Creating something Beautiful for a Friend

A couple days ago I decided to paint a picture for my friend who is having a birthday.  I got the idea from Modern Bird Studios.  I felt really excited about it.  And after, conversing a little with her husband, we decided on this picture:

 

I cropped and then contrasted the picture 7 or 8 times until it was down to a very raw black and white photo:

I decided it should be acrylic instead of my usual preference, oil, because I was short on time and couldn't wait the 3-5 days it takes for oils to dry. 

The creative process was incredibly enjoyable.   I can't quite explain the joy and peace I felt as I created something so beautiful.  The attention to the details of drawing the picture first satisfied my logical, structured side, while the abstraction of the original picture and modern final product satisfied my artistic side. It sounds corny and dramatic, but it felt like I was meant to create this painting and perhaps others like it. What's more than that, the subject matter (the little girl) is very sensitive to me. In fact, I nearly cried giving her the painting, and am about to cry now just thinking about it.  The little girl is about to embark on a very trying time...

Anyway, here is the finished product.  The first picture is closer to the right color background (it's sort of a creamy, light tan color). And the second picture captured the "midnight blue" darker tone.

U-Pick 'Em!

 

Happy Memorial Day!  A local farm was having a special on U-Pick peaches (first 5 lbs for free), so with children in tow, we made our way to the orchard and picked ourselves some juicy peaches!   

(Couldn't resist snapping a shot of me and my honey with the freshness all around us. It's so invigorating!!  Farm life is so appealing to me.  Having grown up in some remote areas--sometimes with orchards in our backyard--I have a very keen idea of the work it takes to keep this type of thing up.  Which is probably why I am not a farmer.  Oh well, I can applaud the locals and buy there crops, right??)

 

My little dinosaur hiding among the branches.  It's all a game to my little Ezra!

Eliza found some lady bugs and decided they needed to come home with us.  We could use them in our garden, so I thought, "Why not?"  She LOVES these little bugs now and prays for them.  I'd say if she were any bug it'd be a lady bug, they share so many qualities: dainty, cheery, and a friend to all.

Hello Bees

I went to go mail a letter this morning and I had to go running back to my house shouting for the kids to go inside because a HUGE swarm of bees was flying around my side yard and spilling over onto the street next to our house where the mailbox sits.  Eventually, they settled in a cluster on top of the Queen Bee (per info from my exterminator).  He's coming in the next few minutes to help them on their way so they don't make my palm tree their permanent home. 

Adventures in Breadmaking

So last week for Mother's Day, my mother-in-law bought me a kitchen aid!  I was floored!  I have been wanting to start making my own bread for some time, so I went to work making this: What? It doesn't look like bread dough?  Hm... Yeah.  I think your right.  That is probably the ugliest dough I've ever seen.  And it went right in the garbage since I didn't know how to fix it.  My second attempt was better:
The bread turned out quite well (if a bit on the dough-y side since I undercooked it just slightly. Oops.)

So then I got super motivated and thought to myself, what would make this bread making chapter in my life even better??  You guessed it, a wheat grinder!  My fingers were just itching to click "Buy" on that website.  And so I justified it to myself that it was really a Food Storage expense since I'm going to need to start rotating all that wheat in my pantry anyway.  CLICK!  And here it is... isn't it beautiful?

It works like a breeze and quick too!  I ground about 12 cups of flour in about 2 minutes.  I felt like I was a little girl on Christmas morning again it was so fun.  And perhaps I should note here that I grew up with my mom grinding her own wheat in this huge, brown, loud, slow wheat grinder.  I was completely in awe of that thing though, and I remember just watching it slowly grind the wheat from start to finish.  I think it's memories like those that make this new hobby more satisfying.

But enough of my introspective ramblings.  I made the above recipe again with the freshly ground white flour and WOW.  I tell you what the flavor is amazing!

The texture leaves a little to be desired, however, and it didn't rise the second time in the pans as I'd like.  This whole venture has taught me that it's going to take a lot of practice to get it right, I think.  So now I am on the hunt now for the perfect bread recipe.  Any suggestions?

Eliza's Spring Dance Recital

Eliza had her ballet recital on Friday.  I curled her hair for the first time ever and she absolutely loved it (until a little girl told her she looked like a clown, but that is a different story). She felt so beautiful, and I think it shows these pictures I took of her.  She truly enjoys dancing.  I think my favorite part of the night, though, was during her second number when one of the girls was standing on her spot of tape on the floor and Eliza just kept looking at the girl, and pointing to the floor saying, "Um, that's my spot." And then looking out to the crowd helplessly.  She just stood there, not knowing what to do the rest of the dance!

Adventures in Gardening: Planting

Planting the garden was relatively easy, and quite therapeutic, really.  Eliza turned out to be a fantastic helper.  She has her own gardening gloves and everything!  We planted mostly transplants of tomatoes, lettuce, strawberries, onions, garlic, and several varieties of peppers.  We planted seeds of watermelon, cantaloupe,

carrots, spinach, and cucumbers.  Can't wait to see what actually survives!!!

Eliza insisted on kissing every plant we put in the ground.  

Adventures in Gardening: Building a Retaining Wall

Okay, this is nearly two months old, but I thought it was important to blog about our gardening adventures.  It's been a big, emotional, stressful, but mostly rewarding and therapeutic new hobby for Shiloh and me.  We had considered box gardening first, but in the end we wanted the garden to be a more permanent fixture in our backyard, so we decided to build a retaining wall instead.     Now, keep in mind here, that neither of us are very "handy" as they say.  It took us 3 days of planning and working to get this done, but in the end it went off without a hitch, and I am happy with the end result.

Step 1: Measure, plan, and purchase materials (we used a Home Depot booklet that laid it all out for us, thank heavens for that!!!).

Step 2:  Measure the spot on the ground and then build a shallow trench for the first layer of brick. (Shiloh is pretty talented with the shovel, so I let him take the rains on this one.)

Step 3: Create a layer of sand in which to level the base bricks.  Level. (I can honesty say I had "fun" with this one... Why?  I have no clue, there is just something so rewarding about seeing something perfectly level.  Anybody with me??)

 

Step 4: Keep adding bricks and then back-fill with some sand to add extra support.  Then, fill the area with dirt.  (We have a pool between us and the gate to our backyard, so Shiloh ended up hiring a priest in our ward to help him get the dirt over our side wall.  Bless that kid for saving me from scooping dirt from a truck bed.).  Aah, and not part of this tutorial, but perhaps should be written in it's own, is an explanation of all those irrigation pipes.  Purchasing an Arizona home, you are bound to have to learn some basics of your everyday "drip irrigation".  We built the drip into our garden so that it has automatic watering, cool aye?

Step 5: Relish in your overwhelming success!!!