My Origami Valentine

February 14th, Valentine's Day, the day for lovers to celebrate love and affection. A day that encumbers those in relationships to provide lavish gifts for their partners and loved ones while managing to cause feelings of loneliness, depression and desperation for those people whom are single.  A holiday that was created by the greeting card companies that has grown so large that it causes couples everywhere to dig deep down into their pockets and spend massive amounts of money on things like cards, candy, flowers, balloons, jewelry, stuffed animals, dinners and so many more grand gestures in order to profess our love for that special someone.  A day, that no matter what your beliefs, is very hard to resist.

I can remember going to school as a young child and exchanging Valentines with the other kids in the class.  I can even remember how from Kindergarten until about 6th grade there was a kid named Gregory Vice who would never fail to show up at my doorstep bearing gifts of chocolates, cards and flowers.  I loved Valentine's Day. But I loved it because of the gifts that I would get, not because of the people that I loved or who may have loved me.  As I grew older and eventually went off to middle school and knew that we would no longer exchange Valentine's with our classmates I began to feel the pressure to have a boyfriend each year for that holiday so that I knew I would be getting something and would not be the only girl walking around empty handed.  Even after I graduated from high school the pressure was still felt each year to have someone to spend that special night with instead of being home alone.  So why is it that even now, while I am an adult and married, I feel that pressure of celebrating and acknowledging this irrelevant holiday? Perhaps it is because I have children and one of the greatest things about being a child is all of the holidays.  Perhaps it is because like the rest of the world I feel the pressure put upon us by the greeting card companies and do not want to be the only one who says that I gave nor received anything on that day.  I know, it's ridiculous. I don't need a holiday to tell my husband and children how much I love them but we did it anyway.

So as it is, I awoke yesterday morning to get the kids ready for school and to my surprise Michael had left each of us a little something for Valentine's Day.  While I truly expected nothing it is in these moments when he does just the smallest little things like this that remind me of how much and why I truly love him.  For you see, no matter what problems we may be facing or the hardships that we are dealt he always seems to come through for us no matter what.  In this case, I had no expectations of doing anything for Valentine's Day due to a lack of finances as well the fact of knowing that after he would get home from work he would then have to head off to school for the evening.  But Michael, being the person that he is, made sure to do something to let each of us know that he was thinking about us that day.

Now of course with the kids off to school, Alyssa wearing her Valentine's shirt she made, the pressure was on me to come up with something special to surprise Michael and the kids with for the afternoon.  Honestly, I was feeling this pressure mostly because for Christmas and for his birthday I was unable to provide gifts for Michael and as I said before, he always provides for us.  So I sat down and began to wrack my brains about what I could do to show him that he is indeed special and loved. 

It wasn't long before I came up with the idea to make something using what supplies I had readily available to me here at home and I set to work.  I wanted to create an atmosphere that was light and fun but said that I am celebrating our love.  Since we are not an overly romantic couple and are by far not a family that does anything elegantly my idea was to create some origami hearts and flowers to decorate with.  After that it was some hand made cards for the little ones, writing on the windows with the window crayons and I was able to scrape together a few dollars to buy some stuffed animals, a small box of chocolates and cards for Michael and Dalton.  I'd also promised Alyssa a 'Lady and the Tramp' style meal for the evening so I prepared spaghetti with meatballs for dinner and we rounded off the night with a cake covered in pink icing. 

While none of this was extravagant, elegant or romantic it was perfect for us.  They were all surprised and delighted by the decorations and gifts and although our time together for the day was brief it was still filled with love for one another.  This is what everyday should be like.....well minus the gifts. LOL

BTW, the flowers will be staying indefinitely!  I love how they turned out!

Art A.D.D.

