Wednesday, March 30, 2011
These Hands
These hands held me when I was just a newborn baby and played with me in my playpen. These hands built our house and dressers and little rocking chairs and my built-in room. These hands baptized and confirmed me. These hands gave wonderful hugs and strong handshakes. These hands operated the controls of airplanes both small and very large. These hands took care of the finances at home, at the bank, and at the Church. These hands took such good care of our yard and grew an amazing vegetable garden. These hands belong to my dear father who I love so much. Thinking about my Dad today.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Zentangle
My new discovery and obsession! We made some of these stamped and doodled cards in my last ATC class and one of the ladies told me it looked like Zentangle, which I had never heard of. So I came home from class and looked it up on the internet. Wow! It's a whole new art form that is really fun!
Zentangle is the art of creating beautiful images with repetitive patterns and it is very relaxing while increasing focus and creativity. There are a whole group of people "out there" who are trained teachers and they do workshops showing how to make all kinds of beautiful patterns. And I just thought it was doodling! Little did I know what a great art form this is! There are several books on the subject, a couple of which I bought, and they are incredible! These ATC cards below are the samples I did for the class. The card at the top is called a tile- 3 1/2" square, which they make in their classes. Lots of fun!
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
New Kitchen!
Out with the old kitchen, and in with the new! After 31 years in our house, it was time to get a new and improved kitchen. The cabinets were falling apart. If you opened a drawer too far, you'd better watch out because it might fall on your toes! And the icky old kitchen carpeting (not a smart thing to put in a kitchen!) just had to go.
On Saturday, April 19th, Danny, Steven, Jacob, and Greg all showed up to help us with the demolition. Even little Mason and Gavin were helping to haul stuff out to the truck. Other than Jacob almost being electricuted, it all went well! We were just going to let our contractor, Dave Ridd who's my second cousin, do the demolition, but our boys wanted to come and do it. We were very grateful for that because it saved us a lot of money.
Goodbye to the old cabinets!
Our new kitchen only took two weeks to finish, which is really good. We were told it usually takes three or four weeks. Dave and his workers did a really great job. We ate a lot of frozen, microwavable food (yuck!) in our little make-shift kitchen downstairs and went out to dinner several times. We're very glad that it is finished.