Are the Q Pages Finsihed, You Ask? Yes, Quite!

I really have to stop trying to come up with catchy titles for these posts about my ABC Book pages.  This one was a little lame, I'll admit.

But the Q's are quite done, and I am quite happy about it!

Before I show you the Q pages, I want you to know that I kind of cheated again.   Not really, but sort of.  I scanned and copied some old artwork of mine, because I was too lazy to try to recreate it all over again.  (Mea culpa!)

The original children's alphabet book that I started about 25 years ago for my youngest son and then abandoned completely after I'd finished just 10 of the illustrated pages (only to dust it off many years later and start working on it again when I became a grandmother) was somewhat problematic.  The artwork was done on very large pieces of paper, and it would have been necessary to shrink the pages down to fit a printed book format--which in my crazy pipe dreams, the children's book publisher was going to do for me.  The pages were also hand-lettered, because it was the olden days and I didn't have a PC with Word on it and therefore didn't have the ability to make the text look utterly professional.

Here is one of those original pages, with my big old size 9 feet nearby to give you perspective.

The first time around, each letter was going to have three pages of illustrations; but having gotten older and wiser, this time around, I decided that there were only going to be two pagers per letter.  (I mean, look how many years it's already taken me to move this project along--and I'm 60 now, as of yesterday. I figured there was a lot more hope of actually finishing this book for my grandchildren before I kick the bucket if I cut down the number of pages.)  I really liked those ducks and wanted to use them again, but I'd already completed my two new pages of D's.  What to do, what to do?

Well, one solution would be coming up with a new rhyme for one of the other letters where a picture of ducks would fit right in.  So that is what I did, and this is how my 25-year-old ducks played their new part in my soon-to-be-completed (hopefully!) ABC Book.

Boo-yah!  Yes, that just happened!

The new pages are drawn on 8 and 1/2 by 11-inch card stock, so they are much more manageable.  I print out the text first using Word and then do the artwork around it. The queen is all fresh and new; but those ducks were scanned and copied from the original book, and then glued into place under the text.

When I first decided to finally finish this long-neglected book as a gift for my grandchildren, I meticulously redid the artwork that I wanted to reuse.  It was painstaking--because it's extremely difficult to try to recreate a drawing that you liked as is the first time around.

Well, no more of that!  It's way too time intensive, and I have to get this thing done while my precious little ones are still young enough to be enthralled by alphabet books!

There is a part of me that thinks my queen needs a bit more tweaking, but I'm going to try to let the urge to improve her go and just move on; I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I think I actually might get this thing finished before 2018 is over.  Stay tuned...

Turning the Big Six-Oh (Oh No!)

I never got depressed or stressed when I hit any of the milestone birthdays, the "big ones."  Thirty, forty, fifty--those numbers were not all that big a deal to me.  But SIXTY..hoo boy, that's a big number.  That sounds old.  You know, very senior citizen-esque.  That's a lot of years of living on this earth.  At that advanced age, you'd think I'd be the wisest woman in town, but this is not even close to the truth.  (And we live in a pretty small VA town these days.)  I still feel like the exact same person inside that I've always been, like the shy young girl who could hardly look at a cute boy when she passed him in the hall in high school (and then ended up marrying him--proving that anything is possible and dreams can come true!); however, my outside is starting to show a good amount of wear and tear.

But as my dear dad, who died  almost two years ago, just one day shy of his 82nd birthday, would say, "It's better than the alternative."  Dad loved birthdays.  His last week with us, he knew he was dying but he REALLY wanted to hang on to celebrate one last birthday.  That's how much love of life he had in him, even at the end.

So in his honor, I think I'll embrace 60 and remember that it is indeed better than the alternative.  Especially when you are surrounded by the love of a big and ever-growing family.

A couple of weeks ago, when our youngest son was in VA with his girlfriend (on leave and in the States for the first time since last summer), the kids planned a dinner out at a restaurant in our little hometown.  The four oldest boys and their wives got babysitters for all but our youngest grandchild (she was the youngest at the time, anyway--as reported in yesterday's post, another Pearl has since been added to the string), so it was a very rare grown-ups only dinner.  I had been eagerly anticipating this night out with all of my favorite grown-ups on earth.

When my husband and I walked into the restaurant, I realized that it was actually a surprise birthday celebration for me as well--a few weeks early, since our youngest would be back in Germany on my actual "natal day," as my Dad liked to call it.

There were balloons!

There was cake!

There were presents!

