It Ain’t Easy Being Queen…

… of a blog give-away and having to pick the winners.

But, I have deliberated and hereby decree the remaining recipients, based upon their expressed WHYs for certain items, to be…

for my I Need A Man cd…

1.  K —  for enthusing “I’d love one of your CDs. I need some new tunes to blast in my new minivan – what could be more fun!”

2. Sean — for offering “Oh wow, you have a CD? I had no idea you sung. Anywhere I can listen to the songs or where can I grab a copy of the CD so I could post a review of it?”

3.  Robin —  for her poetic plea…
“I’d really like Jannie’s CD
….if you please
The music and lyrics
….and nice melodies
I’m sure it has all
….to please a dear fan
Like loving the title
….of “I need a Man”

4.  Anne Bender — for her certainty that  “a cd of Jannie singing… may very well be the centerpiece of any musical collection…”

5.  Brian Miller — for his simple but stunning  “Your cd –  why wouldn’t someone want that?” 

Moving on to the Billy Collins poetry…

“Sailing Alone Around The Room” goes to Davina for her poetic yearing….
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
thy angels watch me through the night,
And keep me safe till morning’s light….
so I can awake and read my new book of poems by Billy Collins, of course…”

“Nine Horses” goes to… SuZen for her whimsied wonderings, “I can imagine painting one of the horses on the cover in an abstract… and I had a horse, Silver, back in the day, that I adored and the cover of this book reminds me of him in the most nostalgic and loving way.”

“The Art Of Drowning” goes to Shona Cole for trusting me to help quench her poetic thirst…  “I need a new book of poetry, as I just finished one and I hate to choose new poets on my own (on Amazon) ’cause usually they suck… but when someone recommends a poet or it is one that I already know I am rarely disappointed. So as I already ‘know’ Collins and you are recommending him too I know it will be a sure fire winner!”

“Ballistics” goes to Brian Miller for his thoughtful wish that… “as the [Billy Collins] dust jacket says, simple words capturing ordinary life…sure sound like what i try to do, so why not learn from someone who has gone where i would like to go. ”

Moving on again…

the three books below fall magically into the hands of these uncontested commenters…

Singing For Dummies —  Cinderkeys
The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Singing — Jaymie
Tori Amos, Fingerstyle Guitar — Jeanne!!

And in case you missed it, the winners from earlier in the week were…

SuZen — my cd.
Fireblossom — Billy Collins’ “The Apple That Astonished Paris.”
Gina — “Blogging For Dummies.”
Toni Cross — the Marilyn Monroe notecards.
Snaggletooth — “Inner Productivity.”
SuZen — “Twitter For Dummies.”
Glenn — Billy Collins’ “Questions About Angels.”
Daisy — my “I Need A Man” cd.

Now, where did I put that packing tape? And that glass of wine?

I will be doing more give-aways of old stuff lying around my house in the future!  Who wants 4 out of 6 Disney Princess drinking cups?? A slightly damaged brass door knocker in the shape of a squirrel? Half a bottle of Old Spice??

🙂

xoxo

Portrait Of The Artist At Age Four

Kids are such wonderful natural artists!  And can be pretty prolific when given full reign to create whatever, whenever.

But if you save all their masterpieces, how do you organize them?

Anybody have any ideas for sorting / storing and / or displaying kids’ art??  And school papers? Oh, so very many school work papers since our little angel first entered the halls of academia at age 2. So much stuff collected over the years, I’m not sure what to do with it.

About the 3 pix in this post… For Mothers’ Day when Kelly was four, her pre-school teachers gave each of us a little album of our darlings at work and play.  Sweet, eh!?

Beauty Shop Cutie (Now With “Reveal” Edit!)

See any MS Paint tweaks I made to the first photo? 5 in all? (6 if you count the light switches as 1 thing.)

Feel free to divulge what you think they are.  Or not — I am not here to be Miss Jannie Bossy Blogger!  🙂

What do you think, Snaggle, you Visual Design (and all-’round) Artist-Poet-Musician, you? My guess is you find them all quickly, with your discerning eye.

For anyone who doesn’t know multi-talented Snaggle, do yourself a favor and check out her photographs which always transport to magical places.

Talon is another amazing photographer and poet!

Anyway, speaking of being transported… back to the Beauty Shop Cutie (Cutie Shop Beauty?) photo tweaking.

And now that edit!!!! “The  REVEAL” because I know I’ve worked you too hard over this…

Crazy, eh?

But you know what’s REALLY crazy, ladies and gents?!?  My photos are now Ludicrous Wide!! Yes indeed, I upped ’em another 30px wide!

