Bramblewood Bears: January 2010

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Happy New Year and 7 things!

Hello again to all my wonderful artisan friends! I hope all your Christmas' were splendid and joyous. Let me begin by saying HAPPY NEW YEAR, and please forgive me for neglecting my blog so. The kids and I spend all of November and December hand crafting over 50 gifts for family and friends, which in turn left no extra time for my bears or blog. I thoroughly enjoyed crafting with my little ones who made two sided sewn teddy bears with scrap fabric and painted delightful faces on each of them to give to other children in the family. The teddies were far from perfect, but the joy that came from the other children when they received the little bears was truly a blessing to my little sewers. We really wanted to turn the corner from purchasing all of our gifts to trying to hand make them instead. It seems it really puts the focus of Christmas more on creating and giving rather than receiving and spending. My children learned to find delight in planing, making, wrapping, creating, gifting and being thankful for what we have and this Christmas was especially sweet. My hope is to continue our tradition of hand crafted gifts like in the olden' days where every gift was treasured and appreciated fully.

And now onto my 7 things....

I have been awarded four blog awards and I am very remorseful for taking so long to respond. I wanted to put a lot of thought and time into answering, so waiting until the holidays had passed was the best way to attend to my awards rightly :)

My first two awards come from my wonderfully talented and inspired artist Rose of b.b.flockling, Christel Hutson of 'A Far Place OOAK Dolls' who is a new artist in the sculpture category and wildly talented and also Penny of Angelsdoor who paints and draws the most beautiful angels you could lay your eyes upon. Thank you mom, Christel and Penny for honoring me with a blog award!

7 Things You May Not Know About Me:

1. I suppose that one of the struggles that defines my life is my ability to NOT get pregnant :) My husband and I spent the first 6 years of our marriage praying, trying, paying lots of money to doctors, injecting shots, taking pills, weekly tests and monitoring, to finally come to the realization that pregnancy was not much of an option for us. As you can imagine, those 6 years were a roller coaster of hurt and emotion I wouldn't wish on anyone. We wanted a family more than almost anything and decided to turn to adoption. We tried foster care and were thrilled to have two newborn twins come to live with us. Nine months later, they were reunited with their birth mother, which just about destroyed me. Thankfully we had by only a miracle of God, an opportunity to adopt a newborn baby girl from the island of Yap in the South Pacific only two month after the twins left. I was able to be present when my sweet little girl was born into the world.

I was the first to hold and feed her. She was (and still is) the most beautiful and precious thing I have ever seen! Amazingly, by the grace of God, after returning home, I became pregnant three months after my daughter was born. 9 months later we welcomed my son into the world!

Over the years, God has been so good to us and added 2 more precious boys to our family and we are praying a third little 2 year old boy will become a part of our fold by February! My husband and I will be celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary this month. It is so strange to look back 6 years into the past at our hopelessness at ever having a family. We are now an ever-growing brood of 7 members and everyday I relish the blessings God has brought my way!

2. This quaint household lives upon a dainty little farm snuggled deeply inside a pristine valley. Our home was built over 100 years ago by my pioneer ancestors and was remodeled before we purchased it. One day we would like to restore some of the charm the original house that still whispers and reflects across its now modern walls.

Our farm is graced with 8 hens, 1 rooster, 5 turkeys, 6 cows, 18 rabbits, 3 dogs, 8 puppies and 1 cat!

We are hoping to add some sheep to our fold in the fall this year and are working on a front pasture for them to live in with a little loafing shed. We try to be as self supporting as possible like growing our own food and herbs. One of my deepest desires regarding our farm would to become un-reliant on electricity and totally free of the grid. To have our own solar and wind power set up would allow some electricity for the major jobs like laundry and dishes. We have an old restored wood cook stove that would be my dream to use fully. As of now, it only graces our kitchen. Perhaps one day in the future, it will be a fully functioning and used wood cook stove resembling its glory days!

3. The fact that we live on this beautiful farm reflects something in my personality that may seem to be a character flaw, but to me it is rather gratifying. I am something of a hermit! Being raised on a farm as a young girl and experiencing the loveliness that comes with fresh air and being surrounded by animals, and then getting married and moving to the city, I longed to return to the country life.

