Eagle Bluff

My dad called me Friday night to tell me about some eagles he had spotted on the bluff near his house. I grew up traveling this one particular highway....

 

It starts at 5-mile corner, the driveway in the photo above leads to an empty lot. Before it was an empty lot, there stood a burned-down trailer house. Before the trailer burned down, my mom had a boyfriend that lived there...many years ago.

Highway E continues past a white building/barn with sunflowers painted on it. Just past the little white building is a crumbling house, it used to have sheep wandering the surrounding pastures, and a 'crazy' hitch-hiker lady who would always be found on street corners around town. She was nice enough, but if you picked her up, she was like the hitch-hiker missionary, telling you about Jesus and the bible. I don't know if she still lives there, or if anyone does....the house is practically falling down now and the sheep are gone.

Just after that, you drive through an intersection, turn east and you head out into the country, to a secret spot where we used to drive through an old tree farm and go swimming on our own private creek beach. I remember the stinging nettle and the crawdads. 

Turn right, you will drive over Wagon Bridge, the old version of highway E, where the Granby was built, near Shoal before it got flooded and the whole town moved to higher ground. I have many memories of wagon bridge...of taking pictures, going swimming, digging worms, and fishing.

Past that intersection, sits a beautiful mansion with a pond and fountain, and a copper awning over a massive front door. 

Just beyond the mansion is a bridge that connects two bluffs. The bridge goes over a scenic valley, with grazing cows, a babbling river, and a train track. The familiar sound of the late night train whistle in the distance is one of my favorite sounds. The valley and the bluff together is a picturesque scene, especially in the fall.

Highway E is a very familiar place. The bluff that my dad referred to as 'our bluff' is most definitely ours. When I was a kid, I would hike up the dirt road behind our house to the bluff to pick flowers, look over the edge at the water below and pick blackberries. My first kiss was on the rocks overlooking shoal creek. It is a very special spot to me.

 So when  he told he he had seen some eagles in the trees, I wasn't sure if I believed him...

When he said, 'Nellie, you have got to get down here and see these eagles before the leaves blow off the trees, they  are amazing! With their white heads, and the orange leave. Get down here and bring your camera with your biggest lens because these are National Geographic images!'....

I figured it was just dad code for: "You need to come see me soon, before the leaves fall off the trees."

I decided to squeeze his request into a very busy Saturday and drive down to Granby around 3:00pm, since he had seen the eagles on his way home for several days in a row. 

Saturday was one of the windiest days EVER! 

When I first got to the bridge going up to the bluff, and saw the eagles perched in the tree, my first response was, "Those are FAKE eagles......those aren't real.'

Seriously, the eagles were absolutely beautiful! And huge! They looked like fake eagle statues someone had hung up in the trees. Who would climb up in a dead tree under a bridge and hang up some eagle statues? No one. The eagles were real. Hooked beak and all!

I was fiddling with the settings on my camera, trying to get them just right. I was using my biggest lens, and the AUTO feature just doesn't work with my camera, so I have to manual focus and make sure the exposure is right on each picture. 

When I say that it was windy...I mean that it was insanely windy. I had my camera mounted on a monopod....and the wind kept blowing the big lens, just when I had it focused perfectly, a lot of my images came out blurry.

I only had a few second to adjust my camera before the eagles started flying around. I am so mad. I wish I would have had my camera ready BEFORE I got out of the car, crossed the bridge, and pointed it at them...then I would've had more time. 

The pictures of the eagles aren't the greatest. I know that. But it was amazing to see them....they were so beautiful amongst the orange trees. I am so glad my dad convinced me to drive down and try to spot them with my camera.

 Sort of looks like a Monet painting...all blurry and dotted.

 So I know that if you want to see some good eagle pictures, just google EAGLES...and some REALLY amazing images will pop up. But if you want to see a landscape that is familiar to me, newly dubbed 'Eagle Bluff'....you can only see the images right here.

