Rainy Days are for Stitching

There have been a lot of rainy days in my neighborhood. That usually means I can be found in my favorite chair creating cards to send to loved ones and shut ins.

I love to work on dark cardstock because it makes the colors "Pop".

I began making cards by using rubber stamps. Paper Embroidery became a passion for me in the last while. Then just lately I decided it would be great fun to combine the two of them. I usually color the images with colored pencils and sometimes water colors. It has brought new excitement to my card making. Combining the two mediums has opened my mind to other possibilities. Isn't that what keeps us creating?

I am so thankful to live in a time when there is such a wide range of colors and different kinds of threads to choose from. My colored pencil box is huge too. I have the rainbow at my fingertips. It seems the more I do, the more ideas that come.

Hope these will brighten your day.

Have a great weekend.

A new kind of Mother's Day

Darkness has fallen on Mother’s Day 2011. I am ready. I knew the first Mother’s day without Mother would be difficult. You just don’t live for almost 70 years with your mother in your life and not feel a deep sense of loss when she is no longer with you. She will always be in my life because she will always be in my heart but it is different.

I knew it would not please or honor my mother to have it turn out to be a day of mourning and tears. But I also did not want it to be a “business as usual” kind of day either. Some wise soul told me that it is sometimes a good thing to embrace our pain. At first I thought this sounded like a lot of craziness. But I decided it was worth a try.

I had made plans to make a memory garden in her memory so earlier this week I picked up the perennials to do that. I chose flowers that I knew that she liked and a few that would remind me of her. As I can no longer get down on my hands and knees I decided I would put them in containers and have them near my little deck table where I often have morning devotions.

Then this afternoon I went out to the deck and began to plant the flowers and at the same time buried some of my tears into the soil. There were no deep sobs, no lost feelings, just a sense of love and peace that seemed to come from my mother. Once they were planted, I sat in the sunshine for a while just feeling it’s warmth and the presence of God. . I find myself wondering how my own mother worked through her time of grief when her own mother died. I realize it is a cycle we all take and yet we do not seem to learn from those who have gone before. It is a personal thing and we must each walk the road relatively alone.

My reality is my mother has died. We will not see each other again until we meet at the feet of Jesus. I know she is at rest and I need to continue my way to find peace about that.

It is time for me to find a new part of myself, new growth and hopefully a way to bloom once again.

Mother’s birthday was June 11^th so that is my next hurdle. But I have learned things from today and I hope I will manage as well as I did today. I am truly relieved that this first Mother’s Day is over. I cannot but hope that next year will be just a bit easier.

So tomorrow I will return to dong the creative things, cooking meals and gardening, hoping I will grow and bloom and all the love and hard work of teaching me the best she could will be rewarded.

I had hoped to post photos of the new memory garden. It will have to wait until I can shoot pictures in the daytime. Perhaps I will let them settle in just a bit.

Happy Mother's Day to all of you, even those who are missing their mothers. Memories can bring us close

Sallyann