Such a pretty place...

It is no secret that I prefer books for Children to books for Adults. Anyone who knows me or sees me walking around might assume I am a teacher (well, I am, but anyway...) or that I might be a Children's Librarian. I usually have some "juvenile" book tucked under my arm. I do HAVE kids, so maybe it wouldn't be so odd, I mean I could be carrying the book for them. But, I never am. I make them carry their own books. It's a life lesson. What!? I assure you, it is! I also love movies made from children's books, and a particularly great one is The Witches by Roald Dahl. The movie is so enchanting! No pun intended! I love Anjelica Huston's portrayal of the Grand High Witch, the whole cast is DELICIOUS! Again, no pun intended... But my favorite part of the movie is the scene where they are telling the story of a little girl who disappeared and wound up living out her days in a painting. It just stays with you. It was told so well, and the paintings were so lovely, that you almost envied her living in that painting. If it weren't so sad that she was taken away from her family, you might even imagine that her "painted world" was lovely and simple and filled with quiet pleasures. Anyway, I did! Which brings me to my picture header today. This painting is by one of my favorite artists in the whole wide world. Carl Larsson. If I could live inside of someone's paintings, it would be his. Probably. The first painting is entitled Das Blumenfenster, which translates from the Swedish to Flowers on the Windowsill. Das Blumenfenster is so much more fun to say though. His palette is so lovely, his subjects so graceful, that to live in his paintings would be a treat! At least I hope to recreate a bit of his colors and atmosphere as I redecorate my new-ish home. I am fascinated by how the Larsson's ran their household as well. It is worth reading up on. They seemed a perfectly lovely family, if a bit unconventional. But, I have never been one for convention! The next painting is entitled "Old Anna". I LOVE the little black-shoed feet that barely appear in the picture! The man is a genius of the understatement! What we imagine upon seeing those little footsies, obviously their owner is up on the counter or table top. How wonderful "Old Anna" must have been! Allowing little ones to help in the kitchen, teaching them wonderful skills of baking bread, making cookies, all of her lifelong wisdom being passed from old one to young one. Oh what we miss when we don't have multi-generational families together!
With Thanksgiving and Christmas Holidays upcoming, we should remember to get together with friends and family, take time to pass some wisdom along, some little something we enjoy doing or reading or looking at, take a moment to share it with someone else. It is okay if it isn't a smallish someone! Any someone will do. It is just the teaching, the sharing that is important. It is like giving a little piece of you to someone else. Whenever they think of it or do it again in the future, they will think of you as well! And they will probably smile...

And the mice began to play...

I happened across this completely out-of-this-world photo while blog hopping this morning. I SO want to make this. I actually have a pattern for some similar little mice, and the pumpkins would be difficult but not impossible to find. I have seen similar pumpkins around, but the expense might be ridiculous. Also, I will never find belt buckles like those. One might suspect that all of this impossibly clever craftiness would originate with one Martha Stewart. However, one might be wrong...it actually came from last years Hallmark Magazine. I checked the website, and much to my disappointment, it has gone belly up just like my FAVORITE magazine of all time Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion. How that mag could not exist is beyond me. Anyway, I thought I would post the instructions for the pumpkiny transport device here. I found it on a blog called www.artsanddafts.com. Photo and directions are from Hallmark Magazine. If this doesn't make you feel all Halloweeny inside, I just don't know what will!
How-To Make the Carriage Pumpkin:
You'll Need

• 3 ornate metal belt buckles
• 1 pumpkin, about 12 inches tall
• Pencil or marker
• Knife
• Craft glue
• 1 ornate lamp finial
• Cordless drill fitted with ¼-inch bit
• 4 gourds, about 4 inches tall
• 2 quarter-inch dowel rods, cut to the approximate diameter of your pumpkin
• 4 ornate drawer pulls
• Heavy-gauge florist's wire

1. Trace the inside of each belt buckle on the pumpkin with a pencil and cut to create openings for two windows and a door. Glue the hardware over the openings. Remove or cut down the stem until it's even with the flesh of the pumpkin, and twist the finial into the top.

