Art + Design // Art with Lizzy

My sister Lizzy and I share a love of art. We both love to draw and paint, among other things. She is a much more developed, talented artist than I am and focused on it much more in school than I did. She will also most likely study it at some level in college as a focus, while I only studied it as a minor. Either way, we don't have much else in common and found that we bond well over art and it is really fun to have a partner in crime anyways. Whenever we can, we get together for an art night. I'm usually drawing something, while she's painting something. 

These are a few pictures from our last get-together. She was working on a mini painting project while I did some drawings to go in my wedding scrapbook. I'll share pictures of my wedding scrapbook when I have more of it finished.

Our mess we made. Mostly Lizzy's mess...

A painting Lizzy did a while ago--this one is hanging on her bedroom wall.

A drawing of Johnny Depp as Edward Scissor-hands Lizzy did. I'm telling you, talented.

The drawings I did that night for my wedding scrapbook. They have nothing to do with my wedding, but that's kind of the point.

I hope Lizzy doesn't get mad at me for saying this... but she will be a famous artist one day. I just know it. Also, she is graduating from high school next week so congratulations to her! Love you Lizzy!!

Thanks for reading!

House of Literature // City of Light

I was sick last week with that stomach bug that is going around. It's the worst kind of sick to me because not even medicine helps.

Anyways, I have been able to read a lot because of all my bed rest time and just finished a book called "City of Light" by Lauren Belfer. It is one of the random books I picked up at Goodwill and bought for $1 because it looked interesting on the shelf. I ended up absolutely loving it.

The story is set in Buffalo New York in 1901 when electricity was new and being generated by water power through the Niagara Falls. The story is told in first person through the headmistress of the Macauley School for Girls in a time where it was thought that education made girls masculine. It was a fascinating read as I learned about that time period, the political and social culture of 1900's Buffalo NY, and also about the resistance that environmentalists put up against using the Niagara Falls for industry purposes.

We all take electricity for granted now, and reading about the struggles of living without it and trying to embrace the power it offered really opened my eyes. One of my favorite quotes from the book is a picture of the dream Tom, who was the chief engineer on the electricity project at Niagara, had for what electricity could and would eventually offer the world:

"The glow of commitment filled his eyes. And it was a glorious vision. I saw it with him: an end to child labor, an end to the beating-down that so many women endured simply to get by from day to day. I wanted to embrace that future with him--it was a miraculous place of hope and freedom, intoxicating to imagine."
                                                                                                     [pg. 34, City of Light]

Incidentally, I have been to Niagara Falls--on the Canadian side. Below are pictures I took when I was there in the winter of 2004. 

Thanks for reading!

Hello Lovely // The Future Me

^My use of the Ryman Eco font

Everyone wants to grow and change right? When we were little kids, that's all the adults in our life would ask us: Who do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I'm still trying to answer that question. 

An artist, designer, lover, friend, reader, writer, servant, maker. All those things perhaps? Those questions answer 'what'. What about the 'who'? No matter what I'm doing, designing, reading, serving, I want to be...

Someone fearless, who jumps on opportunities, has no regrets (or at least learns from them and moves on), is a great friend and wife, a lover of all things creative and laughs a lot. Above all I want to be more passionate about my Savior, Jesus Christ and love people the way He does. 

I'm some of those things but have quite a long way to go before I get there. To some degree, I know I will never fully achieve this future me, but I will certainly never stop striving for it.

One day at a time, right? To keep loving and learning and praying. And also heeding the wise Dr. Seuss: "If you never did you should. These things are fun, and fun is good!"

Thanks for reading!

House of Literature // The Book Thief

My own tattered copy of The Book Thief

Another book I highly recommend reading. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. It has gotten a lot of attention in the media and a movie is now out. However, I was initially drawn to it just by the summary of the book that I got strictly from the title. A girl who steals books. That's cool. Also, it is set in Germany during World War II, which is a fascinating time period to me as it is to most people.

So I read it... No, I devoured it.

I wanted to quote one of my favorite parts from the book. Don't worry, nothing of the plot will be given away. This is a 13-page 'storybook' that a Jew in hiding wrote for the main character, Liesel. Here it is:

"The Standover Man"

All my life, I've been scared of men standing over me.

I suppose my first standover man was my father,

but he vanished before I could remember him.

For some reason, when I was a boy, I liked to fight.

