I decided to get back to the drawing instruction book I got in 2023: 50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life.

Here are some of the beautiful ordinary things I bought at the beautiful ordinary grocery store.

Drawing practice of any kind seems like a good idea. Sometimes I think about whether or not I could publish anything I’ve written and do my own illustrations. These are mostly delusional thoughts, but it doesn’t hurt to give it a try, right? I’ve been continuing to work on my story about Saul, the bog lemming. His wife’s name is Borealis (Alis for short) and he has three children, triplets named Yogi, Kogi and Chogi. Let’s see how this experiment turned out.

I was trying to think of a way to make the triplets distinguishable from each other. Very challenging.

Then I moved on to draw Alis, who wears a leaf apron when she is cooking. As you can see, the first attempt makes it look like she is wearing a large green diaper. Alis, I done you wrong. We can’t all be Beatrix Potter, but I’d like to get closer to her work than this.

Thank you for taking the time to see what weird things I’m drawing these days.

This beautiful, ordinary blog post will self-destruct in the morning.

Before we get to some quotes from my commonplace book, I thought I’d do another roundup of neglected photos. These are photos that I smallified, thinking I’d use them on the blog and then nothing happened. There was no call, for example, for a statue of a monk that I saw at the Como Park Observatory. Commentary, such as it is, will follow the photos.

Tonsures are awkward.

My artsy photo of our cat Luna. I still like it.

What’s the difference between a turtle and a tortoise? I think this is a tortoise, but couldn’t tell you why.

Notes from My Commonplace Book:

Join them in their world when they’re little,
So you’ll be welcome in their world when they are big.
L.R. Knost

Those that with a holy reverence fear God need not with any amazement to be afraid of the power of hell or earth. If God be for us, who can be against us to do us any harm? It is our duty, it is our privilege, to be thus fearless; it is an evidence of a clear conscience, of an honest heart, and of a lively faith in God and his providence and promise.
Matthew Henry, commentary on Psalm 46

The best mirror is an old friend.
George Herbert

Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;
Not by wine drunk, but the wine poured forth.
For love’s strength standeth in love’s sacrifice;
And whoso suffers most hath most to give.
Ugo Bassi, Sermon in the Hospital

Measure my blog by loss…in the morning.

With all the re-shelving of books going on here, I’ve been finding occasional bookmarks, tickets and other random things in them that served as bookmarks in a pinch. It felt like a special treasure, then, to come across an old note from my mom in a book by Georgette Heyer that was one of her favorites.

She says in her note to me that it’s a book she revisits every few years and that she bought an extra copy of the book to give to me since she thought I might enjoy it. Because it’s a small paperback with somewhat small print, at the end of the note, she wrote: “Buy some cheap magnifying spectacles at the drug store or Walmart! Love, Mom” Ha ha!

As it turned out, I did enjoy the book and have revisited it at least once. The note from my mom will serve as the perfect bookmark for that one.

What’s the oddest thing you’ve used as a bookmark? I’ve been known to stuff a paper napkin in a book.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits.
eating someone else’s good cooking
inspiration for writing
privilege of prayer
Big Bertha, our backup van
nightly hymn singing
re-reading a favorite book: Stepping Heavenward

I’ll be determined to delete this in the morning unless it steals my heart!

Books, books and more books.
Re-shelving all of our books
Takes a lot of time.

Yes, I’ve been pretty busy reorganizing our bookshelves after my husband put new flooring in our library. Hence, the zippy haiku instead of a longer poem. Here’s another one just for fun:

I love root beer floats
1919 is the best.
Three cheers for root beer!

Zippety do dah!

I’ll probably zip this post in the delete file in the morning.

Taking a break from watercolors for a moment, I’ve been doing some pencil sketches, one of which I featured with a poem from last week. Although I’m usually copying someone else’s artwork, I actually drew this deer from a photo I found on the internet. I used a few coloring pencils to finish it off.

Did you ever read the book The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings? I read that as a child – first book that made me cry (but not, by a long shot, the last). It’s about a boy who raises a fawn as a pet. If you haven’t read it, you could still probably make a good guess as to why the story made me cry.

Got a hankering to start drawing mice, which may turn into a series of watercolors paintings. I found these cute sketches by Brenda Lee Minor on Pinterest and gave it a try. Our kids were fond of the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, in which mice with names like Matthias and Cornflower were the main characters. I mean, why not?

Ta ta, friends!

Not a blog creature was stirring, not even a mouse…in the morning.

First, a couple random photos that I find pleasing.

Where did I take this photo? Was it at your house?

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If the sight of those bright yellow swimming fins doesn’t bring you some cheer today, I’ll refund the money you didn’t spend on this post.

More quotes from my Commonplace Book:

Christ chargeth me to believe His daylight at midnight.
Samuel Rutherford

A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back.
Proverbs 29:11

In the confession of the Trinity,
we hear the heartbeat of the Christian religion.
Herman Bavinck

A poet is a man who is glad of something,
and tries to make other people glad of it, too.
George MacDonald

We may ignore, but we nowhere evade the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him.
He walks everywhere incognito.
C.S. Lewis

Time to make this post inblognito…in the morning.

Do you know this family?

I found the photo in a book of ours while re-shelving books after the Great Flooring Project in our library was done. The people in the photo are not familiar to me, so it must have been a book that we picked up at a used book sale. A normal person would have tossed the photo immediately, but as you all know by now, I’m not normal.