 It is so beautiful this time of year! I'm really glad I took this little drive down memory lane.

 I love the Ozarks!

This is one of my favorite times of the year. In just a few weeks, it will be Thanksgiving. I am thankful for my family and my memories.

Morgan's English Tea Party Bridal Shower

Today, I had the fun pleasure of helping host tea party bridal shower! It was SO much fun!

 

For the theme, we used Morgan's wedding colors....which is basically champagne....we added some silver and gold and since she loves peacocks, we used feathers throughout the decor.

A white peackcock lives near the home where I grew up and my aunt saved a bunch of his feathers for a few years. They are WAY prettier than any white peacock feathers I found online, so I asked her to borrow them for a centerpiece. (Thanks Auntie Robyn!!) The giant champagne class is a left over from a friend's wedding. I painted a big gold and champagne peacock eye feather on it.

We used a handmade lace table cloth, real and paper doilies and lots of fancy real china for the decorations and for the food.

 We wanted it to feel like a really fancy tea party!

 Mint chocolate diamond rings. The mold is from Hobby Lobby, really fun...my first time using a candy mold!

Stormi had these beautiful petit fours made, and they were so delicious!

I made these little cucumber tea sandwiches. SO yummy! Recipe here. There are many recipes online...I just used this one because it said FANCY in the title!

 We had a bunch of tea flavors.....

And lots of things to add in...like real sugar cubes, honey, and lemon.

There was SO much yummy food. Stormi made some delicious scones, and Lindsay made some delicious chicken salad sandwiches.

Morgan and her mom admiring the spread!

The Party Planning Committee.... Stormi, Me and Lindsay. (Also Julie....but she had a baby 3 days ago, welcome to the world Emily Grace!)  You can see here how dramatic the peacock feathers were!

We requested that everyone wear 'elegant tea party attire'.....I was hoping people would wear hats....but I knew that since I didn't specify, it probably wouldn't happen...so I made these little hair combs. So easy and cute! Just took some hair combs, added some feathers, and a little bit of glittery tulle and viola! (BTW, I spray painted the non-white hair combs gold, easy transformation!)

Here you can sort of see the punch....I borrowed Julie's dispenser, made an ice ring with fruit in it and used this punch recipe. Thanks, Pinterest!

At the shower, we played All About the Bride. Guests answered questions about Morgan, and they got a point if they wrote down what she said...and a bonus point if the groom also guessed the same answer.

Guests were also asked to make a little Magnetic Poetry poem for the bride.

I made a single sheet of words, using some from the Magnetic Poetry and some added words that related to the bride and groom and everyone cut out their own little poem and glued them to black paper for Morgan to take home.


SO CUTE! Morgan texted me a couple of them.


























Here are a few of my favorite pictures of Morgan with the party guests!

Lindsay.

Stormi

Me!

The nieces.

English tea party!!! SO ADORABLE!! 

My gift to Morgan....toasting glasses for the wedding, matching the big one from the table. She found some on Etsy that she loved, but they were super expensive ($75!!)

Wow, what a great day!!

The Smallest Act of Caring

I need to share this story so that I will never forget it.

Although I would not normally share a personal story about a student, (and details have been changed to keep his identity secret), this is one of those stories that is a HUGE reminder that what I do is important and special.

Usually, students mature over the summer and naughty kids grow up a little bit. One year, a boy named Tommy, had been  acting completely different than he acted the previous year. This boy was so sweet and smart the year before, but on this particular year, I started to dread his class before I even saw them coming down the hall. I didn't want to be mean to the kid, but he was just so disruptive that I could hardly get through the lesson without getting frustrated with his behavior. I even mentioned it to his classroom teacher from the year before, and she said that other teachers have commented on how wild Tommy had become.