A lot of the time, I lost.

Another boy, sometimes with blood falling from his nose, would be standing over me.

Many years later, I needed to hide. 

I tried not to sleep because I was afraid of who might be there when I woke up.

But I was lucky.

It was always my friend.

When I was hiding, I dreamed of a certain man.

The hardest was when I traveled to find him.

Out of sheer luck and many footsteps, I made it.

I slept there for a long time.

Three days, they told me... and what did I find when I woke up?

Not a man, but someone else, standing over me.

As time passed by, the girl and I realized we had things in common.

But there is one strange thing.

The girl says I look like something else.

Now I live in a basement.

Bad dreams still live in my sleep.

One night, after my usual nightmare, a shadow stood above me. 

She said, "Tell me what you dream of."

So I did.

In return, she explained what her own dreams were made of.

Now I think we are friends, this girl and me.

On her birthday, it was she who gave a gift--to me.

It makes me understand that the best standover man I've ever known is not a man at all...

-Markus Zusak in The Book Thief

There were hand painted pictures to go along with it, but you'll just have to read the book to see those!

I hope that if you were on the fence about reading this book, this post helped encourage you to do it.

Thanks for reading!

Nostalgia // Romantic Virginia, Part 1

I like revisiting memories from my childhood and wanted to do that a little bit here for a different kind of post. Maybe you can relate to a childhood perspective and visiting grandparents?

The Magical Place

Visiting Nanny and Pops was always a very magical, romantic concept to me as a young girl. They have a beautiful house in Hampton, VA, where all things wonderful, fun, and exciting were sure to happen.

Packing half a suitcase with a few pairs of underwear and my toothbrush, I would dream about all the fun we were going to have. Even though the five of us girls would pack into a small van with our parents, which would normally be a recipe for a miserable time, I looked forward to the 4-hour road trip. I say that, but honestly, I slept most of the trip there and back. Something about the warmth of a cramped car, my pillow, and the predictable shaking that highway miles always gave our van would put me right to sleep. Of course, there was the occasional jostle of a fight in the back seat or someone complaining about needing to pee, but our trips were still pretty smooth and painless.

The favorite part of the trip was always going through the tunnel underneath the James River. I would have a slight tinge of fear as we initially drove in that this time, the walls would crumble and we’d drown. But that quickly went away as the wonder of knowing I was under the water hit me. Once we were past the beginning of the dive, it was dark with reddish lights showing drivers the way out.

Once we survived the tunnel, the rest of the drive was only about ten minutes longer. Of course, that still seemed like such a long time, so we appointed landmarks identifying specific milestones we reached for that last ten-minute stretch. This helped those last terrible minutes fly by.

The first were the Virginia walls. They are tall, concrete walls built alongside the road to keep the backyards of residential areas private.

Next is the 'Virginia turn', which is a ridiculously long spiral off the interstate onto a highway closer to our anticipated stop. We always let the force of turning around such a long steep spiral throw us against each other as we giggled and held on for dear life.

The third and final ‘landmark’ is the half a mile long dirt road—at the end of which was Nanny and Pops. As we bumped along the dirt road, we rolled down the windows and all gathered on the right side of the car to be the first one to spot their house…

My wonderful grandma (Nanny)

The story is to be continued...

In Theory // A Teaser Trailer for The Dusty Butler

My husband, JD, is writing a book. It will end up being a children's book most likely that I will illustrate. It's very unique in that there's not much of a plot and most of the story just consists of ridiculae (as in the noun version of ridiculous). Think Monty Python and the Holy Grail ridiculous.

I know this isn't everybody's thing, but I personally think it's brilliant and am very excited about the release of this book. People who don't take themselves too seriously and have a silly side to them will appreciate the humor and creativity displayed in JD's writings.

I wanted to preview a few sentences here as a teaser trailer for what's to come in the final edition:

"Mr. Chankers was a jolly man with a belly, and one dimple held captive on his left ventricle. After embracing the Butler, he started to laugh and couldn't stop, until he began to cough because of Dusty's dust. He just kept coughing and coughing until he began to choke, until he fell down and died."

-JD Loftis in The Dusty Butler, Part 1

1st Edition of the Book Cover

I will announce progress of this book as well as final release once it is completed. Our goal is that on our two-year anniversary, September 28th, we will have it ready to be printed. 

Thanks for reading and please comment below!