Isane!

(Whoops, I mean “insane”)

Just how much wilder can this blog get!?!?!

Next I’ll probably be putting up a photo of Kelly looking all Jason Vorhees in a mask she made from a paper napkin at a rib joint a few weeks ago!

But that’s a bit much.  Sorry.

Here, let me help you recover from that mask pic with something calmer…

Sleeping angel, age 4.

Ahhhhh.  There we go.  All better now.

Have YOU ever “painted” anything out of any photos?  Do you think it’s “cheating?”  I don’t!  I think it’s “Enhancing Viewer Pleasure!”

And if you don’t know how to, and want to “Paint” –  it’s easy!! I stumbled onto it a few months ago, and taught myself as I went.   (Note: I am not sure if MS Paint works on Mac computers, not a computer expert.  But I CAN do the highland fling!)

And below — voilà in reverse!! Mustard stained shirt, little dirt on wall. Bits of lunch around her mouth.

Told you it was getting absolutely nuts around here!!!

xoxoxo

The Sweetest Bloom

(Me & Chance — March, 1994)

In autumn of 1993 God came to Jim in a dream and told him to build planter boxes in front of our humble bungalow.  And Jim did.

God told me to splash our bungalow’s dull grey trim with Bermuda colors, then try my hand at filling the planter boxes. And I did.

Spring bulbs came up!

Little birdies sang.

We drank much beer.

In early 1995 God sent Jim visions of a terra cotta / dark green paint combo for the bungalow. And it came to pass.

God told me to paint the door white. That too came to pass.

The shrubs flourished, I planted others. And trees!  I dabbled in summer flowers.

We drank more beer.

In 1994 we started building our first addition, then a second in 1996. And later, a third — glimpses of which I showed you here.  Sometime during the years of those first 3 additions, God also had us gut and remodel our kitchen and transform a spare bedroom into a dining room.

At some point the front door went green. (God likes to change things up.)

He saw that things were very good.

He gave us The Child. This one…

Sweetest bloom our entryway has ever seen.

Then…

God smiled and said  “Jim, my son. You have done well with your own two hands.  But you must build a 4th and final addition to the bungalow. Begin by taking out the planter boxes you built on the south side of the front yard. There you will build a whole new entry into a breezeway connected to a 2-car garage with a media room up over it.  Build a half-bath at the top of the stairs. (A lean-to shed off the end of the new garage would please me too.)

Make sure a gilded wooden pineapple decorates the very pinnacle, that you take at least 8 years from start to finish of said project in your spare time, and that you also build this for The Child while you are working on Addition Four!

Oh — and paint the entire abode again (I like that new “Navajo White” with dark green trim I see folks using.)

But, Jim my son, please finish the interior of Addition Four by December 1st, 2010.  Even though Jannie will one day find respite in something called “blogging,” which will ease her wailing and moaning over what she will come to dub “this fricking never-ending house remodel,” she’d really like the Christmas tree in there for 2010!”

So it was decreed.

Yesterday God told me to go out with my iPhone and take a photo of the exterior of the very lovely-but-still-unfinished pineapple-pinnacled addition.

And one of our entryway.

Yes, the Old Door is still where it was in 1994! The New Door is in the breezeway addition.  We’ve had both doors for 5 or 6 years now. (We use the new one.)

The “tree” you see to the left is actually the one-same little pittosporum that was behind the tulips above!

God says that one day the Old Door will be magically replaced with a beautiful new window, one with finished stonework all ’round.

Fairies will dance and glazed donuts will pour down our street like tumbleweeds.

Yes, there will be beer for all!

And our sweetest bloom will continue to grace our every breath.

What’s your sweetest bloom (or blooms) in life these days?

xoxoxoxox

She At Three In Hat

Welcome to my first official Photo Wednesday Whoo-hoo!, where the pictures will hopefully speak for themselves.

Rather than closing comments on my Wednesday posts, my responses may be nil to sparse to enable me more time to get around and read YOUR wonderful blog posts, but for sure I’ll be reading all comments here.  And you’ll still love me anyway, right!?

(My Monday and Friday post offerings will afford you the unparalleled thrill 🙂 of my personal response to your comments.)

So…

Kelly is definitely a hat girl.   Her extreme cuteness made those toddler “I Do Myseff!!” moments easier to live through from about 13 months until the age of, um, 5, when she suddenly became incapable of doing things for herself.  Hmmn.  Strange phenomenon.

Right shoe? Left shoe? Wrong shoe…

Right shoe, right.

Kids!!  Gotta love ’em.

xoxo