Who I Am

I saw this blog Link-Up party for Funky Junk over on my sister’s page and had to join in.

Who I Am

I am a mother, wife, and creative spirit from a creative family heritage. I am a passionate Christian, a conservative, a hard core Janeite, love music and choir, and even other Mormons think I’m ‘churchy’ (and I suppose their right), but I have a fun side as well, and maybe even a (secret) wicked streak, as one of my favorite things is to watch the local news and mock it. I love to smile at my husband’s jokes.

My world revolves around my children.  

  I love skirts, dresses, Barbie dolls, and cute, girly stuff!

 Where I live

I live in a mountain town outside of Seattle. The natural beauty just envelopes me……whenever the clouds part long enough to see it! This is my neighborhood in the Fall.

This is the view from my bedroom window, in the early spring.

What I love about my home

Before building this house, the longest our family had been in a home was three years. We’ve been here for ten. This is our house.

  This is our house in the framing stages. I traced the girls hands near the front door and we signed our names before the drywall went up. Oh! This little one is all grown up and at college now!

I love filling up my house with a big crowd of family.

My favorite room

My favorite room is my bedroom. It’s not the fanciest room in the house, or even the cleanest and most organized. But it is my retreat and sanctuary. When I don’t feel well it comforts me. The curtains need to be replaced, but they are gauzy and airy and romantic. The headboard doesn’t fit our new king sized bed, but nothing in a store makes me smile like those shiny black dragons. The dark aqua paint treatment took me DAYS! But I wish my whole house was as colorful and romantic and rich.

What I like to DIY

Journaling, scrapbooking and family history

 

Decorating and painting

 

Throwing a yearly Jane Austen party

 

   Designing and sewing an occasional Jane Austen dress.

Oil Painting 

And other little crafts.

I wish I knew how to

sew better (and like it)

play the guitar or piano (as long as I’m wishing)

take the time to be a REAL artist, not just an occasional dabbler

be relaxed and organized (again, as long as I’m wishing)

Why I love to blog

(back to the journaling and history….)

I love the record it creates….a colorful, visual record that words in a journal alone can’t describe. I love that it lets me put my accomplishments out there, and put my best self forward, and keep all the parts that are dorky, sloppy, and complete failures to myself.

Unless I choose to share, and then there is a chorus of friendly, supporting voices of family, friends, mothers, fellow crafters, artists and literary fans, and other kind people there to offer support and sympathy.

Thanks friends!

-Lynnae

P.S. Since I wrote this post this morning, my college daughters have linked up too! FUN!

Please visit Paisley Muffin: My Life, My Blog and An Inventory of Shiny, Adorable, and Colorful Things.

Signed, Proud Mom.

Dorothy Tag Swap

I recently made some Dorothy and ‘Wizard of Oz’ inspired tags for Karla Nathan’s Dorothy tag swap. You’ve seen the button on the side of my blog. Now normally I would keep my tags a surprise, but since Karla has asked us to post pictures on Flickr I thought I could go ahead and share them with you also.

This is the tag back.

I had to scan these because the computer wasn't reading the memory card.....

My inspiration was Professor Marvel/The Wizard of Oz. The sepia toned back represents the beginning of the movie, and the front of the card represents the colorful land of Oz.

Don’t we all at some point wish we could get away, as Dorothy says, ‘behind the moon, beyond the rain’….to a place where there isn’t any trouble?

-Lynnae

Sisters Be!

My sister Julianna made this collage with all nine of us sisters.

I am on the top, center, if you couldn’t tell. I come from a large family, and looking at my sisters…we are all so alike, and all so different. I hope my three daughters grow up with the same kind of a bond and love for their family.

I have three brothers also, and I love them dearly. My own daughters were brought up in a home without any brothers. We were pretty much a girl house with girl things and a pink Barbie room, and my husband has always been greatly outnumbered. There is a church song that we often sing at family night that has the line “We must brothers be….” and somewhere along the line my daughters started shouting “SISTERS BE” after the is line. I’m surprised none of them actually said it at church.

There’s something wonderful about sisters.

-Lynnae

More Thrift Store Finds

Today I was out shopping the thrift stores looking for a dress for my daughter’s Halloween costume. Once I had a good dress in hand, I had to do a little searching for myself.

I found two small Battenberg style tablecloths, perfect for my next Jane Austen party, $3.99 each. And then…..and then I saw this lovely beaded scarf, excellent embroidery, excellent color, oh…… from the moment I saw it a regency ball gown developed in my head with this beadwork gracefully flowing down.

Not like anything I had planned to make for this year, so whether I can make it into something in time for this year’s ball I don’t know, but it will be made at some point. The scarf is long, about 8 feet, and a lovely ecru color.

The cost for this piece of loveliness? $4.99.  Score!