But most importantly, there were these precious faces gathered around the table together.  These are my people, and I am the luckiest 60-year-old woman on the face of the earth.

I've got more gray hairs these days.  More wrinkles. More aches and pains.  More fat around the middle that won't seem to go away (no matter how much ice cream I eat--ha ha!).  But I've got this amazing bunch of humans who love me and whom I adore.

Young mamas, look forward to this.  All the sleepless nights, changing dirty diapers, mediating squabbles over toys, fixing dinners for the pickiest of eaters, taxiing carloads of smelly football players, listening to your darlings' accusations of being "the strictest parents in the whole school"--all of those things you're going through now (and that's just the tip of the iceberg, of course) will be well worth it when your children become kind, thoughtful, responsible adults and fill your table with love and laughter, when they start having families of their own.

Life is indeed a gift.  So I'll take 60, with a heaping helping of cake.

Lucky 13

Our newest grandchild, a little boy named after two powerful saints, arrived on July 19--ten days before his due date.  He is our 6th grandson and our 13th grandchild.  (I like to say that we now have a baker's dozen, because any reference to baked goods makes me happy.)

His daddy, our oldest son, has recently started flying commercially, and he was scheduled to go out on a trip July 20-23. Even though they have lots of family (three brothers and their wives) and friends in the area who were willing to help out, I felt like it might be best if I could be there to set my daughter-in-law's mind at ease.  I wanted her to know that someone would be there with her if she went into labor when my boy was on his trip.  And even if nothing happened while he was away from home, I figured it would be nice for her to have another adult in the house to lighten her load at that point in her pregnancy.  My husband and I were up in NY taking care of our VRBO house on the lake, and we had planned to drive down to VA together on the 23rd, thinking that with a July 29 due date, that would be early enough.  But I started to worry that we would be too late; something told me I'd better get down there ASAP.

I hadn't been on an airplane in a while (long story--I can tell that one later), but I decided to two-leg it down to VA on the 20th.  Then when the flights that day looked like they were going to be too full, there was a last-minute decision to fly down on the 19th.  And what do you know: when I landed in NYC and turned my phone on, there was a text from my son saying that it looked like things were getting started that night.  Regina was having contractions and he was not going to be flying his trip the next day.  He was surprised and relieved to find out that I was already en route.  Through a flurry of texts, I was informed that son #3 was going to head over to his house to be with his four daughters until I got there.  I was picked up at the airport by son #4, and he lent me his extra car so I could drive over to his big brother's house to relieve son #3 of his babysitting duties.  I got to their house at 10:30 p.m. and the baby--their first boy after four girls--was born at 11:04.

Talk about great timing!

So lucky 13 is here!

Already posted this one on IG.

And I have been one busy Grammy for the past few days!  While mommy and baby are spending time together in bed, bonding and getting the nursing thing going, I have been reading books aloud, playing library (there is a budding librarian in the group), admiring drawings, telling aspiring novelists how to spell words, changing diapers, filling water cups, making grilled cheese sandwiches, organizing dance parties...well, you get the drift.

Which begs the question, you wonderful "mommy bloggers" out there who are in the trenches raising your young'uns: how in the world do you do it?  How do you have time to blog?  I miss blogging so much, but feel like I just don't have the time or energy to devote to it these days.  I have never been very good at multi-tasking; I can only juggle one ball at a time, I guess.  But I really would like to get back to writing posts here at String of Pearls.  There is something about playing around with words that is almost therapeutic for me.  Writers gotta write, I suppose.

Before I sign off, I thought I'd share a few pictures of the newest Pearl, our Lucky 13.  As you will see, he is well loved and doted upon by his older sisters.  I joked to my son that the little guy was going to be smothered with love by all those little mothers.  And he said, "Or literally smothered."  LOLOLOL!

This one has already been on IG, too.

My husband is on the road as I write this, driving down to VA to join me here and meet his new grandson.  I've really missed him, my "old building and loan pal." (That's one of our new terms of endearment for each other--and if you don't know where that line came from, I don't think we can be friends!  Just kidding, of course.)  I can't wait until he gets here.

Anyhoo--that's what's been going on in our neck of the woods!  (And boy is it wonderful that those woods are filled with so many people we love--our four oldest sons, their wives, and our 13-going-on-14 grandchildren! It's like an enchanted forest or something!)

Now I need to wrap this up and head on over to see the girls, who really hoped I would be there to have breakfast with them.  I'd been staying at their house until last night, when I decided that I needed to sleep in my own bed.  Thank goodness it's only 17 minutes from our place to theirs!

