Saints Everywhere I Look

I was sitting in my living room this morning, listening to the Hallow app, doing my morning prayer routine, and soaking in my surroundings with feelings of utter peace and contentment. Every wall, every tabletop in this room is decorated with reminders that our goal here on earth is to one day become saints in Heaven.

There are framed pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary hanging above the loveseat, vintage prints that I discovered a few years ago buried in a box of paperwork in the basement of my husband’s a childhood home and was given permission by his siblings to take and cherish.  There is an icon of the Blessed Mother and Baby Jesus hanging above the bay window, a souvenir that my husband brought home from a trip to the Holy Land, back when he was working as an international commercial pilot. And there is a statue of Our Lady of Fatima, which he purchased on a working trip to Rome, up high in a place of honor in a corner niche. Not to mention a little brass sign that reads "Rosary Room," because this is the quiet place where we often say our Rosaries.

You might think that some of the framed artwork and photographs in this room have nothing whatsoever to do with sainthood or our beautiful Faith, but there you would be wrong.  There is a trio of lovely botanical prints on the wall above the loveseat, gifts from our oldest son and his wife.  But they aren't just special because they're beautiful to look at; these prints are from a shop which many of you Catholic blog readers will recognize,  Rose Harrington, and each of the five flowers depicted on each print represents a different mystery of the Rosary.  (We have prints of the Joyful, Sorrowful, and Glorious Mysteries, but the shop sells the Luminous as well.) There's also a sweet framed photo of my husband holding our newborn oldest grandson, with me peeking over his shoulder, emblazoned with a quote about the importance of grandfathers--a gift from son #3 and his wife.  Again, this picture reminds me of life's ultimate purpose--not only because grandparenthood is an unequaled joy and privilege, but because I'm confident that my husband, a man of deep commitment to practicing and living out his Faith, will be a saint one day. Hanging on the wall above the couch are canvas photo portraits of all of our grandchildren at age one, but again: I expect that these beloved children will one day be numbered among the saints.  That's what I think of when I look at those precious faces.

I have added a few saints to the mix this past week. On the little table in the bay window of the living room, I have placed small framed portraits of two heavenly helpers about whom I knew very little before they wove their way into my fictional stories but who have become dear friends to me: St. Gertrude of Nivelles (patron saint of cats, among other things), to whom I dedicated Marguerite's Diary; and St. Barbara (patron saint of field artillerymen), to whom I dedicated The Boy in Blue.  I also have a small framed cross-stitch image of Our Lady of Knock that means the world to me, for two reasons: because it was handmade by a beloved 12-year-old granddaughter and given to me as a Christmas present; and well, because that apparition of Our Lady took place in Ireland, and I love all things Irish (dontcha know!).

Saints everywhere I look, that's what I see when I sit in my living room.  [Sigh...]  Someday, I hope to see all of them together, in person--the great canonized saints and my own humble string of Pearls--in the glorious presence of Our Lord.

We're off to TN to morrow for a week or so, and I will probably be too busy enjoying my two wee granddaughters to think about blogging.  See you on the other side, dear readers.

The Joy of Gift-making

Although it is not my first love language, I do so enjoy gift-giving; but I enjoy it most when I've been able to come up with an idea for something hand-crafted or homemade.  The love language in which I am most fluent is time spent together (and that one is pretty much tied with expressing love for others through acts of service), so it makes sense that making gifts is so much more satisfying and fun for me than buying them. Homemade gifts truly do become labors of love, and my thoughts are focused so much on the recipients as I work on them.

(That's not to say that there haven't been store-bought gifts that have given me great joy to give; I'm just saying that, in general, making them is preferable to me.)

We are going out of town in a few days to visit our youngest son and his wife and two daughters.  Both his 33rd birthday and his baby's first birthday happened in January; and his older daughter will turn three in early March; so we are bringing along gifts (and a cake) and will be celebrating all three of them while we're there.

Our darling almost-three-year-old granddaughter loves to play with little animals and dinosaurs, "small stuff" as she calls these kinds of toys.  (I actually blogged about this recently in post called "Not-So-Small Stuff.")  She already has miniature sets of zoo animals, farm animals, and dinosaurs; so when I asked what she might like for her birthday, our son advised me that perhaps a set of miniature woodland creatures would be appreciated.  Grammy had them ordered within a few minutes of receiving the Amazon link from my boy.

