A Call to Art

Since Sister #3 got the first "October Art" picture in, I feel like mine doesn't quite measure up. It's not a stunning landscape and there's no harmonious post to go along with it. Rather, I have a simple picture of my kiddo in the Halloween costume I made for her. Yup, handmade with love, complete with a badly stitched, crooked shoulder seam that I've cleverly disguised by attaching the cape at the same seam.

TA-DA! (And yes, that's grandma's 40-year-old Singer sewing machine that I got running thanks to a hearty dose of oil and some super glue. But that's a whole different story. And it's only a temporary fix.)

A Time to Fall

      This is my first response to the call for October Art. I'm going to tell a little story in pictures about my trip to Poughkeepsie, New York.

*      *      *

      Tucked in the Hudson River Valley, Poughkeepsie sleeps alongside the estates of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and Ruth Livingston Mills. Up the road a few miles, at the foot of the Catskills, you'll find the homes of the most famous artists from the Hudson River School movement, artists like Frederic Church and Thomas Cole. Artists and men who wiled away their hours just thinking and painting and chasing the colors of light in the sky.

      Today, just as then, Poughkeepsie is a quiet town, a hard-working town, a picture of middle America --halfway between the dreams of the past and the hopes of the future.

      In the Hudson River Valley, it's easy to see a world created by God. It's a place where the seasons happen in natural order, with passion, and I daresay in excess. For a study in autumn, there are few better subjects, and on Columbus Day weekend in 2008, my friends and I found ourselves at the peak of the season. We found ourselves in the midst of living proof that whether or not God is all-loving, or all-powerful, or all-knowing, He is without doubt a true artist.

      In every color: an emotion. In every fallen leaf: a teardrop. From the tops of mountains, the sides of ridges, you can discover the inspiration for every colonial patchwork quilt. It's the rise and fall of the land and an expertly stitched landscape sewn through the eye of Heaven's needle. It's a quilt you'd like to wrap around yourself. It's the blanket Rip Van Winkle used for his many-yeared slumber. This is the season where those tales were born, a season that erases the line between water and sky. One world reflects the other: taunting, haunting.

      I took this picture on the roadside in a spot where I was sure that right-side-up and upside-down could double-dutch and laugh.

Boodah Belly

Or should it technically be Buddha Belly? Doesn't matter.

Here's the best reason in the world for me to stay married to my darling husband...

In an effort to be helpful, my sweetie decided to fluff my freshly washed winter sweaters in the dryer. Except he didn't use the "Air Fluff" setting. He set it on medium heat.

My pre-baby-formerly-at-least-kind-of-flat belly now shows, charmingly round, from under the hem of my previously perfectly-fitting sweaters. Let me re-phrase that. The lower part of my ribcage shows from under the bottom hem of my previously perfectly-fitting sweaters.

So getting to the best reason for me to stay married to my honey...this now means that I have to go buy a partially new wardrobe!

Wasn't it so sweet of him to make sure I'd have plenty of new clothes for the cold weather?!

October Art Assignment

Sisters, give me something pretty to look at. Picture, painting, sewing, anything that's yours. The fatigue of fading light is starting to settle in on me. You in?

The Real Reason Dinosaurs are Extinct

I'm in a "Fowl" Mood!

I made a wonderful dinner tonight. Roasted chicken (in the oven instead of the crock pot), stuffing, broccoli and apple dumplings.

My house still smells wonderful.

Except we never ate dinner. The beautiful, golden brown chicken that left a wonderful, heavenly scent in my home was NOT COOKED. It looked perfect. So imagine my shock (and extreme pissy-ness) when I sliced that chicken and was greeted with a pool of pink juice.

SOB.

It turns out that the oven door popped partway open and even though the chicken should have been thoroughly cooked, it just wasn't. I am throwing away nine dollars worth of chicken. So, there's leftover broccoli, stuffing (the stuffing that wasn't in the bird) and apple dumplings in my fridge. We ate dinner at Jimmy John's.

Now I'm going to drown my sorrows in apple dumplings.

Happy Friday!

In the midst of my somewhat crappy past couple of days, this article made me laugh a little, and marvel at some of the random things that people are actually willing to do experiments on.
Enjoy!