My, oh my. Time does fly, especially this time of year. I wonder why I keep adding moving to everything else that happens during the holidays? Next year, I'm gonna cut that out.
But things around here are coming together, very slowly. Still quite humble, decor-wise, but we do love it. (Humble is the new chic, I keep telling myself.)
So I saw this kind of framed-number thing in a magazine (which I tried to save in order to show you the inspiration, but it's gone forever). It was like this, but fewer numbers because they were bigger. And I just really loved it. Then I saw these red plastic numbers for sale on
etsy, and I snapped 'em up, knowing just what I wanted to do. Backed with linen burlap and framed in a $14 frame, I'm pretty happy with it. The numbers are arranged to represent the girls' birthdays and our anniversary. Plus a six, which is how many we are in the house now that we have a cat. Ha!
(I stuck the numbers on to the fabric with some really sticky tape I found at the craft store. It's behind the red parts, so you can't see it.)
This is our couch, which is so very ugly that I kind of love it. We will get it covered when finances allow, but for now, it's good because if someone gets a stain on the gold velvet, who the dickens cares?
Olivia (my 13-year-old) made this canvas for us. It's part of an
ee cummings poem and she did it with big sharpie permanent markers. She's so awesome.
An improvised side-table, next to a chair from Goodwill that is so ugly that it's just ugly, so I'm not going to share it. :o)
This (above) is what happens when you hang something by yourself at 10:00 at night. (Under the tape is a nail, because it kept falling down.) I don't want to move it, so I'm going to move the bed sometime. This makes sense to me.
The girls' rooms are very much still under construction, but this canvas is going to be where they can see it every day.
Yoshi continues to find ways to make herself right at home.
That's about it for now, in terms of stuff to show you...I have some time off over the holidays and I hope to finish moving-in then. Some more stuff on the walls would be good, although I'll try not to get too carried away, as I am wont to do.
***
Yesterday while my mom and I and the girls were looking out the window at a very bleak landscape filled with bare branches and lots of brown and grey, a male
cardinal landed in the closest tree. And then another, and another! No fewer than eight of them in all, bright red spots of happiness right there in front of us. We were
entranced, this being only our second winter on the east coast. They stayed and fed for almost twenty minutes, six males and two females, we think. It was such a gift.
Of course, I looked up the symbolism of cardinals right after that (because that's just the kind of thing I love to think about) and I found
this:
"The cardinal reminds us that passion, warmth and vibrancy are available to us, even under the cloak of winter's grey clouds." Isn't that wonderful? It's so perfectly put, I think. In fact, the other day as I was driving to work and listening to some of my favorite songs, I thought
that's what music and literature and nature do for us: they somehow go below the surface of our everyday lives in order to reveal what is beneath. And what is beneath--love, seeking, helping, saving, lifting, praying, crying and laughing--that is what is REAL. Without my books and music and nature (and my loved ones) it would be so very easy to forget this, to forget that under that grey cloak of winter, "passion, warmth and vibrancy" are there, waiting to be discovered.
Our everyday world can be grey indeed. We must remember that we are all hurting, seeking and deserving of love, and especailly that love and hope are there waiting for us all the time--we must go deeper and deeper, each of us and every single day, to find what really, truly matters.
Remember the cardinal, won't you?
Blessings, all.
xoxox.
