A recurring dream.

          I have this recurring dream. In it, I'm standing on a covered porch. It is summer and it's rain - hard. The rain is accompanied by thunder and lightening. So much lightening that it lights up the whole sky. With me, is a little girl with strawberry blonde curls. She looks at me with her big blue eyes - the same eyes my sister Patti had as a little girl, the same eyes my niece Lexi has now. Her eyelashes so long other women will envy them someday. Freckles dot her nose. She smiles at me. She is 3 years old and she is mine.

            The screen door behind us creaks open.

            "What are you crazy girls doing?" a male voice asks. Without turning, I know that he is handsome.

            The little girl giggles, her damp curls bounce.

            "We are watching lightening Daddy. Me and Momma love thunderstorms."

            "Come inside you goofs," He laughs, a laugh so deep that if I laid my head on his chest I would feel it resonate there. "I'll make hot chocolate."

            We turn to him and he lifts the little girl into his arms, much to her delight. She is as smitten with this man as I am. I can't see his face except for the outline of a wickedly sexy grin. Even after years, this man still makes me melt. This is my family, this is my home. Just as he leans to kiss me, I wake up.

            I hope this is a vision of the future and not just my mind playing a cruel trick on me. Of all the prayers I have prayed, this is my most solemn. More than anything in the world, this is what I want. It is buried so deep in my heart, I can't imagine it not coming true. Right now all I can do it wait, turn it over to God and when the time is right, it will happen. I believe this with all my heart. I don't really have any other choice.

Mixed media fun.

Good morning.
Let me tell you a story. When I was a little girl I loved to put on an old work shirt of my Dad's, roll up the sleeves and paint with my sister Patti. One year my Nana put my sister and I in painting classes @ the local art gallery. This year my Nana told me that the reason we were put into the painting classes was because Patti was so good @ art but she felt that it wasn't fair just to put Patti in them and not me. Imagine her surprise when I loved the classes more than Patti. I think it was the structure or something. Patti could make up anything out of her head and didn't like to be confined (funny that she is a graphic designer now and gets paid to create someone elses vision). I on the other hand can't just "paint" but can paint a flower if someone asked. Somewhere along the line though, art was lost on me. Probably because I was always competing with Patti (which might also be why Patti doesn't sing much even though she has a beautiful voice  - I'm the singer). 
This year thanks to Brave Girls, I have re-discovered art....I love having paint and glue on my hands. And it doesn't matter if it isn't very good to anyone else, it always suits my style. Brave Girls has gotten me brave enough to play with paint and glue and fabric and paper and ribbon. And it has bumped my scrapbooking up a level.
I want to share a mixed media piece I created for Courtney's Scrapbooking your Faith class. The purpose was to pick a phrase, a scripture or whatever that when you read it you knew that it was true, even if sometimes you forget it. So I picked "You are loved" a line from Josh Groban's song of the same name. In fact I could have used any lyric from that song but this one pretty much sums up the whole song.

This is not something that I would have been able to do a year ago. I used a piece of drywall from my basement, taped the edges and painted. I added rub-ons and chipboard. Some old sheet music and letters. I'm happy with how is came out and just have to figure out how to hang it on the living room wall.

I am so grateful for the classes I've been taking, I'm having so much fun!

Hope you guys are having a great week so far, the weather here is amazing!