After saving and flipping a couple of houses, we were finally able to find the perfect farm far from any town to make our own. Little did we know at the time, this sweet farm was settled by my ancestors years ago. Now happily home on the farm and surrounded by my brood of children and animals, I have NO desires to leave, even if that simply entails a grocery run! We do venture into the nearest town about 25 miles away on some Sunday's to attend church or to meet with my mom or sister for a quick brunch, but I am fully fulfilled staying home and shopping online where the ordered items magically appear on my front doorstep! It is like the best of both worlds....being home and shopping without even getting out of my nightclothes!

4. If you have not guessed already, I am quite fond of anything old-fashioned that has to do with the charm of yester-year....specifically anything before the 1940's. I adore music from the great depression era including Bing Crosby, Dick Haymes, Betty Hutton, Danny Kaye, Andrew Sisters, Fred Astair, Doris Day and Greta Keller among others! It is such joyous music of a simpler time and fills our house with joyousness.

My love for the olden does not stop with music, but continues on with furniture, clothing, decor and movies.

I often dream of living in the pioneer days. I grew up watching "Little House on the Prairie" with Laura Engels and all her adventures. Now as a mother I reminisce of Caroline baking home-made bread in her wood cook stove that Charles bought for her one fine Christmas, the meager family built homestead lighted by the golden glow of kerosene lamps, and my favorite, the long pioneer dresses complete with bonnet and lace-up boots.

I love every aspect of the old life including the covered wagons and old hand pump water wells.
Of course I know I am fooling myself. I have been modernly spoiled with computers, mechanical wash machines for clothes and dishes, electricity at the touch of a finger and motorized horse carriages, but I can dream and set up here on the farm something reminiscent of those glory days stored away in my imagination.

5. The most important aspect that defines my life apart from my devotion to God, are my children. Each of them are nearing school age. Before they were even born, my husband and I decided our children would most defiantly be home schooled. Now that my oldest is 5 and all my boys are now 4 (my youngest is 2), it is time to build the school house. Back to my love for everything old, we are fashioning a one room school house on the top floor of our garage in full recognition of the19th century one room school houses! I am so excited for this venture. It really should not take us too much time or even cost us a pretty penny. It will be quite simple and use materials we mostly already have on hand. The rest are items we have gathered over the last few years from auctions and garage sales. At a sale from the library in a city near our home, we acquired a very old and very amazing hard wood library book case! How we will manage to move its enormousness to the top level defeats my mind, but we will prevail and it will be a centerpiece of our school. One item we will be looking for is an iron pot belly stove for a heat source. No one room school house would be complete with out one! Of course our old desks and slate board will add that old charm I am looking to reproduce for our 5 children.

This picture is just the space we have to work with and I will surely update pictures as we near the end of our project!

6. Through all of these years and all of the amazing blessings God has given us, I still have retained the desire to get pregnant. I have a syndrome called Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) that makes it not impossible, but very very difficult for pregnancy to occur because your body only cycles a few times every year and ovulation is practically non existent. My daughter has been asking for a sister (now that she has 4 brothers :). My husband and I just underwent a failed, very expensive and heartbreaking Invitro fertilization cycle (IVF). I began to seek out my own understanding of what PCOS was and what I could do about outside the world of fertility doctors. What I discovered was short of a miracle. Through my research, I found that natural remedies using herbs, vitamins, minerals and organic eating could all but cure my condition!

It would take prayer, willpower and commitment, but I found a naturalist in Australia who I could confer with online who would guide me on this journey to natural medicine and healing. Eating organically (especially dairy and meats) would account for keeping my system from being bombarded with extra estrogen mimicking chemicals and the custom herbs and vitamins would encourage my system to begin to work on it's own they way it was designed to do. I also have to stay away from gluten which has been no small feat since I LOVE to make home made breads and bake cookies and cakes. But I have found alternatives that the kids love and keep my system continuing to heal and function on its own.

