Where the time goes

Wow, just noticed it's been 10 days since I last checked in here.  It's a busy life with kids, animals, and art.  I've been learning a lot, trying some new techniques, reading some books.  I love to read.  There seems to always be something left to work on, or to change in myself and I do this with the help of many authors.

 That is a story for another day though.

One of the girls pointe shoes

Today what I wanted to share with you is what
things take up all my time.  So there was this contest at my daughters ballet studio.  They do this yearly, sometimes semi annually for Galas and such.  They sell these beautifully decorated pointe shoes, decorated by the lovely ballerinas themselves.

one of the girls creations

 Always full of ideas I have been wanting to make one.  This time I did.  I only had a few hours to accomplish this, but I had so many ideas I just had to pick one and execute it.

 Here is the outcome...

It was fun, albeit a little stressful with my time constraints.   And I am very happy with the way it came out.

 I hope some little ballerina in the making is happy with it too.


I have this way of letting myself get distracted and sucked into things my kids do.  Especially if it's a creative endeavor.

One of the girls did this one

So this was a welcome distraction today.   A piece of art to create in a very busy week.  I am in the home stretch with the graduation over and ballet dress rehearsals in two days.  

Isn't it gorgeous?! 

 I got a new tattoo ...

   and my mini has been out having too much fun once again...




that too is a story for another day...

The chicks and the ducks are pretty much full grown now.  They are less work, but still occupy some of my time.  I will post pics another day.

This is the final piece.  Giselle.  My lovely daughter has been working on Giselle for her auditions.


This is where my time goes.  Love, Art, Life...





Enjoy life loves.

      It's the only one we get.

Something New

Thought I'd post a few pics of some of my current works.  I have many things going on at once and finish things all the time, but don't always take pictures, or do anything with them really, except look at them.  I get attatched. It's always been difficult for me not to. So, here's some of the latest paintings.  Hope you like them!

I've been experimenting a lot with textures.  Took a close up so you could see some...

Beauty

Tonight I found some beauty.  In fact I was privileged to sit in a room full of beautiful women, all there hoping to find some grace.  It was wonderful.  I am cynical of meeting new people to say the least, and seriously debated staying home and 'holing up' as I prefer to do.  But I mustered the courage and went.  I am so glad I did.

I met a wonderful woman tonight.  Her name is Wendy Joy Hart.  I found her through Meetup.com.  Going into this I thought surely this woman is selling something, or pushing something.  The last meetup group I joined was more of a way of drumming up business for the woman who led it than a meetup group.  I promptly quit that group.  But this one was so different.  I left feeling better, lighter, and happier than I've felt in years.  I learned a whole lot of new things, and hopefully made some new friends.   Beautiful friends.

Driving home I was struck by the fact that I was in a room full of beauty and could easily, very easily, have missed it.  These are the moments, the light I need to retrain my eye to see.  My memory to hold.  I had pictured this being a scary thing.  Me and all my baggage.  My deep deep shame and shyness to boot.  But whenever I am in a group of women who are real and honest I find that we all have baggage, and shame.  If we can just be real for a moment we find that none of us wants to be left out or judged.  We are all looking for love and a little acceptance.  That is my motto as you know choose love.  On my way to the group I kept telling myself, it'll be ok, just choose love.  It was exactly where I was supposed to be tonight, and I almost robbed myself of the opportunity.

Graduation time!

It's been a very busy couple of weeks.  I had my first High School graduation to plan, and as a homeschooler it's not as easy as that sounds.  There are many things to tend to besides the party afterwards, the gift, and the guests.  There are photos, programs, music, a slideshow, a display table, cap and gown and a boy scout uniform to find and make sure is ironed so he can lead the flag ceremony at the beginning.  Not to mention the other million and a half things, grad night, events, and all those little details.

Now that it's all done I'm happy.  Happy to have graduated one.  Happy to have been able to share this with family and friends.  Happy that he's happy.

I wish being happy came easily to me.  As you can tell from my art it does not.  I am trying to change that.  There really is so much beauty and grace in the world if I look for it.  

This is what I must remind myself constantly.  

I went through a period last year where I realized that I must retrain my eye to see light.  As with Art, art is a process of training oneself to see- to really see things.  I think there is beauty in everything and everyone if one looks deep enough.  It is my hope that people have that kind of grace for me.  That they look deep enough, beyond the external stuff, the tattoos, the funny clothes messy hair and pack of children I travel with  to really see me.  

One of our guests commented on the love he felt.  So much love in that room.  He was impressed.  Did I feel it?  No.  I was horribly stressed and hoping everything was ok.  One guest gave us his interpretation of our sons biography which was, well let's just say non-traditional, as a statement of our belief that none of this really matters.  I hadn't seen it that way, but I had to laugh, because that is how we entered homeschooling.  Wanting our kids to be the best people they could be, regardless of what they knew or had accomplished.  Wanting to give them a love of learning, not just a set of facts memorized and quickly forgotten.  Not a host of  painful school memories, but a family they know they can turn to, and be loved unconditionally.  These are all very lofty goals.  I am not sure we accomplished them.  But I think what I will choose to remember from this past week and this past 17 years is the certificate of appreciation our son gave us during the ceremony and his beautiful smile.  Life is good.  Life is indeed good...

Monday monday

It's been one of those weekends, you know the kind of weekend you should be cleaning, or at least doing something productive, since you'll have a house full of people next weekend and the 6 kids, pets and farm animals are a lot to keep up after... but instead curled up in a ball and slept the panic off...  sometimes it's all I can do.

oh well...    the Harpie is back...