Okay then, bye for now...

House Tour: A Home Library (of Sorts!)

Whenever I see photos of amazing home libraries that look like this

or this

or THIS (!),

my eyes get a little green.  I can't help but envy such beautiful spaces to store and read books.

As Thomas Jefferson would say,

We had a number of built-in shelving units in our old "forever home" in NH, thanks to my husband's carpentry skills. He is not a professional carpenter; but he's a talented and exacting one, and the pieces he made for the house wherein we raised our boys were quite spectacular (said his grateful wife).

We had to leave much of the fruits of my favorite woodworker's labors behind when we moved to VA in the spring of 2017.  We miss all those handcrafted shelves; but our new neighbors (our four oldest sons, their wives, and our 12-going-on-14 grandchildren) more than make up for anything we had to give up.  They make up for it and then some.

However, one of the problems I couldn't wait to solve once we moved into our new, smaller house in VA was where and how to incorporate storage for our rather large collection of books.  As it turns out, although we do have a fourth bedroom that serves as a home office (something we never had before, and which I just love!), between our his-and-hers desks, two large filing cabinets, and various other storage pieces that house our office supplies, there was not a lot of room for shelves.  We did manage to add some, including a space-saving tall, narrow, solidly-built all-wood unit bought at a local Amish furniture store.

This one, a small cherry "wood" unit purchased at Walmart, is not nearly as solid as the tall one, but it works in a pinch.

We also managed to fit one little red "wood" bookshelf into our not-very-large family room.  It's not as well-crafted as the one from the Amish shop either (it's mostly made of particle board, a reasonably priced Target find that used to store video equipment in our NH TV room), but it works for displaying our family Bible, our college yearbooks, and some other oversized books.

Even after the shelves pictured above were filled, we still had boxes and boxes of books that needed a home.  What we ended up doing was turning each of the remaining three bedrooms of our new house into mini-libraries.

For the master bedroom, we purchased his-and-hers medium-sized solid pine shelves for either side of our bed from our go-to Amish furniture store (my new favorite local establishment).  These matching shelves were unfinished, so I gave them a light stain and a couple of coats of poly.

Mine.

His.

The little table below, which I bought with the country-style distressed paint-and-stain finish from the same Amish shop, is actually handy for holding a lamp...which I could otherwise put on my dresser, if it wasn't for the 55-inch TV we have mounted on the wall just above it.  The lamp would get in the way of the Notre Dame game, you see, or the latest episode of This Is Us, so I needed somewhere else to put it.  And how handy that the somewhere else came with space to showcase a few of my favorite hardcover books.  (The little shelf below is what sold me on the table, truth be told.)

By the way, I am aware that this master bedroom is almost embarrassing, it's so big.  I mean, we have room for a king-sized bed, two bookshelves, two easy chairs, two dressers...Oh, and there are also two walk-in closets (I claimed the bigger one!).  I'm not even going to show you our ridiculously large master bathroom.  All I can say is that we never had an expansive and glorious master suite like this when we were young parents raising our five boys.  But now we're a couple of spoiled grandparents--who've earned it, I guess?  (Sure, let's go with that.)

Anyway, the other two bedrooms have some bookshelves in them, too.

In the yellow room where our twin granddaughters usually stay when they sleep over, there is a night stand between the twin beds that was made by my husband over two decades ago for our two oldest boys' bedroom, and which he recently re-worked to add more room to store books.  It used to be stained pine, but I gave it a coat of Irish green chalk paint, and I think it looks terrific.

There is also an inexpensive Walmart faux wood unit in the corner of that room.

In the blue bedroom that I think of as our youngest son's room (mostly because he's the only one of our boys who isn't married yet), there are two nightstands that were made by my handy guy for our old master bedroom many moons ago.  I love the way they look in this VA bedroom.

Ummm...note to self:  I need to center the bed under that picture in the middle.   (A professional home decorator I am not!)

They're small, but they hold a surprisingly large number of books.

So that's the tour of our home library (libraries?), if you can call it that.

Hmmm...Were you interested in seeing pictures of the inside of my house?  I know that I love getting glimpses of the homes of bloggers whom I admire and follow...but this little cookie cutter house in a cookie cutter neighborhood in VA is hardly Gramblewood...Then again, very few houses are!  ;)

In spite of our new home's limitations, at this stage of our long and blessed life together, this is just about the perfect place for us to live. And with a little creativity, it now has the perfect number of bookshelves to keep this bibliophile happy.  For now, anyway.  As our collection grows, my ideas for creating more storage will have to grow as well.

