Pink Holidays

About this time of year my local hobby store starts clearing the aisles to make way for Christmas ribbons and ornaments.   I used to groan, it's way too early for this sort of thing.  But now after selling holiday things year round for several years the decorations themselves have become almost season less, almost meaningless.  I'm sure a lot of you who make Santas or Easter Bunnies are working out of season.  At first it was disturbing, I didn't like painting chalkware Santas in September or unboxing bottle brush trees on a warm summer day.  These things always seemed as if they should be accompanied by Christmas music and cookies.                                                                                I live in a temperate climate, in northeastern Wisconsin.   At times I've loathed the bitterly cold days that keep you stranded indoors, the cold at times so extreme that spending any length of time outdoors borders on reckless.  I have lived in a tropical climate with year round balminess, then on to a rainy place, followed by a dry arid place.  Perhaps it's just because I was born and raised here that I like the rhythm of this northern climate best.  The definite seasons, winter being broken by days almost unbelievably beautiful as the grass begins to grow again and the trees leaf out.  We tend to associate holidays with these rhythms, a white Christmas, a pretty spring day for Easter, corn shocks and fields of pumpkins for Halloween.

As time passes I make peace with unpacking Halloween decorations in the middle of summer and Easter bunnies showing up right after Christmas.  I've found I still really associate the holiday with the changing of the seasons and not the objects, the dinners and traditions and not the  decorations.  I have found the meaning lies not in the things themselves but the meanings we give them when we invite them into our lives and give them a place in our homes.  These things we labor on out of season are just waiting for someone's family and home to give them meaning.    

Just an added note, I didn't create any of the things in these pictures,  I do show some of my chalkware Santas in another post.

Little Luxuries

I was reading Inc. magazine the other day and came across some of the best ideas for a business now.  One was for a cupcake shop.  The premise being that in a down economy we may put the big purchases on hold, but we're quite happy to treat ourselves to a fancy cupcake.  The absolute other side to this are all the discussions being held about "The latte factor", that those little purchases add up and are what is putting us in debt.  You've heard the story, give up your $4 morning chocolaty coffee drink and in 40 years you'll have $810,764 or something like that.               I've lived for many years like Scrooge, seeing myself in Silas Marner--forgoing the latte, the cupcake, and a good many other things.  Undoubtedly it did build my savings account, and I was good at it, but anything taken to an extreme like a diet can lead to anorexia.  How to know when to stop.  Living that way can lead to a feeling of scarcity, that if I don't save this dollar another one may never come my way.  Better that I learn to make a few extra dollars here and there and have my little luxuries.   It's hard to believe that the pretty roses in the first picture are actually soaps.  I came across them in the etsy shop Satin & Birch http://www.etsy.com/shop/SatinandBirch  They're raspberry roses with a splash of lemon.  I saw them and lusted after them for days.  I just ordered and I'm awaiting their arrival. I will update when I get them in.  (They arrived and are sitting on a rectangular Japanese plate and sweetly scenting my bathroom, really lovel soap.) You get a set of 4 and I'm keeping 2 and giving 2 to a friend.  One of those little luxuries.

The remarkably frilly tutu is from the etsy shop of Tiaras Tutus http://www.etsy.com/shop/tiarastutus

It's a little indulgence for my granddaughter.  It's still being made and I can't wait to see it.  I have no idea what possible use it's going to have.  Maybe a photography session, maybe Halloween, maybe just for dress up.  A play-pretty with no other purpose than being pretty.                                                     Life is just so much more delicious with little treats.  We need clothing to wear, but don't need tutus.  We need food to eat, but no one needs a cupcake.  We need soap to wash with but it's not necessary that it's shaped into roses and scented.  But, rather than worrying that today's little splurge will lead me into poverty in later years I should view it a challenge and an ambition.  How to make the extra money to give myself this feeling of being unabashedly wealthy.  Taken this way my treats aren't "guilty pleasures", they're spurring me to ambition and action.

