Dancing shoes

When a little girl gets her first pair of light up shoes and a pink tu-tu, life is just about a good as it can get. The absolute thrill expressed is contagious to everyone around her and they too are filled with this joy they can't explain. She puts on the tutu and is transported into a beautiful fairy, dancing in pink with a crown and twinkle slippers.

I know that feeling is better than anything I can accomplish with yoga or exercise or living right... Pure joy. The best feeling and one we search for whenever we're awake. We really need to go back to the magic of childhood. Imagination is replaced with dreams of sleep instead of seeing magic when we're awake. We get transported into whatever we're reading, at times, but spend too much time watching TV where there is no room for imagination. Quiet encourages imagination and I find I'm spending more and more time in silent surroundings and my creative imagination has the opportunity to flourish. Even if I'm dead tired from a day at the office, the stillness makes me relax and my mind has the freedom to excerise itself. What a revelation.

By watching EQ doing her pretend play I realize the TV is off and the noises of life within the house don't infringe on her creating a world of real friends and sharing tea. We look in from the outside and see nothing but cups in a circle, but she is in full conversation with her guests and enjoying a tea party with all of her special people. The conversation is lively and sincere. Her baby brother is a real live baby but serves as a new doll for her. Whatever she sees him as, is what he is. He looked particularly fetching in the stickers she placed all over his head, face and clothes. She was quite amused.

I am thankful she is getting the opportunity to entertain herself with imagination. It isn't encouraged enough in children today and those of us of a certain age, remember all the pretend we did as kids - cowboys, bank robbers, cops, teachers, doctors and nurses. I remember being convinced that I was an auburn mare trotting all over my pasture when I played recess with my grade school friends. I was so envious of the palomino. She really thought she was something. The trees in the yard were houses and forts and the tricycle made a great truck, car or horse depending on where I was at the time.

We didn't have a television set until I was in junior high so books, the radio, playing outside with the neighbor kids and my imagination kept me busy from breakfast to bedtime. I remember being so busy all day that it was hard to stop long enough to eat lunch. When the weather was warm enough it was always a picnic in the backyard and the milk in a metal cup was colder and tasted so good. During summer, I spent time every day in the garden with grandma. The rest of the year I helped wash clothes, learned to iron (hankies and dish towels) and learned how to cook being with her. She tried to teach me to sew but I'm still getting the hang of that now. We didn't miss TV - we had ourselves for entertainment and it was wonderful.

My life is so much happier now that I have turned off the TV at night and head out to the garden instead, while it's still light out. At dusk I move in to my craft room and sew or scrapbook until late in the evening. If there is something important coming on TV that night - I record it and watch it when there is nothing else to do. Not watching the news three times a day has made an immense difference too. My dreams are better and I rarely have nightmares. I'm not afraid to leave my house and the world isn't a big bad place anymore. I read good news and scan the Seattle Times when I eat lunch but that's about all the news I need.

Get outside and get your vitamin D and smell the fresh air - Enjoy your life!!

Thanks for checking in.
Hannah
Always - Dreaming in Colors

Goodbye - dear friend

It’s been an odd week. Sunday brought the news that a man I have admired for over 30 years had finally found peace and passed over after suffering from pancreatic cancer. Dith Pran. He had a website that made it possible to communicate directly with him and I felt honored to be included in his final months.

I first discovered him back in the 1970’s when he worked with Sydney Schanberg of the New York Times who was a correspondent in Cambodia during the Viet Nam war. When he and Sydney first started working together they witnessed the devastation of a U.S. bombing attack on a vital river crossing on the highway linking Phnom Penh with eastern Cambodia. Dith recalled in a 2003 article for the Times what it was like to watch U.S. planes attacking enemy targets and I kept this quote: "If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

Schanberg moved to Phnom Penh because he recognized that what was happening there was an unfolding catastrophe. He hired Pran full time, and together they covered the deterioration of Lon Nol’s corrupt government and the gathering power of the Khmer Rouge, culminating in 1975 in the communist victory, and the mayhem that followed. After Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1979 and seized control of territory, Pran’s choice to stay in Phnom Penh and at Syndey’s side when the Khmer Rouge took over is now a piece of history. (The film The Killing Fields) Schanberg was soon expelled and Pran was sent to labor camps where he somehow endured the tortures that took the lives of as many as two million Cambodians, including many in his family. Dith escaped from the camps,dodging both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces, to reach a border refugee camp in Thailand. From the Thai camp he sent a message to Sydney, who rushed from the United States for an emotional reunion with the trusted friend he felt he had abandoned four years earlier. "I had searched for four years for any scrap of information about Pran," Schanberg said. "I was losing hope. His emergence in October 1979 felt like an actual miracle for me. It restored my life." On their last meeting on Saturday just before Pran died he told Syndey “I promise to send you my dreams” as assurance they will continue to be together. They both acknowledged they were more than brothers.

