Through his eyes

To him life really is beautiful. He is an observer of things that many pass by everyday without noticing.  To him it is important to try and capture that moment. He needs to do that. He finds joy in it.

Every afternoon when he gets home from work we have a special little ritual. As soon as they hear his truck pull up in the driveway, the children come running from all corners of the house to welcome him back. Many hugs and kisses later, after their most important and exciting news of the day has been shared, while he removes his boots and sheds all of the extra layers of outerwear, they disperse back to their various activities. 

Then we sit together, always. I make us a cup of coffee and we talk, just the two of us. We tell each other about our days, we reconnect. And he shows me his pictures. I get to see what he sees. He amazes me constantly with the beauty he brings home to share with me. He needs to do that. He finds joy in it. And I find joy in that he shares it all with me.

All pictures in this post were taken by Rodrigo (including the selfie- one of my favorite pictures of him ever). If you are interested in seeing more of what I get to see you can take a peak at his Google+ page.

Pin Cushion Swap ~ What I made

I recently took part in a pin cushion swap hosted by Sew Far Sew Good and House of Pinheiro. My swap partner was the lovely and talented Keri of Two Little Flowers. I had so much fun coming up with this little pin cushion and all of the accessories! 

First off, I needle felted a little tree stump on a little green hill and attached it to the wood base. Well, actually I dyed the wool first then felted it... Then I decided to make a little snail out of oven bake clay and a real snail shell I found at the ocean last year.  (The snail idea is not originally mine, but I can't remember where I saw one like this. I saved a picture onto my computer for inspiration, thinking that someday I'd like to make one for myself, and I didn't put down were the idea came from... sorry! If anyone knows I'll edit to include the link!)

Isn't he adorable? 

The flower pins I made by gluing tiny beads onto pin heads.

And the little owl family and clay mushrooms are my own design. I shaped them from oven bake polymer clay, and pushed them onto pin heads. To hold them up while baking I cut a potato in half and pushed the pins into the potato, so they wouldn't warp by laying on the baking sheet while hardening. Not very elegant but it worked and it was free! When they were hard and cooled I painted them. 

My little photo stylist helping my arrange everything just so for the photo shoot. ;-)

I hope Keri enjoys her little pin cushion! Be sure to pop over to her blog Two Little Flowers to see what she sent me!

I'm also linking up with Nicole over at Frontier Dreams for her {Keep Calm, Craft On} link up!

Flower Mandalas with Kids

When I was 15 years old I took a trip to India for 2 weeks. The entire time there was packed full of exotic sights, sounds and smells. One of my favorite memories was waking up early every morning and climbing up to the roof of the building where we were staying to watch the women of the neighbourhood go out onto their front steps scrub them clean, sweep them off and use chalk, flower petals or dyed sawdust to create beautiful intricate mandalas. Every morning the old ones where carefully cleaned away and new ones were made in their place. 

These mandalas were created by my children with very little input from me. I showed them a few pictures of flower mandalas online and suggested that we might try making some using only flowers and objects found around our home. They thought it sounded like fun so we set out, basket in hand to cut flowers and leaves. They made about 15 different mandalas spread throughout the yard. When the wind started blowing and tossing the flowers around, we gathered a few more flowers and came inside to make one more mandala on the dining room table. Even 2 year old Claire helped out pulling petals off the flowers so Matthew could place them in the mandala. These mandalas don't last very long but they are fun to design and smell great!