Today's Post

Saw this on my friend Mimi's Live Journal and had to copy it. Mimi, you are just too funny and always the clever one! Thanks for the laugh.

Color Me Happy

Last week my mom and I took a trip to the Kimball Art Museum. They were having an Impressionists exhibition with works of art on loan from the Art Institute of Chicago. The line was huge to get in. I was very excited about this exhibit because my favorite painting by Van Gogh was there. It's called The Bedroom (2nd version). This has been my favorite since I saw it in a book in college. Art History was one of the hardest courses I took, but I took so much away from it. It is a dream of mine to some day have a home with an extra room in it so I can re-create this painting with real live furniture, painted wood floors, etc and then hang a print of this painting in the room...

Back to the museum...the minute we walked into the exhibit I told my mom all I wanted to see was this painting...as luck would have it, it was all the way toward the end of the exhibit, so we were the first ones there to see it that day...I actually got to stand there, uninterrupted, for at least 5 minutes. Painting took my breath away and I was so estatic I almost started crying. Went back to the picture at least 3 times after looking at the others. I really enjoyed the other paintings, too. Unbelievable to see the real mccoys. Next to each painting they had information about the history of each piece. For The Bedroom, they talked more about his first painting of this room and a letter he wrote to Gauguin about the painting. Here is what he wrote:

"It's just simply my bedroom" he wrote his frined (Gauguin) "only here color is to do everything, and by giving its simplification a grander style to things, is to be suggestive of rest or of sleep in general. In a word, looking at the picture ought to rest the brain, or rather the imagination...The shadows and the cast shadows are suppressed; it is painted in...flat tints like Japanese prints".

Thinking this explains why I'm so drawn to this painting. I've always loved very simple furniture with lots of wall color.

It was a wonderful afternoon. When picked up Peanut from school after that and the rest is for another blog...

A Day at the Patch

Caught on the wire?!
Peanut in the sky

My Peanut!

Kissing Nana

Showing some "tude"

double the "tude"

Pumpkin head to pumpkin head

Nana was in town this weekend and we took her to the Pumpkin Patch for some fun. Along the way we picked up one of Peanut's friends. This is the 3rd year the girls have gone to the patch together. We also met up with other friends. It was a really nice day. The sun was really bright so the photos were harder to edit...but I think I captured some fun moments.

If I Only had a Scarecrow...

Peanut and I decorated the front yard last night. We will get more pumpkins when Nana comes in this weekend. Think we have enough scarecrows! No, I did not dress her yesterday (still a little too warm out for turtlenecks). She slept over Mimi and Paw Paw's Sunday night and this must be all they had to put her in...mosquitoes are still out, so I just let her stay in those clothes so she wouldn't get any more bites... hmmm... wonder if the scarecrows can scare away the mosquitoes?

Butterfly photo was posted

Here's the exact link to the butterfly post on Journey North's website. Same as the photo in my earlier post here, but neat to see one of my photos on a website (besides my blog!)

http://www.learner.org/cgi-bin/jnorth/jn-query-byday?1223322897

It was a Monarch Butterfly migrating to Mexico!

I looked up butterflies and discovered that October is a big month for the Monarch butterflies to migrate south. People have been seeing hundreds of them at a time. Found a fun website and was able to post my sighting. http://www.learner.org/cgi-bin/jnorth/jn-query-byday I think you need to click on Monarch/Other sightings to see my post which is dated 10-04-08 (the date I saw the butterfly).

Visitor

Saturday night I went outside to water the flowers and other dying foliage by my front door. It was about 9pm. Never expected to see this beauty hanging around! She was very large and the colors on her were spectacular. What a treat. Ironically I posted to the blog about this time last year with the story of the "moth-erflies" and my Grandma Ann. I mentioned how they always showed up around a significant time. Grandma Ann's birthday would have been this October 9th. I like to think the buttterfly knew I was thinking about her...and as corny as it sounds, when I see a butterfly it is nice to just pretend it is a visit from Grandma Ann...and my heart fills up.