Pretty Pretty in Porcelain

Today, as the sun was setting on our glorious spring day, I grabbed my baby, my camera, a blanket, a cute bonnet, and a bouncy seat and went outside. Yes, I did carry all of that at one time. It was quite comical to see. I laugh even as I think to myself of how I must have looked, with a baby on my hip, a camera around my neck, and a bouncy seat hanging onto my arm bustling out the door before the sun went down any further and I 'lost my light'. These things take a certain amount of dedication, you know? (Did you know photographers always refer to any light source as My light? We really do think somehow that we are absolutely, positively entitled to the light that is shining on, near or around our subjects. You'll often hear us say things like, 'Could you move out of My light?' Or 'I gotta get this shot before My light's gone.' I'm just admitting the issue. Listen to a photographer sometime and then ask her if the light really belongs to her. Then run. hee.hee.)


Back to today. So I finally was trying to get some decent pictures of my baby girl. I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've not been satisfied with the portraits I've taken of my own daughter in the first 5 months. Yes, I've gotten a few ones that will adorn the walls of my new Old House, but not as many as I expect from myself. And she loves to smile, but not when my face is behind the camera. So today as My light was setting, I tried to capture Lydia's true essence. Here's one where the porcelain-ness of her skin just radiates. I did not alter the photo in any way except change it to a low contrast black and white. And I cropped it to feature her eyes. Okay, so technically I did alter the photo by doing those two things. But I didn't mess with anything else. Her skin really is perfect, that's all I'm trying to say!



More to come later. The color ones turned out beautifully, too!

Seeds

In the midst of the chaos that is trying to squeeze all the sanity out of our lives right now, I've been extremely blessed by seeds. You see, along with this 100 year old house we bought, came a 100 year old yard. And the people who lived in this house 2 owners ago were gardeners.

It's been my pure delight and pleasure (what's the difference? I'm not sure, but I'm trying to show my excitement here!) to see things literally spring to life before our eyes.


This is the flowering tree right by my front porch. It was covered with hundreds of sweet smelling blossoms!
These little beauties, were hidden by a foot of leaves, but after we raked those away, they bloomed up beautifully.

And this is one of my favorites. Must be some kind of exotic tulip, or at least that's what I like to call it.

This is just a regular tulip, but perfect in every way. Who says tulips are supposed to grow straight up and down? This one wanted to lie on the ground and bloom. And as a fellow gal who's had a hard day, I can understand that. I think we should add an addendum to the 'Bloom where you're planted' thing. It could say 'Bloom even when things didn't work out like you thought they would.' I like the ring to that.


And here are a whole bunch of little darlings springing forth next to my porch steps.


Now, why am I so happy about these flowers? I didn't plant them. I didn't choose the color or location. I didn't plan it out so something in the yard would be blooming all the time. I didn't do anything, besides rake a WHOLE BUNCH of leaves off the ground, so the sun would reach them.

And this, my dear friends, is how God intended life to work. You've heard the concept of 'planting seeds' in someone's life. Like when you tell a friend about the goodness of God, yet they choose a life far from Him. Only later, sometimes years later, to hear they finally chose God! And other times, when I've been disappointed at the lack of response from an unbeliever to trust God, a well-meaning friend has said, 'Just think of the seeds you've planted.' You know, I didn't really think of the seeds. I wanted to see the results. And sometimes I didn't even believe the seed was planted.

But as Spring has sprung at the new Old House, God has been teaching me about what it looks like when someone else plants the seeds before you. All I did was clear away the mess, let the sun shine down and viola! I got flowers! I'm so thankful to the actual gardeners who came before me. They knew what they were doing. They planned and planted and pruned and I get to enjoy the fruit of their labor.

So for those of you currently in the planting stage of life, take heart! Seeds do grow! Keep planting into people's lives. You are making a difference! And for those of you like me who are reaping the harvest of someone else's labor, be thankful. Recognize the Gardener and be gracious you get to enjoy the beauty of life itself.

A picture of our backyard taken from a third floor window. There's our old, old oak tree not quite leafing yet. In the back left under that flowering tree is our fish pond. Mark said it's about 4 feet deep. My idea was forget the fish, let's make it a hot tub!

What does Quaint mean to you?

This used to be our kitchen. Let us briefly reflect on it's good points.


1. White cabinets (very Victorian)
2. Neutral counter top. Though hunter green is not my color of choice, definitely workable.
3. Painted wood paneling (also very Victorian)
4. Side by side fridge
5. Quaint

So you see it isn't a bad kitchen. It has some things going for it. For 100 years, people cooked there, well maybe not on the gas range. It may have been a cook stove at first (more on that later). But people prepared their meals on the counters. (Well, actually we know that the Formica was put in about 10 years ago). But they prepared food on some kind of surface before that, I'm sure. They washed their hands and dishes and little 'owies' at that very sink. Okay, okay. The sink is stainless steel. I know it isn't more than 20 years old either. And those cabinets are not cute when you get closer. So let's just rip the whole thing out and start over! Because, honestly, 2 people can't fit in it when either the dishwasher or the oven door is open!




Ahhhhhhh . . . . isn't this better?!

And even though it was quaint in it's previous size, quaint not only means cute and charming, but also SMALL. So we took a wall down to make it bigger.

I bet ya'll were gettin' claustrophobic just looking at the pictures!

