flowering friendships

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
Marcel Proust

 

Highlighting Defects

All of a sudden I've found this song lingering in my head.

please?

 

Sadie knows the words in my brain. 

Also, she is wonderful at all of the things, you should go look at her tumblr and youtube and everything.

http://thehalfbloodpaints.tumblr.com/

disperse the gloomy clouds of night

fools

This.

what you're seeing is me...

illusions

independent will

 

- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

When Love Arrives

baby brother

This child is basically the most consistently wonderful thing about my existence.
He is the very sweetest gift God could have blessed my life with.
When ever I need it, I know I can go to him for a hug and a kiss 'to make it better'.
At least once a day we go through the ritual of taking turns whispering to each other:

"guess what." "what?" "I love you." "thanks. guess what." "what?" "I love you."

For the past couple weeks I have been his most requested bedtime buddy. As such my official job is to read and cuddle him until the lights turn off. Then we lay there in the darkness with his arm wrapped around my neck as I coo any and all lullabies of his request(usually something to the effect of the entire soundtrack of the Wizard of Oz...) until his tired hand is weighted with slumber and I can slip out from under it, leaving a quick goodnight kiss on the chubby little digits.

Tonight during bedtime stories(You are Special - Max Lucado) he announced with confidence: "God made my nose", with a giggle. This lead to pointing to various body parts that God had made and listing reasons why they were important, and why God thought we should have them.

"God made my belly!"
"Why would he make that?"
"I don't know Didi, you say."

His smile and insightful baby questions are a delight and a constant challenge. His intelligence and wisdom are often startling.
There I moments when I have to stop and catch my breath when he surprises me with a new glimpse of the real little person he is growing into each day.

The smallest repetitive nonsense will leave him breathless with uncontrollable giggles, which can leave the entire family crippled by the infectious-ness of laughter.
There is something so wonderful about the unbridled excitement of a three-year-old experiencing the world with wide eyed joy.

Whether it is our nightly dinning room production of the Wizard of Oz(which can have a cast ranging between 2-6 performers, depending on how willing the parents and other doting siblings will allow themselves to be), or the acrobatics of the simultaneous dinner and story time/sneak food attack system we have created to shovel food into this child, I cannot help but be entertained by the silliness and love that this family has surrounded our baby with.

I know with confidence that I'll always have a singing buddy/avid couch side audience member. Whenever I hum or sing a phase from a tune he hasn't heard yet the question that sometimes requires a trip across the house, but is always asked is: 'how you sing that song'.

This child also provides me with all of the excuses to watch movies musicals that I could ever want. 

The responsibility of being the one he most consistently comes running to when things are 'not fair' or when there is an ouchy that needs kissing or there is something exciting that needs showing, can be a heavy one, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. All the silly kisses, and kitty licks, and toothy smiles are so worth it.

my own personal struggle

Autumn Sounds

"The earth has music for those who listen."
— William Shakespeare

Joy

 “The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.”
― E.E. Cummings

Buckets full of water are a child's best friend when the days get too hot!

Thanksgiving

Gratitude is the inward feeling of kindness received. Thankfulness is the natural impulse to express that feeling. Thanksgiving is the following of that impulse.

Henry Van Dyke

 

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Canadian Thanksgiving weekend!

Adventurers

 Blessed be childhood, which brings down something of heaven into the midst of our rough earthliness.
Henri Frederic Amiel

Austrian Memories

 

 You brought music back into the house. I had forgotten. 

-Captain von Trapp, The Sound of Music

 

Here are some more images from my Austrian adventure! Now that I am sitting in the utter silence of my bed room, I can't help thinking of the flurry of excitement that started off my Summer!
This was the house used in the the iconic film The Sound of Music. There were scenes filmed in front of the building, as well as on the lake. The insides scenes were shot at a different location(one of the many magic tricks of film). The building is now a part of a university. How wonderful it would be to be able to study in such a location surround by so much beauty!

When You Grow Up

gentle whisper

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.


Matthew 10:29-31 

The last sentence of this passage never fails to make me smile. Its like a gentle whisper full of love that God has given to us. I can feel the smile on His face when I read these words.

Whole Wide World

This song really embodies the way I feel about life. 

