A Pink Fiesta

Look what I just found!

Fiesta ‘Flamingo’!

This will be a great addition to my lovely rainbow of Fiesta dinnerware. I’m so excited!

The color is still in preorder but I ordered a few to add to my collection. I’m so excited. They look so lovely!

In other news…. Our England trip is less than a month away. I’m freaking out a little bit right now. And I’m so very grateful I have a sister who lives there to not only invite me, but be familiar with the area a bit. It’s strange to travel without my husband.

Speaking of his deployment, he ate camel meat. Can you believe it?

And on the home front, today is the last day of school. My daughter went to the park with friends and I brought them a bag full of treats to celebrate. And in an unusual twist for Washington, it actually LOOKED like summer. Hoorah!

-Lynnae

One Week Down…….

My sweetie has been gone just over a week now. Over 9 months to go for his deployment. Just writing that sort of takes the wind out of my sails a little bit.

I know I’ve been a crummy blogger lately. Between getting up at 4:30 every morning for an early morning job (which tires me out), and preparing for my husband to be gone (which saddens my heart) I just haven’t had the mental energy to sit and blog and say everything except what I’m thinking about non-stop.

I have done a few little projects around the house this week. One that I’ve had a lot of fun with is fixing up my porch with more flowers and trying to make it more inviting.

Here’s the view from the front Yard….

-Lynnae

My Daughter is Married

I guess the word is poignant.

When she and her new husband walked out of those doors husband and wife I was overflowing with joy. My oldest daughter was married, married to a great young man I admire, with a family I’ve grown to adore. She married in the Holy Temple in a beautiful ceremony with her loved ones around her, a lovely, worthy, Daughter of God. As a mother I could not be more pleased. As the days pass I miss her a little bit, even though she’s spent most of her time at college the past few years I begin to feel a little wistful. My first little girl.  It’s sad, but as I sometimes say, it’s a good sad.

   I hope my younger daughters follow her example someday, but at the moment I just want to hold them tight.

Being enormously busy planning a wedding and reception did help to shield me from the emotions that start welling up now. But I just keep acknowledging that it is a ‘good sad’ and I’ll see her again soon.

-Lynnae

Wedding Plans: Bridals

Yesterday was a big day in the wedding preparations world, which is pretty much the world I exist in right now. We met with the woman making the wedding cake, and she also brought some yummy cake with her.

Library at University of Washington

  It was also the day for my daughter’s bridal photos. So her hair was done and the trip to Seattle was planned despite it raining cats and dogs. I bought a huge umbrella and prayed for a sun break. It cleared up in time for her late afternoon photo shoot. I took a few photos for the scrapbook of her and the photographer. Joshua from Joshua Gene Photography was great and really fun to work with. Unfortunately for you, all photos of the bride in the dress are under wraps until the wedding day. But I did snap a few pictures of the lovely locations we visited.

Lovely garden that will remain nameless for the time being because upon leaving we saw a sign that said no commercial photography was allowed. Whoops!

As enchanting as all this looked, it involved rushing around all day, eating nothing except cake samples, and neglecting my other daughters. I’m grateful to my second daughter who stepped in when daughter number 3 was having a bit of a meltdown about her 8th grade project being more lame than anyone else's.  That’s life in the real world. We got home from the bridal shoot at 10 pm, I ate more cake, and then stayed up until 1 am cutting new holes in the album filler sheets for said project because I bought the wrong type of pages and my hole punch was lost.

It’s good that there’s always a little something to keep me grounded.

Tomorrow my good friend down the street is hosting a bridal shower for my daughter, and then the next day we’re off to more showers and parties in ..…….

New Orleans!

Stay tuned,

-Lynnae

P.S. The 8th grade project turned out more awesome than anyone else’s.

On Into May

The arrival of May for me has been like waking up from a fog. Here is a brief sampling of what I’ve been up to.

I bought fabric for a Jane Austen dress for the AGM in Portland. My Mom is going too and it is going to be FUN! One fun fact about this cloth….I had the same fabric in an empire waist long dress I had when I was a kid. My mom made all the girls matching dresses for Christmas one year. I wonder if any of those dresses are still kicking around? They would be great for a little niece to wear to my next Austen party!

My second Daughter is overcoming her health problems. As I write she’s taking an AP History test (You go girl!) And a month ago I was wondering how she would even make it to graduation. I am so grateful to the Lord for her recovery. Here is a sneak peak at her prom dress.

 

My oldest Daughter brought her boyfriend up to our place to visit Washington and meet us over spring break. We liked him, I hope he liked us, and I think we had a lot of fun and ate a lot of sushi.

