shining egg

thank you.

oh my goodness.  i'm a bit overwhelmed after the last few posts.  

(this is what my dining room table looks like right now.  i think i've turned the dining room into an office!) 

thank you, first of all, for your kind emails after my capture the flag post and the one that followed.  i really do appreciate your thoughts and your comments so much, and it's so meaningful to me to hear from you - so thank you.

and second, thank you for all of your support for my little shop opening.  for your comments and your emails and your orders, thank you.  i know it sort of came out of the blue - though i have been considering it for some time.  

so that you know, here's how it's going to work, this little shop of mine.  right now it's stocked with the beach collection (and i'll say a bit more about that tomorrow) - which will be available through the very last day of summer (september 21).  after that, i have plans for two more small collections during the fall/winter months.  each collection will feature some tiny original artwork, some photographs.  there will likely be a few monoprints, and there will be one fantastic print of one of my favorite paintings.  i promise to give you a bit more advance warning next time!   

so, tomorrow a bit more about the beach collection.  and then some thoughts on back to school and routine (oh how i love routine).  maybe something about cleaning out closets, and probably more about how the light is changing so dramatically these last two weeks.  sigh.

until then, thank you, friends.  really.

open for business

alrighty then.  it's all there.  except for this painting which is already (gulp!) gone.  the brownies are on the counter.  help yourselves.  i'm running out now to buy milk.

the beach collection

now that we have reestablished my love for the beach, i thought i'd let you know that i'll be sharing a tiny bit of that love - in this space - on monday (tomorrow!) at noon.

there will be note cards.

tiny oil paintings - some dunescapes and some seascapes.

some beach love photos, and a single framed oil painting that was hanging in my show.

i'm baking brownies in honor of the occasion.  i hope you'll stop by.

about that last post

it's funny.  i felt funny posting about capture the flag yesterday.  it's funny that i felt funny.

i've rolled this around a bunch over quite a number of months - what sort of blog this is - and i keep coming back to the fact that it's not any sort categorizable blog at all.  (is it?)  at least not as i think about "the categories" - craft blog, mama blog, blog full of lovely links.  

i don't really chronicle my artwork here - i mean, i mention it, but i don't write about it regularly or share everything that i'm painting or working on - though often i wish that i did keep a better record here of what's happening in my own creative process.

and i don't really chronicle my family life here either.  they're private sorts, my husband and our children, and since this isn't their blog, i try to respect their privacy.  as much as possible.  though i did earn some points with my private son when i was able to recover his recipe for sesame noodles supreme by googling it, since he gave me permission to share it here last fall.

once, many months ago now, i stumbled across a blog with a long blog roll on the sidebar - the blogs were categorized: design blogs, craft blogs, mommy blogs, other interesting blogs.  i was in the "other interesting blogs" category.  i remember being taken aback, at the time - i suppose that when you're a mother, it's hard to imagine that you could fall into any category other than the mother category - but that was when i first realized that i don't write so much about my life as a mother in this space.

maybe that's why i felt funny writing about capture the flag.  it's not my usual subject matter (what is my usual subject matter!?), nothing to do with anything really, other than my life as a mother.  our life as a family.  that's why i turned the comments off, i guess.

but why did i feel compelled to write about capture the flag in the first place?  if it has nothing to do with the sorts of things that i generally write about here?  aha.  

i thought i knew.  i thought i was going to type the next sentence and say that i wrote about it here because it was such a glorious night that i wanted to preserve it and share it.  but as i was about to type that sentence i realized that i've known all along exactly why i wrote about capture the flag in this space yesterday.  only i didn't realize that i knew it until this very minute.

whenever i talk to people about why i keep this blog, i talk about finding the beauty in small things.  i talk about finding the beauty and acknowledging the beauty and celebrating the beauty as a way of inviting more beauty into my life.  and, of course, that's exactly why i wrote about capture the flag here yesterday - because it was a beautiful evening.  it was a little idea that turned into a great celebration of friendship and summertime and sweaty children and cold beer and late evenings in the yard with fireflies.  and i wanted to capture that, to celebrate it, to hold it up as a reminder of what can be, to invite more of those extraordinary moments into my life.

capture the flag

last night we had 20 kids over to play capture the flag.  it was the perfect end of summer activity, and i have a strong suspicion it's going to turn into an annual tradition.

b. has been planning this for months.  i'm not sure whether the idea originated from gym class at school, or from his favorite books, but since school let out, he's been asking to have a big group of friends over to play capture the flag.   of course, l. got into the act, and by the end of june they had divided a list of 30 kids into two teams.  we've been putting the date off all summer - the weather, the important friends were out of town (and as it was we had to do it without two essential players), until finally, last night, we played.

