House Art Journal

Sorry I've been on hiatus, but we just started homeschooling again. I'm with the Classical Conversations program, and our group just started this past Tuesday. So - given that right now, I am busier than I have ever been in my entire life - I put off starting school till the group program started. So I spent last week organizing homeschool material that will hopefully be moved into the new addition sometime next month. But right now I am fortunate to be able to fit everything into a computer armoire, due to my husband's generosity in buying it for me when it was on sale two years ago. The armoire hides the messy avalanche that schoolwork had become over the summer, but now the avalanche is eradicated and safely filed and labeled in our file box system. Everything else is organized in four wooden magazine files from IKEA (which sadly, don't fit binders, their one flaw), two metal bins which slide onto shelves below, and in a desk organizer, which is not the Truly Useful...

Here's another photo and commentary from Catholic writer Catherine Fournier : One of the nice things about moving into a new house after living for a long time (in our case 18 years) in one spot, is that you discover new things about your furniture and decorations. Suddenly, in a different arrangement or in a different light, that chair or dresser you took for granted takes on a whole new beauty. This mirror was my mother-in-law's; she inherited it from her parents. Initially, I didn't find its ornate, elaborate style terribly appealing, but a mirror is a mirror and it was useful in our bedroom. As you can see, it's not very exciting hung against a plain white wall (though the cutie in the reflection is quite nice!) I only kept it when we were moving because it was a family-piece and may well have been one of the first "beautiful" objects her parents bought after spending years struggling as Ukrainain settlers in Manitoba. But in our new house, with its much ...

A few months ago in June I blogged about visiting Molly and Bill McGovern and their delightful little family farmette, Oliver Hill . This weekend I received a plea for emergency help from Molly. They were able to buy the farm because they purchased a sub-prime loan: at the time, this was their only option. Last year, they lost their baby son Oliver to SIDS, and then Bill lost his job as a result of all the time he took off to take care of his family during the crisis. Not to be kept down, Bill started his own business as a home health care aide, Oliver Hill Home Health Care . As an aside, he is thriving in the business: he's a big teddy bear of a man with years of emergency medicine experience. He specializes in helping older men with their health needs in their homes: for those of us who know Bill, this job is a perfect fit for his warm, compassionate personality, and his clients and their families have nothing but praise for his work. Molly has been holding classes in sewing and ...

My friend, Canadian writer Catherine Fournier , kindly allowed me to post some photos of the rennovation of their upstairs hall, with commentary. Thanks for sharing, Catherine! Upstairs Hall When I arrange a room and begin to decorate it, I think first about what the area will be used for, who will see it, then traffic patterns, then about ease of maintenance (keeping it clean and tidy.) I usually try to develop a theme for the colours, pictures and knick-knacks. In the case of our upstairs hall, it started with finding a (safe) place for our statue of Mary; somewhere where she’d be properly and respectfully seen without being in danger of being knocked over, always a hazard in the large-footed & large-elbowed Fournier household. Once she was in place I realized that this transient zone –in my opinion you can be a little more overstated or emphatic in an area where people just pass through than in a room where people sit and stay – would work well as a “Marian devotions” area. This...

At times I feel like a snob for admitting it, but plastic things really upset my sense of beauty. I can tolerate it in the house at times (yes, I do own Tupperware!) but when it comes to plastic outside, the contrast between the artificialness of plastic riding toys, swingsets, etc. and the vibrancy and realness of the natural world is jarring. So whenever I can, I try to find ways to eliminate outdoor plastic fixtures. I find that for babies, a galvanized metal tub makes a fun wading pool. While it's not really big enough to swim it, it definitely takes the edge off the last hot days of summer. And even bigger kids like to soak in it. I've found that one of these tubs (we just "upgraded" from a 30 gallon to a 45 gallon model this summer - $25 at the hardware store) and a good sprinkler is all the water fun my small children need. And this fall, we can use it for bobbing for apples. :)

Years ago my friend Joan introduced me to the art and work of William Morris , the ecclectic genius of the Arts and Crafts movement of the last 1800's. Although not Catholic, Morris was fascinated by the art that was birthed by Catholic culture, and used his considerable fortune to fund the production of paintings, books, fabric, wallpaper, furniture, and architecture that paid homage to medieval art. He sought with mixed success to raise the level of popular culture in his day and age, away from mass production and towards the appreciation of what he considered to be true culture. Ironically, he never embraced the faith of the intensely Christian culture he sought to emulate, but spent his life a child of the wind, flying from one philosophy to another. I suspect that if he was saved in the end, it would be because that his heart was wiser than his head. Above is one of his popular patterns, Briarwood Manor, one of my favorites. Different companies release new versions of...