The photo was taken in the era in which I grew up. That could be my older sister with the glasses and the nice dress. Where have all the nice dresses gone? I love the bow ties on the two boys. It wouldn’t be hard for me to find an old family photo of my siblings in which the boys were wearing those clip-on bow ties. Isn’t it sweet how the two little boys in front are looking at each other? Sure, they probably fought some times, but one gets the sense that they were friends. I should probably throw this photo away now, but I might stick it back in the book where I found it.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits:
A fun outing with a friend on a very cold day
New flooring – I love it!
A husband who is industrious in January
We hit a deer but had no injuries – tender mercies
A letter from a young man I used to babysit back in the day.
A letter from my daughter.
TWO letters in one week!
Celebrating my FIL’s 97th birthday
A timely word in the Sunday sermon

Happy Monday to you all. May you be aware of the way the Lord is daily loading you with benefits.

I’ll probably be industrious enough to delete this in the morning.

We had a strange appointment this morning
In the dark hour just before dawn
God sent a deer to meet our car
T’was a young’un, but not a fawn.

Brakes were applied with strength and speed,
The animal startled and leapt,
But the appointment that God had in His book
Was still most dutifully kept.

We marveled to see that creature get up
And run off out of sight.
A meeting with two tons of metal and yet
It bounded away with might.

And us? Why we were kept from harm,
Though with damage to the car.
But the deer most likely met His Lord,
A better appointment by far.

The next appointment for this post is in the morning.

Even though it doesn’t actually feel like a workshop thing, I’m always pleased when I finish a puzzle, especially one that’s visually appealing. I use my puzzle doing time to listen to podcasts.

I did some painting as well. I recently re-read my story about Herda and decided to try to paint her.

Herda was my D&D character the one time I played it a couple years ago. You can read Herda’s unfinished story here if you want: I Am Herda.

A friend of mine recently did her first felting project and I was immediately filled with happiness upon looking at it, as well as a desire to start doing stuff like this. I didn’t ask her permission to share the photo, so I hope she doesn’t mind.

I’m considering buying one or both of the following craft books to get back into sewing little felt creatures. Let me know what you think!

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Too cute!

Lastly, I’m back at the family history project in earnest and can see the light at the end of the very long tunnel. I came across this fun photo of my Dad on his first day of school back in 1932. Look at those pants!

Awww… I think he’s an adorable kid.

That’s it for this week, folks. Thanks for tuning in!

I’ll probably delete this in the good old A.M.

Yesterday I ran across a Mother’s Day letter that my daughter had written to me almost 10 years ago. What sweet and encouraging words those were! I felt awash with gratitude and emotion. Sometimes I feel like I save too many things, but I have no regrets about saving correspondence.

Today, I was looking through an old Bible cover of mine – time to throw it away (but not the old Bible in it, the first one I ever owned as a young Christian). Tucked away in the side of the Bible cover I came across some old notes of encouragement written by some sisters in Christ in Indiana before we moved to Minnesota in 1997. I sat down and read through them, greatly moved and, again, encouraged. Some of you may remember that back in 2021 when our car was broken into and some of our belongings stolen, the loss that grieved me the most was my Bible. It was my second Bible, filled with all sorts of underlinings and marginal notes by me. But also, I had kept a collection of encouraging notes in the Bible cover that had been sent to me over the years. I was sad to lose those as well. What a blessing to find these other older notes that I’d forgotten about, like a hidden treasure!

Best of all was finding the note written to me by one of our deacons back in Indiana, a solid Christian man named Mac Lockard who had grown up in the foster care system. I was having a perfectly rotten Sunday at church that day, struggling to keep our two little boys from misbehaving, my husband being out of town. (I’ve written about this before on this blog, but it bears repeating.) After the service, Mac gave me this note and it nearly made me cry.

He paid me the ultimate compliment of telling me not only that I was a good mother, but that if he were young, he would have wanted a mother like me, and that he would have been pleased to have a daughter like me. I cherished that note and read it over occasionally on days when I was needing to hear it again. A few years later I had left it out on a desk and my little mischievous twins found it and cut it into pieces. I saved what I could find and taped it back together. But in recent years I never knew where it was and assumed it had been lost.

Thank you to all of you who have written words of encouragement to me over the years. They are words to remember.

I’ll probably cut this in pieces in the morning and then y’all will have to tape it together.

Today was one of those “never-got-above-zero” days that we have in Minnesota in January. I usually swim laps on Mondays, but the closer it got to time to leave, the more I felt myself succumbing to the inward dread of going out in the cold. I said out loud, “I really do want to go swimming.” I had to say it a few times to convince myself to get ready to go and then to actually go. What are the things you have to talk yourself into?

Sometimes if I’m the only one in the shower room after I swim laps, I’ve been singing through a hymn that my husband and I have been working on memorizing. It’s quite stirring by the time I get to the last half of the last verse:

Oh, my God, I pray Thee
In the combat stay me
Grant that I may ever be
Loyal, staunch and true to Thee.

Got a FaceTime call from Little Miss Cutie Pie last week. “Can you see me well enough?” I asked her. “Yes! And I can see your mustache, too!” she answered brightly. I went to some lengths to explain to her that I do NOT have a mustache. I felt paranoid after that, checking the mirror to make sure.

Blessed be the Lord who daily loads us with benefits.
FaceTime calls!
A sun dog on a very cold morning
Painting with a friend
The last of the Christmas caramels
The joy of writing
Long-distance conversations with old friends
Driving around the Twin Cities with hubby
Good worship and fellowship at church

I’ll probably delete this in the morning after checking AGAIN to make sure I don’t have a mustache.,