i am a southern girl. there are rules that must be followed. correct ways to do things. wrong ways to dress. right ways to make sweet tea. one staunch rule is that you don't put shoes on babies until they need them. then, it's shoes from j rays shoe store in mobile. this is how it's always been.

so, i'm soon to have a grandson.

we just returned from a quick little trip to nyc with our oldest son and his wife (our grandson's parents...). first stop, fao schwartz baby department. my tattooed son spotted these and apparently was smitten. "yes, they are cute. but not for babies," i scream but only in my head and to no one in particular. "they are baby shoes," is what comes out of my mouth and is met with an "of course" or two. but, upon closer inspection, they are packaged in the cutest little shoe box and wrapped with the tiniest bit of cheetah-spotted tissue. and, after all, we are in nyc and are feeling quite metropolitan...

so, here's a picture of my grandson's shoes...

snapshots of my life...

that's what my blog is about. some people that i love and respect have blogs of such commendable content. spiritual lessons they are sharing with their dear readers. travels they've taken. items they have for sale on a thriving web site. me, my posts are fluff. they are bits and pieces of a random life. and i don't say that embarrassed or apologetically. life is made up of our choices. we've made decisions in our yesterdays that make up what we are experiencing today. sometimes there are things that may happen out of our control, but the choice comes in what we choose to do with those experiences, how we choose to view them. i've made choices, good and bad, wise and not-so-wise over the course of my life and i've learned from them ALL. my life isn't your life. your life isn't my life. we can, and always should, learn from one another.

thus, the photo from "my room" that i've posted for today's entry. my memo board hanging on the closet door. it's filled with bits and pieces of my life. random thoughts. photos of my favorite people. places i've visited. quotes from old books. a "sash" from my pals. this is me.

yes, i'm here. and not because i made myself be...

thinking about random events and things that make up my life again. thinking about pretty items that were gifts or hand-me-downs (isn't that a lovely phrase?) or purchases from anthropologie. and thinking of my "work room" that used to be caleb's bedroom (i say work room because i don't like the word "craft" when applied to me. i don't exactly know why...). it is ordered chaos. it's the place where i work on and store projects and gifts waiting to be delivered and vintage children's books and estate sale finds and odds and ends of this and that. and ribbons. and photographs. and blank canvases cause id REALLY like to learn to paint-and to sing. this room both overwhelms me and inspires me. but the clutter is purposeful and therefore pleasant. the pups don't like to stay in this room with me cause it used to hold jordan's drum set, which they hated, and actually is in a neat stack in the closet. they'll come in for a peek to see what i'm doing or to take a quick rest, but it's not their favorite room. i think it's mine though...

a snapshot of my life. that's what i envision a blog to be. mine is just that, but from a lovely kind of view.

today, i took the "snapshot" thing literally. on a recent trip to atlanta, i purchased some red, white and blue cupcake accessories to use for the 4th of july. they really were pretty so i styled them for a photo to use for today's entry. which, by the way, is my 14th entry. i did it! 14 day challenge to myself from myself. why did you do it, you might ask? because why not. that's kind of my motto right now. why not. think about it.

maybe i'll post tomorrow, maybe not...

so, i don't know if i've mentioned it before or not, but i like to shop. i really like to shop. not for the gratification of spending money although i'm not a particularly a window shopper. and i don't shop to fill some unmet-need-type area in my life. to me, shopping is a way to see and learn different places; the trends, the people. some shops take me to areas of particular cities that i might not otherwise visit. the act of shopping allows me to, when the time calls for it, to find gifts perfectly suited to someone, gives me almost personal entry into another's life that i might not have accessed. shopping with someone (which i did today. 2 someones. 2 dear to my heart someones. 2 much younger someones who did not irritate me in the least bit even after traveling and shopping with almost 20 hours!) gives me a "cheat sheet" into who they are. quickens deeper relationships. pretty deep stuff i know, but because shopping floats my boat and i do it often, i've actually given it a great deal of thought. looking forward to doing some more...

i'm kinda liking this challenge as i need work in the self-discipline area...

an uneventful day as i was trying to rest for a bit of driving tomorrow-taking a 4-ish hour drive to a shopping day and then headed back that night-but, the day gave me an exciting turn and rained...a good and needed soaking. not too long, just right. the pups and i went out to investigate afterwards and found one of my favorite shady spots with my handy iphone. it looked so refreshing, the top of our cement dog, faithfully holding my basket of cement flowers, a darker shade due to the rain, under the branches of my baby crepe myrtle, with a teeny bit of caladium peeking through. just thought it was a lovely image for today's entry into the world of creativity, and seeing my world through different eyes...

no new or exciting pictures for today's post.

if i had taken some, they would have been from the inside of a store, helping look at pink things for a friend's baby's room.

