{a play on words}
Archive for the 'family' Category
my beautiful baby is two today.
one of my newest etchings. i am quite fond of this piece because of the time and energy that it took to make it. I colored the children’s clothing with chine colle paper….5 pieces to be exact and then editioned it to 10! I have been holding out on showing this until the right moment….which i guess is now? hm
meet “boy” griesse whom has recently moved into the perrodin house. he actually belongs to our friends who just moved to germany and were unable to take him at this time. though a temporary move, we sure love him.
here is a drawing I completed several months ago. thanks to my husband introducing me to this about 5 years ago, I now appreciate and prefer the delicious taste of french press coffee.
OH, and if you haven’t noticed. I now have a “shop” tab here on my webpage.
we began our trip with a hike...
stayed in the sunshine...
swam in the stream...
made surprising discoveries....
explored abandoned mines....
took time to watercolor....
made plenty of camp fires near the cabin....
watched the wind blow....
checked out the area's public library...
discovered new species of plants....
roasted marshmallows......
and had our fair share of naps.
one spring morning.
pin the beard on the president. designed by raine.
cake made by mimi {& raine}. table cloth made from 25cent bandanas found at a thrift store.
raine wanted to have pies thrown in her face.
the donkeys, elephants, and independents all showed up to celebrate Raine’s seventh year of life! Raine picked the theme of “president party” {not sure where it came from} for her birthday, it was fun making this happen for her.
jonathan thought that making a coffee cup out of bronze was a much better idea than a cassette tape. i disagreed, but made him a coffee cup anyway and surprised him for christmas.
this is a starbucks cup cast in bronze. it weighs around 15 pounds.
i know its well into january now, but i have yet to show you all of our handmade christmas. this was raine’s gift to jonathan, her own version of a prayer book. she wrote three prayers for each day. i helped with the cover design, its a mock up of a page from the book of kells. jonathan says that this was his favorite gift.
here is a clay remnant of my portrait bust. i couldnt bring myself to simply trash my face along with the rest of the clay that it took to make myself.
a bust of myself. now what to do with it?
here it is! raine’s first published book, including 4 stories written and illustrated by herself.
this turned out fantastic. shes says that she would like to make more. so perhaps this is merely the beginning. im proud of her and inspired by her stamina…she worked diligently to make this book happen.
and of course, a special thank you to the papa that spent endless nights making this book happen!
a gift for jonathan.
he recently attended a performance (if you will) by michigan-based pastor, rob bell called “drops like stars”. at the end of the night, they passed out bars of soap encouraging individuals to essentially create a work of art with the soap.
so for christmas, i carved jonathan a tiny olive branch out of the soap he received, loaded with christian symbolism. the scroll beside it explains some of the connotations often sited with the branch.
kiki, ezmah's doll, is on the left {named after the incredible artist kiki smith b/c her hair reminded me of hers}, and libby on the right, was made for raine {jonathan named her}.
front
back
these toys were not only made with tons of love, and no money whatsoever, but with 100% recycled materials as well.
all the fabric, rick-rack, and ribbons were hand-me-down scraps from a gracious soul {probably circa 1980ish}, the dowel rods were simply found, the dolls are stuffed with plastic grocery bags (they remain really soft and you can’t hear the bags), the inside of the wands are supported by 6 circle cardboard pieces cut from the bottom of my canned chicken broth package (this was really nice because the perfect cirlces were already made by the indentions that the cans left).
and to boot, the girls love them, though raine has renamed her doll “sam”….
ezmah likes spaghetti,
raine made shadow puppets,
we had a beautiful thanksgiving at the allen house,
later discovered that turkey really does make you sleepy...
ezmah experienced her first white christmas,
dasien was reminded of her heritage,
now we are simply trying to relax.
raine has recently began writing and illustrating her own books and coloring books. i am planning on marketing these real soon….no lie.
something full of meaningless symbols. satisfying nonetheless.
raine averi
ezmah jane
hope you all have a great evening!!
this year i received some pretty incredible gifts for my birthday. amazing enough that i thought i should share with you and show a bit of appreciation.
included in the photo is a new {much needed and larger} french press from jonathan. he also printed photos and updated the frames around our house as an added gift {hence the framed photo of the girls}, abby made an incredible hardbound book for me {that is blank inside} which probably deserves its own photo, the book and the precious stuffed owl were from both abby and suzanne. raine made a halloween themed triptych to give me, you can only see part of it in the background {it includes a bat (shown), a witch on a broom, and two cats}, also, my incredible inlaws surprised me with a cast iron chimenea, my mother bought me a ton of new clothes, pops sent money, and on top of it all, i was fed mexican and american delicacies for lunch and dinner!!
here are a few shots i took before and after our perrodin potluck last saturday. i have been terrible about getting my camera out at our parties lately…..i need to work on that. i thought these were pretty enough to share though. i took a ton of photos with this blanket my mom made from the 70′s….its such a great splash of color!
our friends jonathan and valerie griesse harvested a beautiful garden this past summer, included in that was a surplus of watermelon. we were lucky enough to share in the opening of the “best” one last week while raine partook in her own mini-melon.
we began the day with painting halloween decor, then headed to fayetteville to meander on some beautiful trails, eventually making our way to the library (for the restroom?)...
after leaving the library we began to walk to ddp gallery....
but were briefly distracted by kathy p. thompson's studio windows. they offered much inspiration and beauty!
after the nice gallery visit, we followed the sounds of music....
...and happened upon a parade!
after all of this, we returned home for a brief moment of rest, then went to jonathan’s parents house for a ridiculously long night of games, good food and crazy entertainment.
…atleast the ones at murphy park.
ezmah was in awe and raine ran out of croutons too fast!
jonathan so graciously volunteered to make invitations for our upcoming potluck. he knows that my time is extremely tight these days and that i would want to do more than i had time to do. hes definitely raising the bar. is it fair to say that im fortunate for such an incredible man?
ezmah recently turned one. here is a small glimpse of her incredible party.