 

The Joy of Journaling

In addition to blogging and the Journal Project I’ve done with my Grandmother, I also keep a pretty regular written journal myself. It’s always a big day when I get to start a new journal, and today I started journal #8 with a crisp new title page to write the start date on, and attempt some flourish at writing my name.

I haven’t always been a habitual Journal keeper. I started when I was 12 years old, and though I often wrote daily, there are gaps here and there of a month, and occasionally a year.   The early journals have fun details like crazy day,

A description of my mom’s Corelle dishes from Thanksgiving,

My bedroom floorplan and my sister’s costume for a school play.

 

An addition from a few years ago was the crossed out college shopping list from my oldest daughter’s trip to BYU.

One book from the early 90’s included this sketch of Santa.

Sometimes I stick things in there that are just plain odd, like this score sheet from a game Jordan and I played. Her score became the king, and mine was the queen. The game was played on March 15 and across the bottom it reads “Beware the ides of March”

Do I write this for posterity? Oh, I hope not. I don’t know. It is so full of my fears, inadequacies and complaints. But it also contains my faith, my testimony, and many musings on my gratitude to God. Often I get out my journal and write just to ‘process my thoughts’ and get things out of my system.

On the other hand, how wonderful it would be to have a hand written record of the day to day life of one of my great grandmothers.

I don’t know what will become of it. I am not a real writer. But I do feel that journal writing is very important for everyone. Everyone will benefit from keeping a journal, and it’s never too late to start.

I hope I will fill many more books to come!

-Lynnae

Crazy Candle

After my last post I curled up in front of my fireplace for an antihistamine induced nap. Little did I know this was going on right behind me. Good thing it was a short nap!

The candle I was burning had a ‘breakout’ and dripped down onto the mantle. Not pictured here are my car keys, which were also covered in wax. I broke them out and let them cool and the wax chipped right off.

I set my car keys by a burning candle so I don’t accidently leave the house while a candle is burning. It’s my own little system I’ve made up (one of many) to keep me from being an airhead and it works pretty good (until now).

-Lynnae

Cake Stands

Last month when my mom came to visit, she brought me a gift of a lovely white cake stand.  Thank You Mom!

A few days later we went on a little treasure hunt at Goodwill, and mom had gathered up a bunch of candlesticks and dessert plates. She said she was going to epoxy them together to make mini cake stands. So of course I had to get in on the action and find some things too.

Here’s my loot from Goodwill

Today I finally put them together. I used a regular epoxy that my husband had around for the tall white stand, but it was gray, and I realized I needed a clear glue for the glass plate. Once I found something I got them all together. I hadn’t really thought about how the glass plate would look with the glue. You can see it pressed against the plate in the center.

But I like it so much I don’t care. When I use it for a little party a pretty doily will cover that up nicely.

Once I assembled the cake stands all there was left to do was make some cupcakes (one can’t really photograph naked cake stands now, can we?).

For these treats I used Krusteaz brand Fat Free Cranberry Orange muffin mix, then I added orange zest and Neufchatel cheese* to white frosting that I had on hand. YUM!

I don’t like the cupcake papers, but I was trying to used what I had on hand. I thought of peeling them all, but then I wouldn’t be able to give them away, and would have to eat them all. Even I won’t go quite that far for a blog post.

Speaking of blog post…. I’ve had a weird allergy all day today, and finally took some medicine, so this post has been a race against time. So I will hit ‘publish’, sign off, and hopefully nothing is amiss.

Tomorrow, among other things, I’ll be in Tacoma for a two hour Zumba class. The ‘Party in Pink’ is raising money for Susan G. Komen foundation. I also have a great Goodwill find from yesterday that I need to show you.

* I use Neufchatel cheese in place of regular cream cheese for everything. It is lower in fat than reg. cream cheese but tastes wonderful.

P&P- The Play

I am back home from my travels and ready to settle in for the fall.

One of the fun things that I did while away was to see the play “Pride and Prejudice” at the Utah Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City, Utah. My thirteen year old daughter came to the play with me. We had a great time. The play was very well done. We enjoyed laughing at Mr. Collins especially, although Mr. Darcy had some pretty comic moments himself. It was fun to have Jordan as a play partner. She was thrilled to be seated on the front row of the balcony (The thought of which made my stomach drop several times during the show).

The set was minimal and it was interesting to see how they utilized it for the various locations. The play was very fast paced, which caught me off guard at first. At one moment Jane gets and invitation to Netherfield, and then almost as she reads it the Netherfield cast is assembling around her. It was a very interesting device to get so much story into a play on a minimal stage.

The acting was all first rate, the costumes were lovely, and everyone could be heard clearly, so for me it was a night well spent!

-Lynnae

P.S. Are any of my readers attending the Jane Austen Society of North America AGM in Portland next month? I would be interested in knowing. Also, I started an event page on facebook for the AGM because there wasn’t one yet.