One day, the class was coming down the hall and I realized that they had a substitute. "Oh, great," I thought...generally, whenever a class has a substitute, bad behaviors are intensified and the normally well-behaved students are a little wiry from the lack of structured daily routines normally enforced by classroom teachers.

As soon as he walked up, Tommy said, "What happened to your hair?" as the class passed through the doorway. Immediately, I snapped (without thinking), "What happened to your face?" and then I looked at the substitute and cringed...hoping she had heard him be so rude, but somehow she didn't hear my completely unprofessional retort. I don't actually think Tommy heard me say it, because he didn't respond, but kept bee-bopping through the doorway as if it is completely normal to insult a teacher and get away with it.

I walked into class, closed the door, and got on with the lesson. I don't remember if Tommy was his usual interrupting self after that...I just tried to teach about mixing paint to create tints and shades.

About halfway through class, the principal came in and wanted to take Tommy out. Tommy left his painting sitting on the table.

Near the very end of art, with only about 6 or 7 minutes left, (everyone else was cleaning up and we were about to conclude) the principal brought Tommy back to art. He took me aside and said that Tommy had been in his office, meeting with family services. 'Could Tommy finish his painting? He really wanted to get back down here to art, so that he could finish it."

I don't know why Tommy was talking to a social worker, or whomever it was in the principal's office...I never asked....but students don't just meet with family services for fun....it was an immediate sign that something was going on in Tommy's home life. I had seen the signs all year. His behavior was drastically different than the year before.

Instead of showing Tommy a little more love, or given him opportunities for more attention, I had started to dread even being in the same room with him.

There he was, in the office, meeting with some stranger, about some situation at home, and all he wanted to do was be with me, in art, working on his painting.

I was mortified and embarrassed and ashamed that I had lashed out at the poor kid with "What happened to your face?!" when he is dealing with some pretty terrible stuff at home.

Being an art teacher, I can usually sense when something is going on with a child. It isn't necessarily that stuff comes out in their artwork, usually I notice a huge shift in behavior.

If a student suddenly starts acting oddly or misbehaving, I can tell that something is going on...perhaps the child is going to dad's for the weekend...or stayed up too late because parents were fighting....maybe the kid is living at Children's Haven or in foster care.

Rarely do I ever know the details about what is going on at home.  If I notice major changes, I will mention it to the classroom teacher and the counselor.

As I said before, I honestly never knew what was going on with poor Tommy...but his behavior started to improve after that. Or maybe, I started treating him a little differently because I had a little insight into the fact that something had changed at home and it was affecting his behavior. In any case, it is a huge reminder that no matter what, so you should always treat others with compassion because you never know what burdens they might be carrying.

Here are a few great quotes:

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong.  Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.  ~George Washington Carver

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.  ~Leo Buscaglia

Halloween Post!

Whew!! What a month October has been!

Busy.Sad.Busy.

I am so ready for Christmas.
I've already started making plans for the annual Christmas party.
SO. MANY. AWESOME. SURPRISES!!
I can't wait!! I'm ready to put the tree up right now.

I didn't get super into Halloween this year. Not much can top last year's concert+Power&Light in KC for Halloween.

Friday night, I worked my school carnival in my Eric Carle, Very Hungry Caterpillar costume. 

Saturday night, we did a haunted walking tour of Joplin's downtown. It was cool, a few 'spooky' reenactments and a lot of history (Highlights: hobo camps, the KKK and prostitution on Maiden's Lane).

Sunday, went to see Paranormal Activity 3, it was pretty good...not as scary as the first two, but it was set in the 80s and that was pretty cool.

Today, I had a dentist appointment so I took the day off. I think I needed some time to get things caught up around the house and relax. Rather than cater to trick-or-treaters, I worked at Spiva with my Art Lounge class this evening. They finished up their giant paper mache head sculptures and we took some pictures, ate waffles and had a life drawing session with the giant heads on. It was super fun. 

Hmmm....I planning some blog posts for the next few weeks. My blog has been way too sad lately! Watch for some fun stuff soon.

