While Mother Mary Prays

Blissfully, solemnly holding baby Jesus in her arms cast white porcelain Mother Mary prays over the button and bead flowers that my Rosa made for me at least four mothers days ago.  I think to myself that somewhere I have a digital photo, but I have over 13,000 poorly labeled digital images spanning two laptops and an external drive.  Why keep them if I cannot find them?  I go through this thought process often re: linens, art supplies, gift wrap and craft supplies, spices in the kitchen cabinet and even clothes in the closet.

Mothers' day is as good as any time to reexamine the goals I set out in the beginning of the year.  The simple list, as one reader commented, of not so simple tasks.  Almost to the halfway point I am ready to regroup and see how I am doing (there is a word for this...).

For Mikey, the robot

Kids Craft Weekly - Issue 70: the robot. Mikey loves the robot, pretends to be the robot, watches for the robot, and so it is safe to assume, he would love to make a robot. Although the ideas for gluing together 2d robots on cardboard are pretty, I am afraid my son will have to make something he can turn around and play with. Good thing #4 is the matchbox robot.

Cakie's birthday buildabear handmade

Along with the beuatiful spring decor, three bears theme, and too good to eat vegan cupcake recipe, rubyellen shares the how to build your own sweet handmade bear for kid's birthday party in her blog Cakies.

She shares photos of the celebration an provides her flickr link.

Just beautiful, rubyellen!

some really cool craft and kid blogs

First, story stones by The Crafty Crow. I like these because this is something the boys would love to make. They collect round rocks from the garden and cart them around the back with their Tonka trucks. I think they would like taking it a little further:

Redbird crafts gives all the details. Sweet story I am sure we have all experienced but this is a good solution to creative storytelling.

It reminds me also of this blog called decorating nature, sorry I couldn't find the link, but I wanted to mention this because similarly the artist takes and decorates an element from nature but leaves it there as decoration.

good morning to you four

Birthday Barbeque

The gorgeous weather that told us last week was the intro to spring here in did not hold. It was cold and damp for Tommy's birthday,but the boys were too sick to be going outside anyway. Runny nose and cough, fever, maybe flu (off topic: swine flu in the news started to freak me out last night). Uncle Jes came anyway from boulder, just in time to get out the door for Rosie's soccer game.

She looked like the Michelin Man with a jersey on over her white winter coat. She played awesome forward, but cried a bit after. She said it was because the coach wouldn't put her in defense. Why not I don't know, but she stopped crying when we stopped at the Coffee Cabin, our drive thru in the parking lot of the bike shop, where she ordered a strawberry Italian soda and felt better.

Anyway, Mike and Jes cooked the brisket while I did whatever takes up the whole day every day with very little to show for it, and we ate before the boys passed out with fatigue.

Tiny buds and blossoms have arrived in Cheyenne. Here is the view of our church, St. Marks, from the parking lot. This is near the side entrance which leads directly down to the nursery and up the the kitchen and large meeting room. I liked the blossoming tree, but although I imagined it some fruiting tree, I really have no idea what it is. There is another pretty blossom in the edge of the wrought iron fence, but I don't think my shot of that came out.



These other pictures are from the walk around with Cleo. All of these buds and flowers are in our block. I like the red buds against the whitish grey bark. I would also like to know what these blue flowers are. In many of the yards, like the bulbs, they have begun to emerge from underneath last year's dry growth.

Handmade Housewares on Etsy - Feathered Friends in Pink...Pillow by CoffeeAndCream

Rosie, what do you think of that?

this watercolor was made by Kim Toohey and submitted to Illustration Friday under the topic "fleeting". I can only guess how she did it, maybe from a high contrast photo of Blythe doll. I secretly love Blythe who has huge eyes which come in five colors, and she was only made for one year in the States, the year of my birth.

Back to the matter at hand, I don't want to be a copycat, but I have been wanting to do a stencil project with the kids, and something like this from a photo, projected and painted would work.