Mad Hatters

I love hats.  I don't always have the courage to wear them, but I wish it was still the thing to do, the way it was back in the day, because I think they're so much fun.  If I lived in England (the land of my father's people), I probably wouldn't be as shy about donning a chapeau--especially if I went to Ascot, or was lucky enough to be invited to a royal wedding.

I mean really, hat-watching is one of the most enjoyable activities for me when these oh-so-British events are televised.

Those two young princes are very cute and all, and their uniforms are quite dapper; but I can't stop looking at the hats!

This isn't the first time I've blogged about the sometimes quite attractive and other times completely outlandish hats worn at a royal wedding.  I did so here, in this old post  from 2014, back when Prince William and Kate Middleton were still the couple everyone was talking about.

There were actually some very lovely hats and fascinators at this recent wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  Here are a few that I particularly liked.

It is not surprising that Kate rocked hers.  She always looks impeccable.

Back in the summer of 2013, I was invited to a wedding shower for Preciosa (now the wife of my middle son and the mother of his three children).  We met up with some old college friends of hers here in VA (one of them being Ginger, who would meet my second-born son at the wedding and is now his wife and the mother of his two sons, with another baby on the way).  Knowing that I was planning to wear a hat for the wedding, they convinced me to buy a rather dramatic fascinator that we saw in a small boutique.

However, when it came right down to it, I didn't have the guts to wear it. I even removed a long black feather from it to see if that would help me feel less conspicuous in it, but no dice.  I spent $50 on that crazy thing, and it's been sitting in a hat box in my closet for the past five years.

Recently, inspired by a photo Kendra Tierney shared on Instagram, in which she and her eldest daughter were wearing fashionable fascinators with their Easter finery, I dug it out of the closet, put it on, and a took a selfie.  Then I texted the photo to Ginger (who is as loyal a follower and fan of Kendra as I am).

Ginger thinks I should think about wearing this daring headpiece when my fifth and last son gets married.  I just might have to do that.  We shall see...

Before I sign off, I've just got to show you a couple of photos of my youngest grandchild (as of now), an angelic, constantly smiling 6-month-old lass who I've decided to call Rosita here at the blog (she is the youngest child of son #3 and Preciosa, the younger sister of G-Man and Princesa).  This sweet little gal looks utterly fab in a hat, let me tell you!

When I met up with some of my gang at a vineyard on Mother's Day, this fashionable little lady was sitting at a picnic table, waiting to greet me, wearing this wide-brimmed beauty on her adorable noggin.

Can.  You.  Even.  Stand.  It??!!

With that, my friends, I'm going to doff my proverbial hat and bid you all adieu.  Until next time!

Cuteness--in Triplicate!

I have spent a lot of time with three special little people the last nine months.  They are the firstborn children of my fourth son and his wife, triplets who made their much ballyhooed entrance into the world last August, at 32 weeks.  After spending less than a month in the NICU, they came home and have been growing like weeds and hitting every milestone ever since.

There are two boys and a girl in this adorable trio, and it's very likely that the boys are actually identical twins (their parents may eventually have them tested to find out for sure).  They look so similar that it's positively uncanny.  Our firstborn grandchildren are our oldest son's identical twin girls, who just turned 7.  If these triplet boys turn out to be identical, too, I'm going to start wondering if this is something than runs in the Pearl family!

I just wanted to share a few picture of these three sweet babies who have wrapped their Grammy around their chubby little fingers.  Their parents have given them nicknames that I am going to use as their blog handles as well.

PUMPKIN (the larger of the two boys):

PAQUITA (the lone senorita in the group):

PEANUT (the little guy who wasn't supposed to make it):

They are cuteness cubed.

When we brought son #4 and his wife over to see the new house we had just decided to buy in VA (a mere 35 minutes from where they live), she had just found out she was pregnant and had no idea yet that she was expecting three at once.  We always knew that moving down here to be closer to our kids and grandkids was a good idea, but little did we know just how much our help was going to be appreciated!  It's definitely vital to have a lot of helping hands when you're dealing with multiples.

And I am most happy to oblige.

As is Papa.

