As we near the end of July, I see school items hitting all the stores with signs saying "School starts soon!" and I always feel like starting school in August is cheating kids out on their summer. I've said it before thousands of times; there's simply nothing wrong with the old-fashioned summer that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day and all the days between those 2 holidays belongs strictly to KIDS. Guess it's the kid in me that makes this one time stay-at-home-Mom think that we need to just let kids be kids and The LORD will make everything else fall into the right place. Summer is the time to relax and let go- lax bedtimes and sleeping in, sleep-overs, and late evening lightning bug chases, days of pool time (and no indoor showers or baths with so much chlorine time), picnics, and family gatherings. Those are the things that no amount of money can buy.
The ChiefHubby and I just celebrated our 39th Wedding Anniversary (plus 2 years of dating before that) on July 14th. Since the younger kids had to change their plans on coming to Indiana in July, we decided to take a trip down to the Florida house and relax a bit. Well... that was the PLAN, anyway. It's not like going to a hotel- you have to unpack what you need and set up your house again for use. Throughout our stay, the huge storms just kept rolling through, and if you've not been to sea-level during a storm, you're in for a scare: lightning hits the ground quite often, and quite nearby. So on that first Sunday after worship, we were all standing around and talking, waiting to head over to Maw-Maw Dixon's house for lunch together with the family, when the power went in and out several times before going out altogether. When we got back to our place in the late afternoon, we found ourselves still without power while everyone else was back on. The surge blew out our main component and with it; our main AC and lights. It was in the 90's and Florida monsoons like this are extremely muggy. Oh, joy! It took 3 days for the new component and a huge surge protector to arrive. In the meantime, I went back and forth to the beach on my own, enjoying the huge surf sent in by all the weather off -and on- the coastline. The crowd was there but I managed to get in some really great, powerful waves! Windsurfing on the lake was out- it was too extreme heat to be wearing a life jacket, no matter how cooling the wind was. So I stuck it out , swimming with the sharks and black bears, at the beaches until incoming storms chased me away. (Google shark and black bear sightings at my beach: Destin Beaches.) This led me to the craft I'm sharing with you on this post... from my happy place!
It's time for another new theme for the next 2 weeks; "Distressed About Paints"! Lyla leading off here once again, and if you'll remember: July is my favorite month and that usually shows up in all my creative makes during this time of year. When Linda, owner of The Funkie Junkie Boutique put out a challenge to the Design Team for using Distress Paints, I was disappointed at first because painting is not one of my best forms of art and the thought crossed my mind that this was going to be a total flop from me. But as I went through my drawer of Tim Holtz items, I realized that I use Distress Paints quite a lot more than I thought. I took that revelation further with the idea that this project didn't need to be solely Distress Paints, but the use of any DP mixed in with any type of paste medium, certainly brings any plain product up to a new level. Let's roll on and see where this project ended up!
