art time!

I needed to wait until after Christmas to post these as they were made into a calendar for our families. But now they're all out and I wanted to share.

Our Christmas present to our siblings, grandparents, etc. was a calendar of ourselves. But we didn't want them to be any ol' pictures. So I came up with the idea last year to reproduce famous paintings. My plan was to do two a month and then we wouldn't be rushed. HA HA HA HA HA! Who was I fooling?

I completely forgot about it until late October.

But...I always do better with an impending deadline...

We ended up revamping our choices anyway because some paintings were too ornate or the costumes too difficult to reproduce and our budget was rather limited.

The unexpected part was that the kids learned all sorts of truths about paintings and photographs. As did I.

Truth #1 - Posing is hard work! And painful! Sometimes the shoots would take upwards of 30 minutes and we were constantly taking pictures and making minute adjustments.
"Move your foot just a titch more to the left."
*snap picture and compare to original*
"Nope, not far enough. A little more."
"Mom! My leg is starting to ache!"
"Just a few minutes more...I promise!"

Truth #2 - Paintings, while looking real, do not necessarily adhere to reality. My daughter, reproducing Flaming June, found that there was no way, short of breaking bones, to get her body in that exact pose. She's a child and the woman was full-grown, so there are some proportion issues, but frankly, I'm not sure even a professional yoga master could do it. Let alone fall asleep in that position! All the time the kids were realizing as they looked at these great works of art, "Hey! That's not even possible!"

Truth #3 - Photographs are just as dishonest. As a group, we were constantly looking at the paintings and asking, "What do we have around the house that we could use for that?" By the end, we were all outside-the-box thinkers. Strips of cut t-shirts became suspenders, a swimming medal, while being careful to hide the bright green ribbon, became a royal pendant, and very carefully placed fabric transformed into a beautiful, flowing dress, to name a few. And in the end, shoulders wrapped in towels, and bed sheets piled on heads, became pretty close representations.

(As always, click on the pictures for enlargements.)

i don't love poetry, but...

俳

haiku: poetry
that my un poetic heart
can truly love

my birthday dinner

For my 35th birthday, I wanted to have a real-life, grown-up, outdoor dinner party. So I did. My best buddy from Oregon even flew in as a surprise!

So while my mom and I made the meal (Indian, my fave!) Best Bud took all my ideas and made them just right. (She always does, she's so talented.)

Partner these images with Billie Holiday, The Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra serenading over the spicy scents of the meal. Ah...so much fun.

balance-shmalance

I've been struggling lately with that enigmatic concept: balance. I hate it. It doesn't really make sense. How can I maintain this balance-thing when I don't even understand what the term means?

The visual I have is one of those old-fashioned scales where you have the things you need to accomplish portrayed as little weights. We carefully place them on the scales in such a way so they maintain an even keel. (Sorry, mixing my metaphors there.) So we can keep placing more or more on as long as we keep them 'in balance'? And when is it unbalanced? When the weights fall off? Or when it's just barely off horizontal? Does anyone really know?

What about the idea that we are one of those circus performers that balance all sorts of things upon our chins? (cue calliope music) They must be placed just so in order to keep them from tumbling down. We are also limited by the length of our arms as to how much we can place upon the pile. (Unless we have help, but I really don't want to go any deeper in this analogy, if that's okay with you.) It sure seems awful precarious, doesn't it? Is that really how I want to live?

In any description of balance, there is an accompanying element of instability. If I misstep, will it all come tumbling down? And won't my neck get sore keeping it in that position all...the...time?

I'm exhausted just reading about it. How can people really aim for this as their goal?

I've decided that being a world-class cagola player or a side-show extraordinaire is not what I want to strive towards. Especially since I'm not the best at choosing which things are most important to place on my balancing piles in the first place. So I've made this agreement with God: I give him the multitude of odd-shaped pieces that I'm failing to balance on my own. He then picks out which ones are just right for the day and as I go along, He's right there beside me, carrying them Himself, letting me know what's important. I go to bed at night with peace. And that's a big thing for me.