Thanks for reading. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

A Lifelong Journey

While driving down highway 69 to Dallas on Wednesday night, I started thinking about all the times my family has driven down that same highway over the years.

Back-and-forth between Carthage and Dallas, getting off the highway at Big Cabin, passing through Muskogee, across the dozens of bridges at Lake Eufaula, topping the hill at McAlester to see city's the twinkling lights stretching out for miles, past the razor-wire-surrounded-prison-on-the-hill, and that enormous star at the 'Welcome to Texas' center at the state line.

For those of us who are used to two lane highways in the country, the trip from the state line through Dallas is a spectacle because there is something to look at in every direction, especially when you literally drive right through DFW airport.

The Dallas skyline is amazing at night. How many of us have 'ooh-ed' and 'aw-ed' as we drove passed neon-lit sky scrapers? Or during the day, exclaimed, 'Six FLAGS!!'

I started wondering how many times my Papaw, my dad, my Memaw, my aunts and uncles have traveled that same road over a lifetime. How many people in my family have gotten tickets, or crawled along in two-lane construction gridlock for miles and miles? Why were they making that long trip, to spend the summer together? for a graduation? a birthday? a reunion? a business trip? a funeral? a wedding? The journey itself is a metaphor for a life, with all the pot-holes, and speed traps, and road-trip games, and pit stops, and memories. Whether we realize it or not, my family will always be bound by that familiar path.

Passing by the lake at Eufaula, I got a sick pit in my stomach. This wasn't a fun road trip to Papaw's farm.

This was a farewell journey.

I had been suppressing my grief, and I was in denial until it hit me. Something about the combination of the sun setting, seeing the moonlight reflecting on the surface of the lake, and the sound of the music playing on the radio, the sadness overwhelmed me, with a million memories and the swift realization that never again would it be the same sort of trip.

We weren't driving merrily through Oklahoma to visit with family over Thanksgiving supper or chat about the weather. We weren't about to drive up to the farm, and see Papaw sitting in his recliner, petting Shadow, doing a word puzzle, trolling around on the golf cart or dolling out candy from his candy jar.  This wasn't a vacation and my visions of Papaw in his element, loving life, are just memories now.

Papaw had a larger-than life-personality. He had the sort of personality that left you always wanting more, with his quick wit and sharp memory, he always had a funny story or a saying. The kind of story that made everyone who met him, want to sit and listen.

Some of his stories were so outrageous, and ornery, like the one about the time he was speeding towards Missouri on highway 69, in an El Camino and got stopped by a Hi-Po. He had just passed a couple of big rigs and after he got his ticket, the cop took off south, so papa hit the gas and flew past the big rigs again, exclaiming over the CB, 'I stopped back there and got my speeding permit, now I can really fly!", knowing full well that the officer could hear him bragging.

Papaw wasn't afraid to speak his mind. He would tell you what he thought about you, in a very serious-but-joking-but-completely honest sort of way. He never filtered his comments with a fear of hurting your feelings, which taught all of us to have a thicker skin, and believe in what we were doing or saying so that we could back it up. He was a tough guy, and he expected some toughness out of us, no wussies allowed.

Some would probably say 'Doc' was a bit of a legend.

To others, with his giving spirit and his generous heart, he was a hero.

After the tornado, I got a phone call that he and Memaw had a bunch of furniture for my mom's new place just as soon as we got her settled in somewhere, they would load it into a trailer and bring it up for her. Just like that. Just because it was the right thing to do, no matter that he was undergoing chemo treatments for cancer. A 14-hour round trip was all in a day's work.
 
 Today, at the family viewing....I really wanted to say something to my family. I wanted to give a little speech, encouraging words, and tell my family what I was thinking. From the second that I knew what I was going to say, I started to shake with nerves and I couldn't get up the courage to say what I really wanted to say.

But I would like to share it now.