2. To create wheels, drill a hole through the center of each gourd. Insert one dowel rod into the holes of two gourds to create an axle, and secure with glue. Repeat to create a second set of wheels. Finish off all four wheels by inserting a drawer pull into the outside hole of each gourd for hubcaps.

3. Line up the two sets of wheels next to each other at about the same width as your pumpkin. Then wrap wire from one dowel rod to the other to fasten the axles together and to create a webbing for the pumpkin carriage to sit on.

4. Gently place your carriage on the wire.

I do believe little white mice can become cheese-loving footmen with cute little noses.
I do believe that large pumpkins can become sweet smelling carriages with a slightly damp interior.
I do believe in Fairy Godmothers.

Up Against the Wall

Because sometimes you just feel better after a good cry...

And then the Rains came...

I believe I have found the definition of growing old.
When you are 14 and love music, the idea of going to a 13 hour all-day music fest is thrilling! Dude! You can't wait! You count down the weeks, then the days, then it is TOMORROW! ROCK ON! You make bizarre hand gestures and stick out your tongue and wave it wildly from side to side! You don't sleep much the night before, and then, you are up at the crack of dawn! AWESOMENESS! It is today!! You can't handle all the excitement you are feeling so on the way there, you blare your ipod, rock out in the back seat, insult your buddies and trade punches over just about anything. All is right in your little teenage world!
When you are the driver, who is NOT 14, (flip that li'l number right around...) and you love music and you love your 14 year old, the idea of driving to a 13 hour music fest that is 2.3 hours away and into the fabulous Beltway of our Nation's Capital is daunting, but not without it's charms and excitement! It is a beautiful, gray, young Autumn day and the State Fair is in town. What could go wrong, you ask yourself. It ought to at least be great music, and you have packed half of the kitchen into your little coolers. You have extra shirts, extra socks, umbrellas. You are not wearing flip flops or sandals. You are good. After all, some great bands are slated to play, you can't WAIT to see Kutless again and you have two, count 'em TWO fully charged digital kameras to kapture the aktion. Oh how quickly the two paths diverge. The teenaged boys are crammed into the mosh pit action, daughter and mature adult are back a bit, but still with a fab view of the stage. Yes, it's gray, but there are funnel cakes. We're good. Then, around 2 hours into your magical mystery tour, it begins to drizzle. Gently at first, as if it is not commited to it. The teens do not feel this slight moisture up in their violation of all personal space rules area. You, however, start wondering if you should trek the mile back to your car, uphill, both ways and retrieve umbrellas. Nah, it will quit. It doesn't seem to be getting worse. You put up your hood and daughter's hood and return to the festivities at hand. Ok, it is not stopping. In fact, it appears to be putting a bit more effort into it and is really sort of a rain now, not really a drizzle anymore, is it? That is NOT a good sign, but hey, how long does it usually rain anyway? Teens still oblivous. Most people here still walking around in flip flops and shorts. They seem fine...lets just fast forward a bit to when even the teens have noticed that there is moisture actually falling FROM the sky. The come back to the "spot", eat half a sandwich and head back into the fray. They are smiling. Foolish children. Daughter and I trek for the third time out to car (uphill both ways, now in muck) warm up briefly, because the temperature has plummeted. I'm pretty sure it is below zero, but most revelers still walking around sans umbrellas in shorts and most are now barefoot. I have been sucked back to Woodstock. Are these kids on DRUGS? How do they not feel the cold and wet? Will they all be hospitalized tomorrow? My teenage charges? They have not emerged from the pit. At least now that it is dark I can see that there is a large cloud of steam emanating from the huddled mass. I can only hope some of that is evaporating dampness and that my "kids" won't have to be nude on the way home. I am sorry, but I have fabric seats! I have now entered the seventh circle of Hell, and this is Christian music. How did this happen? I have never been so cold, nor so drenched in my life. I am racking my brain for history lessons on warfare and the conditions soldiers had to march in. How was their health? Did they survive all of the slings and arrows only to succomb to illness from the deplorable conditions? As a nurse, I know in my head that they can't catch a cold or pneumonia or the swine flu from being cold and wet, but why do I feel like they could? I'm now officially worried that despite medical science it IS possible. help me. The cold is affecting my brain. Why isn't there a tent here offering hot cocoa and blankets? What kind of people run this Festival? Brutes! At this point even the teens are shivering and huddled under extremely "un-cool" umbrellas. It's a little late for that but we have not covered saturation in chemistry yet. HA! I was mentally prepping that lesson as I tried to stop my teeth from chattering. Thank Goodness that Skillet was up next. Let the head-banging begin. I never really encouraged this behavior in my children before, but I am thinking the muscle movement should be warming. I try it. I stop. Skillet ROCKS. I am slightly warmed by the sensation that I have suffered through this day so my kid could see his musical IDOLS (no, not THAT kind of idols!) I just hope he survives it. Next time I am feeling rested and relaxed, I will describe the drive home. (Teaser: cold, drenched kids, kid who gets carsick if heat is on, frequent side of the road stops for false alarms, the Beltway in the pouring rain, a 2.3 hour trip on GPS that actually took OVER FOUR HOURS....) Just a little taste of the experience that was Awakening Fest 2009. Those pics I wanted to get of Kutless? Well, apparently it is difficult to take good pics and hold a large golf umbrella at the same time, especially when your hands are wet, the umbrella is wet and your camera is wet. Who knew? Oh, and I might have accidentally recorded a bit of the concert on my digital camera. I am so technologically unadvanced and all...and I am officially old.

