Living With Grace & Humility

       What can I say, but that I love life & living. Each day brings something new~ and is a new opportunity to live life to its fullest~ be it climbing Mount Everest ...or taking a walk to check to see if any wild asparagus has come up yet. I take great joy in the simplest and sometimes silliest of things~ but that's O.K.~ its me. I don't need to live in a huge house or drive a fancy car. I don't wear makeup..never have. Heck, some days I don't even comb my hair~ pays me no mind and those that know me don't care!  I love to sit by my window and listen to the quiet and the birds singing. I love to sew and dearly love my dollys, both olde and new.
    Some of my most darling of little darlings are my early 19th c wooden dolls~ they are referred to as many things~ Grodnertal Dolls....Tuck Combs...Penny Woodens...Apollo Knots~ all are of the 1830 period~ one of my most favorite of all eras. Us girls were so ultimately feminine and delicate in this era~ clothing was finely detailed with embroidered & padded and wadded hems to dresses...huge gigot sleeves and gorgeous elaborate hairstyles that wrapped round and towered up above fine tortoise & silver hair combs.  My original girls like Princess Holley, Ada, Emma & Lucy all have the sweetest of sweet expressions and I have been itching to sculpt some elaborate do's as of late...and I very much enjoy my quiet time spent sculpting in my little studio.  I ponder all sorts of things while sculpting, and as I was working on the above three pretties, I was the entire time pondering and appreciating how much I love my life and making dolls.  How much I love being a Mother & a Wife. I do my best to be the best person I can be, and to teach my children, and show by example, how to be a good, honest person. How to love the time and place one is at, and to be content with things~ how to dream and set goals and most importantly, to treat others how they themselves would like to be treated.  Whenever talk starts going amiss in our house...or someone gets that look in their eye...I always will say " Patience...Restraint.....Compassion!"  When Pip was just so little~ 4 maybe...her Daddy went to say something one day and she blurted out as loud as she could "Patience...Restraint....Repassion Daddy!"  I think I even have it on a video~ she couldn't wrap her brain around compassion....it was always repassion.  So where am I going with this rambling tonight...I had affectionately been referring to these three dolls as the "3 Graces", and when I painted them and asked their names....they all said Grace....but yet not~ one was Compassion....one Restraint.....and one, Respect.  There are many virtues, I guess I should call them, that I tack on to 'Grace'~ I wrote down a whole long list of my favorite attributes, so naturally, I guess I will have to sculpt a new dollye for each one~ and this is how a new series of my dollys is born~ a very special near & Dear to my Heart series~ The Graces~