Dith spoke and wrote often about his wartime experience and remained an outspoken critic of the Khmer Rouge regime. When Pol Pot died in 1998, Dith said he was saddened that the dictator was never held accountable for the genocide. "The Jewish people's search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people's search for justice doesn't end with Pol Pot," he said. He founded ‘The Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project’ (http://www.dithpran.org/) to educate “American students about the Cambodian genocide which occurred from April 17th, 1975 to January 7th, 1979.”

A man who could survive the horror and come through it with the outlook that Pran did, had a profound effect on me. He has always been a source of strength, and when things get overwhelming, I remind myself that people like Pran overcame things far worse than anything I will ever experience. He found beauty and joy and built a valued life! It really doesn’t matter what we own or the superficial things we sometimes make too important. It’s the contribution we make to the people in our lives, and the earth that is truly our legacy. I can only hope to do a small percentage of what Pran accomplished to feel like my life too, was a success.

Peace

Hannah

Marketing woes

I wish I had a degree in marketing. Who knew 30 years ago that I would want to start a business. Etsy has opened doors and made home based business reachable for anyone, however it seems to me the successful sellers are people who know how to market themselves and what they do. I have tried the local team, but they seemed to want to sell at shows and at First Friday events and left out those of us who were staying just with Etsy. Luckily I am good on the computer and have figured out blogging and adding links and ads to my blog site. Hopefully this will add traffic to both sites. There is so much to learn and challenges to overcome. I much prefer making the goods than selling them. I love the creation process - find that just right piece of fabric and have it tell me what to do with it.

A friend and mentor of mine has the marketing thing down pat. She does the widest variety of jewelry from fun light hearted stuff to serious Judaic items which I have purchased myself.

You can check her out at A Passion for Fashion at the following link: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=5218926

Thank heaven my daughter had a baby and I was there to see my first burp cloth. Who knew? Now it's one of the many things I enjoy making. Applique is my new skill. I love my new Singer Confidence machine that seems to do it all. Now days you can Google anything - and voila there were the instructions for perfect appliques. What can't you learn just sitting at one's computer?

Lucky for me my other passion is my garden. Living in the SW we have the best growing weather starting in January and my garden is now giving me such joy with everything coming into bloom. I plan to add my first roses this weekend. I love roses but they remind me of being old - don't know why but they do - so I held off adding them for the past six years. They grow well here and offer cut flowers all summer. I just hope my humming bird flower bed gives me other offerings for floral arrangements. I opted for gardens instead of a pool and about August I regret that choice due to the extreme hot temps we get. With flowers all summer I may have an easier time this year. Swimming pools are great but very selfsish - look at all the water it takes to fill one. Deserts aren't designed for that.

It's almost warm enough to start hanging the laundry back outside like last summer. I miss the routine and look forward to starting that up again.

Please be sure to check out my new and improved Etsy site. I added a new colorful banner and there are always new items.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hannah

As always, I'm Dreaming in Colors now - For Baby

Atty in his RoslynsCloset onsie. So Cute!!

Click on the link below to go to her shop.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=102728

Hurry Spring -

Phoenix is in the midst of Spring weather - not too hot and not too cold. In fact...it's just right. We can leave the heat and AC off and have the doors and windows open to circulate air. This is the only time of year I can say anything nice about living here. Come May it will be a different story.

We had heavy rains in February and early March and the weeds have been prolific all over the valley. I went to several stores looking for extended weed killer (very un-Green of me I know)and all of them were sold out. The stores just couldn't keep up. Now I admit to using chemicals SPARINGLY only where I can't get to the weeds (rock riverbeds, pathways and under cacti) and the weeds were smart and grew where they thought I couldn't get to them. Ha! I hate weeds more than I hate weed killer so they lose! They were strong little buggers though. It took me digging the majority of them up, followed by some spray followed by more digging a week later. Once I get them out of there I can use Amaze granuals and keep them at bay the whole season. The really great garden news is my orange tree has blossoms and I just hope the bees find it and pollinate. My first citrus - how exciting.

