Once upon a time...

This is the story of a girl.  A girl on a path to continue to discover and create her once upon a time.  Not a happily ever after.  Just a once upon a time...a narrative filled with happiness, sadness, hard lessons learned, hurt and injury given and received, deep love and broken hearts, creativity, beauty, discovery ...you get the idea... a common thread walks between the lines of each of these descriptives ...experience.  A perfect once upon a time, with no guarantee of a happy ending, and no fear of a sad ending.  Just living.  Loving.  Laughing (a lot)... and some (maybe a lot of on given days) crying.  But in all of this, seizing the day, experiencing each moment and every breath.  This is not a deep story, although it may sometimes contain deep moments.  This is a place for me to journal and document my once upon my time, and hopefully relate to others with my random thoughts.  By profession, I am a mother, an art teacher, and an artist.  The components of me beyond that are endless.  And boundless.  I design with a passion.  I scour thrift shops for the perfect find.  I paint and re-paint my walls/furniture/floors...really anything that will hold paint.  I order pizza after I put my best effort into preparing a well-cooked meal.  I love to bake anything that will turn out sweet, soft, fluffy, gooey...on and on...But I'll eat it no matter what it comes out like.  I crave creativity and discovery.  I have a massive chalkboard wall so that I can change something in my house regularly without moving art and furniture around.  I write.  Mostly in my head.  All the time.  I write and I write.  I correct grammar to a level of ridiculous, but make up my own words, and use "..." constantly.  You will get tired of it.  And I will still continue to use it...because it's the best way that I've found to signal a random thought brought on by shiny things in my head.  My pinterest boards are a massive, deep sea of random, and the count is getting up there with some guinness book record that must be relevant to the highest number of pinterest boards one can ever achieve.  I teach art to the most enthusiastic little ones, who are still of the mind that they are artists no matter what they put onto a piece of paper or canvas... I build confidence so that there is little room left in their heads for failure or discouragement.  I do the same thing for my little ones at home.  My goal is to make sure that my kids know they are loved.  Not a little loved...adored.  Admired.  Amazing.  Phenomenal...this does not, however, mean that I am without parental frustration and temper...we have our moments.  Plenty of them.  But they have nothing on the moments of love that we share.  For my ten-year old going on 15, that moment may be as simple as her bringing me a brush and asking me to brush and style her hair.  Sounds silly, I know...but if you knew my very independent with very strong ideas ten-year old, you would know that this is a big deal.  Really, really big.  My 7-year old still tells me I'm beautiful.  Silly, again...right?  But the feeling I get hearing it from my little one, and remembering thinking the same thing about my own beautiful mother at that age...big deal.  So that's it.  I've been putting off this blog thing for years with many excuses...the number one excuse being that I am so incredibly random. You will learn this about me very quickly, and may already have an inkling of it from my introductory post...r-a-n-d-o-m...really.  This blog is going to be an incredibly random mix of everything that goes through my head on a daily basis.  Those who know me (and love me anyways) tell me that my brain is full of trap doors with rooms full of shiny things...all true.  And I'm about to open the doors and get the shiny things on display.   I've started blogs based on single topics and subject matter, but lose interest after about 2 minutes, 4.5 if it's a really good topic.  We'll see how it goes.  No subject is off limits, but kindness and respect towards myself and others is a must.  I hope at some point, someone else (besides me) will read this and chime in!  I figure if it's just me here, then my kids are in for a world of hurt when they have to read all of this at the end of my life.  Sorry to them in advance, but it just has to be done.  And so it begins...