Manufacturing plastic animal toys is well beyond my skill set; but I decided that perhaps I could fashion some kind of play mat to use with them.  At Michael's, I got a 9x12" canvas stretched on a wood frame, and with the help of  acrylic paints I proceeded to create a small landscape for my granddaughter's small creatures to inhabit.  Once I realized that I had to throw the idea of "perspective" out the window and remember that this humble little canvas isn't going to be hanging in an art gallery, it was smooth sailing. And oh, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed making it!

The hippo and elephant can hang out at the watering hole, while the zebra walks down the dirt path...

The monkey can climb into the trees, the lion mountain can climb onto the rocks, and the cheetah can be restrained inside a zoo fence...

And although it is not an ideal size for them, larger toy animals like this thirsty elephant can make good use of this play mat, too...

I'm also stitching up twin dresses for those two precious little birthday girls, but I've got some work to do yet. (I got sidetracked by that painting project mid-way through my sewing project!)  I'm trying something new, mixing two different (and not necessarily coordinating!) floral fabrics.  I hope the end result will be pretty, but we shall see...

My goal is to finish the dresses in time to bring them along on our trip to TN, and I'll try to get a picture of my granddaughters together, modeling them. 

I'm glad I have so many indoor hobbies to keep me busy, because I sure don't want to be outside.  It's been SO COLD here in VA--this is the coldest, snowiest, iciest winter we've had since we moved here in 2017. When we left NH, I thought we would no longer have to deal with these frigid Northeast-style temperatures, and I feel like I've been tricked!  But that's a story for another day!

Speak your love languages loudly, dear readers.  And have a  great week.

Not-So-Small Stuff

Our youngest son texted me a few weeks ago to tell me that his older daughter, who will be turning three in a couple of months, was randomly "reminiscing about Grammy helping her with 'small stuff.'"  (She is a petite little thing and was an incredibly verbal child from a young age.  She has an enormous vocabulary now, and she's very in tune with what grown-ups are saying; so she's a tiny person who often says big things.) Awww...that text just melted me, and it made me start reminiscing about her family’s week with us in November, when they came from TN for Thanksgiving.

That adorable little girl loved being here--and she really loved playing in our basement.  It's a bit of a kids' paradise down there, with ride-ons and building blocks and lots of vintage children's books and boy-friendly toys from when her daddy and his brothers were little, as well as lots of new (make that thrifted) items we've acquired over the years we've been in VA, such as a toy kitchen, dolls, dollhouses, etc. Every day we'd head down there and the first thing she wanted to do was to raid the dinosaur and animal bins to find all the smallest ones. 

My little sweetie knew just where to look for the small stuff she wanted to play with, because Papa and I are insanely organized when it comes to putting things back where they belong after the grandkids have been wreaking havoc playing down there.  I say "insanely" because we get teased about this by one of our darling daughters-in-law and her husband--my very own son, the traitor!--about how OCD-like we are when it comes to toy organization in our playroom. (They might have a point: we have separate storage areas for the "regular" dinosaurs and the much cooler Jurassic Park ones.  Is that crazy?)  But imagine if the small stuff was all mixed in willy-nilly with the cars and trucks, the blocks, the baby doll accessories, the Lion King toys...it would be mayhem, I tell you, utter mayhem!  My little angel would have had to dump all eight bins in this storage unit every morning to find her favorite little animals and dinosaurs!  Thanks to our much-mocked system, she only had to dump two!  (One of these days, I'll treat you to a post all about our basement playroom and how organized it is.  Stay tuned...or perhaps the better way to put it is be warned.)

So my little granddaughter and I would gather up all the small creatures and line them up and play with them, and that is how we spent many happy hours while she was staying with us that week.  And then sometimes, all that playing would get too exhausting; once, she even crawled into my lap mid-play and crashed. I was, as her mommy and daddy call it, nap-trapped.  And I was quite okay with that.

I miss that little peanut, and her baby sister. (Not to mention her parents.)  It's hard for a mother not to have all of her chicks in the nest anymore, or at least to have the nests they're building with their own chicks a few trees over from hers.  I have three of my five boys and their families living close enough to see regularly, though, and I count myself as very blessed. And thank goodness for FaceTime!  Lately, whenever we FaceTime with this little girl, she reminds us, "I came to your house."  Yes, she did. And I hope she comes here many, many more times in the years ahead.

