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Swing votes, swing states, swing dancing, and just swinging……

November 5, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 12 Comments

Life goes on….even when your candidate doesn’t win….. even when you run out of decoupage two sheets of scrapbook paper too early….even when the seven pounds won’t come off…..and even when you’re children think you’re crazy for trying to learn to swing dance from a girl name “Tracy” that lives in your computer. The sun rises, we wake up to another beautiful day and thank God that we live in America…..where we can vote and decorate and dance and……swing. So, to cheer myself up, I downloaded a video of my girls reciting a poem…..called “The Swing” while swinging.

The Swing
by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside–

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown–
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

Election Day….

November 4, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 8 Comments

It’s election day, except I already voted for John McCain which you can read about here. So much for never discussing politics or religion….rules I frequently violate. In other news, guess what I found yesterday? C’mon, guess….no, I didn’t find cheap and gorgeous pieces of ironstone. No, I did not find a way to train for a half marathon without running…..and no, I did not find my sanity which I seemed to have misplaced a few months back. But I did find several delightful pieces of hammered aluminum at my local antique store. It seems they have some new vendors…..who have some new pieces. Or had some new pieces. For those of you who don’t love all things 1950, hammered aluminum was very popular back then and is harder to find these days because it’s relatively inexpensive and people who buy it…love it and don’t give it up. Why do I love all things from the 40’s and 50’s…..I don’t know. Maybe it’s because that’s when my parents were born….and we always idealize the past. Maybe it’s because I watched too many episodes of Leave it to Beaver….and Andy Griffith….and I love Lucy…and Happy Days. But I love old things….which sounds much better if you say ‘vintage’. And I absolutely can’t wait until Thanksgiving…..when my hammered aluminum will make it’s debut. Macdaddy loves this quote by Cicero, which seems so appropriate today,

“To disdain those things handed down by your fathers is to remain a child”

So, I won’t disdain them, I will wash them and display them and use them and think back to a quieter more settled time in history when home was the center of life….and mom’s wore aprons and made homeade bread and kids played outside…..all evening long…..and people knew how to do the east coast swing…..which I am determined to learn. Oh, and they served their families homeade food in hammered aluminum. Which I will do very soon!

Doesn’t it look lovely against the black bookshelf? This piece I will use for silverware.…
and these pretty little pieces will hold olives and pickles…..
and this sweet covered dish will hold my cranberries and apple dish……
and this…..will hopefully be finished by then. I’m painting the bookshelf black….then I have to distress it (to make it looked ‘worn’ )and then I will add maple stain(to make it look vintage)
and then I will add the hammered aluminum to make it look retro 50’s. Now, go vote. For John McCain. And find some beautiful pieces of hammered aluminum. And put on an apron and make homeade bread with your own two hands. And turn off the TV and send your kids outside to play. And dance. The east coast swing preferably. But I’m not trying to tell you what to do.

Song 42

November 3, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 15 Comments

My son wrote a song called Song 42 based on scripture taken from Psalm 42—tricky, huh? The song is beautiful and after I listened to the song 442 times, I went and read Psalm 42…..and began to weep. Like a baby. I’ve read Psalm 42 many times before and have always loved it. But it’s different when you see how your children might translate that word into a song. I think the girls and I (the little ones that I homeschool) will have to add this psalm to our list of ones to memorize. I’ll never read it the same again. Every time I read those precious words I will hear my son’s voice in my head singing this:

I will say a prayer to the God who gives me life

I will say to God my rock, Lord I love you

And I am thirsty, thirsty for the living God

Where can I meet Him?

Tears have been my food day and night

I long to serve him

Where can I meet Him?

During the day the Lord sends his love to me

During the night I wil sing songs about Him

I will say a prayer to the God who gives me life

I will say to God my rock , Lord I love you

When the world comes down on me

and questions “Where is your God?”

I will say, He lives inside of me

During the day the Lord sends His love to me

During the night I will sing songs about Him

I will say a prayer to the God who gives me life

I will say to God my rock, Lord I love you

Lord I love you

Lord I love you.

Now for a double blessing, read Psalm 42.

Tales from the dark side……..