I am exercising again. To say my foot is better is not accurate really, but I couldn’t take it any longer. Besides, gaining back weight I fought so hard to lose is not going to help the foot either. But that’s another story.

I’m trying to get ready for the ‘Where Bloggers Create’ party I mentioned in the last post. Since writing that I acquired the summer issue of ‘Where Women Create’. <SIGH> It’s so beautiful. I have already been through the ‘first perusal’, and the ‘reading-every-word-cover-to-cover’, now I will go through and dog-ear the pages that I really REALLY love….

As for my studio space, There’s a few things I need to finish up, but with the blog party being days after daughter’s graduation, I have to be realistic about what I can get done. I am committed to participating though, ready or not!

Another Day

This is a picture we took on Sunday of me and my sweet husband Jon. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I liked it so much I had to put it up here. The second is Jon practicing his best ‘Jack Donaghy’ look.

 What a cutie!

I have a lot of errands and household stuff to get done today to prepare for Easter, and my trip next week. Things with my daughter are a little more upbeat since seeing the neurologist yesterday. We don’t know anything yet but feel the ball is rolling now. She has a lumbar puncture tomorrow. She went to school yesterday afternoon, and today will be her first whole day this week. She will do what she can and not stress about the rest. She did tell her work she can’t go in for a while. We’ll take it easy and hope things get resolved soon. Jon met with the school counselor and she also picked up her cap and gown. What a crazy month it’s been.

-Lynnae

Bride and Prejudice

My family watched ‘Bride and Prejudice’ again this weekend. I love Jane Austen adaptations and this one has really grown on me. I admit it’s corny in places, but I love it more every time I see. Why aren’t there more musicals based on Austen?

This show also leaves me with the feeling I need more color in my life. The bright colors and staging remind me of old MGM musicals from the 40’s.

Here’s an interesting tale about the first time I saw this show. Before my daughter had her license my husband and I took her to a church dance in a town that was 40 minutes from where we live. Since there wasn’t much time to go home and back we decided to make a night of it. We brought the ‘Bride and Prejudice’ DVD, and after we dropped her and her friends off at the church dance we went to a theater and bought soda and a bucket of popcorn. We took it back to the church where we parked, popped the DVD in the player, and climbed into the back seat with our popcorn.

We were JUST WATCHING THE MOVIE! But apparently the chaperones patrolling the parking lot were suspicious of our fogged windows and had to come tap their flashlight on the car door and chat with us. Surprise- old married people, haha.

Once we explained our marital and logistical situation (that would be living too far from that church building) we were left to resume the movie.

It’s like they say in the movie, “No life, with no wife”.

-Lynnae

I’m Dreaming of a White Table……

…Or, How to turn my frown upside-down.

Today started off pretty crummy. Regular readers know that I had Dry Needling and a Cortizone shot a while back in an attempt to help my plantar fasciitis and was told I would not be able to jog or do aerobics for eight weeks. Now I am in week TEN and my foot still hurts. So either it’s healing very slowly or it didn’t work.

  You may not know that over the past few years I’ve lost 100 lbs. It’s not something I’ve shared with the blog, though it’s one of my greatest accomplishments. That’s a story for another day. But I just have to emphasize how important exercise is to me. I have returned to Jazzercise, and do a ‘hardly moving’ low impact workout, but today in class it was all I could do to not start bawling. Seriously, loud music pumping and everyone’s happy and I’m blinking away because I’m so frustrated with this darn foot.

I wish I’d never had the stupid shot!

So, my foot is pretty good if I sit around all day, but what mom can do that? Plus, thanks to an old car accident, sitting too long makes my neck and back hurt. So these days I feel like it’s a choice between my neck or my foot.

I will stop whining now. I know many people are worse off than me, so I’m trying to get a grip and just be thankful for what I have. In an effort to ‘flip this day’ (you know, like flipping a yucky house into a nice one?) I decided to paint a table I got at Goodwill a while back. The table cost me $19.99.

Original table

I added little wooden embellishments on either side at the base, primed it and painted it white with old paint we had around.

I LOVE IT!

It still needs another coat but I was anxious to show it off.

Close up of the embellishment.

So now I feel a little better. Plus crawling around to paint it I was neither on my foot or sitting all day.

My kids went to see holiday lights and Jon isn’t home from work yet. Thanks for allowing me to be vent some frustration, and yeah, maybe whine a little.

It’s cocoa time.

Of Hemlines and Timelines

12:45 pm- I am supposed to be making a few alterations to my daughters homecoming dress…..to ‘bring it up to code’. Whether that’s Mormon code or Mommy approved code, it’s one in the same. I’ve been looking forward to it but now I find I keep stalling.  Every other household project I put off starts to suddenly seem more attractive. That’s me stalling. Sew the darn dress!