Papaw is a hero and a legend. And the incredible thing about heroes and legends, is that they live forever. Through our stories, and our memories, we can pass on all the things Papaw taught us about life and about doing the right thing and standing up for what you believe in, no matter what.

My Papaw had an extraordinary personality, lived life to it's fullest and loved his family BIG. I will never forget his laugh, his voice, and his giving heart. His suffering has ended, and he had a good long life. It is with a heavy heart and tremendous sadness that I will join with my family in Texas to honor his memory and his love, and say farewell. Never forgotten, June 9, 1934~October 19, 2011

http://m.joplinglobe.com/TJG/pm_105318/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=kJnn4GXP

New Vintage Dining Room and Hungry Caterpillar Halloween Costume!

So crowded!

With nothing on the calendar this weekend, I made the most of every minute!


Friday night, watched Mad Men and ate sushi on the couch.


Saturday, went to Springfield to do some vintage shopping...had lunch with some great friends....

Best of all, found a great new dining table...completely made-over my dining room with the new find.


The old dining table was nice, but I hated sitting in there because it was just too crowded. I wanted something vintage.

Old Table

 

New Table Detail

 I really wanted something that was more chrome, and more floral...but I realized a couple of things after shopping all day.

Finding a chrome dining set, with 6 chairs, and two leaves under $500 in good condition that didn't clash with my orange paint and stripes would be next to impossible.

New Table Chair Detail

So I felt really lucky to find this set with the dark green chairs.


When I found the floral table cloth, I was in love with the whole arrangement!

 This is now my favorite room in the house! A great place to eat, pin ideas to my pin boards on pintrest, or type up new blog posts.

Sunday morning, in my newly revamped space, I spent a few {hours} on pintrest, brainstorming ideas for my Halloween costume this year. I have to dress as a story book character for my school carnival, so I always scramble around at the last minute trying to figure out what to be...I usually throw something together...this year, I wanted to make something really cool...but I wasn't sure what.....

Then I saw the cutest picture of a baby in a Very Hungry Caterpillar costume...and I realized that it would be easy and super cute to make for myself. The baby version was crochet, so I googled for more ideas.

I was delighted to find all kinds of things for inspiration.

When I went hunting in my stash for green fabric...I had very little...hmmmm. I wanted to start on it right away, and I did not want to have to run around town finding green fabric so I had to improvise. When I spotted a white pillow case in my stash....I thought it might work to paint the fabric?

Um, yes. Painting the fabric...that would definitely work. So I painted one side of the pillowcase with 'Eric Carle' colors and textures. After it dried, I peeled it apart and cut out arm holes and  a neck hole....it was a little too tight to wear as a dress and be comfortable...so I decided to turn it into an apron.

I cut the bottom to be sort of rounded and started sewing lines across the front to make the segments of the caterpillar's body.

Then I stuffed those segments with batting, added some ribbon around the top for the neck, and added one of the few green strips of fabric that I had for the waistband.

The hat was tough. I have only ever made a few hats. I made a 'trial' hat.....but it was too small...so I thought I could just make the red one little bit bigger....that didn't really work, so I started sewing together little panels, sort of like a beach ball...the result is a little bit wonky, but I stuffed some purple felt antenas and added some felt shapes for the eyes and nose and it looks pretty cute.

The last thing I made was the feet. I just cut out a foot pattern, traced it on brown fabric....sewed two pieces of brown fabric together to make little 'pillows'. I attached those to the body, and viola! A caterpillar costume. I plan to wear it over a long-sleeved green shirt, and a pair of pants. It should be easy to take on and off, and it won't be too hot.

I have a little 'Hungry Caterpillar' bag, I am thinking about putting some food in there from the book: Lolly pop, apple, orange, etc.

For the school carnival, I was sort of thinking about taking my brown sleeping bag to school so that I could curl up in my 'chrysalis' in the corner...wonder if I could get away with that?