More projects

Have I said yet that I decided that I am making Christmas presents for everyone in my family this year? It's a fabulous excuse to expel my creative energies. So...maybe you might see some of these again, but I am just so excited about them that I had to share! :)

Suncatchers: I found the butterflies on clearance at Pier One, CD's, sparkles, beads, and all kinds of stuff to reflect the sun. Turned out fun.

So, I got this idea on pintrest to do a tree and use buttons for the leaves, but unfortunately I didn't have the right size buttons, and it really didn't work with the shape of my tree.  What I did have was extra stems of flowers from a bouquet so I decided to pull them off and make myself a spring tree.  I think this was especially appealing because I was in the hospital for half of spring.  While I hate the allergies that come with spring, I love the blooming trees.  I missed a lot of them this year, so...now I have one year round. :)

This one is another pintrest find (I'm in love in case you were wondering). I used canvas boards, modge podge to paper it and buttons for initials!  Then ribbon to hang. I love the way they turned out!!

The "w" questions

Sometimes, I probably regress in my development. Back to the age of...I dunno 3, 4, 5.  That age of the "w questions".  It's actually described like that in some basic development books. What do I mean by this?  While, in my soul searching which I do on a regular basis, I find myself questioning some of the most basic elements of life that I perhaps have taken for granted.  For example- trust, What is it? Why should I trust you? Why should I trust anyone? How do you know if you can trust someone? When is it appropriate to trust and when is it more appropriate to express distrust? Who is really trust worthy...especially those people who are "supposed" to be trusted...are they really people to be trusted?  Just one line of thought that I go through....regularly.

Well, recently there have been two other lines of thought that go about like this and I decided to do art pieces about them and hang them on my wall.  You see, my move to a new home was one that was based highly on emotional need.  I found myself in a house with people that I thought I trusted and felt safe with.  I was away from home for a whole month and wanted to go back more than I could even express. I wanted to be in my safe place.  But when I got there, I found that it wasn't the safe place that I had left, and circumstances as they were...well...it's hard to live with someone who is emotionally based like I am and compromises to help rebuild that sense of safety provided impossible.

So as I moved I considered very deeply the concept of "home".  It's really a deep and somewhat confusing topic at times.  I grew up in home that was filled with the gospel, and siblings, and parents, and activity, and support, and love, and betrayal, and secrets, and pain, and belittlement.  And so as I've grown older, it's been really confusing to think of home and think great things like "home is where the heart is" and then to think...except that home is where I get the most hurt and where I have to hide my feelings. So I've searched long and hard and talked and pondered over the meaning of home. And most especially what I wanted and needed in a home as I created my very own home. One that I had complete control of and could make safe and happy or whatever I wanted it to be. I wanted something to hang on my wall to remind me of this home that I have been building and so I made this:

A bunch of pieces of cute paper, modge podge galore, a sharpie, a ruler, scissors and a whole lot of time and this is what I came up with. (In one night by the way...which was kind of stupid. It took a long time and I paid for not going to sleep). The quotes I included were especially meaningful to me:

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
Maya Angelou

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.
Maya Angelou

Where thou art, that is home.
Emily Dickinson

“Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.” 
― Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye

“Home is the nicest word there is.” 
― Laura Ingalls Wilder

There is one more quote by Maya Angelo that I ran into a couple years ago when I read her book Letter to my Daughter that I will include here, but it's long so it's not for the faint of heart. :)

Question number two came because I was dating someone the last few months (as you may have noticed.  We just broke up this week. I should still post some pictures. He was a general focus of my summer. Anyway- my relationship with him had me questioning love.  What is love? How do people fall in and out of love? Is it just this chance?  No...I really don't believe that. I believe it is much more a choice. I think that love is a feeling, but more importantly it is a feeling that leads to action. Maybe it even gets to be the verb.  So, I ended up doing another piece about love.  It's a topic I've questioned multiple times in life, usually when I'm dating somebody. It's another one that is hard for me because too often throughout my life I've heard people say "I love you", but then there actions say something different. Or I thought their actions were saying love, but I found out later that love doesn't have to be that way and doesn't have to make you miserable.  And so I came up with this:

I know- not the greatest picture.  Neither of them are. I decided that love cannot be expressed completely in words. No way.  So I gathered images of what love meant to me...not just romantic love, but LOVE, all kinds of love included.  Because I think that all those kinds of love aren't so different as we sometimes imagine.  Maybe the other feelings around love make it seem different, but love, in itself...I think it's really the same. 