   I am definitely not a seamstress, but my little projects and alterations usually turn out pretty good. But who knows, maybe this will be the day I fail miserably.

1:15 pm-  The mom of another one of the double-daters just called all excited to chat about the get together time, which will be an amateur photo shoot for all the moms to fawn over our little darlings. I am so excited- and delighted she is doing this at her house because while I can be very enthusiastic, the thought of organizing and hosting events usually makes me get anxious and cry.

1:50 Daughter and I just got back from ordering the boutonniere. I also just realized that her skirt has black netting and I bought black tulle. So it’s time for a run ‘down the hill’ to JoAnn’s, which is actually a 35 minute commute.

Better get moving!

8:25 pm- UPDATE…I’m finished! Here’s a peek.

I added a little length with the black at the bottom, and an overlay of the netting so it matched what was already there. Even with the jacket the neckline was a bit low, so we found a black camisole that looks great, however I decided to add some black interfacing to the lace in front so it’s not so see through ( I slipped a paper in there so you could see it against the black of the jacket). I think it all goes great with the style of the dress. Now I just get to fret about doing her hair tomorrow.

-Lynnae

Baroness von Puur Chocolade Hagelslag

“There’s a surprise downstairs”.

Usually when my husband says that I am less than thrilled. It often means either he’s got me some kind of weird gag gift he knows I’ll hate (Obama mints?) Or he wants me to see some programming work he’s done and I can’t possibly grasp how amazingly cool it is or how much time it took to come up with those eight lines of code.

Soooo, Saturday  he informed me there was a surprise downstairs.

And guess what? There was Chocolate! NOW were talkin’!

You see a couple years ago he went to Amsterdam, and upon returning he informed me that what I previously thought of as a country with a confusing name (or names) was actually a land where people dump chocolate flakes all over their morning toast. How did I not know that? How could my intuition not tell me that there was such a country on this earth?

Recently he wanted to order another box of chocolate sprinkles- which are nothing like chocolate sprinkles in America that are brown but just taste blah. These babies are packing some serious cocoa! He found however, that they wouldn’t ship unless he ordered a bunch. Yessssssssss!

Do you see that? Do you see the chocolate on the toast? That’s the Suggested Serving, folks.

You have to obey that.

Here we see Extra Dark chocolate sprinkles, Dark Chocolate flakes, Milk chocolate flakes, Regular dark Chocolate Sprinkles, Two Boxes of Milk chocolate sprinkles, and a bag of chocolate Euros.

And their all MINE!!!!! (except for a box that will be making it’s way to a very special college girl in the near future).

My advice- don’t tell anyone you have it.

Little Ones

 

I had a dream I was standing by my two year old girl looking in a mirror. I gleefully lifted her and spun her around, then we looked in the mirror together and smiled at out happy faces.

Then I woke up to the real world where this toddler is really 12 years old and loves Yearbook club and playing X-Box with dad.

I never liked fall, but these past few years it’s growing on me. I think of baking and Christmases past. But mostly I feel sentimental about my little girls. Because all I ever wanted to be was a mommy,  and now one is at work and one is in college, and I’m left feeling like sand is slipping through my fingers on most days.

Creative Jane Austen Challenge

Maybe I woke up on the snarky side of the bed this morning, but today while browsing the latest issue of Martha Stewart Living I just couldn’t take it anymore. I never really subscribed to it, but when Home Companion quit printing they switched for Living to finish out my subscription.

Anyway….

That calendar thing at the front has always ticked me off. It’s so ludicrous. On August 4th Martha is going to open her windows for cross ventilation. Yippee. I hope there’s not a rainstorm that day. And her dogs must REALLY be looking forward to August 22nd, when they get to go on a walk. I’ll bet they’re making a paper chain to count down the days.

I am a real life woman with a three foot pile of laundry on my couch and two weeks worth of mail piled up on my kitchen counter. Every day I yearn to do something creative, (that’s right, YEARN), But by the time I’ve started the laundry and exercised so I don’t blow up like a balloon, the wind is pretty much out of my sails. So I express my creativity in costumes for the kids, projects or other ‘have to do’ things, and end up feeling stressed and miserable.

I know yesterday I shirked my duties to run off and play, and maybe this is the rebound. But what do you do? How often do you get to craft or make art or write or WHATEVER?

Well, I’m not going to let some woman with a staff of 50 dictate how I feel about myself or my ability to express myself creatively in my home. I’ve got better plans for August. And if I announce it here, then I can’t back out. So here goes!

