Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!


I'm getting ready to head up to my mom's for our family celebration, and I have to tell you what about my mom inspired my Mother's Day cards for her, my sister in laws and my mother in law.

My mother gave me the gift of contrast.

I absolutely adore absolutes, and she (and her father) are a big part of why.

While I understand that life, and nature offer no such thing as an absolute, what my mother and her father excelled at was conviction.

And since I was a wee tot (ask her), I have felt that conviction and the absoluteness of things that are right and things that are wrong.

And I may or may not have been a wee bit opinionated about them. Please don't ask anyone about this. :)

And she (and her father) may have given me this trait of certainty, for which I am grateful, even if it makes my Libra friends puzzle a bit over me :).

It's very easy for me to say yes, or say no - and I don't very often say maybe, and this is a gift from my mom.

What I've only recently realized is that it is PRECISELY what I tend towards in art. As Gladwell observes, you're not really good at anything until the 10,000 hour mark, and it was about then that I decided that what I was good at was contrast. Light and shadow, black and white, blue and yellow, red and green.

It was very liberating to let go of everything else - like vintage, which I love, and am completely incompetent at. Or shabby chic. Or subtlety.

I embrace the gift of my gene pool now and I celebrate the sharp, clean edges. So thanks mom! :)

For the five moms in my family - my mother, my brother's wife, who raised two of the kindest, sweetest, smartest children I know, my other sister-in-law who is the mother of the most stunning and graceful and kind and ladylike twins on the face of the earth, and my other sister-in-law who is tied with my first sister-in-law for raising the world's most favored nephew, and my mother-in-law who raised three of my favorite boys on earth, I say - thank you and I hope you forget all the barfing and backtalk today. Although I bet it will come up over lunch. In which case, I hope there are lavish gifts.

Mothering is some thankless work most of the time, I think. But trust me - we grown up children appreciate it more than you know.

One of the things (simple, I know) that I am most grateful for is that my mother cooked us breakfast every day. Egg in the hole, just eggs, soft boiled eggs torn up with toast - I cannot cook a glorious egg to this day without being grateful to my mother for starting my day with the world's most perfect food.

Also, I never ate a school lunch. And I did learn how to cook like a boss.

So here are the cards I made for all these great ladies, inspired by my own mom's gift of black and white. Hand zentangled while I listened to the little birds singing out back.

Hope you have a good, lazy Sunday.

Loveyameanitbye.