fresh picked whimsy

summer blurrrrrr

Well, that went fast. Summer, what was your hurry? I thought we were having fun and stuff and then you had to go and run off...

there was a brand new firepit to enjoy...

and family fun at an Indians game...

a cousins visit to Indy...

and my first time meeting up with The Peach Truck...

the time we spent under water...

 and by the sea...

and swung by Georgia on our way home for brief, but quality time with my sister and brother in-law and nephews...

stopping to smell the flowers...

and getting up earrrrrrrrrrrly to watch the hot air balloon race out at the State Fair with my Katie...

a friend spied us on someone else's instagram feed {who I don't know!} that day, which was super funny!...

we loved the race so much, we decided to go back that night for the "glow"...

loved watching the balloons and loved watching sweet, young love grow between Riley and his girlfriend, Jen over the summer, too...

 we love you, summer! 

 Why can't winter go by that quickly?

Vitamin Sea

 It's the fastest week of the year.  We count down the days leading up to it...and they go by at a snail's pace.  And then, BOOM! It's over. Gah! Take me back!!!! 

We spent last week in our happy place, Gulf Shores, Alabama. 

I've blogged about it many times before: like here, here and here.

This year we rented the most adorable beach house...the Lucky Dog

It was a dog-friendly rental and we would give it 2 paws up if you are looking for a place to take your family and pups to the beach!  It was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house and it was perfect!  There was a little fenced in backyard full of fun toys for them and less stress for us having to take them out to potty.

A little inside tour...

We had some stormy weather off and on during the week.  It would be super sunny with blue skies and then all of a sudden a wall of black clouds would swoop in. 

So, we would head back to the house for a little break and hang out on the screened porch and just watch the storm until it passed.  Griffin loved this hanging swing on the porch...

We all worked on this fun jigsaw puzzle and Sudoku, too...

The owners of this house have thought of everything.  There are games, cards, the kitchen is fully equipped with everything you could want and the drawer in the cocktail table in the family room was totally full of tons of issues of eye candy magazines.  I LOVED thumbing through them and daydreaming about our SOMEDAY beach house...

It was our first vacation with our brand new 21 year old.  She played bartender a lot. We brought our Nutri Bullet from home and it made fantastic frozen cocktails...

She was trying to style a pretty photo of her concoction...

I can't tell you how many photobomb shots she got before getting that one above...

Which takes us to the photos...oh, the photos.  We brought a selfie stick with us to GS.  Before we left on vacay, I posted our family beach portrait from our very first year that we stayed in Gulf Shores {2001}.  Griffin was just one year old!

We used the selfie stick and recreated this memorable picture...14 years later:

Of course, I'm trying to get our Christmas card photo and they are all a bunch of goofballs...

Me:  "can I get a nice shot of you kids with Daddy?"...

my turn...and I love it.

 Katie tried to get us to take a special family selfie of a selfie.  It was a #selfiefail...

then she took one with her brothers on the beach and it was awesome...

We loved bringing the dogs down to the beach at the end of the day each night, when it had cooled off and the sand wasn't so hot.  They loved it too...

the ocean turned pink from this delicious sunset...

On Thursday evening, we saw something we had never seen before in all our years going to the beach.

A shark!

He popped up right in front of us...thankfully we were not in the water! He was about 5 feet long and swimming in knee deep water.  KNEE DEEP!  Katie snapped those pictures.  I don't know how she did it...we were all so rattled by it.  Riley ran down the beach to some folks who were in the water in the shark's path to warn them.  The next day was our last beach day and sadly, we stayed out of the water all day.  But, we sure counted our blessings. 

 Yet another fabulous beach week is in the books.  We're already daydreaming about next year!  

tender mercies: feathers

Thank you for your kind messages and prayers for my family.  They have meant so much. 