one thing i'm very good at now is helping (and by helping i don't just mean shopping, but maybe...). i like to selectively help. i don't like to get dirty just to get dirty (and i don't literally mean dirty necessarily, but maybe...)but i'm not against it for a good purpose. and i see good purposes all around me. i know some good people. i was helped, and am helped, along the way. and i'm thankful i'm able to help and that someone would actually want MY help. and it's in helping others, selectively, that i continue to be helped. so great that it happens that way...

my mother-in-law has quite a green thumb. years ago she transplanted some of her ginger into a sunny spot in our yard. they have multiplied (good thing they are a very hearty plant) and the first bloom is something i look forward to as soon as the weather turns warm. the stalks grow to about 5 feet or so, unfortunately, not too many see this height as they grow in emma's favorite spot for hunting lizards, and therefore are often bent in half. this day, in fact, one pal was sunning himself on the leaf nearest the bloom, safely hidden from her view. they smell wonderful...sometimes the first blooming will catch me off guard until the evening i walk into the garage and that undeniable fragrance lets me know they have arrived. makes the summers feel so tropical...

using an old photo-me sad to be leaving nyc in march-cause we booked a quickie (sandwiched between busy days!) trip today! just a couple of nights in the city (2 nights in nyc is better than many nights just about anywhere else...)on my birthday. going to do some grandbaby shopping with our oldest son and his wife, this will be their first trip to there. my hubby booked us in a hotel directly between the 2 destinations i mentioned by name; bloomingdale's and fao schwartz, 2 blocks from each in opposite directions, how great is he? good times...

random happenings...got some much needed rain today. been several weeks since we had any. a young but large and unknown pup slipped out of his home during the storm, decided my pups were cute and set up temporary residence here-found a phone number, left a message, heard from the owners hours later, they were out of town, so loaded up "thibbadeaux" in my rav 4 and took him to his brothers and sisters, aka owner's pre-teen kids...

thinking a lot about anthropologie again...

making some of my homemade journals for goodies for some pals. good to be creative...

excited about a couple of days in nyc...

random and good...

just a thought tonight...

watched a family of birds this afternoon outside our bedroom window put on quite a show. two babies, as big as their momma, sitting outside the nest, obviously not enjoying their first flying lesson, hopping about the tree branches with their mouths open, while their mom flittered from tree to tree, hoping to set a good example. i wondered, do we look like this? appear grown on the outside, feathers full-sized but with our mouths opened wide hoping for another handout?

long days lead to not feeling particularly creative, and this gets me back to why i challenged myself to two weeks of fluffy blogging. it keeps my creativity on ready, lurking just below the surface as well as helping me to see my life a little more lovely-like even when it doesn't feel like it...

so...my iphone takes great photos. to me, the best part is that it's always available. i don't have to plan a photo, i just reach in my pocket and snap. goes back to the randomness of my life, too. i get to see something perhaps overlooked as mundane as beautiful because i've captured a moment.

and, cmon, doesn't get much more mundane than the chore of dishes...thus, the need for a photo of one of my ongoing collections, beautiful dishtowels! how can one think it drudgery to reach into this drawer and grab one of these lovelies to dry a dish or wipe our hands? i began this collection a while ago, mostly with vintage dishcloths. i think my first was an old vera one with hilariously bright 70s colors. however, upon discovery of anthropologie, my cloths from this lovely of lovely stores (and the website, anthropologie.com if you don't have one near you, as in my case, the nearest store is about 4 hours away...) have overtaken my drawer. actually, it's a bit hard to close. i buy them for gifts as well; one is on a ship on it's way to samoa, some are at my mother-in-law's house. i encourage people to use them, they are useful pretties. suppose it's time to begin paring the dishcloth drawer down. but i guarantee that my anthropologie towels are staying put...

these happen to be from our trip to new york, but i actually have quite an extensive collection of shopping bags.

i've collected them for years. some i might keep just temporarily but others will stay with me for awhile. some of my favorite bags right now are from mackenzie-childs and anthropologie. but i have some sentimentals from shops in south america. i think i've always been a bit of a collector. i remember once while traveling with my family as a kid, my very wise mother talked me into collecting squares of toilet tissue from various bathrooms along the way...or keeping my dad's souvenir swizzle sticks from flights he had taken. right now i've slowed down the acquiring just a bit, but not without at least once a month, while frequenting my favorite estate sale at a local antique store, adding a perfect piece of china to my collection of mismatched china. or really unusual bracelets. and old children's books, particularly really lovely reading textbooks. maybe really great kate spade bags. my rule is now that i must be able to incorporate my new find into an already existing collection. unless perhaps it's a piece of bunnykins baby dishes, which i think would look really lovely in a brand new stack in my kitchen...

