You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul. ~George Bernard Shaw
Chihuly’s work definitely makes me see my soul and is also a perfect way to ring out 2021 in a bright, colorful fashion. May your 2022 be as bright as this glorious creation!
Sometimes the light is the star as it is here, making the ordinary extraordinary. Gotta pull out all the stops for the last few days of the Life in Colour challenge, one I’ve greatly enjoyed the past few years! Here the emphasis is on “bright” as opposed to all sorts of colors.
I love Christmas and although we don’t have outdoor decorations, we have lots of indoor ones. Outside we rely on our neighbors on either side who have enough decorations for all three of our houses. In fact our entire neighborhood shines brightly at night.
But I digress. When we moved, I had to find new places for some of our decorations. Since Jude wants us to close out the year with bright, colorful, let me start with two shelves in our living room. The stockings hang below this first shelf on the holders with the stars and the reindeer. The sculptured Indian serenely oversees everything while rocking his sparkly boa. Is that culturally inappropriate? He doesn’t seem to mind.
The next shelf up hosts a small town and miscellaneous decorations. The blue lights add color and brightness. Most of these used to go on our mantel but although we have a gas fireplace here, the wide shelf above it holds our TV and PlayStation, so no room for decorations.
I used to put all my decorations in one large plastic bin. Each year I’d have to take them all out and try to remember where they all went, taking up a great deal of space and time in the interim. One day I realized I could put all the decorations for each area (piano top, mantel, various shelves) in one box per area, label it, and each year it would be simple to decorate one small bit at a time. It works a treat!
When we lived in Illinois, there was a butterfly bush right outside our large living room window. I enjoyed seeing butterflies, hummingbird moths, bees, and other critters up close and personal and of course, taking photos through the window. 🙂
…once again I have nothing, no Thursday Doors that is. It’s supposed to be the easy week, favorite doors from this year but I always find it hard to choose but mostly I’ve been busy.
A short explanation is in order because I haven’t been visiting your blogs nearly as much as I’d like. The simple reason is caring for aging parents, the reason we moved to Arizona in the first place but a task that’s become much more consuming in the last several months. I’m now generally at their house 3-4 hours a day to fix the main meal (prepared meals, not from scratch), clean, do laundry, run errands, etc. Sometimes, such as yesterday, it’s much more: a call at 3 am that Mom had slipped getting out of bed to go to the bathroom and was lying on the floor. Dad’s balance isn’t good enough to get her up, so I drove there, got back home in time to get another hour of sleep before getting up to leave at 7:30 am to take Dad to his eye doctor’s appointment, and then due to Mom having a really bad day, didn’t get home until 7 pm that night. They have no internet and obviously I didn’t feel much like doing anything but eating, relaxing a bit with my husband, and going to bed once I got home.
Not complaining, just explaining. On the several days a week when my husband goes over, I’m generally running errands, cleaning our house, and things of that nature as well as squeezing in some time for relaxation by reading while sipping tea. These days I’m hoping to get in some baking and finish and send my Christmas letter. So please don’t feel neglected. It’s what my priorities have to be right now.
Today’s offering for Jude’s December challenge of color, color, and more color comes from one of my walks earlier this year while visiting all our friends in Illinois. Along the back trails, I kept coming across bright drifts of flowers tucked among the tree. Soul food of the very best kind!
Bougainvillea are everywhere here, bright and colorful. But beware of thorns!
This, that and the other thing 