Besides the yard, I have been a busy bee in my craft shop. I made Elsie a dress and a vest/pant outfit that took so much work and looks so bad on her. I can't help but crack up when I see her in them. It was so bad I deleted the pictures of her in the pants and the dress made her look like a bag lady, and the vest fit, but the pants look like parachute pants on MC Hammer. It was pitiful. I'm better off sticking with tag blankets and burp cloths. My etsy shop is getting stocked and I have been buying fabric like I used to buy shoes. It's important to get designer fabrics not available at the local Joann's so things are unique. It all started with Funky Monkey and has gone uphill from there. I've had to organize in bins all the fabric I have now. Be sure to check out my esty site dreamingincolors.etsy.com)

I haven't seen my new boy Atticus since the first week of February but he's growing fast and has the cutest grump faces. We kid his daddy that Atty picked that up from him. Jason jokes all the time about hating people so we blame it all on him. I can't wait to hold him again before he gets too big. They are small so short a time. I plan to go up North for tulip season in April, again in June and in August for the birth of our second grandson to Javan and Terina. 2008 is proving to be baby explosive. Enough!

Hope this finds you happy and well. Thanks for stopping by,

Hannah

Always, Dreaming....in colors.

We have a Baby Boy!

I am visiting in Seattle and helping out now that we have a wonderful new member of our family. Atticus Ryan Ronald was born on January 28th at 8:44am and weighed 8 lbs 2 oz. It was a blizzard the morning the kids headed to the hospital and we were totally surprised to wake up with Elsie at home to a heavy layer of snow outside. We took our time and waited for the rush hour traffic to subside before joining the kids and Atty at the hospital. I don't remember snow in Seattle like they get it now, every year!

Elsie is a wonderful sister most of the time. She kisses and hugs him and feels the need to cover him with a blanket and offers binkies to him - however when we went to get Mommy and the baby to bring them home, Elsie was a bit confused as to why he was in the car with us too. She hadn't figured he'd be coming home too and sticking around. Most of the time she's busy with me or her folks and ignores him. If he cries she gets a bit upset but is quickly calmed and distracted.

He looks just like his little sister Elsie did when she was born, except he frowns all the time and hates to be naked. He sleeps most of the time and eats and we change diapers a LOT but other than that he's pretty quiet and uneventful. We still have to pinch ourselves and remind each other that we really have a baby boy with us now. She was Ms. Mellow about most things but he has definate dislikes and lets them be known. Baths and diaper changes lead the list of least liked activities.

Elsie on the other hand is an amazing little creature and I love spending every day with her. She is vocal and has opinions on everything - and loves her 'Nona' with lots of hugs and kisses every day. We play and read and since I didn't feel like lifting and carrying her everywhere, she is now a full on walker. It started with me holding her hand and her walking with me, and now she stands up and walks off on her own. We make a big deal about it each time and she feeds on the praise and does it more and more! She gets up with the help of holding on to a piece of furniture or my legs and then off she goes to see Daddy, Mommy or baby Atty.

Being a girlie girl myself, I have convinced Elsie to let me brush and add ribbons and a topnot pony tail to her hair. She looks adorable and seems to enjoy the added attention! Her mother makes fun of me and her dad is his usual sarcastic self about the whole thing and asks "what the H--- did you do to my kids' hair?" to which we all protest loudly until he finally admits it looks cute. (I win!!) Now her poor Mom will have hair to do on top of a baby to keep fed and bathed in the mornings.....sorry.

I will head back to Phoenix on Saturday and out of habit will watch Sesame Street to stay up on Elmo, Grover, Abby and Big Bird just so I can converse with Elsie about the latest events. It's our special time and I will miss it so much!!

Everyday I try to figure out how to move back so I can see my kids more. Phoenix is just too far away and I love the chaos and love this house surrounds you with, just by being in it.

I'll write again soon. Thanks for stopping by!

Hannah

Dreaming in Colors

Crafting with Nona