finished the dining room

My lamps arrived and the curtains were installed...
Aren't the shades interesting?

finished the entry way

I've had most of these pieces of furniture for almost two years, but had been waiting to find just the right things to put up on the walls...

I reframed two early 1900's etchings (an inexpensive ebay find)
-- and then, Donna found this... (to go over my settee)
What is it, you ask? Well it came to me with the back side of it showing (when it was framed previously) -- which, by the way, looks like this:
And -- it badly needed new plexiglass. It is a page from a very old hymnal (ye olde page is written with a quill on an animal skin). It is written in latin and originally sat in front of the church choir and someone used a page-turner to turn the pages for the choir. We did some digging and it's a 17th century antiphonal and the latin reads:
The first three italicized words are assumed to be on the page just prior to this one. I also had it translated and it says:


Since my tribulation is at hand and there is none to help me
But you Lord do not keep your help far away from me,
look to my defence. I have been troubled in you since I was in the womb, in the very womb...


The first two lines are most probably from Psalms (which is my favorite part of the bible) 22 and I don't really know where the third line was going (or if it came from the bible), since I only have the one page.

So personal

(Gives me goose bumps, really) and -- I purchased it before I knew what exactly it was or what it said.

David

To be sent tomorrow :-)
Hope you enjoy it!

Just call it what it is...

lack of motivation? I haven't been emailing, blogging or hardly anything but our routine stuff. I wouldn't say it's overall sadness like before, but still -- this wanting of some 'alone time'. Anyway, I had started several blog entries only to scrap them because they were just not exciting (in my mind, I was saying that it was just too lame to put on a blog). Plus I am working on a couple other things that aren't done - so I can't post pictures! Today I was thinking about it and I can't say that I've ever posted much about our routine. So, here you go:

BigBro wakes up early. I am not a morning person, so by 'early' I mean between 5:30 and 6:30. He comes downstairs, climbs into our bed and is so very excited about the day. Any day. Every day. Usually a few "I'm hungry"s followed by "Come on, let's go. I really want to go." and mommy is out of bed. After bathing or changing into daytime clothes we drive to one of the main nearby shopping areas.
This is because although we are within walking distance (less than 2 miles) - it's just not conducive to walking. Busy streets, no sidewalks and many with no bike lanes - or very narrow bike lanes. It doesn't help that the bike lanes are only on the busiest of streets (which means you suck in exhaust fumes the whole time - which is not my idea of a 'nice' walk).

Anyway, we drive, park, then walk Stanley. Even though Stanley will be 11 yrs old in August, he still needs daily exercise. I feel like the mailman, "Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow & ice will keep me from picking up dog poop". Okay, well the mailman delivers mail, he doesn't pick up poop - but you get the idea anyway. So, I combine my morning coffee with this excursion and let's just say that the ladies at Peet's Coffee and St. Honore Bakery know BigBro really well.
In fact, even though we already have more toy cars than we need, the ladies seem to find one in a cereal box or from their own grown son's retired collection and so BigBro's collection just seems to keep growing. On our walk, we go through a small park at one end of the big lake, then down a path next to the lake. About once or twice a week we bring cracked corn to feed the ducks.
Since it's spring, we've been seeing lots of ducklings and gosslings. In fact, Mother's Day was the first day that we had seen a pair of Canadian Geese with a clutch of six gosslings. And just this last weekend, one momma duck had 11 newly hatched ducklings.