Here are the quotes I chose to go with it:

"Standing beside you,

I took an oath

to make you life simpler

by complicating mine

and what I always thought would happen did:

I was lifted up in joy."

David Ignatour

"Love is my decision to make your problem my concern"

Robert Shuller

"The essence of love is kindness."

Robert L. Stevonson

"Love is our true destiny.  We do not find the meaning of love by ourselves, alone- we find it with another."

Thomas Morton

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth out fear."

1 John 4:18

Of all fires, love is the only inexhaustible one."

Pablo Neruda

"God is love."

1 John 4:8

And so I continue on. And hopefully my therapist loves me for it. Because I still ask all those "w" questions.  And some days I think I've found the answer.  And the next, maybe not. But for me, it helps to know that I can keep on asking.. 

p.s. congratulations if you made it to the end! :)

A missing month

Well friends...I've got to be honest. It hasn't been my greatest month of all. August was fraught with illness and that is just no fun. A couple of weeks ago I started having an asthma attack that wasn't responding to my albuterol. After 24 hours or so, I finally decided to go to the ER (it was Saturday before urgent cares were open) because I really couldn't breathe and my whole body hurt.  They found nothing wrong except that I couldn't breathe and even then, my lungs sounded good to the doctor. Apparently, I don't wheeze very much when I have asthma attacks. My bronchioles just constrict and you can't hear it. But I can feel it.  So the doc sent me home with orders to come back if this that and the other happened.

By Sunday night/Monday morning this that and the other had all happened.  I had a fever that peaked at 102.3 and I still couldn't breathe. So, feeling like a complete idiot, I went back to the ER. The doc thought that I had pneumonia (didn't surprise me, it's happened before) because she could hear it, but everything came back normal. Ironically, I had had a chest x-ray just the week before because I had a positive TB test. Then another one on Saturday, so she tried to avoid a third x-ray for the week, but with all the blood work normal, she wanted to see my lung.  Apparently it looked clear, but she treated me for pneumonia. Long week.  I basically went between bed and the floor to do crafts for 1 week straight. The next week I worked some, but was wasted at the end of the day.

Insert a more normal week until this Thursday. So, on my list of things to do while I am 27, I included rollerblading.  I used to go with my brothers and I loved it. So I thought it would be great to start again. Unfortunately, I chose a particular part of a path that I was not familiar with and I fell (twice) and hit my head (twice) [note....because I'm a genius so I decided to keep going after the first try] and thanks to a fabulous good Samaritan I went to the ER, but not in an ambulance. I'm rather glad he was there because I was kind of disoriented, but I wouldn't have called an ambulance so I would have tried to drive to the ER.  That could have been a catastrophe.  So a CT scan, ibuprofen and acetaminophen with codeine later, I patient waited while someone...(after a long list of calls and texts) could come and pick me up. That was last Thursday. I'm doing much better now, but still a little sore in the head and the back.  At least I've been able to wean some of the NSAIDS. I am afraid I won't have any of my stomach left after this month because I've taken so many with both incidents!!

So there's where I have been.  Next post will be some pictures of the crafting I'm doing. I decided to make Christmas gifts for everyone in the family. It's crazy really, but I'm loving it. Pintrest is my new best friend. I love the ideas I find there.

Shout out for the kind man named Chris who I never saw before, but not only found me on the asphalt, but walked me back to my car to get my stuff, drove me to the ER, then waiting with me until he was able to make sure that I gave them an accurate history (I was out of it). I hope to be able to find him and thank him for real. He was a certainly a blessing!!

Hope you all had a much better August than mine!!

This si the awesome hole in my pants from the fall(s). It was rather large. Fortunately not right on my seat, but I was showin some nice skin on my thigh as I stumbled into the ER.