My faith teaches me that God is always with us.  I believe that with all of my heart.  Throughout this very difficult time for my family, we have also experienced some wonderful things.  These little wonderful moments, which are seemingly to us, magical.  But they are in fact, not magical at all.  I know that they can only be little tender mercies from God.  They have comforted us and given us hope and because of that, i thought i would share them with you. 

Feathers

Our dogs love to sleep on our bed. 

One day in December, i was scratching Sunny's belly while he was lying on our bed.  i must've hit the sweet spot for him because i really got his leg going.  So much so that his paw and nails ripped a hole through the cover of our down comforter.  Feathers were flying everywhere!  Truth be told, the comforter was about 10 years old and had worn pretty thin.  It didn't help that the duvet cover was in the wash and i just had a light blanket over it.  Like i said, feathers everywhere!

Well, in the chaos of the holiday and my mother-in-law's decline, i didn't have time to replace the comforter and because i don't know how to sew, my engineer hubby duct taped the hole.  It was very hillbilly, but we put a cover over it and hoped to just make it through Christmas that way. 

Nevertheless, feathers made their way all over our house.  Little, tiny, fluffy feathers.  I would vacuum and then they were back an hour later.  They were driving me crazy.

And then one day while looking at Pinterest, i saw this quote, which i had never seen before...

 {illustration by Jane Lee Logan}

To be honest, the first time i read it, i didn't give it much thought at all.  Then i saw it a second time later in the day.  It kind of felt like someone hit me over the head.  I felt like it was a message straight from Heaven. 

And it made me so very happy. 

I understand that there is a perfectly logical explaination of why the comforter ripped and why i'm finding feathers all over my house.  It's the timing of it all that seems to be Divine to me.

a little tender mercy when we needed it most.  i'm so thankful for it.

i'll have more to share...soon.

{new print in the shop} 

our adventures in the little rustbucket by the sea

Truth be told, our rental wasn't everything we'd hoped it would be.  My heart sank when we first arrived.  Renters beware: photos are often creatively and cleverly taken.  It took me a full day to get over the serious flaws of this beach house and the $$ we had saved and spent to rent it.  This house is in need of an extreme home makeover, inside and out.  Mark gave me a pep talk and he was right...all that mattered was that we were together, right on the beach and that was where we would be spending all of our time. 

Riley and I hung white twinkle lights on the deck railing (which was about to fall off).  Trust me when i tell you this house looks so much better at twilight than in full daylight.  The roof was metal and totally rusted.  Everytime i looked at it, i couldn't help but hear the B-52's singing "TIN ROOF...RUSTED!!!" By mid-week we were all laughing and joking about our stay at the little rustbucket by the sea. We McD's know how to have fun regardless of where we are...

we brought a telescope from home and got to see the Super Moon up close and personal!  ...and the millions of stars that you can see when you are away from city lights is UNBELIEVABLE!

Griffin likes to dig. 

Huge holes. 

To China.

we all love the warm Gulf water.  Nothing better than floating in the surf!

We always get fresh seafood one night from the local seafood market.  We ate by moonlight and twinkle light...

a trip to Gulf Shores wouldn't be complete without a ride on the Wild Woody...

 a stop at Souvenir City...

and lunch at The Hangout...

We love going to Our Lady of the Gulf Catholic Church, in GS, too.  They serve holy water on the half shell here. Love that!

Riley was faithful to his daily workouts, even on vacation.  He moved that giant tire up and down the beach every morning.

I was exhaused just taking that picture.  Football season is fast approaching...no time for slackers.

BOOM BOOM FIRE POWAHHHHH !!!! {name that movie}

Time to cool off

Kate loves to draw in the sand...

and the guys always bury dad every year...

The Blue Angels practiced over our beach every day.  That was incredible to see!

 

 

time for a break...

it was pretty awesome to be so close to the shore...

Special times with my favorite people in the whole wide world...

These two guys sum it up...

Life is good, indeed! 

beach dogs

Yup, we brought Sunny and Abe to the beach with us. 