Kutless!!!

More Fall Giveaways!

Bloggers must be the nicest people in the whole wide world. Here is another brilliant blog giveaway over at Painting Thyme Needfuls. Take a moment to check out her gorgeous artwork (How 'bout that shoe!) and enter her giveaway. I realize that by doing so you will reduce my chances of winning, but Hey, I AM a blogger too!

Why, "killevippen", of course...

When I saw this little door on a crafty blog ( I promise I will figure it out and post which blog, but right now I am unsure of exactly where I happened upon it) I thought immediately of my blogging friend RunLoriRun. I thought it would be a rad addition to the Alice In Wonderland mural she is working on. Tonight when I saw my desktop, there was the little door, calmly waiting to remind me of another childhood favorite. Here you will find a tiny tale by the author of Pippi Longstocking's adventures, Astrid Lindgren. Even though there is no actual door in the story, this is what Nils Karlsson's door would look like if it WAS there. When I was young, this story wrung every emotion known to childkind from my small frame. There was loss, sadness, despair, loneliness, warmth, friendship, and hope. I suppose it is something of a bleak tale, but so are many stories we loved as children. We just managed to find the good among the not-so-good, remember how we had to "find the moral of the story..." This story was in one of my Childcraft books, which I looked the world over for for a year or so, until I finally found one in a thrift store. So, Nils Karlsson is introduced to another generation and Bertil lives on in the imaginations of my children. I hope they love him as much as I did.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Did you know that there was a Dictionary of Idioms? I should have ceased long ago to be surprised by what is available online at the drop of a hat, in mere seconds you can find practically any information you could imagine. But, looking for a title for this entry, I decided to double check my facts and make sure I was using that particular phrase in an acceptable way. I didn't want to appear idiotic, especially since my entry involves education. So, "binging" the phrase I discovered this, fount of all English usage knowledge. What a magnificent thing. We need never be confused again! Or, perhaps most importantly, we need never appear unintelligent after using a phrase incorrectly, leaving us feeling like Alanis Morissette after the she released the song "Ironic" which should have been called "Dude, It's Just Plain Bad Luck." I also have become quite enamored of the online thesaurus available here. Ahhhh, life is good. So, without further ado, my blog title quite simply refers to my new Adventure. A Moment of Truth. I am going back to school. I will do it online, which may be difficult for a procrastinator like me. However, I am going to do it. I will have to tighten my belt, financially speaking, even though that will also be approaching the impossible for me. In fact, that may well be the hardest part of the whole venture. I love to buy stuff. Which brings me to the reason for bringing it up in the first place. I will be, I 'm sure, utilizing this avenue of expression as free therapy as I attempt to 1) Spend less 2) Do my assignments in a timely manner AND 3) do my assignments in a timely manner THERE! I have made myself accountable!!
WOOHOO!
Let the wild rumpus start.....