Back when my daughter-in-law Braveheart was expecting these little munchkins, I asked you to pray for the health of mom and babies.  And dear readers, those prayers were answered, in spades. She was able to carry the babies until the all-important 32-week mark, and they were born tiny but remarkably strong and healthy.  Even little Peanut, who wasn't supposed to make it, and who doctors felt might be the best choice for elimination if our son and his wife wanted to reduce the risks of her pregnancy (insert angry, red-faced emoticon here!!!), is doing great.  He does have some GI issues and struggles a bit with eating, and he is due to have his tongue snipped next week.  (He is tongue-tied, but this was not properly diagnosed until recently--the poor little fella!)  So once again, I am asking for your prayers. #prayforpeanut

I am sometimes in awe of the fact that my husband and I--who had babies of our own only YESTERDAY, it seems--are the grandparents of 12 already.  Your family grows pretty quickly when your kids keep having multiples, I'll tell you that.

Having My Own Things About Me

I have a tendency to hold on to well-loved things forever and ever.

We've had the same living room couch and loveseat set for 24 years, for instance.  I know their pink and green floral pattern dates these pieces; but even though they were bought at Costco for a bargain basement price, they are a good make (I think?)--Bassett--and they have held up beautifully, so I can't see the justification for replacing them.  Besides, when I see them looking right at home in our new house in VA, their steadfastness and familiarity--and all the memories they evoke, of Rosaries prayed together while sitting on them in our old living room when our boys were growing up--give me a great sense of peace and happiness.

Can furniture make you happy?  Should it?  I don't know, but it does.  And actually, the older and more well-used, the better.  I can totally relate to Mary Kate Danaher, the feisty heroine in The Quiet Man (hands down one of the greatest movies of all time), when she says: "Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of having my own things about me.  My spinet over there, and a table here, and my own chairs to rest upon.  And a dresser over there in that corner, and my own china and pewter shinin' about me."

I get you, Mary Kate, I really do.  Ever since I was a little girl, I dreamed of only two things: getting married and being a mom; and having a home to take care of.  Call me old-fashioned.  (Really, you can call me that.  I'm totally okay with it.)

When we moved in March of 2017 from our home in NH, where we'd lived for 26 years and raised our boys, the transition was a bit emotional. Of course, we were moving closer to the people we loved, so we knew we would be happy here.  But I have to admit that I wondered if the much-different house we were moving to could really ever feel like home to me.  Well, after more than a year as a Virginian, I am pleased to report that it does; and one of the reasons for this is that I have my own things about me.  Even shinier, newer furnishings could never make me as happy as these familiar friends.

Once such piece of furniture is a pine night stand that my husband made way back in December of 1991, for our two oldest sons' bedroom.  (I know this is when he made it because I actually dated it, in pen, on the back.)  Once upon a time, the room it lived in looked like this.

[Sniff]   Where do the years go?  It seems like yesterday that our five boys were all still sleeping under our roof, tucked in beds covered in Notre Dame puffs...

Sorry about that.  Back to the night stand.  This solidly-built little piece was a total original, made without plans, and my husband even let me help him with some of the design elements.

This is how this beloved friend looked when we found it a new home in our VA house, between the twin beds that are sometimes occupied by our twin granddaughters when they come for sleepovers.

So here's the BEFORE.

For years now, I've thought it would be a good idea to add another shelf to this piece, so that it could be used as a more traditional bookshelf.  But there always seemed to be more important projects for my husband to tackle, so I didn't push it.

BUT--we had to leave behind our built-in bookcases when we made the big move, and I've spent the past year trying to figure out how to incorporate book storage wherever possible; so I recently decided that now would be a good time to finally add that shelf, and this project shot to the top of the honey-do list.

And my honey did.  So here's what it looks like now.

And here's the AFTER.

I thought it might be hard to match the stain perfectly, so I decided to try my hand at using chalk paint, after hearing so many good things about it.  (The fact that it can be applied over stain without sanding first was a big selling point with me.)  I wasn't sure what color to paint it, but I always seem to be drawn to shades of green.  I think Mary Kate Dannaher would approve of this very Irish color I settled upon.  Aye, I think she would!

This charming little bedroom pleases me so.  It looks like it belongs in a B&B, always ready to welcome stayover guests.  That's one thing that does change when you no longer have a passel of messy boys living at home: everything stays so neat and clean!

Unlike Mary Kate Danaher, I can definitely live without a spinet (I have no musical talent whatsoever) or shinin' pewter; but I need to have my books about me!  So in a future post, I'll show you how I turned each of our bedrooms in the new house into mini-libraries, since there really weren't good places anywhere else in the house to add bookshelves.  I'm sure you'll be waiting with baited breath for that post!