House Art Journal

Playmobil figures are great for encouraging creativity. But they're plastic. :( And they have more eensy-weensy fiddly-bits than the Barbie Shoe-and-Accessories Mall. :( :( And since our family was bequeathed a large amount of Playmobil sets by a homeschooling family whose kids had all "graduated" to college -- I have lots of Playmobil. My solution has been to put the Playmobil (and other toys like legos and the miniature brick set and the marble-ramp set) in large decorative popcorn tins and display them in sight but out of reach (they line the top of our current kitchen cabinets). On a rainy day or when the mood strikes, we clear off the kitchen table, bring a chosen tin down, and let the kids go to town playing with the contents. Since a great deal of the fun of these sorts of toys derives from having lots of them (or having all the parts), I put them all the pieces back in the tin when the kids are done and store them back, out of reach. So far it's been a great...

Dear P&G, I have used Ivory for years and love the product. For years I've wanted to email you and ask you to consider coming out with a prettier dish soap bottle that wouldn't have an obvious "Ivory" name, something more decorative that I would feel good about leaving out on the countertop, where it's far more useful. What I do now is use is a hair gel squeeze bottle from another company, filling it up with Ivory soap, but of course it's small and inconvenient. I would love to see Ivory come out with a new soap container that was too pretty to hide away. I would buy it! I just blogged about this at my blog, http://houseartjournal.blogspot.com/ and I thought I might as well email your company and make the request in writing. Thanks again for your excellent product. Regina Doman

In decorating a family home, it makes more sense to me to decorate using things you actually use. But many of the necessary items of family life aren't beautiful. There are roughly two things I do with every necessary item in my house: 1.Hide Them in Something Beautiful If the objects I'm trying to store don't look nice (ie: medicines, tampons, toothbrushes) I hide them. That means I put them behind closed doors or I group them in containers that hide their wordy labels and jarring colors. My hatred of plastic means that I don't like using plastic storage boxes anyplace where I need to see them. To me, plastic just isn't beautiful, so when I do use it, I hide it in closets, in the garage, in the attic and basement. I love baskets. The neutral colors are calming and they go with almost everything, and I use them lots of times to hide things I use often. I almost always buy them from thrift stores, where they are usually only 50 cents to a few dollars each. I look out...

Following an article in one of our favorite magazines, Catholic Faith and Family on the Sunday supper, we started redoubling our efforts to make Sunday, the Lord's Day, a special day. For years my distaste for plastic has led me to collect silver-plated serving trays as an unbreakable alternative to plastic ones. Tonight I pulled them out for a rather poor way-between-paychecks Sunday feast -- and they added something to pull the meal together. The meal was sausages stacked on a silver tray, leftover pasta, bread (the sandwich kind), butter, and as a treat for Mom that the rest of the family refused to touch -- shredded zuccini from my mother-in-law, fried in olive oil with onions. And homemade tomato sauce, and wine, and as a last touch, a can of olives poured into a silver bowl. And it was a festive meal, after all. Blessed art You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, who favor Your people in the days set aside to Your honor...

Why wooden toys? Some folks choose wooden toys for their children for environmental reasons -- they don't want their children breathing in supposedly off-gassing fumes from plastic toys, or they don't want to contribute to plastic in landfills. Some folks have Montessori reasons for choosing wooden toys: they argue that, for their own education, children should be given real things, not fake things, so they can learn about materials like wood, metal, wool, etc. instead of imitation things, like plastic. Some folks have philosophical reasons for choosing wooden toys: wood is a natural material. As one mother-writer (whose name I forget but who founded the Natural Baby Catalog ) wonderfully reasoned: consider a sunny field of daisies. Picture a child playing in the field. The child and the field belong together -- they fit. What sort of toy fits into that picture next to the child? A Barbie Doll? Rainbow Brite? A plastic laser gun? A Bionicle? Introduce those toys and something j...

A problem peculiar to serious Catholics ... what do you DO with old scapulars? When the strings tear apart and the images of our Lady start hanging -- you can't just throw them out, you have to burn them or bury them. I suspect most moms of large families have a little pile in the corner of their top bureau drawer of these little patches of cloth embroidered with Christ and Our Lady. Well, here's what I started doing with them: sewing them on the backs of my boys' overalls. This allows me to combine my hatred of name brand dressing ("What? You mean I pay you to advertise YOUR product?") with a desire for covert evangelism. See, the scapulars LOOK like those ubiquitous OshKosh tags at first glance -- but then you look again... Also, I don't mind having the Blessed Mother and our Lord watching my boys' backs in an extra special way. :) For non-Catholics: a scapular is two scraps of wool cloth with an image of the Blessed Mother on it worn front and back ove...

"Oatmeal on Checks" Sometimes the meeting of patterns catches my eye for some reason... when one of my children left their oatmeal bowl on the children's table, the juxtaposition of rectangles and circle with squares (slightly off kilter) and splatters made me stop and notice. I love random moments of beauty, and was glad to capture this one. Back to the day.

For the past year or so, my husband and I have been hard at work on a house we bought, a property of some five-and-a-half acres which we named "Shirefeld," after the Hobbit-usage: "county field." Since that's what it is. Our house is the Black Cat, since we have no prancing ponies, green dragons, or golden perches. But we do have a black cat. And two Siamese. And thirty chickens. And we had six wonderful children. But sadly, this past summer, there was an accident, and now we are reduced unwillingly to five. And pictures of my son Joshua hang in every room of this house, because we will never forget him. Right now this house is our work of art, and as of this month, we embark on extensive renovation. I may post some of our adventures here. Or I may simply post about beauty and order, since there will be only the hidden sort of beauty and the "eventual" sort of order here for quite some time.

For years I have refused to start a blog because I refuse to take the time to tend to it and keep it up. My resolution has not changed, and neither has my "to do" list been lightened. So I will post sporadically, as the mood strikes me, and when I have time or feel the need to create a bit of order and beauty here. Thank you, reader, for indulging me in this.