nesting dolls

I still have a set of nesting dolls that my Uncle Mark gave me while he was studying in Europe. I always loved playing with them... opening them up, finding the wee baby one in the center, re-nesting them together. I was always afraid of losing the pieces, luckily I still have some of my doll intact. Hopefully with this card, you'll never lose one of the dolls.

Unfortunately when scanning this card in, it washed out the pink cheeks on the dolls. They are much brighter in real life.

I think I'm going to try and get this design printed off into multiple cards before it goes onto etsy, it took a good bit of time to make so I'd like to have more.

When you were a kid, what toys were you worried about losing the pieces to?

trains

Yesterday we went to our nephew's 2nd birthday party. It was all about trains! He received lots of Thomas the Tank Engine trains and tracks with a table for his birthday. I must admit, Tim and I want to go back over and play with his new toys, they were pretty cool.

At the risk of giving away what his gift was, I made this card for him. Hopefully I will be putting up some cards like this in the shop soon!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

the question you're never asked

Tim and I like to give each other quizzes, interviews you might say. We think up questions for each other that we want to know the answers to, simple, complex, silly, or deep.

Here are examples of the type of questions we ask:

Would you rather live in a houseboat or a treehouse?

What kind of neighborhood would you like to live in someday?

If you could take lessons to learn any skill, what would it be?

When you were a kid, what was your favorite thing to do outside?

What makes you feel most loved?

Questions like that. Questions that make us think, questions that help us continue to grow in our relationship. It's fun and eye-opening to know those things about your husband, and interesting to learn things about yourself that you never knew until you were asked.

One question we asked each other recently was what question do you wish you were asked more often? That might sound like a strange question, but think about it for a second.

Have you ever walked away from a conversation, feeling like you didn't really talk to the other person at all, feeling like they didn't listen, feeling like you didn't get to express the things on your mind and heart?

I know that I love it when people ask me about my art endeavors, ask how I'm feeling and wait for the real answer, and ask me about my faith.

What do you wish people asked you more often? What do you want to share with your family, your friends, the world?

I'd like to hear about it. Write me a message, comment on this, send me a text. I'd love to know what question you are just dying to be asked.

to write a novel

I have been thinking about writing a novel. Problem. I don't know what I'm going to write about. I dream about the day I will be struck with that golden idea.... an idea that has the depth to last for two hundred or more pages.

I have had thoughts on what to write a novel on, and sometimes I think they have potential. But I worry that its me, not the idea. I don't know that I will ever have the skill or stamina to write an epic story. My efforts have been short and brief at best. Probably two pages.

How do I become Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, C.S. Lewis, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, etc.? Maybe by not watching television, wasting time on the internet, etc. Regardless of how I currently spend my time, how I can I shape my mind to think like a novelist?

I like thinking about the book Les Miserables for the purpose of novel idea formation. This story has one of the best redemptive story lines, ever. It paints a beautiful picture of the human condition and the effects of grace without being heavy handed. I would love to write a story like that... a story that is full of grace, true to life (Flannery O'Connor-esque if need be)... real.

I want write about characters that are full, so well-developed that they rise from the pages and permeate your imagination. They stay with you, you reference them, you admire them, you loathe them, you love them.

I want to write a story that is familiar, in that it reminds you of life, of people you know. But it is unexpected, it looks at things from another viewpoint.

Les Miserables is a masterpiece, as well as all the other books by the authors I have mentioned. I doubt that I could ever light a candle next to those brilliant fires. I do want to try and write one good story before I die though.

Just writing this now brought to mind an idea I had long forgotten about... maybe I'll kick it around this time, sketch it out. You never know.

mittens

Here is a new design I've been working on... mittens! I love mittens, they remind me of the years my family spent in an old farmhouse. When I was a little girl my brother, sister, and our neighbor friends would all spend hours in the snow. Making snow forts, piling up snowballs for a fight that never came, making snow angels, and so on.

It's crazy to think about how long we used to play in the snow, and hardly seemed to suffer at all from the cold. My aged limbs now freeze at the first chilly days of fall. Ah, youth.

My mom used to let me borrow her ski mittens to play in the snow, a lovely black pair. They were fleecy and warm on the inside and black suede on the outside. They were definitely superior to mittens I have tried on since then.

One of my goals for November/December is to find a decent pair of mittens for my wimpy hands. The quest begins!

hat

The hat:

I want that.

new in the shop

I added a few new cards to the etsy shop today. A couple for Christmas and one birthday card. I'm hoping to work on a few more tomorrow. If you have any design requests, send me a message!

I hope you all are having a lovely Sunday afternoon!