We will be going to her house in a matter of weeks, and I can hardly wait.  The fact that she was reminiscing about playing with small stuff with her Grammy here a couple of months ago made me realize that she's getting old enough to remember things between visits; so I look forward to making some new memories with her there. 

The small stuff, it's really the big stuff.  But you know that, dear readers.

Rules for the Living Room

It's the living room, but also fondly known as the "Rosary Room," a title we bestowed on our old living room back in New Hampshire (in the house where we lived for 26 years) and brought along with us to Virginia when we moved here in 2017. 

That NH living room was a lovely sage green, or leaf green--I'm not sure what to call it.  I painted it when it was still unfurnished (we couldn't afford to furnish every room right away, as we started out a bit "house poor" when we bought that just-a-tad-beyond-our-means dream home in late 1990, the beloved Colonial in which we raised our five boys and thought we might live forever).  I just really wanted a green living room, don't ask me why.  Then one day in 1994 when my husband and I were out grocery shopping at BJ's Wholesale Club, we saw a floral couch and loveseat set upholstered in fabric that had the same green shade as the walls of our empty living room, for only $600--and it was a decent brand, Bassett.  We bought it and we've had it ever since. When we first toured the Virginia house which we ended up buying, I was delighted to see that its living room was painted almost exactly the same shade of green, incredibly, which meant that my trusty couch and loveseat would look perfect in there.  It seemed like a sign that we'd found our new home.

I'm inordinately attached to that pink-and-green couch and loveseat set.  It's probably a little weird.  I suppose after all these years, I should be yearning for a change; but the exact opposite is actually true.  If we didn't have it anymore, I wouldn't even feel like it was "our" living room. Our youngest son was only a year old when we bought it, and he's now about to turn 33 and the father of two little girls.  At this point, I've developed a sentimental attachment to my vintage set.  Through all the years when it was considered hopelessly dated-looking, I continued to love it.  (On a side note: I've heard through the grapevine that couches upholstered in floral fabrics are making a comeback, proving the wisdom of the age-old advice that if you hang onto something long enough, it will eventually come back in style.) 

One of my daughters-in-law has expressed amazement that we’ve had the same living room furniture for 32 years, and she can't imagine how it didn't get destroyed with five boys living under our roof.  But you see, they never used the living room to jump around or roughhouse, or to play noisy games. There was no TV in that room, no video game player. No one was allowed to bring food in there.  Without us having to really say much about it, it was understood that the living room was a peaceful place, where we did things like sit and talk, listen to music on the stereo, and pray our family Rosaries.  Our boys had plenty of other rooms where they could hang out, where they could draw and play board games, eat popcorn while they watched a VHS movie, or whatever, and they didn't really gravitate to that room. For me, the living room was an oasis of calm, of peace and quiet, in a loud and sometimes crazy testosterone-heavy house.  It's still that way for me here in VA, but the difference is that since this smaller house we live in has a more open floor plan, the living room is not separated from the other living spaces as much as our NH one was.  So the grandkids often wander into this pleasant little room with food in hand and need to be reminded that it’s not an eating room.  They sometimes stand and climb (and have on occasion even begun to wrestle!) on the couches, and they need to be reminded that only sitting properly is allowed, and that if they want to play energetic games they should head down to the basement playroom.  

After all the Christmas festivities were over and our oldest son headed back to WI with his family, I gave the house a deep clean.  And in the living room, there was some evidence that Papa and Grammy’s rules had been broken.  Among other things, I found a ball point pen wedged between the couch cushions (it hadn't leaked any of its ink, thank goodness) and a half-eaten Oreo, a couple of M & M's, and a hard-as-a-rock chocolate chip cookie (so who knows how long that had been there!) on the floor underneath the loveseat.  I knew that one of our grandsons had brought paper, scissors, and scotch tape in there to work on a little craft project, on a day when I was too tired to object, and there were pieces of tape stuck to the coffee table. None of this is the end of the world, I know; but if I don't nip it in the bud, I fear that I will lose my neat and tidy, calm little oasis--and that my precious floral couch and loveseat set might eventually even need to be replaced (NOOOOOO!). 

So I went on Etsy to have a downloadable sign made up for the Rosary Room, one that I can point to if I ever see any grandchild bending or breaking the rules.