Now don't get the wrong idea. I suck at this, too. I often forget to ask for His help (or maybe I'm "too busy" to stop for a ridiculously short few minutes) and then I'll spend the afternoon engrossed in Pinterest (which I love, but isn't really the best use of my time usually), kicking myself when the kids are still working on their school while I'm finishing dinner at their bedtime of 8 o'clock. But luckily I've got a God who believes in second chances (or third...or fourth...or thirty-fifth...) And being a crappy God-relier (yeah, 'relier' is a real word, I looked it up) is 1000x better than balancing the world and her seven continents on my chin.

(Dang it! I just spent the last 20 minutes looking at Pinterest because I checked to make sure the link worked right. Grrrr...that site is a giant time-sucking lamprey eel...of awesomeness!)

techno love/hate.

I've finally gotten an iPhone.
The other afternoon I looked down and the battery was at 82%. My first thought?

"Awesome! I've been really productive today!"

How sad is that? A high battery shows that I haven't been messing with it much, thus I've been busy doing the things I need to get done.

My iPhone battery readout can now act as a productivity meter.

Almost directly.

Too much time on Words With Friends or perusing the Interwebs and not only does my battery life drop like a well-oiled cannonball, but so does my ability to check off those super important "To Do" boxes.

"Let's see...54% battery at lunch time? I've wasted half my day today! Whip crackin' time!"

OR

"2pm and my iPhone is at 91%!! (in the words of my consultant husband) I'm practically at Full Utilization!"

I'm not sure how I feel about this. We have a TV in our bedroom and upstairs in our Family Room (where I rarely go during the day) and no cable. This is on purpose. With no TV in our common areas, I accomplish much more. Now I've invited a pocket-sized So-Much-More-Than-A-TV into my life. One I can carry with me EVERYWHERE. It's up to sheer willpower now. There's no Removing The Temptor.


*gulp*

clever swim-related title

I just had an hour's worth of work vanish with the wrong combination of mouse clicks. *heavy sigh*

To sum up in ten sentences.:

1. Four of the kids are on a summer swim team.
2. I have to get up early.
3. I'm not an early riser, but have always wanted to be.
4. Swim team has given me the opportunity to change my sleeping habits.
5. "Early to rise" necessitates "early to bed."
6. "Early to bed" sucks.
7. Swim team = crazy busy.
8. Crazy busy = 2.5 hrs a day (Tues-Fri) and 7 hrs every Saturday for 8 weeks.
9. Crazy busy sucks.
10. The positives of swim team outweigh the sucky parts...just barely.

In retrospect, I think this sum up version is better.

the green-eyed monster

If I ever check out this one friend's wall on facebook I can't help but feel jealous and insecure. She's beautiful, successful, has way fewer kids than me (so her life is obviously easier than mine (that was sarcasm, if you didn't know)), is skinnier than me, has more money than me...I'm sure I can come up with more.

It's ridiculous, I know. It's juvenile, I know. It's like she makes me feel like I'm back in high school again with all those "Am I good/cool/skinny enough?" thoughts. I hate it. I have actually outgrown those insecurities. (Thank you, God!) But for some reason this one person drags it all back up again. The crazy part is that I'm completely aware of how skewed online personas can be, since most people only report the rosy everything's-going-good stuff. I know that everyone has crap they have to deal with and everyone has different strengths. We really can't compare ourselves since God made us all with unique purposes. That knowledge is all up in my head, but when she's on the screen, I can't feel it in my heart. So what to do?

Right now it's blaringly obvious to me that I need to get some Divine help. If anyone can get this ridiculousness sorted, it's Him.

And why did I even post this for the world to see? Ummm...the good answer is "If it just helps one person, it's worth it." Yeah, right. But the real answer is, "I just had to get off facebook because of her and I'm tired and should be in bed and felt like posting some honest/transparent stuff."

Nitey nite.