In the Eye of the Storm

Welcome, Family, Friends, and Visitors!  While threatening hurricanes of news swirl around me in the world, and challenging squalls of circumstances rock the boat of this Saylor from day to day, one thing I try to meditate on is how to be in the eye of the storm.  I found this song on YouTube and while it does not reflect my specific experiences, it does speak to my aim to know peace in the midst of our world that is peace challenged. 

In my mind's eye, I see our home with gardens that offer the lovely controlled chaos in scent and sight of the quintessential English cottage garden abuzz with bees and highlighted with fluttering butterflies and hummingbirds. I do not have photos of bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds to show you, but I have seen them here.

 The Joseph Coat rose bushes climb to great heights, but we do not know how to train them to form a lush arbor over us.  They do however amazingly produce over a dozen roses at the tip of a few branches, and if your nose gets close enough you can enjoy their sweet gentle scent.

 The HollyHocks have come back again and are forming promising buds at the tip of each gangling stalk,

 and the Clematis is in lush purple bloom.

 We have several types of Hydrangeas and the white bush presently has the most profuse number of blooms.

 We have done some weeding of the berm out front and some of my adult children have spread Cedar chips to help keep moisture in the soil and hopefully discourage weeds from thriving.

 The wildflowers my youngest son planted down by the pond last year have dared to come back this year and he has been weeding around them since this photo was taken.

 Being born in New England, our family enjoyed having traditional Boston baked beans and brown bread that my mom made.  She had a brown pottery bean pot that my older sister now has.  I have been fascinated in reading in some English novels that the characters often ate beans and an egg on toast and so recently I prepared a version of that for myself and thought it was yummy.

 I just have four more rows to crochet on my Ruby shawl!!!!

At our worship art group last Saturday, I started on a mixed media project focused on the theme that God chooses to build believers together into a dwelling in which He lives by His Spirit. The example our facilitator made is very clever and different in color from what I have started. I enjoyed forming the base she designed and I hope to work more on decorating the houses.

How are you creatively coping with the storms of life in and around you?

May you know joy and peace.

Gracie xx

Five on Friday: Between Storms

1. This month our worship art group worked on a mixed media piece.  Our facilitator gave us a printed sketch of the back of the heads of three women.  Using our facilitator's work as an example, I cut out the shapes of the three women. I glued them onto a watercolored painted background.  I used watercolor, acrylic paints, and a fiber tipped pen to paint over the three women and write the words.  Our facilitator's idea is that the women are looking with hope toward God from their complicated stances in the world. [Be anxious for nothing. Phil.4:6,
Fear not. Isa. 41:10, Think on lovely things. Phil.4:8, Our eyes are on You. Psalm 141:8]

2. On the way home from the art group I stopped by the Tsuru Japanese Garden in Gresham to get a picture of it at the height of Autumn. I was surprised to see so many oranges, reds and yellows.

3. On 302nd Street  several blocks from home I stopped to admire the deepening coat of snow on Mt. Hood and took a picture so you could admire it, too.

4. Expecting some possibly hungry Bible study members I picked six apples to make an apple crisp for them.  I counted 21 apples left on the tree...not fully ripe yet.

5. Rosie has developed a fondness for the media character, Hello Kitty, so we had fun celebrating her third birthday Sunday afternoon with a Hello Kitty theme for her party.

Thanks to Amy from her blog, Love Made My Home, I am posting this on her Five on Friday link, but next week I hope to be driving to and from Sonoma, California, just north of San Francisco, to take my oldest sister out for brunch to celebrate her 75th birthday so I may not be able to visit with you, but I will be wondering:  Are you between storms in your life?

xx
Gracie

Spring Bunny Brunch

Imagine the excitement when my four little grand girlies [ages 8, 6, 3, and 2 received the invitation to our dear friend Grantie's house for a Bunny Brunch! [No matter if they did not understand exactly what a Bunny Brunch would be like, they knew that if they were with Grantie they would have fun!]  Baby Sarah and the adults in our household did not attend the festivities, but the girls' parents took the pictures when they delivered the girls to Grantie's. It's hard to say what was the girls' favorite part of the afternoon, but jelly beans, chocolate milkshakes, and Grantie's tire swing in the backyard have received their high praises :)

While the girls attended their brunch, I attended the Joy of Artful Worship group at a nearby church.  We made mixed media pieces with watercolor paints on watercolor paper.  We used scrapbook paper to glue our houses on the backgrounds we had painted.  The upper right piece was made by our facilitator.  My youngest daughter made the piece on the upper left and I made the piece on the right middle.  Isn't it fun to see how each of us launched off to illustrate Cultivating Community?

On the way home I stopped to take a photo of a pretty tulip tree and another photo of Mt. Hood from Palmquist Avenue that I thought you might enjoy seeing.

During the rest of the weekend I completed a dishcloth for a friend using a pattern Teresa published on her blog.

Meanwhile, my youngest son has been experimenting with several recipes.  He made yummy banana almond flour bread for me...let me know if you want the recipe.  He also made delicious celery soup and garnished it with thin slices of radishes and green onions...sooo pretty and good!

After 20 days of rain we had three days of sunshine, then the first day of Spring marched us toward another ? days of rain...and we aren't even into April showers yet :)

Have any of you enjoyed a Bunny Brunch lately in the rain or shine?

Gracie xx