I don't want to have a house where everything is hands-off, a place that makes visitors feel like they can't relax; but I also want to make sure that the kids know that the living room is not the place for rough play and making messes—especially when there are other rooms that are more suitable to those activities. Do you think I'm being unreasonable?  I mean, we also have a cozy family room in this house, right next to the open kitchen, with a big TV, a gas fireplace, and baskets of toys and children’s books. And the basement was finished off with the intention that it would 100% be the grandkids’ domain; it’s bright and cheery, toy-filled, with another TV and plenty of comfy seating.  Surely it’s okay for the living room to be preserved as a quieter, calmer space?…And the rules are ones my husband and I actually even follow ourselves (although I might bring my morning coffee in there on occasion--but adults are allowed to drink their beverages anywhere in the house.  Age has its privileges, after all!).

Anyway, wrapping this up: I've waxed poetic before about my not-very-special but very-special-to-me couch and loveseat set here at the blog, more than once; I'm probably getting a bit boring, and if you keep coming back anyway, then God bless you.  I know I'm like a broken record sometimes.  But you're aware that old people just like to keep repeating the same old stories, aren't you?  Yikes, that's what I'm doing. Perhaps then it might be time to close up shop here for good, before I embarrass myself?!  (Too late? Ha ha!)

Before I sign off, I thought I’d share just a couple of the many grandkids-on-the-couch pictures taken in our living room over the past nine years that we’ve lived in Virginia. A Rosary Room rule or two was being broken when these shots were taken, you might notice.  But moving forward, maybe my pretty little Etsy sign will help?

You might also notice that the wall of canvas portraits looks different in those two pictures.  It's a constantly evolving project of mine, as grandchildren keep getting added to our String of Pearls.  By the end of the month, I’ll need to do a little rearranging in order to make space for a new canvas, as our youngest grandchild will be turning one and joining the gallery of cuteness hanging above the couch in her Papa and Grammy's living room.  I can't wait!

Okay, then, I'm not going to blog about my couches anymore.  Pinky swear.  You've heard enough about them, surely. But I may share more kids-on-the-couch pictures, because we always seem to be taking those when we have our family get-togethers at this house.  And while my stories may be getting a tad old, those precious faces of theirs will never get old (says their unbiased Grammy!).

Christmas 2025 Re-cap

We had a wonderful Christmas here in Virginia! We were celebrating with the families of the three boys who live nearby (as well as some in-laws of theirs) in the days leading up to December 25, and then sons #3 and #4 and their families joined us for a party on Christmas afternoon, after Santa's gifts had been opened at their own homes and everyone had been to Mass.  I got to use my new professional-style stainless steel chafing dishes to serve up roasted pork, hash brown casserole, green bean casserole, and Buffalo chicken dip.  We had lots of other snacks and desserts to enjoy as well, and the kids opened Christmas crackers (which was always part of our Christmas Eve tradition when our boys were growing up).  Corny jokes were told, paper crowns were worn, really cheap prizes were fought over and broken, and all was right with the world!  I was living in the moment, mostly, so I didn't get many pictures on the Lord's birthday.  It was a peaceful and relaxing day. (Son #4's gang even came in their flannel Christmas jammies!  It doesn't get more relaxing than that.)

The day after Christmas, our oldest son packed up his 15-seater van, and he and his wife and seven kids started a two-day road trip from WI to VA.  They arrived the night of December 27. Then on the 28th, we got everyone together for yet another family party at our house, this time with four of the five boys and their families: 10 adults and 21 children altogether. (We were missing our youngest son and his crew, who were out in MI with his wife's family for Christmas this year.

I can't even put into words how much it warms my heart to see my menfolk hanging out together, talking, laughing (a lot), and solving the world's problems.

In order to respect the wishes of our oldest son about not posting images of his children on the Internet via this blog, I'll just share this one redacted photo we managed to get of all the kiddos who were there. Look at this crew!  And two were missing!  How abundantly blessed are we?!?!  Talk about a stairway to Heaven.

It was so wonderful having this WI family with us for just over a week.  Each of the brothers who live here in VA wanted to host them at their homes while they were here, so there were lots of little get-togethers throughout the week--on New Year's Eve, New Year's Day, and other days. It was a full and busy visit for them (and there was a little head cold/fever kind of a bug running through their family that put a bit of a wrench in the machinery here and there, but fortunately didn't ruin their week entirely). They left to make the 1,000-mile trek back home yesterday morning, and I miss them so much already.  

But of course...this quote from my favorite philosopher, Pooh Bear, is absolutely on the money.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, dear readers!  And that you will be blessed with peace, happiness, and good health in 2026.