1.) May Mary Crowning
Four days into May, I suddenly remembered that May is Mary's month, and I should do something to commemorate that.
I took the old fish tank (all of our fish have swum off to the big tank in the sky) and covered it with some scraps of white cloth and an old doily my great grandmother made back in the day and I somehow ended up with. I took a statue of Our Lady that I've had on top of our bedroom mirror for awhile and placed her on top. We had a Mary to crown, but no crown.
I know flowers are the traditional crown materials, but I couldn't think of any way to fashion a flower crown for a statue that small. Little Girl and I ended up using florist wire, some beads, and a small scrap of ribbon instead.
We did a quick crowning ceremony when Little Boy got home from school. It wasn't fancy; just a simple explanation of why we were doing it and a Hail Mary.
Hopefully next year we'll be able to get more elaborate and have a little party or something. In the meantime though, I'm glad we were able to at least do this much.
2.) Enough with the Mortality Reminders Already
Friday morning, I woke up, get dressed, kissed my husband goodbye as he left for work, and checked my phone.
That's how I found out a close relative had a sudden medical emergency and was headed into surgery.
It's been several days and they've had a couple close calls while in the hospital. He just moved out of the ICU, so he's making progress, but it's been stressful for everyone. I'm still a bit emotionally hung over from the crying and anxiety I had from his setback post surgery.
Seriously though. I get it, we're mortal. NO MORE REMINDERS, THANK YOU.
Not that God responds to slightly passive-aggressive blog posts, but, ya know. Makes me feel a little better to say it.
3.) I Made a Little Shirt out of a Big One
Little Boy has been asking for a school themed shirt, and Chris has moved to a different school district for work, so I took one of his old T-shirts and cut it down into a smaller one for Little Boy.
It worked surprisingly well. I kept the top stitching of the shirt, but cut down the sides and bottom. The result had sleeves that looked a little funny, but other than that it looked fine.
Chris just cleaned out a stash of T-shirts he wants to get rid of, so I'll probably be altering some more in the near future.
4.) Colorful Carrots
We pulled the rest of the (rather stunted) carrots out of the garden the other day.
I've never had good luck with carrots, but I have to admit that these multicolored ones turned out really pretty even if they didn't get very big. I might plant them again next year just for fun.
5.) Redneck art
I'm honestly pretty proud of this.
I've been saving Shiner beer bottle caps for years, because I love the artwork on their seasonal/special edition beer caps, and I just knew they'd be good for an artsy project of some sort.
I finally got the idea to make wind chimes with them when the kids dug up some old gears and weights in the yard. Chris had the genius idea to use a beer bottle as the central chime, and I added some old nails I found lying around to add some heft.
I hammered the caps flat, nailed holes through them, linked them together with florist wire, and this was the result.
It hangs, in all it's tacky gloriousness, on our back porch. It's actually stood up pretty well so far, which I'm pleasantly surprised by. I didn't have much faith in my engineering skills.
My eldest made a windchime when he was a toddler out of his dad's old beer cans. I enthused over it, and then hung it in the very back of the house, in a corner where no one would see it, because that was a little much for me.
ReplyDeleteI hope you are all done with your memento mori events, and that your relative recovers completely soon.
Me too. It's been a very interesting week.
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