We found a pet friendly rental beach house and decided we would put the money that we would have spent on boarding them towards the rent.  We had no idea how the drive would go.  They've never traveled far with us.  But, they did so GREAT!  They were chill and slept almost the whole 12 hour drive.  When they weren't riding shot gun...

or driving...

Ha! that pic cracks me up.  it looks like we are actually on the road.  But, no worries...we were parked at a gas station.  :)

It was close quarters in the van.  But, these guys had no problem snuggling up.

We were so excited to see what they thought of the sand and the ocean.  They both LOVED the sand.  We only brought them down in the early morning or late afternoon when it cooled off. 

Sunny loved the water.  Abe not so much.

They both loved chasing the frisbee and tennis balls.  They played hard and slept hard.

i would say this beach vacay with the pups was a big success.  We would definitely do it again. 

Happy dogs, happy family, happy memories!

i swear we did not set that pic up.  We were doing a jigsaw puzzle at the kitchen table and looked down and that is exactly what we saw.  Brotherly love. ♥

a little vacay goes a long way...ay

Took some time off to get away with my sweet little family...

We pretty much just point the van south and just keep driving until we see the ocean.

 Gulf Shores, Alabama is our destination.

We even brought a couple of stowaways on our trip!...

Our week on the seashore is what we look forward to all year.  But it is always lovely to get back home, too.

We've been home for a little over a week and i'm still finding sand in bags and towels and the van...always a sweet reminder of fun days spent together.  We had such a wonderful trip and made lots of memories.  As we ease back into our landlocked, busy life at home, i will share some of the highlights over the next few days...

thanks for your patience as i loved on my family, friends.  Hope you're having a great summer, too!

Frick and frack

their personalities are very different.  One fella is pretty chill...

and one...not so much...

Sunny loves to snuggle between us on our bed.  Evidently, he's not a morning person and didn't appreciate having his picture taken.

and Abe loves to watch other dogs on tv.  He LOVES 101 Dalmatians...

they are usually found napping together...

and they agree on their favorite snack...peanut butter

 So happy to have these two guys in our family.

♥

Hope it's a warm first weekend of spring where you are.  We are expecting snow.  Grrrr.  Not cool, mother nature.  Not cool. 

Got my vintage fix

...for now, anyway.  Last weekend the Indie Arts & Vintage Marketplace came to our little 'burb, and i'm pretty sure most of Carmel showed up to check it out.  It was mobbed.  There was a fist fight brewing over my parking spot when i left.  Don't mess with a chick who's trying to get her vintage on. LOL!

I met my sister Susan there for some browsing and shopping and this event did not disappoint.  There was some seriously good stuff there.  Prices were reasonable for the most part and people were buying.  Lots of sold signs on things and we got there when the doors opened!

 

These tiaras found my niece Megan...a girl can never have too many tiaras.  Right?

 
I lurved these amazing, huge, salvaged galvanized metal hearts.  i mean, you know me and hearts.  Alas, they were too pricey for my post-Christmas wallet, so i settled for a happy medium.  But, i did grab their card because i will dream of these until i get one.  {mark says we could make one, but i just think that project would end in his and hers tetanus shots}

These vintage drawers made my heart stop...and the price made me swoon.

it was so crowded that it was hard to take pictures.  But, i did take a picture of my purchases when i got home...

there's my heart (not illuminated, but i still love it!), the rusty white utility cart will be another color one day soon, the feed sack will become 2 messenger type bags for Susan and i, the five is from a grocery store and represents my family of 5 and finally....that drawer!!!!

It has a great story behind it, too...

The antique dealer i bought it from told me it came from a religious supply house in Indianapolis that recently closed their doors after nearly 120 years in the business. 

 And, this drawer held medals of saints.  Hello...Catholic girl here...you had me at saints.

I LOVE that this was the former life of this drawer. 

At the show, next to this drawer was a bowl full of these prayer cards...

 

Of course i bought one for 50 cents.  When i got home i looked St. Roch up on the internet because

1.  i'm fascinated by the saints

and

2.  my high school french is rusty... 

