Reflecting.

                                           A foggy morning down at our neighborhood park.

                                       
                                                    Jennifer Jo Fay  Fancy Photography

                                                           Weeping Willow Tree



Today has been kind of a lazy day.  Last night I watched Something Borrowed and almost cried at one part.

And then last night, I got thinking about my novel, The Glorious Money Tree.  I'm thinking of having a dedication page to it.  I didn't do that with the first one I published, but am going to do it with this one.

I'm going to dedicate it to my mother and my four children.  And I'm thinking of having an introduction or a separate dedication piece just for my mother who was my icon.  So that will be in the works someday.

But this morning, I got to the kids house and started to check my eBay listings and then my mail and pinterest.  I spent at least a good hour having fun at pinterest and then got my packages ready.

And then, my youngest, Julia wanted me to take her to Pet smart for some goldfish.  She had about fifty cents to spend.  So, I told her we'd go, but she had to come along on my other errands.  Then after the post office, we went to Kohl's to do some Father's day shopping.  Of course we ended up with other things too.  Both girls got a tank top and we splurged and got some jewelry.  Afterwards, I told her that was part birthday and a summer treat.

I usually only go to Kohl's one or two times out of the whole year.  It's out of the way and I just don't want to go down and shop for things I don't need.

I was looking through some photos last night and I found some of my apartment when I first moved in and it was filled with stuff.  I've got a practically bare apartment now.  I've got no furniture in my kitchen.  I'm hardly there.  Two pieces of furniture in my living room that will come with me.  My couch is getting thrown out when I finally move.  And one of my kids will get my TV.  Randy has two TVs.

I've got a three mirror vanity and chair of my Nana's that will be coming.  And one table in my studio that will come and then there's just a bunch of photo boxes and supplies.

And in my bedroom I've got two bureaus and two benches that will come.  And the rest is little stuff.  I bet if we stay where he is right now, I probably could slowly bring down some stuff and someday just pay to send my furniture down.  But that's down the road.  That's why over the last three years, I have been majorly cleaning out my stuff and making it so it would be so much easier to move.

A few years ago, I was thinking of saving up for a condo for myself, but then I met my boyfriend.  At that time, I was just thinking, what if I'm single for the rest of my life.

Thank-god for dating sites.  Although you have to be careful too.  And when I was first separated, my friends kept telling me that you don't want to meet anyone at a bar.  I did go to the bar a few times myself.  I did meet a guy once and was just talking with him.  He was this long haired guy named Bruno.  He seemed nice and the next few times I saw him there, he had a friend, so the three of us did some dancing.  But just friends nothing more.  I could tell Bruno was a regular and although he was a nice guy to talk to, he wasn't dating material.

And my friends also said that when people are at the bars they are very often coming with baggage.

Back to shopping, Julia and I finished up with getting the fish.  While we were there I bought some rocks for a fun idea for pictures for the blog and other stuff.

I came back and after lunch, I started in on the stuff.  I got this frame that I had taken the picture out of and started adding some ribbon to it with a bow in the middle.  With the same ribbon I duct taped the ribbon to the back of the frame.  Right now it's just duct taped but later, I probably should glue it onto the back and tack the ribbon better to the bottom.

Then, my other daughter, Mollyanne wanted me to paint with her.  We searched for water colors and she found some and I used some of those Folk Art acrylic paints and started dabbing the frame.  It's hanging from the crab apple tree for today.  I will modge podge it later so the paint won't wash off.

And Mollyanne posed outside behind it for some pictures.  It's really cute.  I'm tempted to find a few more frames at my house or at a yard sale to make a few more different ones.  They have their birthday party next weekend and my sister is coming up with her three kids and my dad.  It would be an awesome set up for some fun kid pictures.  And for other photography uses too.

So that is that fun project.  I was so tempted to throw out the frame last week or before that as I didn't know what I was going to do with it.

                                                        Jennifer Jo Fay Fancy Photography

                                                         I have to secure the handle at the top better as the frame fell out of the tree and the handle came apart.


The other fun project was writing on the rocks with a thick sharpie marker.  I just got thinking up different words and of course the alphabet.  I wrote on both sides.  So there is a lot of opportunity to spell out different things.  I've been seeing some pictures that people have done with those boggle blocks or scrabble tiles.  It's kind of a neat idea and I'm thinking I'd like to do my own with my own ideas.