Eating naturally and healthy has really turned into a wonderful lifestyle for our family. I lost about 15 pounds from simply eating well, and my husband lowered his hereditary cholesterol by 65 % (which the doctors said would be impossible). It is amazing what plants can do for our health! The good news is, my body is cycling every month now after only starting this regiment about 6 months ago and I hope to have great news to announce in the coming year of a pregnancy ;)

7. As some of you may know and some may not, I am the daughter of the very talented sculpture artist Rose of b.b.flockling.

She is very well known in her genre of sculpture art of fairies, babies, elves, snowmen and folklore. My mom has always been such a talented artists, not only with the medium of clay, but also with drawing, painting, crafting, sewing and even furniture refinishing.

Any artistic flare I may have comes from my mom's love for art and abilities that my sister and I grew up watching her achieve. My mom was always working with her hands. When I was very young, she loved to draw portraits in black and whites or elaborate pictures of fairy tale characters in water colors or colored pencils.

I remember her beautiful paintings, some she even portrayed on furniture and how could I forget the Harley Davidson Motorcycle (and a baby grand piano) she hand painted to look like solid marble! Mom's talent even landed her as an illustrator of a book cover for a local book written about our area and loggers. I continue to see this book all around in my goings and even spotted it on Ebay a few weeks ago!

She even collaborated with a group of other artist on a beautiful life size mural for the side of a mortuary that is still there today. Although my mom could have used her immense talent in her artwork to probably make a lot of money and travel the world, she chose to stay home with her children and find a art that facilitated a meager income to support her love for family and home.

I am so grateful to her for staying true to what really matters in this life and can only hope to follow in her footsteps. We get many laughs together over our 'artistic-ness' and the scatterbrained and silliness it brings to our lives....but I know that neither of us would have it any other way!

Now on to nominating 7 other artists. I am in-love with so many artists, that this will be heart wrenchingly difficult for me. If you have already won this award, please forgive me or let me know and I will nominate someone else :) I can't wait to hear from each of you!

My nominations are......

1. Bewildered Bears by Australian Artist Merilyn
Merilyn's bears are the most whimsical, colorful, rosy cheeked and freckled bears I have seen! Really delightfully cheerful creations to warm your heart.
http://bearwilderedbears.blogspot.com/

2. Dances With Teddy Bears by Laura Dodd
Laura is almost my neighbor who lives only about 2 hours from me. Such a sweet and loving woman. Her bears evoke her tenderness and passion. Each of her creations are a pure pleasure of fluffy cuteness!
http://danceswithteddybears.blogspot.com/

3. Desertmountainbears, Creations from the Desert (Arizona) by Joanne Livingston
As I am sure all of us already know, Joanne makes some really amazing bears with perfect little claws and all! Her mixed media approach of sewn and needle felted bears is a art close to my heart.
http://desertmountainbear.blogspot.com/

4. Gotta Share This bears by Vivianne Galli
I just adore Vivianne's magical pointy muzzled bears that evoke such a antique/primitive allure. Truly wonderful creations!
http://vivianne-galli.blogspot.com/

5. Julie Baily Primitives
I am just in love with her primitive cloth dolls that reminisce of the colonial and pioneer days, something right up my alley! One day I must own a collection of her creations.
http://juliebaileyprimitives.blogspot.com/

6. Irina Lee Bears
Truly inspirational bears in an old world charm and capture my heart each time I encounter a new one! I am also so enamored with her vintage blog....such beauty and imagination.
http://liralee.blogspot.com/

7. Old Soul Bears by Karen
Karen's bears are a delight to the eyes with their very antique look. Each has a very 'old soul' sparkling from behind their glass eyes just as her name states! She also restores bears, lace and textiles to their old glory days.
http://oldsoulbears.blogspot.com/

1. Thank the person who gave this to you.
2. Copy the logo and place it in your blog.
3. Link the person who nominated you.
4. Name 7 things about yourself that no one would really know.
5. Nominate 7 Bloggers
6. Post links to the 7 blogs you nominate
7. Leave a comment on each of the blogs letting them know you nominated them.