On Saturday I will marry the man of my dreams.  I am blessed beyond belief to have met him and be able to spend the rest of my life with him.  In anticipation of our wedding,  I want to express my feelings through this beautiful poem:

Hold my hand and I’m yours,
And your heart will stay close to mine,
For I know the sun must rise with the dawn,
And at night the stars must shine.

And the wind must wander the ocean
And sing with the waves of the sea;
Just so, I know, I’ll be by your side,
And you will be wedded to me.

And you will be wedded to me, my love,
And I will be wedded to you;
For I know the tide must turn with the moon,
And the spring must return ever new.

And the sky must weep that the hillsides
May laugh in the green of their joy;
And the leaves must turn red, brown, and gold
That the earth might their riches employ.

And love like a mad, swollen hunger,
And love like an unending song,
And love like the silent pull of the Earth
Shall be with us all our lives long, my love,
Shall be with us all our lives long.

(c) Nicholas Gordon

After the wedding rehearsal we are having a family party.  Mister’s family lives in CO so we haven’t met each other.  We are looking forward to have some casual time for the two families to get to know each other.  Mister’s sister has done all the plans for this party (thank you, Sharon!) and she had the idea to have a book available for everyone to write in.  She wants them to write their wishes for us.

I pictured a satin book with a beaded design on it.  My neighbor, Kelli, bead woman extraordinaire (http://theholebeadshop.com ) got me interested recently in bead embroidery.  So, I started out embroidering these beads.  It didn’t take me long to realize I didn’t have time to complete that project, so I decided to just glue the beads on.

So, here’s the book.  It was lots of tedium gluing the tiny beads, but I think it turned out pretty.

Here’s a closer look.  The color is off, but you get an idea.  It’s funny that I didn’t realize I had some bald spots until I saw this picture. Guess I better get back to gluing.

We have been converting a bedroom in Mister’s house into a studio for me.  We are almost done, so I’ve got pics of the progress.

This is what the south wall looked like when we started.  It was a closet with sliding doors.

The walls are plaster so there were some mighty big cracks.  This is after I spackled and sanded all the cracks and started apply Kilz.

TADA!  This is that area now.  After we removed the closet and installed shelves.  More info about Alice and her little door below.

It might be difficult to see the perspective in these pictures, but this door to a little closet, is only about 4 feet high.  When I saw it, I thought of Alice going through the tiny door.  Mister’s son drew Alice on there for me and I started painting her today.  It’s much harder than I thought because it’s made of bead board, which makes it tough to get the lines to go where you want them to.

This is the north wall.  When I moved from TX 2 years ago, I stored a lot of my stuff.  So I’m just now getting all my art things out of storage. It is so exciting to see things I haven’t used in so long.  And it’s going to be unbelievable to have such a big room with room for storage of everything.  I’m hoping it will help me keep it less messy than the tiny places I’ve had to create in before.

The rest of the north wall with my bookcase.  I can’t believe I have a whole bookcase in my studio for all my books!!  There will be another smaller one, too, when I finish painting it.  It’s going to hold all my journals.

This is the west wall.  I hope to paint this big shelf, but it’s made of cheap stuff so I doubt it’s going to take paint very well.  On the middle shelf is the coolest tool box that I inherited from my brother-in-law who recently passed away.  It’s got lots of tiny drawers for small tools.

Lastly here is the east wall with my art table. Sorry it’s so dark.

The walls will eventually all be painted yellow, but that will have to wait til after the wedding.