Turns out, St. Roch is the patron saint of DOGS!  Can't help but think there's a bit of divine intervention going on here.  St. Roch, pray for my little tripod doggie...

and his furry brother who puts up with his nibbly, puppy antics so patiently...

I bought some felt to attach to the bottom of my holy drawer {ok, it's not holy, but that's what i will be calling it from now on! Ha!}  I traced the bottom of the drawer on the felt and glued it and some felt gliders, too.

and now it lives on the bottom shelf of my coffee table holding magazines and newspapers and making me oh, so happy.

Not quite as noble a life as it used to have...but a respectable life, indeed! 

merry days

So fast. 

The blessed day we look forward to all year long goes by so, so fast.  This is the craziest time of year for me and my little studio that could.  It's always a challenge to get my orders out the door in time to really enjoy the holidays with my family.  The first two weeks of December is a blurrrr of fulfilling orders, painting, decorating and online shopping.  This year, of course, our December was a little furrier, too...

When I picked Katie up from school, i found him on her dorm room wall.  So funny...

She could hardly stand the one hour drive home.  She was so excited to meet Abraham!

i cannot put into words the peace and contentment i get from having all 3 of my babies under our roof.  

This tree in my studio may or may not have been knocked over a few times by a puppy and his big furry brother...

Our very special stockings...a treasured handmade gift from a special friend and neighbor who is no longer with us.

Jingle, our nutty elf got himself into all kinds of mischief this month... 

There was much baking to be done.  The kids love dipping the pretzels...

 

 We got 6 inches of snow the day after Christmas and then 6 more last night!  That's more than we got all of last winter!  The kids are loving it!

We've got so much to be thankful for. 

Most of all this...

{Virgin and Child by Giovanni Battista Salvi}

Wishing that we may hold the peace and love and hope that this wondrous Babe brings, all throughout the coming year.  Many blessings to you and yours! 

For the love of Abraham

Meet Abe.

He is the newest member of our family.  He found us at a time when we didn't know anything was missing from our lives.  But, now we know better. 

 
Abraham has had a traumatic start to his young life of 10 months.  In October, Abe was hit by a truck.  He had two broken legs, a broken hip and pelvis.  He was brought to a kill shelter in Kentucky and because he had so many injuries, nobody wanted to adopt him.  In the final hours before he was scheduled to be euthanized, he was rescued by a wonderful organization in Kokomo, Indiana called Pals for Paws.  They picked him up and got him the medical attention he needed.  He had surgery on October 25th and his front leg was amputated.  His back leg still has nerve damage and he often walks on top of his paw.  It may or may not ever completely heal.  My sister Susan and my friend Carolyn happened to be at a local Petco, last weekend, when Abe was there looking for a new family.  They both thought that we needed to meet him.  They sent us these photos from Petco.

 
I'll admit, for a day, we resisted.  Two days later, he was ours. 

{look at those happy faces on our boys on our way home with Abe.}

He was so scared and traumatized in the photo that was blasted out on the shelter's facebook page.  it breaks my heart.

 
and now he is happy, and comfy and so loved!

He and Sunny have become fast friends.

We are still learning his quirks and silly ways.  He doesn't like the vacuum, but he loves it when Griffin plays his trumpet.  He also loves to lay on top of pillows, beds and clean laundry piles...

This is his favorite perch...on the back of the chair.

But, what he really loves is to snuggle...

and he can't wait for his sister, Katie to come home from college on Friday so he can meet her and catch up on snuggles with her, too!

Welcome home, Abraham.  We think you are perfect in every way and we love you very much!

If you are thinking of adopting a pet for the holidays or in the future, please consider working with your local pet rescue organization.  What these people do is so wonderful and they care for and foster so many sweet animals who need a loving home.  I am so thankful for Pals for Paws.  If you would like to contribute financially to help support the work they do and the animals they rescue, follow the link here.  Thanks ever so much!