d. spray-painted a long (long, long) black line across our lawn from the road to the woods behind our house to divide the territories, the kids and i went to a new-to-us store to pick out bandanas and flag poles.  somebody brought popsicles, i ordered pizza and cut a watermelon.  the rules - which had been discussed (and discussed and discussed) for weeks (the most controversial questions being about free run-backs and faking jail, and if you understand that, you must be a capture the flag aficionado) were written (quite beautifully, i think) on tagboard, and the teams were divided.  

b. was captain of the red team.  l. was captain of the blue.  d. wore all black and i wore all white in an effort to avoid the appearance of impropriety.  

children were dropped off.  a few parents pulled up chairs and opened beers.  the teams stood on the black line and the rules were announced.  and then the games began, and they were intense.  the kids were running - and running hard - all evening long (except for the few moments that they spared for eating and drinking - we refilled four pitchers four times over the course of three hours - it was hot!).  

the sportsmanship exhibited on and off the field was extraordinary - there was no whining, no crying, no cheating, no complaining!  there were only two small injuries, and both were adults!  each team won two games.  and when it was dark, and parents were arriving to collect their children, and we were gathering up bandanas lost in the yard, my boy asked me if we could do it again and i said absolutely.

i'm so glad he had the idea.  i'm so glad they shared in the planning.  i'm so glad we made it happen.  i'm so glad my kids have such nice friends.  i'm so glad nobody got hurt.  i'm so glad the rain held off.  and at the end of the night, when the last pizza box was in the recycling bin and the last pitcher was in the dishwasher, and the satisfied children were kissed goodnight, i was tired, and i was sticky, i was so so glad.  it was the perfect end-of-summer night.

once more, with feeling

we were at the beach last week.  i know.  i know, i know that you must be weary of all of my beach love talk.  i know.

the thing is, i adore the beach.  i adore every single thing about the beach.  all of it.  

i love the ocean, of course, with it's crashing waves and it's endless views and that horizon line.  i love the sky over the ocean and how it can be such a saturated shade of grey, or blue, or full of big white clouds, and how it can change on a dime.  

and the sand.  i love the sand.  my preference is for the coarse, grainy sand rather than the fine powdery sort, but really, i'll take any of it.  i love the way it feels between my toes.  i love to lie down flat on the sand, looking up at the sky and feel the entire length of my body warmed by the sun-baked sand.  i love the way it feels when i scoop up a big handful and let it slide through my fingers.  i even love finding it in the corners of cars and at the bottom of backpacks days later, when we're home and missing the beach.

there's more.  

i love the sun.  i love the shade of the beach umbrella, too.  i love sitting in those little folding low-to-the-ground beach chairs, especially when i set them right at the surf line and the waves are crashing in my lap.  i love to read at the beach, wearing big plastic-y sunglasses and maybe a hat.  and i love to color at the beach too (i have a set of colored pencils and watercolor paints just for this purpose - there's sand in both boxes.) - i love sitting on a towel with my children with little yogurt-cups of saltwater between us and paintbrushes poking up from the sand all around us.

and i love evening on the beach, when the sun is dipping low and i begin to feel the need for a sweatshirt.  i love watching the sun set from the beach, sinking below the horizon - whether over the water or over the dunes.  (oh!  the dunes.  i love the dunes and their spiky grasses and squat bushes.)   i love grey days at the beach too - the haze, the cool, the way the colors of the sand and the sea change when they're free from the blazing sun.  

i love lunch on the beach; sandwiches packed in coolers, and grocery bags full of grapes that get a tiny bit crunchy once those sandy hands have visited the bag, peach pits buried in the sand.  i love how pretzels taste extra salty there, and how dessert is never necessary because i know there's a walk to town for an ice cream cone in my future.  

i love how time seems to move differently at the beach.  how i can sit on the beach for hours and the day seems to melt by like honey.  how i can spend an entire day looking out over that ocean, laying in that sand, eating sandwiches smushed from the cooler, painting, swimming, gathering rocks (don't get me started on the beach rocks!), walking, talking, napping, reading, looking out at the ocean some more, and suddenly the sun is starting to set and the day has gone by in what feels like an instant.  i love that.  all of it.

we're home now.  the light has already turned; it's not quite so bright when i wake in the mornings, there's more of a warm glow instead.  my favorite dogwood tree is turning the color of macintosh apples.  there are leaves on the ground.  school starts in twelve days.  summer is slipping through my fingers like that last handful of sand.