Grief is a funny thing.  It’s been a month since we lost Pop, and I’m finally starting to feel my groove coming back.   I expected to cry, to be upset.  And then I expected to kind of ease myself over it in a generally swift fashion.  I figured I’d be back to blogging and sewing, and just back to normal pretty quickly.  I just haven’t been in the mood for all of that.

Still, every night, when I get my dish rag out to clean my kitchen counters, I have the urge to call him and talk while I tidy up.  Routine, routine.  It’s hard to get used to.

But I’m working on new outlets, new routines, new normals; and it really is getting easier.

To start, I wanted to write this “collage” post of all the recent happenings that I want to record for the kids.  I promise, the rest of this will be happy and, as usual, a little cluttered and jumbled, too!

Guess what? A.S. has her first loose tooth!  She’s four-and-a-half and thinks that she is just the bees-knees.  She can’t eat or drink without having me check out how much looser it is from the last time we checked.  It’s really cute.

Poor A.W. is suffering from a serious case of superhero identity after seeing this costume I made for a sweet birthday boy.  (I pretty much got the idea from the Sew Mama Sew Giveaway contestants; so thank you!)

I actually ended up giving A.W. the prototype (I almost always sew from my own sketches, so the first of anything is usually a real humdinger to me, but a masterpiece in the eyes of my forgiving almost-three-year-old!), and he’s been wearing it nearly every day — with nothing else, but that is another story entirely.

On the gardening front, everything seems to be coming up nicely.  I think I have the upper hand on the grubs and voles and birds – for now.

Check out our first harvest of the season — this gorgeous, jumbo-sized beet:

Also – this sort of relates to gardening – after seeing a fabulous movie – more on that later – and doing some soul-searching on my needs versus the needs of our chickens, we’ve been doing free-range time in the garden with the chickens.  I know, they mess things up in the garden.  But look how happy they are doing it!

In true scatter-brain fashion, let’s move along and talk about the last painting project. I was approached by one of our local librarians to re-do this chair that was made by a community member years ago.  We decided a lion would be cool.

So here was my first attempt:

I loved painting this!  I really liked the whimsical feel and the intense look of the eyes.   Kind of makes me think of the warning I give my little Toddler Mutant Ninja Turtle when we’re in the library and he’s getting too wild.  ;O)

But everybody has different tastes.  And the group that I was painting this for didn’t love it.  Fair enough.  You don’t always get second chances.  So when you do, you really should try to rock it.  And I tried and tried and tried to come up with this one.

Here’s what my second chance looks like:

They love it, so I’m a happy camper.

I’m also very happy to have the project completed so I can do more fun things!

Oh, but wait!  I forgot.  The theme this summer at the library is superheroes, so the same sweet librarian asked me if I could create some photo props for the kids.  I don’t draw much these days, so this was a bit of a stretch for me.  It was fun!  I hope the kids get a kick out of it.

As I type this, I’m hopeful that I will find time to slow down this weekend and spend some time in the best place I know of these days.  This right here, the most perfect corner of our garden is calling my name!

I think I’m back!

C