this week

this week
i am on
a one-woman crusade
to do
as many
random acts of kindness
as i can

and let me
tell you
it's the best medicine
that i know
of
in the world.

xx

mermaid warriors e-camp and other fun mermaid goodness

dear sweet friends,

rally around the insanely inspiring mccabe of dancing mermaid! she's offering an amazing e-camp for girls and she's having a rockin' special on her blog. for a delicious $45 (regularly $55), a sweet girlie in your life can attend this e-camp, watch the videos, and get a huge dose of BELIEVE IN YOURSELF. click HERE for more details.

i cannot WAIT for gray to dive into these videos. and neither can she.

even before i had children, i was always acutely aware of the difficult transitions that our young girls sometimes go through when travelling into womanhood. i spent most of my college days hanging around campus with young girls from the city, listening to them, laying in the grass, and creating plays. my most favorite professor created a program called "all kinds of girls" and we gathered the girls together, created little books, interviewed them just to hear their answers, and then had them put on little theatrical performances. some of my best college memories are of these little girls, who must be young women now. i hope that those days spent covered in paint and glitter made an impression on one of the girls. because i know they made an impression on me.

and now thanks to the wonders of the magical internet, we can encourage and inspire our young girls in such powerful ways. mccabe's videos are a dose of glitter and pack a powerful punch when it comes to encouraging us to get messy, have fun, and just be. after watching only a few installments of her mermaid warriors class, i created three pieces. and this was with a newborn on my hip and a very curious and whiny three year old in tow. so you KNOW it HAD to be inspiring. now that i'm a mama of three, i believe in the magic and power of youth even more than those "all kinds of girls" days. i want my own children to remember just how they are NOW- boisterous, clever, oftentimes inappropriate, creative, and messy. i want them to know it's ok.

the above picture is from last weekend. gray's piece of artwork was chosen for a methuen-wide K-12 art show. we didn't enter her piece. we only received the invitation to show up at the show! this was a big deal for my girl because we have about five public schools in our city and her piece getting chosen was so special. i was a beaming mama and bawling because i'm a DORK and because i was so proud of her creative spirit. seeing her there next to her work was freakin' awesome.

so there's my long-winded endorsement for all things girl empowerment, all things mermaid, all things mccabe. sign up now and get the dealie-deal! you won't regret it.

(video to come- stay tuned!)

Art for the Heart

Hello lovely ladies and dear peeps,

I'm getting involved with a volunteer project put together by my awesome cousin Tabatha. She's beginning to volunteer for a Hospice program, and she'll be spending time with people who have six months or less to live. She will sit with them, hold their hands, and listen to their stories as they pass. Unfortunately, lots of these special people don't have family to sit and visit with them, and as a result, their rooms are often very bare. So this is where "Art for the Heart" comes in. Tabatha and I will be collecting any and all artwork done by our kiddies (anything from coloring sheets to scribbles- anything! The only rule is no last names.) and then she will be taking it to hospice and hanging it up in the rooms. I really believe that this will brighten some days. I know my recycling bin is filled with drawings...so I've started a big bag to pass on to Tabatha. If you are interested, keep some stuff aside and pass it on to me when you get a chance. I'd like to get our first shipment off soon!

Here's the original posting:

Is your refrigerator overrun by your children’s colorful art work? You may think of them as drawings or paintings. We call them “Art for the Heart” and we have patients who would love them.

Most of our hospice patients are elderly and are delighted by children’s artwork. If you send us your children’s crayon drawings, paintings or other art work, our staff will joyfully deliver them to an appreciative audience.

We visit patients in nursing homes in Manchester, Bedford, Nashua, Goffstown, and the Seacoast. We will all treasure your child’s art.

Mail to:
Art for the Heart
Allegiance Hospice and Palliative Care
340 Granite St.
Manchester, NH 03102

Thank you.
For more information, contact: Susan Nolan, Allegiance Hospice Chaplain, 877-255-4623
snolan@allegiancehospice.com


I know I see most of you on a weekly basis, so you can just give me anything you have instead of mailing it to Art for the Heart.

Thank you for your time! And enjoy this gorgeous weather...

Nina

ps- I'm going to be seeing Tabatha this weekend and I'd like to have a big push these next couple of days for submissions- I want a nice, full bag to present to her!

message from me to myself and to you, too. xx

today can you please?

today
i would ask you to
please give yourself a
wedgie
from me
and then give yourself
a little smack
on your fanny-sheikh

smack
smack
smack

just because
from
yours truly.

studio schmoodio

first off, some pretty things for you:

and some of these:
and next, a little trip into my "studio" space. and i use the word studio very loosely. it's more of a little nook in my front porch- a thrifted table, a sewing machine, and a couple of shelves with lots of lots of supplies crammed in (what you don't see in this picture are the three kids asking for juice, milk, dinner, or their bum(s) to be wiped):



now that the weather is nicer and it's not below zero on the front porch, i can actually get out there every once and a while and create. although there is a bee problem. thankfully, the flying termite problem from last year is now resolved after the $1,000+ problem solving, but it seems the bees have found a way in. so crafting/playing time on the front porch is often interrupted by screams of DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! A BEE! IT'S ON ME! GET IT!!! THERE'S ANOTHER ONE! AND ANOTHER ONE! i've used a piece of tape to cover a very suspicious looking hole in the wall and our bee tally has been dramatically reduced. so let's hope the piece of tape holds up and i can keep getting my craft on!
here's a closeup of just some of the things that have been inspiring me lately. the photobooth strip that you can see was one that em and i found in the machine at diesel- it was an abandoned strip because it just took a dark outline of the two women instead of these pictures. is it weird that i love it more because of this? i knew i had to pilfer it and i felt really sneaky doing it even though it was abandoned and unloved. it almost made up for the fact that the machine was broken and it tried to steal our FOUR dollars without producing a strip for us.

another favorite on my board is a postcard that gray wrote out to lulu a couple of weeks ago that says

"dear lulu,
why do you suck a binkie?
love, grace"

but of course it's all spelled weird and you have to decode it. i just love the innocence and simplicity behind it. there's also a pick of a newborn babe, a moo card from elizabeth bunsen, a sketch of my tattoo, some dried sage from the garden, a note from gray that says "mom, i mish you" even though we were in the same room when she wrote it, a hand-drawn deer with a suit on from pancakemama, a postcard from andrea, and of course bits of ephemera from vintage children's books and such. i've since changed the board a bit so it's always evolving and fresh. it motivates me when i'm just sitting at my desk picking my bum waiting for inspiration to strike.


well, that's it for today i guess. i was going to get all deep and write about motherhood and how my new mantra is "we are all doing our best" and judging ourselves but it will have to wait for another day because i'm just exhausted thinking about all those bees and how i live in one of those crazy bee houses. i just know it.