Bluebonnets- it’s a Texas Thang

Nothing welcomes in spring to me more than driving our state highways lined with gorgeous bluebonnets.  And this year has been an exceptionally bountiful crop!

I love seeing all my friends’ pictures of their children sitting in the sea of vibrant blue and green on Facebook.  And years ago a friend of my parents gave me an oil painting depicting a typical Texas landscape complete with rolling hills of bluebonnets.  My husband is the photographer in the family and has taken many gorgeous photographs of our state's pride so I'd like to capture their beauty in a different way.

I’m thinking maybe a quilt.  But what kind?  A wall hanging?   Or maybe a throw.?  A traditional pattern or something modern and wonky?  What do you think?  Well I do know one thing and that is I'm off to the fabric store to scout out my choices!!!

Hunger Games Mockingjay Pin

I’m going to see the movie Hunger Games this weekend. There is so much paraphanalia on the market I figured it couldn’t be too hard to make my own.  I wanted to make a mockingjay pin and remembered the pins I used to make as a kid with Shrinky Dinks.  When I looked on line I found out the company makes special plastic that works with ink jet printers! 

I was so excited I went to my local craft store, using my 40% off coupon of course, and purchased a pack of the special plastic.  Next I found an image of the mockingjay from the cover of the book and downloaded it to my computer.  Using my scrapbook photo-editing software I designed the image I wanted to shrink into my pin. 

So far so good.  The image printed fine.

I cut it out and put it in the oven following the manufacturer’s instructions and watched the magic.

Then I glued a pin on the back and now I’m ready to watch Katniss defy the Capitol!

Complex Me

So I’m starting this blog as a place to put my thoughts and ideas about this wonderful, crazy, tragic, sometime almost magic, awful, beautiful life of mine.  The name of my blog comes from Psalm 139:14(New Living Translation) and it is so true as I’m sure you are too.  I am a very complex person.  For starters I have about a bazillion interests and want to pursue them all! Also I deeply feel a wide spectrum of emotions and act on them freely.  I have an unquenchable thirst for knowledge which I attribute to my wise and intellectual father along with a desire for all things beautiful which I attribute to my elegant and very stylish mother. 

I’ve recently opened a shop at Etsy.com as an outlet for one of my bazillion interests my love of sewing and needlework.  The items in my shop are handmade baby items and 10% of the proceeds go to Sound Options Pregnancy Center. I’ve limited my brand to just baby items with reasons that are connected back to how complex I am and how sometimes life can be tragic.  But more on that subject later.  For now let me just say people can choose to let this life make them bitter or better.   I choose better.

Lord thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous, how well I know it. Psalm 139:14