it can sometimes backfire.
The painting depicts both the way I felt while I was painting it and the way that I feel today. It’s a feeling of falling, gently shifting into another phase of my life. Sometimes I am in control, feeling peaceful and quiet with my thoughts and my surroundings. Being in the now and appreciating all that I have. Sometimes it’s a feeling of losing control and direction .Feeling lost and alone. Mostly it makes me feel as if I’m floating into where I am supposed to go. Letting go of what I cannot control and being at peace with life.
How does it make you feel when you look at it?
My little girl is growing up…fast. Recently my nine-year old decided that she has outgrown her room. She said, Mommy, I’m not a baby anymore and my room looks like a baby room! I want something more grown up.” She said she wanted her lavender room painted black and white, most of her dolls put away except the ones she has gotten each year for her birthday and she wanted her fairy theme gone!
Forget the fact that I spent months painting her a picture of fairies just so it would fit her fairy theme. Now I was going to have to take that down…so she can have a Paris theme along with a picture of Audrey Hepburn somewhere in her room.
Your probably wondering how a nine-year old knows who Audrey Hepburn is. Well, a lot of older people have commented that she reminds them of the iconic actress. She looked her up and decided she loved her! The girl has great taste!
My husband and I considered her request for a new room, mourned the fact that our baby is now a big girl and decided to go for it! It’s a new year and a perfect time for a new start even if it’s a difficult change to face.
My daughter is at an age that is the start of the “tween years.” At nine, she’s no longer a baby but not yet a teenager. It’s a pretty confusing time for her. She is becoming very independent and is starting to want privileges that comes with being a teenager but she isn’t yet ready for them. She’s more interested in cell phones than toys. She would rather go to the movies with her friends than the playground.
Her desire to have more responsibility often leads to conflict between us. She has become more argumentative and tends to beg and whine when we tell her that she can’t have something. But she won’t ever behave that way in front of other people…just at home.
She has a good handle on her anger and her friendships are very important to her. She is very aware of other people’s feelings and is able to empathize with other people’s feelings.
I’m also very aware that she naturally has the desire to fit in with peers at this age. That’s why the choices she makes in friends are important because her peers can be very influential.
I’ve always involved her in positive activities in order to help her find her interests and talents. And disciplining her means balancing freedom with guidance. She needs our support to ensure that she’s making healthy decisions but she also needs to have opportunities to try things on her own. So we let her have her way when it came to the décor of her room.
My husband was really great about painting her room. He painted one wall black and white, while the rest of the room was painted all white. My talented friend Sine helped me decorate the room and add some extra parts in the wardrobe my husband put together in her room. We got an amazingly unique, yet girlish white and black curtains, and little bits of Paris and Hepburn throughout the room. We found a great little chandelier fan in pink…the only color we were allowed to use. We also put up a few positive affirmations throughout her room.
I already know that the next few years of her life, we will deal with a lot of ups and downs. I’m hoping that with open minds and a lot of communication we will be able to make it past the hurdles.
In the meantime, the change she wanted in her room gives her the ability to express herself and feel in control. Hope she sticks with this theme until her teenage years.
When we first moved to our home we found some furniture in the attic that was old and we tossed most of it, but some I just liked too much to throw away. This table is one of the pieces that I really liked. The beautiful little girl is my talented apprentice.
The table is too dated and doesn’t fit into my décor but I just love its shape and design. So instead of tossing it, I decided to change it up and turn it into an outdoor table.
I thought it would make a great family project and I was right! My little girl and I had a great time painting the table with a white outdoor paint. The paint brightened it up and protected the table from the outdoor elements. We had a lot of fun painting it, although we did get a lot of paint on each other as well, all apart of the fun! We let the paint dry for a couple of hours and then applied another coat. We then let the table dry overnight.
Once the table was dry we used this blue/green tile blend that we found at Home Depot. My husband used pre-mixed adhesive and grout to secure the Mosaic tile onto the table.
Once the tile was secured on the table, we used a wet sponge to take off the excess grout from the tile surface. We then allowed the grout to dry. Because the table is round the edges were a bit off so we got creative by using some small stones we found in our garden to decorate the edges.
Here is the final result. I think it turned out pretty great and it was a wonderful little project to do as a family!
Hope you are inspired to do your own project!
Summer is here and one of my favorite things to do is to spend time in our yard. Admittedly, my husband does all the heavy work. I do the designing and directing. We’ve worked a lot on our front yard but we are far from done, We haven’t done much to spruce up the backyard so now I’m trying to focus on that. I would like to add a bit more color to it. The back is very green and Zen, but it lacks color…other than just the green. My friend, a landscaping designer suggested that I put a bunch of colorful large pots filled with flowers in between the hosta.
One of my favorite places to find design ideas is Pinterest. I found some great looking colorful pots there.
Because my backyard has a lot of shade the best flowers to plant would probably be pansies….that’s according to my artistic friend. Now the hard part will be to find some great inexpensive pots.
I’m also focusing on an outdoor wall that looks a bit empty to me. I don’t necessarily have to do anything with the wall…but I think it’s the perfect place to add a little oomph to the back of our house.
Here are some more great designs that caught my attention on Pinterest. The first one is a frame designed with a bunch of gorgeous Succulents. I can do this with an inexpensive flea market picture frame and a variety of small succulents like hens and chicks and sedum. Looking into how to create this design I realized it takes a lot of work, but it can be done.
The next idea is one that will make my nine year old very happy. All I have to do is to put up a chalk-painted board to the wall so our daughter and her friends can unleash their creativity outdoors. This won’t add color to my backyard but it will bring a lot of fun into it.
Putting up a garden mirror is another great look. This will give the illusion that lawn goes on forever. It’s a really great and easy way to add a bit of beauty to the backyard.
A few pieces of wood with a couple of lanterns is another great way to light up the wall. This will make the evenings in our yard brighter and add a nice décor for the day.
There is so much I can do including some art work on some wood, putting up some pots, arranging some colorful bird houses. Take a look at these great designs. I love them all! Decisions, decisions….
I would love to get some input from you folks…what do you think? Please feel free to let me know. In the meantime, I will ponder it all and let you know what I plan on doing. I hope I’ve been able to inspire you to get out and do something beautiful in your yard.