Celebrate Anne Elliot’s

Birthday with me!

August 9th is Persuasion heroine Anne Elliot’s birthday. And you can bet her snooty self serving family never threw her a party, so I’m going to do it!

I’ll post more details soon, but just so you can get to work…your gift to Anne Elliot could be anything creative, from mixed media to poetry to a photographed vignette. The theme is Jane Austen’s book Persuasion, or Anne Elliot herself. Consider the romance, the long lost love, the seaside…….Be creative and get to work. On the 14th I will link to all participants so everyone can see.

Anne is the only one of Jane’s girls that was given a birthday, so lets make it good!

I’m feeling better already. Don’t forget to open your windows on August 4th!

Blog Giveaway Winner

I’m so sorry to keep everyone waiting.

Today I happened to pleasantly engaged in a little sea bathing.

But now, with out any further delay, the winner is…………

.

.

.

.

Oma!

Yes, you win! My daughter pulled your lucky name out of the Tupperware bowl (glamorous, I know!). So please send your mailing address to me at lynnaep at aol dot com, or, since I know you you can send it in a message on my facebook.

I had so much fun making and planning my giveaway I may do another one soon so stay tuned everyone!!!

Dear Ol’ Dad

My Dad is quite a character. I’m sure he was he was even as a boy. My dad is on the bottom left.

He has a great mix of humor and patience. When people ask about his children, he likes to say he has three sons. When they say, “Oh, no daughters?”, then he will say, “Oh, yeah, I have nine daughters too.”

This is my Mom and Dad when I was born.

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and Dad. He would often tell us bedtime stories and we’d be piled all over listening to story after story. They would often descend into strange rhyming stories as he would bounce his foot or tap his hand against the wall. If he didn’t have a word to rhyme he would just make one up, and we would laugh.

Here is my Dad as ‘Chef Burtoni’ with one of my sisters. He did a lot of the cooking when my mom was busy with the babies. He would always stomp around the kitchen shouting some kind of rhythmic Indian type chant he made up.

Here is a picture I took of Dad when I was about 13. He was going to shave off his beard. He had to get on his western hat for the picture.

My Dad encouraged my talents and was proud of me. When I took years of Spanish he would encourage me to go over and talk to ‘so and so’ who spoke Spanish also. I was mortified because I was so shy.

When I was growing up he was always telling us about some fascinating decorating, or house, or view he had seen while he was out putting up draperies.

Once when I was down visiting California with him before college in the 80’s he took me to a house where he was working. The couple invited me in. The woman had a great home and studio in LA near the Greek row of some college. She showed me her studio and drawings. She also had art hanging around her house made of intricately folded paper encased in glass. Her drafting table was covered with markers and paints. Things like that really made an impression on me.

My Dad is kind, funny, and a little kooky sometimes. He is always surrounded by stacks of books, and he loves music.

When we were on the swim team he drove us around and cheered at all the races. He loved our choir concerts. My younger siblings were into soccer and he became the biggest soccer enthusiast ever. He loves a good political debate, a great music performance, or an awesome house or landscape. He has a major sweet tooth, but tries to eat healthy now. He loves when we all gather around to sing a few hymns with the guitar. I think Dad is the happiest when he is proud of something one of his children has done.

I Love you Dad!

To My Husband on Fathers Day

It’s hard to know what to expect when you take a ‘guy’ and turn him into a father.

Thank you for being there as we learn together,

And sometimes get it right.

Thank you for going seamlessly from the daddy of one little girl,

To become the daddy of two little girls,

and showing them the ropes until eventually

You were the daddy of three wonderful girls.

I love going on this journey with you!

You are an excellent and fun father for the girls.

Thank you Jon! XOXOXO

In Which I Take a Spill

Yesterday a friend came over to go on a jog with me. I have never really ran with non family before, and it was fun until, near the end, I was distracted and totally bit the pavement on account of some uneven sidewalk, which I hate almost as much as flourescent lightbulbs.

I injured my left knee, hand, and shoulder, and to my suprise this morning I felt like I'd been punched in the neck. All this to guard my face... since thats how I make my living. (TeeHee..really it was my dad's constant warning- "You'll knock your teeth out!" which had me doing the stunt girl shoulder maneuver). But why, WHY, when I have a friend here? God loves to keep me humble.

And speaking of not being humble, the secret X-Box project my hubby was working on was unveiled yesterday. Read about it on his blog here. He would make comments but say he couldn't tell me, then I'd act like I didn't care and that would drive him nuts. That's just the sort of loving relationship we have.

I Heart Spring!

Look at the gorgeous view from my porch when I sent my daughter out to the bus stop Friday Morning.