                                         
                                            Jennifer Jo Fay Fancy Photography

                                             These are fun.  The fabric they are on is a bag I sewed up last night and I need to sew on the handles.  It is a quilt like pattern from my Aunt Harriet's curtains at her camp.  I brought her curtains home and later cut them up for different things.  Sound of Music ring a bell? Ha. Ha.


I like using people's photos sometimes, but I would rather use my own if I can.  But sometimes we just start blogging about something and you can't help but use someone else's photo.  It could be something of having no way to get a picture of.

Like for me it would be some of the kid things or fashionable pictures.  My kids I won't put on here and it's hard to get them to pose for stuff.  I wanted just their hands and their friends hands last week for a fun picture and they wouldn't cooperate so I didn't get it.

And I have no way of having models or adult women modelling something for me.  Most of my friends wouldn't want to do it.

Someday, I'm thinking if I want to have a certain image to start with, I might just have to rely on some picture  for a beginning and then take off on my own creation.

But with the rocks, I am also thinking this would be a fun thing to have around when I'm someday a grandparent.  Of course I would have to watch small children with them.  But  if you are right there with them, it is a stimulating thing.  Like also having a  rectangular Rubbermaid container filled with rice.  Jake got to play with that sometimes at his therapy visits when he was a baby up until preschool.

She was always pulling out different things to stimulate him.

But kids could have lots of fun with trying to spell words and sentences.  And same with adults.  I have to modge podge these later.

I'm going to have to get a good sized collection of these.  And flowers will go well with it too.

Well, I think that is about it.  I'm going to publish and then have a quiet creating craft afternoon.  Well not yet.  Mollyanne and I went into the back yard jungle of a vastly spreading wisteria that doesn't flower up in the north.  It's like walking into a jungle down by the basement door.  I went in with my clippers this afternoon and picked some ferns and my ivy and mint.  I've got them in a vase right now and my ivy is in a small fish bowl filled with water.  I'm going to leave them and see if roots grow.  It's also growing up the side of the house this year.

My ex likes the jungle.  It's kind of cool.  You have to stoop to get in and then I had white peonies in there and yellow lamium and my ivy as a massive ground cover.  And I trimmed the cherry tree in another section of the garden.  It's spreading out and not up.

I'll take pictures of some of this other stuff tomorrow and share on a later post.  I just feel like knitting up quick bracelets right now and finishing the bag from my aunt's curtains.

Thinking of death and my mom's anniversary coming up.  Plus a friend's sister is in the hospital and it doesn't look good.  We're all praying for her to recover.

And it just all got to me last night.  These memories of death.  It started the year my Grammy died three months after Sean was born.  Then it was my Mom, then my Uncle Ron, then my Aunt Harriet, then my Uncle Wayne and my mom's cousin Sharon's husband Dean and last year my cousin lost her son.  And throw in some other people.  Death surrounds us.

Yet, I was sheltered from it when I was growing up.  My mother's grandmother died and she had an open casket when I went to her funeral in the third grade.  All I wondered was why she was so still.  It impacted me even then.

I remember going to class after the weekend and I was in a somber mood.  And then that was it until my Grammy.  And then it hit home that I was getting older and my relatives time had come.

My mother's anniversary of her death is coming up on the 26th of this month, three days before Mollyanne's birthday.  Mollyanne was born three days after she died.  It was the death and then the birth.  A time of very mixed emotions.

So, I think for her anniversary I will blog about my mother.

Jennifer Jo Fay

Copyrighted June 14, 2012

                                            Jennifer Jo Fay Fancy Photography

                                            I think I'm going to crop this one later.

                                            Weeping Willow at the end of their street.

                                            The sun trying to poke through.

                                              At the end of their road and across the street is Mazza's farm stand.  It's open from late spring all the way to fall time for pumpkin season.  Sean applied there last week and is hoping to get in.  It would be really nice for him as he would just have to walk down the road and he's there.  It would be a nice first job.  But he won't know until they say yes.  I love going down there for corn later in the season.

                                          On the way to their house.  I was stopped at the lights and tried to capture the fog.  I wanted the fog off the river, but when I went to take the pictures, I could hardly see a thing so I didn't take any.  I might try another time at night.  Sometimes a foggy evening is cool too.