Happy Palm Snowday!

So it's been a few weeks since my last blog post, sorry folks, I've been boggled with a lot of freelance lately which is a good thing!! I'm saving up for this long list of home improvements that I plan to make this spring and summer. My house has a lot of space but I feel like I'm not using it to the fullest, I've been in my house for three years and I've only managed to hang a mirror and a Tron poster. I have so much art that I need to frame. And I can't wait to get rolling on redoing my basement, I have a rather rad 80s toy collection that is screaming to be displayed (and played with ha ha).

Since my last post we got a POPE! I went to the symphony, ate free pie, saw a production of Footloose, celebrated my dad's birthday and laughed a lot with great people.

On a weather side note, yesterday people were in shorts and it was 50 degrees outside, today's forecast?  About 5 inches of snow, welcome to Illinois. Well, Holy Week has commenced, I've got my fresh palm branch and time to delve into some meditation and prayer this week. Where is your favorite place to find peace and quiet?

Room to think and grow

I've been delving into painting more recently, this is one that is currently in the works. I'm inspired by the fluid lines of art nouveau design as well as the subtlety of realism and surrealism. My subject matter runs the gamut, but I find figures and landscapes most fascinating. While at my day job, sometimes it's all I can do to keep myself focused on my work when images like these are fluttering through my waking brain, tapping on my forehead just begging to be set free. Turning off the TV these past few weeks has forced me to fill my need for visual stimuli in other manners. This Painting is only 10''x10'', I think I'm finally ready to go bigger and experiment with plein air techniques.

March in with a Mask

So, has anyone seen February, I just had it then I looked away for one minute and it was gone. It's been a busy month, and a fruitful Lent thus far as well. One of my non-Catholic friends asked me how long Lent was and I said 40 days. His response, "Yikes!" I look forward to Lent though I've grown out of giving up candy and ice cream, I've decided to evaluate the bad habits that are holding me back from being productive and focusing the necessary time for a healthy spiritual life. Distractions are a part of life but they grow on us like a warm blanket and we end up inviting even more in if we don't police it carefully. Thus I gave up Facebook, cut back on TV during weekdays, and invoked a 12pm curfew. And I must say the house is so quiet without the TV, I can hear myself think a lot louder and have been catching up on projects and visiting with friends. Recently I've been designing iphone covers for an online company as well as logos for a photographer and lawyer. I've been painting a lot more lately too, I go in spurts, and I'm going to embrace this batch of creativity while I can!

On a side note, I went with some friends to the downtown cathedral where Bishop Jenky held a prayer service for our now former Pope Benedict XVI, and we offered up our prayers for the new Pope to come. It was a gorgeous service and quite crowded. But the really cool thing that happened afterward, is Fr. Joe took my friend Jody and I to the reliquary chapel in the back of the cathedral - what people don't realize is that there are bone fragments in cases of dozens of the bodies of the saints. It's a little creepy, I agree, and odd to think of your body being split into a million tiny pieces when you die, but is was also really cool. They are very tiny but in beautiful little ornate cases and ornaments, even the hairs of Mother Theresa!

Gross but worth it...

Tada!! There really was a pearl inside, (no, it did not have "stupid american" written inside thank you very much co-worker Jeff). Getting to this lovely little gem was no picnic, I had to drain the 60 year old can of formaldehyde, then grab the rubber gloves and butter knife to fish it out. Let me just say, I do not know how people eat oysters, makes me shudder. But lo and behold, after much prodding and twisting this shiny little thing appeared. So here comes my existential metaphor for the week: life is a lot like an oyster, mysterious, the future is tightly closed from us, but if we take the initiative and our trusty butter knife to make an earnest effort through all of the muck and messy stuff, we may find a pearl for our efforts. I challenge you to keep going for it, what is the pearl that you are striving for?