technically, this is a thursday post since i am still up and working on my thursday. it's the end of a busy and rewarding day, yes, doing things completely uncomfortable! i think i wouldn't want it any other way...i am so thankful for every minute, don't want to waste a bit.

finished my activity by wrapping up a "new baby" basket, complete with the crunchy plastic bags that i've grown so fond of. had to post a photo because it begged to be photographed.

as i doze off to a peaceful night's slumber, visions of pink shall be dancing in my head. along with thoughts of this random life i lead...

lovely thoughts...i am in the middle of probably one of the busiest times in my life. i turn 49 this july and life has taken on some surprising faces. i'm not a "5 year plan" type. i know some things, some destinations but the inbetween sometimes catches me a little off guard, like being so busy at this time in my life. this blog, in the way i view it, keeps me creative. it uses the "ahhhh" side of my brain, that's the comfortable side to me. it's just not the side of the brain that i'm using so much right now. that's the uncomfortable yet surprisingly lovely thought...who knew what a renewed sense of purpose could have done for this 48 year old?

so, this picture, like this blog, reminds me of the lovely in my random life... this was taken on a recent visit to NYC (my first visit!) as my husband and i celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary one year late... the entire trip was pretty much made up of trips to various stores. in this photo, i'm mapping out our trip to Mackenzie-Childs or Century 21 or some other completely wonderful location. i'm wearing a necklace i bought from an artist in fairhope, alabama. on the ballerina is the word "dance". i'm not a dancer but i fancy vintage ballerina ephemera. it was chilly. we were standing in battery park. in one of the greatest cities in the world. me with one of my favorite people in the world, my husband, larry, who is also one of my favorite shopping companions as he is very strong and can hold lots of shopping bags and works very hard on being patient with me as my life and destinations get more random, kind of like this post...

this is a photo of me at about the age of 3. what you can't see is my huge grandfather holding me next to one of my favorite people in the world, Ma, my dad's mother who died right after my oldest son was born. i'm holding an apple that i've taken a few bites out of and there is a hideous light fixture hanging from the ceiling. pictures like this evoke bits and pieces of memories. maybe one day i'll post the whole photograph, but right now, i like this one. larry, my husband has saved this one as "baby bunny" and i like that, too. i like being someone's baby. this picture reminds me that i'm lots of wonderful people's baby. and i like that, too...

so, day 2 of my (at least) 14-day blog challenge to myself...been thinking of my adult children...

when the oldest, caleb, left to attend college 6 hours away in tennessee, i felt such an emptiness. every visit there or when he came home, i would cry for hours, missing him being around. this is when i got my black lab, emma. yes, she was my "i need to be needed", and she did turn out to be a good decision, but wasn't a substitute. when our youngest, jordan, (this is a photo of him at yankee stadium on a recent trip with his dad) left two years later, i literally stayed in bed for three days. all i every wanted to be was a mom and now, although i was still "mom", the job description had changed and no one had asked me if it was okay...

when i look back on those days, i realize i was feeling sorry for myself, which actually is a dangerous thing to do. i don't know exactly what moment the light dawned, but i do know it was Purpose. my life has been redefined and it continues to be, that's the uncomfortable part i spoke of in yesterday's post, yet, surprisingly enough, also the wonderful part.

hopefully, others will watch me and my random life and find hope in theirs...

so, if blogging is seeing your life through different eyes, which i recently read, i have decided to just go with it...people often ask me, "what do you do with your days?" and, often, i can't really say except that i stay busy. i like being busy. perhaps that's why i like "projects" so much. walking into a store with a specific purpose. watching a movie and getting inspiration for an upcoming party. listening to a song on the radio and having an idea sparked for a conference. at any rate, this photo, which i snapped with my iphone-some of my favorite pictures have been taken this way-was as i prepared to attend a youth group's "girl's nite". making up these bags was a last minute idea and in fact i had most of the materials for them already, just random goodies. so, a trip to a couple of stores, a heart shaped drinking straw, some candy love beads that i found for 39 cents a piece, and i created "chick goody bags". as i was wrapping them, the colors and shiny plastic bags (right now i like the crunchy ones!) screamed for a photo...

seems, i think, this is my life. good, bad, ugly. i'm enjoying each minute and thankful for the little random things...

so in this frame of mind, at a particularly busy period in my life that is filled with the wonderfully uncomfortable tasks i currently find on my plate, i've challenged myself to drink in the wonder of creativity each day and to document it. yikes. there, i've said it. i'm committing myself to blogging each day. right now, i say each day for two weeks. maybe it's for you, dear reader. more than likely, there is a bigger lesson in this that's just for me as is very often the case and i realize this more and more as i grow older.

so, goodnight, see you tomorrow...

something about this area of the yard reminds me of blogging. plus, the weather has been perfect. plus, dogs are cooperative photography subjects in perfect weather.

