Tolstroy and the Purple Chair

I never read Tolstroy, but I have read "Tolstroy and the Purple Chair" by Nina Sankovitch.  This counts as high culture, right?  By chance, I even read the book while sitting on my own purple fold-up chair at a swim meet.  It didn't occur to me until I returned to my chair from watching ds race and saw my copy of "Tolstroy and the Purple Chair" sitting on MY purple chair. 

Purple Chair #1

Already a blogger on her website, readallday.org, Nina made a commitment to read an entire book everyday for a year.  She also blogged about each book daily.  Gotta love that tenacity.  As the mother of three boys myself, I also really appreciated the time dedication this required.

As I read this book, I was trying to take my mind off my husband's possible breast cancer.  I didn't know it when I first picked up the book, but the author was grieving the loss of her sister to cancer throughout the book.  While this didn't help me take my mind off dh, it did assure me the comfort of "escaping" into a good book.  He does have breast cancer, but we're both reading a lot of books this summer while he's recovering from surgery. Right now, I'm waiting for a book on health and healing to come in from Amazon.

Purple Chair #2

On a lighter note - can you believe I have TWO purple chairs?  My childhood rocking chair is also painted purple.  Honestly, I think the purple chair is what attracted me to the book in the first place.  

Framed Crystals?

Mom and I teamed up to create these...suncatchers?  light catchers?  Framed amulets or hanging crystals?  Please comment and let me know what you think they should be called.  We're starting to add them to my etsy shop...but we still don't know what to call them.

Several years ago my mom started embellishing crystal prisms with well selected additional crystal, stone, and glass beads.  For example, the one on the bottom is the "Purple Bears" one she gifted me with featuring little purple bear beads.  It's lovely, but it would seem to get overlooked in of my house. That's when I decided to frame it, and the combo really is breathtaking if I do say so myself.  I took it in to show Mom at work, and her co-workers all stopped to stare as well.  

First one posted on etsy...called a framed amulet?

"It" is the perfect combo of her amulets and my stained glass.  Of course, it could be called a suncatcher, but it's not the traditional type at all.  So how to convey the difference the open space and hanging crystals in the middle makes?

Morning Surprise

It's not often I go out and sit down in my front garden, but it's a good place to take pictures of my crosses for Etsy.  So while I was out there this morning taking pictures, I looked up and really "saw" my catmint, echinacea, and daisies towering over me.  Wow!  From down there they are looking good.  

From the street, the daisies are too tall since I split them last year and apparently did not put them in the ground as low as they were before.  Now I'll need to split the echinacea, and raise them up, or lower the daisies.  Luckily, neither can be done in this heat.  So I can sit back and enjoy.