ET, A Pearl in a Can, and a lotta dreams

So....I went to an estate sale, if you can't already tell that by the menagerie of oddities on this table. So many treasures. This was one of those sales where they post the photos of what to expect on the web, right away I spotted a few things I was going for and they were already mine! BACK AWAY FROM THE E.T.! I got up super early before work to go, normally my mom would join me but she's off galavanting with her sisters in Cali. The owner was a really great quirky lady with a penchant for 100s of salt and pepper shakers, a pinball machine and two carnival funhouse mirrors in the basement! I snagged this lot, the house was packed and I was #47 so I wasn't getting the prime time stuff (plus I'm cheap as can be so I peruse the corners and dig in boxes). I can't wait to give my dad the MASH calendar for his birthday, it was for the last year that the show ran and Joyce, that's her name, marked the date of the last episode in it. There is even a foldout poster in the middle! The whales are for Carrie at SwankyLadyVintage, the scarves and West Germany set are for Etsy, so is the pixie girl, I have to get her out of my sight before I keep her for my very own. 

Seriously if you don't like E.T. you must be slightly dead inside, go back to your hovel and find a glowing heart already. I reached around a lady who was blocking my way looking at something else to snag him. I've never seen this one before and simply wanted him for my collection, then I saw online that some guy on eBay is asking a ton! He's mine, mine all mine, I just have to keep him out of the sun.

The West Germany set was a major find too! So thrilled! All in all my lot cost $12.85, which seems low, so I tallied up all of the items again and realized I was mischarged! I actually owe them $5!

This had to be the oddest item I found, which says a lot given my collection above. This is a souvenir oyster from Japan, preserved in formaldehyde, it quite blatantly says "DO NOT EAT ME" on the labels all around. It contains a pearl in the oyster, and when you shake it you can hear the shell rolling around. I WANT TO OPEN IT! I must fulfill what Joyce could not! It reminds me of when I was a kid and we would buy a bucket of geodes on the Spoon River then crack them open to see if we had crystals, except I have a feeling that this is going to smell like sophomore year biology class. I will keep you updated to let you know if my $1 was well spent!!

In the land of quirk and Batman

For those of you who aren't aware, I run an Etsy store. I have for the past 4 years. Not the kind of venture to quit my day job over but a fun side business. I sell a little bit of everything, mostly things that my mom has parted with. She is the notorious jewelry collector of our family, she used to buy junk bags of jewelry, take the few good pieces and give me the rest. I started selling it and little things that I would pick up at garage sales, estate sales, flea markets and hand-me-downs. One of the coolest things I sold recently was a Batman ring from 1966, I sold it to one of the biggest Batman collectors in the nation and he had the matching bracelet but had not acquired the ring. I was thrilled! Also the Danish modern vase that I picked up at a garage sale years ago sold to a boutique called NEST in New York. Everything has a story and it is so neat to see where they go from here. And yes that is a thermometer tie clip, I picked that up in California at the end of last year and it was about 90 degrees outside. Whew, one hot deal!

2013 March for Life Pilgrimage

My apologies for my absence over the last few days, I've been in DC. I volunteered to be a chaperone on our Diocese March for Life trip. It was a spiritually reaffirming trip, full of lively souls and quiet prayerful moments. It was surreal to be surrounded by 500,000 people all of different cultures and religions, standing up for a single cause - LIFE. Every life matters, and in the words of Dr. Seuss "A person's a person, no matter how small." No matter how a person was conceived, they are a person, worthy of respect and love. Some of my friends are pro-choice and I love them to death though we disagree. They argue that it's better for women to have abortions because our social services and foster care systems are appalling, well I'm sorry but something is seriously wrong with a country where it's better to be dead than be in the system. I also learned that children are a gift, not an entitlement. There were several parents of adopted children in attendance (a few in our group alone) and though they were not able to naturally conceive, they were called to adopt and it changed their lives. Everyone is wanted by someone. Change is coming and I'm proud to be a part of it. We also got to experience a taste of DC, I'd never been there and I already want to go back. The museums are absolutely amazing and we were literally speedwalking through, I about died at the Gemstones exhibit, I LOVE ROCKS! They were so pretty I wanted to spend all day there. I also got to know the youth of our parish a bit better, they are hilarious and creative and they give me hope for our future :)