anyway, this is emma's favorite spot now. the lizards hang out here and she knows it. she fancies herself a great hunter but is not particularly good at spotting them. she sees them when they move, but it seems as though lizards are aware that movement makes them easy to find. this photo, although not perfect in it's timing (she was in pure pose, till i clicked...) it is classic emma now. she "hunts" for lizards by watching my index finger...when i see one, i raise a finger in the reptile's direction and she will commence the search. this is a picture of her looking for lizards while looking at my finger as i look for lizards for her...

today was another perfect weather day. very unexpectedly on the cool side. low humidity. very refreshing. the gardenias are fragrant and my basil, bless it's heart, only gets used in floral arrangements, which you should try. the combination of scents is summer...

we just returned home after spending a long weekend at a dog-friendly beach and lovely beach house. the occasion was to kick off summer, having the weekend before graduated our youngest son from auburn university. it was a couple of days of nothing, just as planned. a house filled with those we love (including the pups, who, by the way, were not particularly thrilled to be there. happy to be included, but a bit wary all the same). the refrigerator stocked. trips up and down the beachwalk to doze in the sun. no agenda, just a time for clearing the head and the calendar. i highly recommend it...

i am a huge fan of projects. i like helping to put on events, big and little. my brain thinks in terms of themes. a title on an email triggers a package thought... a silver charm gives me an idea for a party... perhaps it comes from a teaching background with a history of hundreds of bulletin boards in various classrooms over the years. maybe it's that i always need a creative release. maybe it's because i like to shop but really dislike window shopping and this way there's always something specific to look for...

whatever the case, this photo is from my latest project. a ladies' tea. the kind where everyone decorates their own table. i like the small surface area (i.e, a tabletop) as i get a glimpse into what other women are thinking...this particular tea had a 50s theme as the subject for the day was "50 ways to be a better woman". good stuff. one of my contributions was a "slumber party" table, aptly named because i got to clump all my thoughts into a common goal since i just couldn't successfully narrow it down! i used a sheet for a tablecloth, my favorite mismatched (the only way i use it) fiesta ware, several Betty Betz books which i've been collecting from eBay, curlers, coke bottles, french poodle knife rests and napkins, an autographed "crush" photo (which was a character my husband had portrayed years earlier for a summer camp for kids), and these cute "little pink book" address books that i found at a bookstore for favors.

several weeks worth of creativity culminated in a single afternoon, then slept for many hours...

it was one of those perfect weather days. one of the reasons that we all are so fond of springtime. all the girls (2 jack russells and a black labrador) accompanied me this morning into the back yard for a bit of sizing-up as i made a mental garden store "to be purchased" list. as you can tell by this photo, the sun was juuuuust right... millie and sophie, who are not naturally fond of one another and therefore are rarely photographed together, were attacked by the sun and sleep monster in the exact same spot. i couldn't resist snapping their picture and, being new at the whole blogging thing, this gave me a thought for a new entry. ahh, the life...

so, i say i fancy myself an artist, among other things. i think i'll title this entry "rainman" as that's how my oldest son refers to my random thoughts...

at any rate, spring has arrived. in fact, we've already had some days in the upper 70s with high humidity which i affectionately call "bad hair days", seeing as my hair is too curly to lay straight but not curly enough to be hip. it is in the in-between and soaks up the moisture in the air and responds with what my husband calls "yakkish hair". just by that description you can probably picture my hair exactly! today, however, is a lovely day. low humidity, the ground is wet due to recent storms, and just a bit of coolness in the air. some of my iris' have responded favorably and i couldn't resist snapping this photo with my iphone as my labrador, emma and i embarked on our morning walk, where lately we have found all sorts of interesting creatures and sights. i will add, happily, that i emailed the photo to myself from my phone to my desktop, saved it in my images, and uploaded it into my blog all by myself. necessity...

blogging...

the idea of a blog has always been a lovely thought to me...brings to mind romantic notions and seeing the world through the eyes of an audience. however, since i am the only "girl" in a family with three very intelligent, very technologically saaaavy men, because blogging is done on a computer (gasp!), i felt it out of reach. but, here i am. an empty house (except for my three companions/shadows/playgroup...emma the black lab, sophie the perpetually youthful jack russell and mille the jack russell who lives in her own happy little world) alone with my thoughts and a computer!

shopping online for a project table, you know the higher than table height, with bookcase cubbies and stools which i stumbled upon at sam's club one saturday afternoon but didn't purchase because i didn't realize how much i wanted it, and a google-search lead me to an artist's blog that included my project table, and one thing lead to another, and here i am. in my imagination, i am an artist and come and go freely in and out of that world. i enjoy being creative. it wakes me up early some mornings but i mostly enjoy using the gift of creativity for others. right now, "project" is just about my favorite word. which reminds me to resume my table search...