Don't know who let her out??  I had her silenced for a while...

Just thought I'd give you a little glimpse into my Art Journal of late.  A picture is worth a thousand words, right?? 

 It's all I have to say right now...

Why blog?

Sometimes I think, why blog, why even speak?  It's all been done before, it's all been said before.   Sometimes I think why paint? It's all been done before more than a million times... and by those much better than me... but then I have days like today.  Today was a good day.  Twice today because of speaking I recieved huge, and I mean huge compliments.  That doesn't happen very often from strangers.  You just never know do you?

Yesterday sitting in a drive through waiting for our drinks my bitties (what I call my twin pre-schoolers) commented that the girl in the window was very pretty.  So I made a point of looking right at her, to see what they thought was beautiful.  The young girl was pretty.   She looked heavy, and I wondered about that, because she looked a strange kind of heavy, and she was really young looking.  Then I realized she was pregnant.  How tiring that job must be standing for so long, serving with that extra weight and the growth processes going on inside her.  She handed me my drinks, and I passed on the compliment from the bitties.  She got the biggest smile.  I hope it made her day.  I know the two compliments I received today made mine.

I saw this quote the other day and it really says it all here it is



"Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible." 
             Dalai Lama

I was reminded today of my sweet Gramsy.  She would run into homeless people in LA asking for change, and she would buy them shoes, or lunch, or shoes and lunch.  She didn't have much, but she could not turn a hungry person away, ever. She said they could always use shoes.

One day I was shopping by the San Juan Capistrano Mission, actually I was done shopping and in a hurry to get home.  An elderly gentleman approached me and said
"Excuse me ma'am..."
 I was in a parking lot, alone, but it was daytime.  I stopped, looked him in the eye and said "Yes?"
His next words startled me...  "Aren't you afraid?" He asked me.  This caused me to wonder for a moment if I should be,  and I answered  "no, should I be?"  Waiting to see what would happen next.  This elderly gentleman, who happened to be a person of color and in need of some cash, then said "Are you from here?" Now this question was slightly unnerving because I could not see where this conversation was going?  "Yes."  I said.  "Why?"  "You are the first person in this city who has even stopped to look at me today when I spoke to them.  Everyone else was afraid."  I was stunned.  Since the economy took its turn there have been more and more homeless people asking for help here and there.   This particular shopping center I was walking through was full of economically well off people.  People with much more resources than I, and can you imagine?  No really, can you imagine??  In this day and age being treated so poorly.  I was shocked and saddened.

Some people might think me naiive, or just plain gullible for helping someone who may or may not need help.  Who may or may not take that money and do drugs, or drink.  But you know what?  Maybe that one kindness that person recieves that day will be the catalyst they need for change.  Maybe it will be that one ray of hope in a dark and scary world.  Maybe they are not what they seem at all, who knows?  I surely don't.  The way I see it if they are asking me, it is my choice to be loving, or unloving.  I choose loving.
That reminds me of another quote I love.  In the movie (A great movie) called The Kingdom of Heaven  

the king of Jerusalem has a conversations with the main character Balien who believes he has been abandoned by God.


The King speaking to him about the uncertainties of life says this  " When I was sixteen, I won a great victory. I felt in that moment I would live to be a hundred. Now I know I shall not see thirty. None of us know our end, really, or what hand will guide us there. A king may move a man, a father may claim a son, but that man can also move himself, and only then does that man truly begin his own game. Remember that howsoever you are played or by whom, your soul is in your keeping alone, even though those who presume to play you be kings or men of power. When you stand before God, you cannot say, "But I was told by others to do thus," or that virtue was not convenient at the time. This will not suffice. Remember that."


Yes, remember that...

Love is the Movement

Life is not a fairytale.  There is no 'happily ever after' I'm learning.  I have learned this, the hard way.  There are always ups and downs.  Sometimes there are even bottom places where we land and have to look for help.  For me words help, art helps, music helps. I think these are true for a lot of people.

I think I have always known the struggle and the pain with which many suffer.  I thought it was just that I was a melancholy person.  I tried everything I could think of to get out of the pit I was in. Looking for help out from a bottom place once I stumbled upon Renee's story.  Her story touched me so deeply. This was the first time I'd heard of such love. From mere mortals. I was convinced this did not exist.   To Write Love On Her Arms is a group, or a movement I found one day graffitied on a college bench where I sat with my son and a friend from Art class- The name intrigued me and I had to know what it meant.  To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide.   I read Renee's story and was so moved by it, by the fact that there were such loving, caring people out there.   People who would give everything to help a total stranger who was suffering.  It touched me so much I had Love tattooed on my arm by a great guy named Turbo at Goodfellas tattoo.  A daily reminder that there is hope, there is love, there are people who care, and I am not alone.

This is a group that has been very near and dear to my heart.  A cause I gladly support.  There are many people in this world suffering with depression and loneliness.  It breaks my heart to hear of children taking their own lives because they had reached their end, and felt there was no hope.  I know that place well.

I'm not sure what inspired me to write about this, this day.  I can only imagine someone needed to read this.  If you are suffering I am here.  You are not alone.  I have found that love helps, and caring friends help.  I know they are hard to come by.  But this group reminds me that they do exist.

photo credit ©2009-2010 ~Siluriformes

Please love.  There is enough pain in this world.  Here is one of my all time favorite quotes



"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."
Philo

and be kind to you.  It's a tough lesson to learn sometimes, but a necessary one.  It all starts with love.











Love is the Movement!