November 1, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 5 Comments

We live in the best neighborhood. Ever. So, yesterday I called around to see if a few neighbors wanted to join us for pizza and snacks before we went trick-or-treating.
The kids looked so cute…….we had a surgeon……
matching 1970’s disco chicks (be still my heart)……..and matching Lucy’s from Prince Caspian….
a soccer player, a character from Star Wars with the best light saber ever.
munchkin and the scarecrow from Wizard of Oz…..
my poor neighbor Cihat who I conned into wearing this black mullet. (As a side note, I have a small obsession with mullets. This is not the first time I’ve bought one and tried to make Stevie, or anybody, wear it. I don’t know where this comes from…….I love bubba teeth too. I put them in everyone’s stocking one year for Christmas and told them they had to wear them through all the morning pictures. Maybe I’ll try that with mullets this year!)
and then there was princess Jasmine…..
and a grim reaper and Dorothy and Toto and Ariel and a hip hop dancer (no,not just me…a real one)
And my neighbors the Jett’s came walking up the street looking like this. This my friends you should not take for granted. A whole Wizard of Oz family Halloween. This is the stuff I dream about. Stevie in a munchkin suit……it’d send me right over the edge. Paul and Jeannie and Jackie and all their children pull this off well. Back in an earlier post, I talked about how Dorothy (really Polly, but she’s all in character and gets mad if you call her Polly today) switches her f’s for h’s and we didn’t want Jeannie to fix it (Jeannie’s a speech pathologist) and Jeannie agreed that for now it was ‘hunny’ and she’d leave it alone. Well, Polly is about to turn four……which in Polly-speak sounds like “hore” so Jeannie, the party pooper she is, is gonna fix it. Hello, I’m Polly and I’m ‘hore’. It would be ‘hunny’ Jeannie.
this is the kinda neighborhood you only dream about…..where good witches roam around and Dorothy clicks her heel together and says, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”……
the disco chicks are so chic in their white go-go boots. What I wouldn’t have given when I was their age for a pair of boots like that.
and Gracie–or should I say Lucy led the trick-or-treaters in their search for candy heaven.
Notice my feeble attempt at festive with the dark nail polish. Lame, I know. But in my mind, I was all dressed up. If Stevie would humor me, I could come up with many-o-costume. I wanted to dress up like Cher and sway and toss my hair and sing ‘I Got you Babe’.
Then Leigh Ann and I had the discussion about appropriate shoewear for trick-or-treating. One of us had on these shoes……
and the other one had on these. I’ll let you decide who chose heels for all this walking extravaganza. Cute boots though, huh?
and BTW, Leigh Ann, you’re already thinking like a blogger, you might as well start one. Come on!
Then the girls and I made our annual trip to Kimmie’s house. Kimmie was our nanny for three years and as you’ll see from these photos, she’s the ring leader of quite a fun troop. We miss her dearly. Their family wins first place for most festive family in the world. They all dressed up and her house was dark and spooky with lots of candles and fog and even dry-ice in the punch…..
Cara and Drew were adorable too. You gotta love a guy who’ll wear this wig all night and enjoy it!
and Lacey and her boyfriend were quite scary and goth looking. I need to see if she’ll do my makeup the night of the Twilight premier!
I couldn’t stop looking at or taking photos of this. Sheer entertainment.
then there was her son Ryan, who was a hillbilly sheriff and kept saying to everyone, “I’m the laaaww. It iis wut it iis”. You think I’m kidding but I’m not. All this….at one house.

and here they are in all the glory. Another unbelievably funny Halloween at the Miklosovic’s.

Hope you had a fun, safe night too! Did I mention that between them all, they have seven dogs….which were also all dressed up! It was like Halloween on steroids!!!!

Spooky mornings……..

October 31, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 4 Comments

While I work on my country girl skills at photographing my new highlights which are slightly on the yellow side of ‘golden’,
There are two little witches stirrin’ away at their witches brew…..
…..and I wouldn’t eat that candy if I were you…
‘cause that leaves more for me. Happy Halloween!

Happy Reformation Day……

October 31, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 2 Comments

On this day in 1517, Martin Luther posted the 95 theses on the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg Germany. Number one on the list was this; that the life of a christian should be a life of repentance. When I was steeped in American Evangelicalism, I can tell you that my life was not a life of repentance; it was more of a life of trying to measure my own christian growth, to somehow quantify my spirituality by how much ‘stuff I was doing for God’. Since becoming Lutheran, I have learned a new way to think about my christian life. It is a life hidden in Christ, with nothing good to offer God save the righteousness of Christ that covers me, and with nothing to measure save the immeasurable grace bestowed on me. None of it my own doing. I am not getting ‘better and better’. I am only becoming more aware of my own sin and my total depravity. This then leads me to repentance. Which is I guess…….the point. Every day when I read God’s word and every Sunday when I hear it, those words, “your sins are forgiven” only get more and more sweet. So, how do you know if you’re growing in Christ? Listen here for a complete answer, but in short think about how you feel about God’s forgiveness. Does it bore you? Do you think you hardly need it anymore? Or do you hunger and thirst for His word of grace? Does it amaze you that He could continue to forgive you over and over again? Luther’s translation and interpretation of God’s Word changed the world forever and showed us that our ‘new’ life in Christ should be a life of repentance. To quote Dr. Luther, “We are beggars all.”