Yesterday, I had such a nice day. I washed the windows here in the dining room and put some cute things in my window sills. As I look up from my keyboard, I can see my two old fashioned double windows.
Ya know, our Mary loves to be wildly creative with her windows. Mary and I will put about anything up for curtains. I mean, some folks think you have to have matching curtains. Our Christian Joy gets very creative with her home.
In my living room, I have two large windows, and I had this one tablecloth that I had gotten at the Dollar Store. It is sort of lace with a gold on one side and a burgandy color on the other side. I used it as a curtain. I didn't sew it -- I just hung it over the rod. It is so beautiful when the southern sun comes through the window in the afternoon. As the sun goes down, the curtain takes on a rose color. It's very pretty. David commented on it when he was here last week.
Then, on my front living room window, I have a white lace tablecloth. I just folded it over the curtain rod. It was slippery, and the cat would have pulled it down, so I put a lovely cameo blue pin in the middle of it, at the top, to fasten the two layers together and hold them in place. I can't remember what I paid for those two lace tablecloths, but it wasn't very much. They may have been around 7 or 8 bucks apiece?
As for my dining room, it is more get down hillbilly. Yesterday, I fixed these windows up. I have some old colored bottles I had gotten last summer from a garage sale. I filled some with water and put plant starts in them. I had some basil that was dying off, and I just cut it up and put starts of the plant in the bottles. They will root and I will plant them in the summer. (Basil loves the hot summer ... not spring.) My bottles in my window are dark purple, dark green, and amber. It's fun to collect these bottles and they bring a colorful sunlight into the rooms.
Then, in the middle of the bottles on the window sill, I have sitting an old small picture of Mary with her baby Jesus. And around her are angels playing instruments. One with a violin and one with a mandolin. It's a very old picture that someone made. They took a circle of wood from a big tree branch, and they pasted the picture onto it and shellacked the face of it. It's really old and creased. The bark is still on the outside rim.
As I have written, I wanted it closer to me, so I took it out of the window and put it in my basket I have hanging by the window, closer to my keyboard. The basket has dried Seven Sister Roses in it from last summer, and it has a few dried branches of berries.
And to my right, I have an old basket sitting on my microwave. It looks just like a big bird's nest, and I have it filled with dried garlic. Mary has a fit when she sees it. "Oh, Mom, that is awful! Garlic stinks, and why do you need that much?" Well, some of the bulbs have sprouts of green coming out of them and, in the spring, I will just plant the garlic in my herb garden. Also, for the dried up ones, I will cut them up and put them in the corner of my door sill, here in the dining room. This keeps the ants from coming in my house in the spring and summer. Also, you can keep garlic in your kitchen cupboards to keep any bugs away. I keep some in my little hoosier cupboard.
Also, in my hoosier, I pasted quilt squares on the top shelf for a covering, like shelf paper. My aunt had given me so many cotton calico squares, and I just wanted to use them right away. And my lil cupboard is so old fashioned and I just wanted to paste those squares in there. It's not practical. Mercy! The FlyLady would squirt me with fly spray. My mother used to spank me with a fly swatter. But, ya know, it's a sin to be too organized. It shackles the Spirit and rots the bones.
Our Mary's home is very creative. She will just take a piece of material she likes and hang it in her window. I don't mean a sewn up one -- I mean just a piece of material with raw edges, with the threads still hanging. Mary likes it like that and I do, too. That little child bride, at 19, has a way with a window. She loves to hand sew, but she likes some of her cutains to be left unsewn.
Her little home looks like a sweet fairy land. And, ya know, she enjoys cutting out pictures and putting them in frames. She will cut a picture out of a magazine or wherever and frame it. I think these dumb Home Decorating Parties stunt your creative growth. They are like tying and roping up your inner man. The spirit of creativity can't be bought -- it comes from your inner man. And especially, a Christian Mother has a lot to say in her home, and woe unto anyone who hurts her creative flow. Mothers, don't allow anyone to condemn your homemaking.
Like Dixie use to tell me when she would stop by and I would fret as the house was a mess ... she would say, "Connie, of course your house is a mess. You have 6 children. If everything was in place, it would mean that no one was doing anything except watching tv."
At one time, I had two huge pianos in my living room and a chord organ sitting in the middle. My Dad would come over and tell me, "Connie, you have all the weight of the house where those two pianos are. It will tip the house over." They were two big heavy pianos. The one piano took six men to haul it in. I loved it. One day, my friend was sitting in my living room and she said, "Connie, what you need is another piano." Well, actually, had I had my way about it, I would have had another piano. My dream was to put a baby grand in my living room and take out everything else. Of course, no one would ever let me.
I wanted to surround my children with good music. I did teach my youngest three to play the piano. I taught them some note reading ... the basics ... but I play by ear and tried to pass this on to them. The chords with one hand and the melody with the other hand. But I had put out as many musical instruments as I could get in the house. The children each had their own harmonica and they learned to play them. Daddy loves to sing and they learned to sing from him.
And if I don't get a fiddle one of these days and learn to play it, I will faint. Every time I hear a fiddle in the background of some music, I tell ya, my spirit just aches deep down. Papa and me were listening to some bluegrass music one day and all the intruments were playing. But when the fiddle came in, oh! I could hear it come with my spirit. And I said, "Jim, when that woman came up and began to play that fiddle, did your soul just turn over?" And he said "No." I guess it is just me.
But when I hear the deep cry of a fiddle, it's like when Mary spoke to Elisabeth and her baby moved within her. And when I hear a fiddle play, it's like my spirit, like a baby in my womb, just turns over easy like. It's like a deep wailing of intercession and prayer takes over. My spirit calls out for a fiddle and the Lord will give me one. Not that I know how to play one, but I could work at it.
I was reading Barbara's husband's book, and he was writing about some Wild West women, and a lot of these women were sure rougher than some of us. But, ya know, they give me courage. I mean, they did what they had to do. They didn't let the world own them. They were where the rubber hit the road. They were made out of something different than what most women are made of.
Ya know, Mothers, don't let the world own ya.
RELATED LINKS:
Native Ground Music - Old time, historic American bluegrass music and American folklore.