It's no secret that I love to be artsy.  When I can find a free moment for myself you will often find me reading, painting, drawing, writing, playing music or crafting with my kids.  Whatever I feel at the moment is usually what I do.  I often have periods of time where I will become focused on one artistic outlet and will go with it for as long as I'm inspired.  Unfortunately though, with each of these talents, I have a huge snag.  I have to be in the mindset and mood with great inspirations in order for me to produce something. I also have to do what I want or vision and have great troubles doing something that someone specifically requests or instructs me to do. A simple request like asking for robots or princesses is fine but giving me a color scheme specific details just doesn't work. There are periods of time such as lately, where I will read and write.  At other times I can go for days painting one thing after another.  Then there are times where all I wish to do is sit down at my piano or behind my drum kit and hammer out some tunes. I'm not quite sure why this happens. It's almost like there's a little set of switches inside of my brain and as one is turned off another is turned on, thus changing my artistic capabilities at that time and making me feel as if I have a slight case of ADD.

Usually these changes don't bother me and I can just roll with the flow of things.  But lately this has not been the case.  Since about November 2010 I've been in the mindset to read and write.  I've been reading on average about a book a week and writing this blog has been my artistic outlet.  No problems there.  The problem that I've been having is that while my brain is in this mode I've had a few requests from friends for paintings as well as a desire to paint for them but my brain just won't let that happen.  Whenever I sit and try to come up with that perfect picture to paint my brain shuts down and it's almost as if I run into a brick wall.  The creative juices just aren't flowing in that direction and it's really frustrating.

It was back in October that I attended a baby shower for a friend.  About a month prior to the baby shower I was uncertain as to what I was going to get the Mother-to-Be.  I was in the mindset of painting almost daily then and knew that I wanted to paint something that she could use in the nursery.  Once I'd had chance to speak to the Mother-to-be and the ladies whom were hosting her shower it was clear to me what I thought would be perfect and I set to work.  The outcome was ultimately two pictures of girls playing dress-up and having tea. For you see, the theme of her shower was along the lines of a garden tea party and her new baby was to be named Violet.  So these just seemed to be perfect.

It was about two weeks ago when I received the invitation to a baby shower for another sweet friend of mine. She is due with a baby boy in March and I have to admit that painting for her has been quite the challenge.  First part of the challenge has been the fact that I have not been in the mindset to draw nor paint these past few months.  Second drawback was that I had no definite direction for ideas.  I seriously sat and wracked my brain for weeks trying to figure out the perfect image to adorn her nursery. In the end, after many failed attempts to come up with something, I decided to clear my mind of everything I'd been guided towards and thought long and hard about this mother-to-be and what I know about her.  Finally it came to me and I was able to paint her two pictures of boys playing in wash tubs.  Yes, they are from a Precious Moments coloring book but they couldn't depict more perfectly what she loves most in life. Her boys!

Unfortunately, due to how crazy the past 12 days have been for me I was unable to attend her shower and give her these gifts.  My mind and body just really wasn't up for much of anything yesterday.  I am sorry to have missed what I am sure was a beautiful celebration and a great time with some great women but as I am quickly finding out, I am no Super Woman. I need to take a break from things and let my mind and body rest.  So now that the kids are back in school and the house is almost back in order I think I'll take the rest of this week off before I begin to tear down my next brick wall and work on my next gifts for some other wonderful women that I know.

Christmas Card Craftiness

With the kids home from school for the next two weeks I am constantly on the look out for things to do with them to keep them busy.  One of the most recent crafts that I came across was a craft for making pop-up cards.  This was so simple to do and came out so cute that I've decided to let them make quite a few to mail out this year instead of our standard photo cards.

Items needed to make the cards are : construction paper, scissors, glue, crayons/markers, foam stickers (optional), printed coloring pages.

For complete directions on how to make these cards please visit http://www.enchantedlearning.com/.

Basically you use two pieces of construction paper (one for the inside of the card the other for the outside.)  Fold the construction paper in half so that you have a card and cut small slits in groups of two into the fold.  Open the folded piece of paper and push the slits through so that they bend oposite of the way the paper bends.  Glue the inner paper to the outer paper (careful not to glue the slits).   Create your own images or color pre-printed ones and cut them out then glue them to the slits.  Decorate the card to your liking and add a message.

These are the cards that we've created so far.  It really was very easy. My 6 year old was able to do it all by herself and with a little help from Mommy my 3 year old was able to create his own too.