These words are going to be my continuous inspiration and motivation for this coming year.

moving from melancholy

Something that I want to do for myself this season, is to find ways to keep myself optimistic and inspired.
For the past while I found that I've allowed melancholy to become my main motivator.
Gray rainy days have been my comfort. Tears have been more satisfying than smiles.
Whimsy and quirkiness are a huge part of who I am.
I enjoy being the quiet girl with the deep running strangeness... that is some what endearing... if not confusing to the general population.
Negative energy has been fueling me for quite a long time. My itunes playlist entitled 'melancholy', where all my most listed to music lives, is a testament to this.
I've come to the realization that I need to change my attitude.
I'm still the same girl, and this transformation may take time, but I think its time.
I need to focus on the joy of life. I need to find the sunshine, and enjoy the rain when it come - not go searching for the dark clouds.

This season I am going to use this blog as a place to keep a collection of thoughts and images that reflect the joyous whimsy that I wish to see in my life.
There may be moments of melancholy that appear, but I need to learn to acknowledge them, but then move on, with out lingering in the darkness.

Each day I want to find at least one thing, weather its a poem, an image on the internet, or from my own life... a memory, a moment of joy from my day, a piece of scripture that speaks to me, a song... ANYTHING! I want to post it here, so I can track my our journey to joy.

The Truth

Anchor

Austrian Quiet

The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
Saint Augustine

Ave Verum

My choir went to Austria to sing in the Summa Cum Laude Youth Choral Festival. 

We came home with a first place placement in the Mixed Choir Category.

This is what we sound like, sometimes.

monastic beauty

Traveling to Europe is like stepping back in time. 

It's this world where two very different universes manage to co-exist.
We long for the stories of the past as much as we strive for the excitement of the future.

The old and the new are all jumbled together into a Picasso portrait that reflects the most beautiful part of the collective human soul. 

sweet lovers love the spring

It was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o’er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
- Shakespeare, As You Like It

drizzle

welp. now I'm 18 folks.

Sunshine and daffodils, just happiness everywhere.
Actually, I'm still in a melancholy mood, which personally I'm quite enjoying. There is something oddly comforting about grey days and mournful melodies.
I feel creative and inspired, yet unmotivated and easily distracted... but what else it new.
I have plans for 18. Big plans.
I want to make a list of 20 things to do before I'm 20, because 20 is a rather terrifying thought for me, and in all reality, it's not that far away.
I could sit and fill volumes with all the shades of grey that I'm feeling. I want to light candles and sit in the silence of flickering light, imagining and hoping. A thought comes, and then flickers away before I can pin it down and admire the beauty of its dazzling wings, but that is probably for the best. This way I never get the chance to kill these vibrant imaginings and dreams by mounting them on my wall.
I feel the need to hold faded black and white photographs between my fingers. Photographs that contain memories that do not belong to me, but for one brief suspended moment of time I can claim them for my own and breathe my own words into the lives of people who have grown up and left their old selves behind.

heart and mind

Winter Bones

Rigid, the skeleton of habit alone upholds the human frame.
Virginia Woolf 

frozen jewels

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without. 

~Confucius, Analects

Imaginary Dates

THIS SONG!

Dancing Umbrellas

Sometimes I write original songs.

Winter Wind

Sometimes I write melodies to go with the lyrics in Shakespeare's plays.

Some times they sound like this.

Art

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

- Plato



i will be

you're the one!

it's a relationship

2011 in Review

This past year I...




... quit something that I do not regret quitting.

... read 45 books.

... played my grade 8 RCM flute exam.

... was in two musicals that were both a big impact on my life.

... reprised a role for the first time ever(several roles actually... all in the same play).

... was in my first show that was neither Shakespearean nor a musical or music based.

... moved into my new room.

... won NaNoWriMo for the third time in a row!

... bled real blood on stage for the first time.

... went more than a full year without being in a single Shakespearean production(something that was rather sad...).

... took my first ever English course.

... started voice lessons with a new teacher.

... took a lot of really pretty pictures.

... went to 3 weddings.


... took the greyhound for the first time ever, and also with out a parent all the way to Toronto.

... got my G1!

... watched the last Harry Potter movie and totally cried in the theatre.

... saw 5 shows at the Stratford Festival!

... finished a journal that I started in 2010.

... cried a lot.

... met Kenneth Oppal.

... taught myself how to crochet.

... filled an entire journal over the summer months.

... sang in Handel's Messiah.

... became a YETI.

... started working on grade 8 piano repertoire.

... went thrift shopping in New York City for the first time.

... met many new friends.

... laughed a LOT!

... made many amazing memories.


2011 was wonderful.
2012 has a lot to live up to!