Now, Mark may tell you to never leave your wife alone with a carpenter in the kitchen while you're talking with his partner about the stairwell. You see, that 3 min is all it took for us to come up with a whole new kitchen plan. I really didn't intend for it to get this far. I was just gonna rip a wall down, use some of the existing cabinets and appliances and make it a little more roomy. I did keep the fridge! If you look right above the fridge you can see through the wall into the foyer and the staircase that goes to the second floor. Cool, huh? (Okay, that was all my vain attempt to look on the bright side of the gutted kitchen. How'd I do?)

The thing about ideas is they tend to grow.

See that start of a wall? No? You don't see it? It's the boards you can see. No, not the old dark boards, the new ones straight ahead. That's going to be our new powder bathroom. We call it that because it's going to be about as big as the powder compact I keep in my purse at all times. Seriously. It's little. But this great house didn't have a bathroom on the first floor and did you hear I've got 4 kids? There's NO WAY I'm having a little pee trail up my hardwood stairs. Did I just say that?!

Okay moving on . . .

Here's what the kitchen looks like from the Dining Room.

Though it's a little hard to see that's a swinging door on the right. (I just love swinging doors in old houses!) "Why?" You ask, " is there a hole in the Dining Room wall, too?" THAT'S where Mark and my Dad ripped out the old cook stove pipe! Seriously! It really did have a cook stove. And it was a large cook stove pipe encased in brick that my husband manhandled out of the wall. In doing so he opened up enough space to make a pantry there! I told you, ideas tend to grow.


So that's where we stand on the kitchen. All we have to do now is: floors, cabinets, electricity, walls, paint, counter tops, appliances, lights, and . . . oh yeah, build a bathroom. I'll let you know how it goes!

Where have I been? And what have I been doing?!

So many of you have emailed me personally wondering why I suddenly, without warning stopped blogging. And since I resumed, why it's so sporadic?

So here's our little heart to heart chat. The death of my friend's baby has really had a profound effect on me. Not sent me into depression, but has affected so much of my life. I feel like God has made a small part of her pain real to me and I've spent much of my energy in prayer for them. Blogging anything after posting the poem about him, just didn't feel right.

And then, after you've been away for so long, what do you write about? I really didn't feel like my funny, sometimes irrational and usually sarcastic self. So I tried to start up again without saying anything and just hoping I could go on. But I wasn't very successful.

In the meantime, we also bought our new Old House. Remodeling, renovation, reconstruction, and some of my retarded ideas take up a lot of time! And scraping and steaming 7 layers of wallpaper off the walls takes some time, too.

So thank you to the faithful who have still been checking my blog and emailing me daily saying, 'I checked your blog. Again. When are you gonna write something?' And don't you worry, I've got another Redneck Reality coming up soon. Thanks for hanging in there with me. I think I'm back now.

Who's Who?

After much deliberation with Luke and Caleb . . . we cannot figure out who is pulling wallpaper off the wall in the previous post!

Honestly, this is the first time this has happened to me. The trouble with this particular photo is that none of the face or hair is visible. I thought immediately it was Caleb because of his posture, but Luke says it's him.

So then I went to the color of jeans. One is wearing blue and one is wearing black on this particular day. Usually, Luke wears the blue color. However, one day last week, they chose their own clothes and I know Luke chose the black. (It confused everybody and I got a lot of slack for it. But hey people! we gotta give them some sense of individualities!) But . . . I don't remember if this day was that mixed up color day or not!

So as for the prize . . . aka and kelly will have to come up with a compelling case for their answer. You can either leave it in the comments section or email me personally with your defense. The one with the most creative/accurate story will win McDonald's coupons! (Luke and Caleb's favorite!)

Home, Sweet Home

Here she is! Our New Old House



Come on in, let me show you around . . .



Living Room . . . a little work to do with the walls, maybe the floor


This is one of my favorite parts of the house

That skeleton key hangs next to the doorknob! And really works! Someone said it probably works for all the doors in the house. Haven't checked yet, but I'll let you know!



If you ever had a house with this kind of a latch, you know you lived in the country. I love it, too! I don't know what it is with me and doorknobs with this house. But just wait, I've got more to come!

We enlisted the kids' help in taking down the wallpaper. . . . They had a blast!!!


The Foyer before . . .



and after our little demo project!

Did I mention, they REALLY liked destroying the walls? They really did! That's my sister-in-law cleaning up the mess. Isn't she GREAT?!

A prize for the first person to accurately guess which twin that is!

More to come!

Sorrow

Rarely do I run out of words. But I have a dear friend who lost her son 4 days ago. He was an infant Lydia's age. I have literally, physically been aching for her. Often when emotion overwhelms me, I have to put it to poetry. Somehow that helps me process when prose just doesn't seem to work.

So I tried to put words to the pain every mother fears that now my dear friend is living. Here's a glimpse of my heart. Please pray for this family.

Baby Boy

Lost

He was here, right here.

He was mine. Ours. Yours.

He is Yours.

He was a gift. My gift. The gift You gave.

Yours.

I loved him. I love him. I can’t stop loving him!

You loved him. You love him now.

How? Why? When?

I thought he would be here still.

Are You here still?

‘Be still and know . . .’

Here, You are right here.

I feel You.

And he is with You.

Found.

~Jody Robinson April 2008