What are three good things that happened in your life in 2017?
And what are three things you accomplished this year that you are proud of?
Month: December 2017
Christmas Tree, Redux
Hope you are having a Christmas which is nourishing you, body and soul.
It was fun creating this last year on the Procreate app on my iPad.
Happy Christmas!
We finally have just about everything done except some wrapping. It felt good yesterday to sit in the living room with my sketchbook, Sharpie and watercolors and sketch our Christmas tree.
Here’s hoping you and yours have a loving and peaceful Christmas.
What Really Matters
A good thing to remember at this time of year, when we tend to get frantic with holiday errands.
Christmas Colors
The combination of red and green is great at any time of year. The two colors together are so dramatic yet warm. When I saw this plant next to a red wall, I reached for my camera, then my paintbrush.
House Portraits
Original house portraits make great gifts. I have just finished three that people are giving for Christmas, including the one below. I have time to paint one or two more house portraits before Christmas, so let me know right away if you’re interested. Details are here.
Raccoons
Tall white pines grow right next to our house. Raccoons nest in these trees, and in the late summer evenings we sometimes see a mother raccoon leading her young ones down the tree trunks to look for food. Here they are waiting for her return.
Advent Blessings to You
As you may know, our daughter Kate’s memoir, Following the Red Bird: First Steps in a Life of Faith, (available here on Amazon) was published earlier this year. The book includes a chapter on Advent, and she quotes from Caryll Houselander who describes Advent as a “season of growth and expectation.” In Kate’s book, the red bird becomes a metaphor for how we can begin to listen for and respond to the ways that God is calling us in our lives. Here is my cardinal painting, with hopes that you have a blessed Advent season.
Fall on the Pond
It’s late fall, and most leaves are off the trees and the migrating birds are long gone. The colors are subdued and the days are short. A friend who moved back to New England told me that in southern California he had really missed the seasons. “Putting away your summer clothes, and taking out your winter clothes — you don’t realize how important the rhythm of the seasons is until you live in a climate where the weather is nice, but pretty much the same all year.”
Here’s a fall sketch of a nearby pond.
