Our First Graduate

Seems like yesterday Luke and I began his first year of school!  I was so eager to get going with him, we started Kindergarten a year early.

 

    

And now here we are…. just a few years later, and he is finished with high school!

                                                               

 

We had a busy week getting ready for his Open House this past Saturday. 

But we all had a wonderful time. 

I thought you might enjoy a few pictures taken that day. 

  

 

 

 

We’re so proud of him! 

So thankful for God’s direction over these school years… and eager to see the paths God will continue to direct Luke in the days ahead!

the Artist’s gift

Our girls love to draw.  All five of them.  From the time they could hold a pencil, they started drawing.

I still can’t draw stick people that are identifiable, but God has given my girls the gift of being able to draw well.  Glenn is very artistic, so I’m sure this gift runs through the Orr line.  Along with feet where the second toe is bigger than the big toe, which just looks odd to someone like me whose toes decrease in size in a more evenly graduated way.

But I digress. :)

 

This gift from our Creator is a quietly glorious thing.

A piece of blank paper. 

A common pencil.

And stroke by stroke, line by line, I begin to see what my daughter sees in her mind’s eye.

 

 

Often as I’ve watched them draw something over the years, I’ve thought how they don’t start where I would.  I would draw a circle first for a face.  Then add eyes and ears, etc.

But they start with an eye.  Just one eye. 

Or a hand.

I’ve even watched them start at the feet.

The interesting thing about this, is the way the final picture comes as something of a surprise to me.

  

Sometimes, I can figure out where they are going with their drawings, but sometimes I’m just not sure how they’ll get there.

And the details they add to their pictures astound me.  I didn’t even realize I noticed tufting around a button, or that little freckle by an earlobe, or the lines which strong muscles form on a horse’s neck. But these are details which the girls notice, and draw.

I remember a few years ago, we took the kids downtown to an Art Exhibit.  It was just incredible all the different kinds of art that had been created.  One artist was a woman who drew beautiful, amazingly life-like portraits. We talked with her for a while and when I told her how surprised I was when the girls drew those tiny details in their drawings, she smiled. She told me that is how an artist sees life.  Many people see the “big picture” of what they look at, but an artist sees the finer details, and then draws them. 

 

And it made me think about our Artist. 

How He has made so many amazing and beautiful fine details all over the place, all around us, but often, most of us just don’t see them.

We see the bigger picture, or maybe even kind of notice a small detail, but we don’t put our pencils to the paper and draw it.

 

And then there are the times when He shows Himself to us through these fine details in our lives.

And we see things with different eyes. 

And we see Him with new eyes. 

 

And both our appreciation of His gifts and our thankfulness to Him are increased!

I pray He will give you eyes today, to see the fine details of the blessings He has given to you! :)

 

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face. 

                                                            Now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.”

Putting a Shelf on the Island Table

Years ago, maybe 13 or 14?, I found an old table in my grandma’s garage.  It was missing a drawer and looked as though it had been forgotten for a long time.  She didn’t know where it came from, or anything about it, but she let me have it.

Glenn made a little drawer for it.  I painted the bottom part of it white, and we oiled the wood planks on top and had a piece of glass made to fit it.

We used it for many years as our computer/office table.  Later, we used it in the school room to hold 2 computers and assorted papers. 

 

We put the table in our schoolroom when we moved here, but it made the crowded schoolroom feel even more crowded.  At the time though, my imaginative juices were a little drained. 

Can you see it there in the corner? 

A couple of months ago, I got a bee in my bonnet and felt like mixing things up a bit.  I cleared everything off of it and Noah helped me move it to the kitchen.  The temporary “island” we had been using was a utility table from Costco.  We put it in the school room to take the place of the old table.

And I have loved having Grandma’s old table for our kitchen island! It’s wider and longer, and a little shorter than the utility table so the girls can reach it easier.

 

But….. I really wanted a low shelf on it. 

So I traipsed out to my private salvage yard and looked for something that might work.  I found 3 boards that looked perfect.

And Glenn found a piece of trim, which he cut in 2 pieces to use for the supports underneath the shelf.

I’m sure you can guess that I sanded them, with Noah’s help, primed one a coat and then painted 2 thin coats of our white trim paint. Then I distressed the boards a little.  I’m sure they’re going to get a lot more distressed over time, so I decided to start them out that way so it would all look very deliberate in the end. ;)

And here it is!

I’ve been needing a little more room for my really big pot, and this is the perfect spot for it!

 

The old white paint I had used years ago matched the new trim paint almost exactly.  I just did some long, sweeping brush strokes here and there all around it, and then sanded the edges a little.  It already had a nice amount of distressing all over, so there was not much to do.

 

As for the schoolroom table, I put a white table cloth over it and it feels much less cramped in that corner now!

I painted the window trim around the same time.  I think the room feels like it took a deep breath!

Ahhh…. a little more space for all of us.

 

Don’t you think so?

Happy Weekend!