Pink Inspiration

   Today I'm trading a little something pink for some inspiration.  I have six 2 ounce packets of German glass glitter and micro beads (all pink of course!) to give away.  In the comment section leave your favorite quote that inspires you.  The one that actually gets your butt off the couch and gets you moving.  The one that works.  I will put all your names in a bag and have a disinterested third-party (my husband) randomly pick one.  The little glitter prize will go to the winner.   I will announce the winner in this very post on Sunday morning.                                                        One of my favorite quotes is by Stephen Pressfield and contained within The War of Art.  Absolutely one of my favorite books, read and read again.  The sort of book you follow someone around with reading aloud just in case they need a little inspiration too.                                 "Creating soap opera in our lives is a symptom of resistance. Why put in years of work designing a new software interface when you can get just as much attention by bringing home a boyfriend with a prison record."                                               You all know someone like this.  And it works, drama gets attention and it's really not all that difficult.  Studying, creating, writing, getting up each and every day and doing what you need to do is difficult.  When you're starting a business or

learning a craft, or just trying something that's outside of your comfort, it would certainly be easier to stop and distract yourself and everyone around you with a little drama.  And you will get attention, but you'll never get anything done.

Let me know what motivates you.  What gets you off the sofa and on to writing your book, sewing your quilt, making pottery, creating your dream.

Photos are of Rosa rugosa "Sandy" and Lonicera halliana.  I especially love the rose.  The deer who devour everything else they can in my yard do not touch it, insects don't eat it, and it grows fast and smells wonderful.  In fall there are enormous rose hips.       

                

Pink Mountains, Scouring Powder, and Starry Nights

     I noticed the other day that all the mountains

in the paintings I own were pink.  Am I attracted to pink mountains?  Or do many artists paint their mountains pink?   Here in north central Wisconsin I am too far away from mountains to do my own research.

   Many mountains are made of granite.  Granite consits mainly of quartz (the clear white part), hornblende (the black part), and feldspar which can be many colors but is often pink.

  As an aside, feldspar is the most abundant mineral on earth.  It's used as the abrasive in at least one scouring powder.  The next time you're scrubbing your sink it may be with powdered rocks.

No two of us are ever going to see things the same way.  Perhaps great art is brought about by not only seeing a little differently, but be being daring enough to paint, write, or compose that very thing we see or hear.  When I see Van Gogh's Starry Night, I think of fireworks against that dark blue sky.  I'm sure others of his time (and ours) couldn't or weren't willing to see the fireworks.  Afraid to stray from what's accepted.  The legions of us who color within the lines, never stray from the path and keep ouselves locked within, afraid, will never paint pink mountains or fireworks in the night sky.  We'll stay at home content to scrub our sinks with the dust of mountains.  Just once see a thing as it really is--to only you--and follow where it takes you.  You never know until you put hand to brush, or clay, or loom, what may spring from your heart. 

 

Which Came First?

Imagine a caveman at work on his cave paintings, he mixes together a little iron oxide and lime and makes pink.  Does he think "hmm, this go in daughter's cave".  Do we grow up learning that pink is a more feminine color or would we just naturally respond to it that way?   If we paint prison walls pink does it calm the prisoners?  And if so does it just have a naturally calming effect or does it remind the prisoner of Grandma's powder room or frosted cupcakes  and these things do not connect with bad behavior.  I once bought my husband a shirt that was yellow and blue (when he had a job that required the wearing of a tie) and a little too flamboyant for him.  He wore it once and gave it to Goodwill.  He swears the shirt was pink.  Pink may well be the most one of the most polarizing colors.  You don't dress your baby boy in pink, paint your house pink (unless you're in the John Cougar song Little Pink Houses) or paint your pick-up truck pink unless you're really making a statement.  You do put pink roses on a birthday cake, dress little girls in pink tutus, wear pink lipstick and plant pink roses.  It's a color  you choose carefully.  You don't fall back on it because it's safe, it's far too powerful.  It's strength lies in it's connotations.  When our caveman mixed up his first batch of pink pigment he knew he couldn't paint animals with it, it wasn't a practical color it was an extraneous luxurious color.  A color to delight in.