celticdragonfly

It's one more step in the slow Oz-zification of Kansas, yes it is. Making this place nicer and more welcoming.

Last night Karl put up a bunch more pictures for us. He's turning the stairwell wall into a gallery of family pictures. There's a shot of me as a child with Grammi, which I'm very fond of and which was on display at her memorial, a couple shots of Karl and Brendan and I from renfaire days, a baby picture of Brendan, and a drawing of Karl's father playing guitar. His aunt Carol did it, and drawing is not an impressive enough word to describe it, but painting implies paint, and this is a drawing. It's really good, and he has it at the top of the stairwell, so it draws your attention from all over the hallway.

We'd already put up the lilies-with-fairies picture at the head of the stairs, the storm at sea paintings I inherited from Grammi in the upstairs nook across from the little couch, my penguin picture over my desk, the little MSU bear Mom stitched next to my desk, and my AoA scroll over my drafting table, for inspiration. Karl put a print of a woman (fairy?) with a pond and lilypads up in the hall, and a print I picked up at a con of a fairy playing a harp by a pool with a dragon behind her was put under the lights on the wall by my harp.

Today I went out and got frames for a bunch of other items, professional framing for a couple. There's a picture from Karl's grandparents' wedding that is going in the stairwell, and another picture of Brendan, as a toddler. There's a print I picked up at a con last year, Tabitha's Bubbles, that is going in the nursery, the celtic-knotwork fancy certificate that we had witnesses to our wedding sign, the dragonet-on-a-wine-glass painting that's going in the library, and a maiden standing in the wind outside a Welsh-looking castle, and a print Karl's fond of, with australopithecines climbing and reaching for the moon.

Most of these I bought inexpensive do-it-yourself frames, that I've just put the pictures in myself, using Karl the engineer's favorite tool, the butter knife. Karl can put them up when he comes home from gaming tonight, I hope. Except his print, which is just a tiny bit too long, I'll let him trim it so he can take the blame for any problem ;-P. The certificate and the wedding picture I had them do for me. I wish we had a good couple photo of Karl and I, but every time we try they're generally awful. (And now that I'm growing my hair out a bit I expect all pics of me will be bad for a while)

There's also a pair of original fairy paintings I got at ConDFW, which needed custom framing - those are being held until their half-off sale next month, bless the man for telling me about it. Those have lots of guh and are going in my study.

I want to find my "Ah, Sweet Mortal" picture, and the "Bookwyrm" picture of a dragon scowling at you over a book (of course that one goes up in the library), I wonder if those are in a box in the garage somewhere. And my parents gave me a fantastic framed photo of them on their recent cruise trip. It was in the box that we shipped home, it got here safely, and Maggie was getting it out of the box and playing with it - "Nana and Granadad!" she'd say excitedly - so I took it away from her and put it somewhere safe until we could get it hung up. Yeah, you can see where THIS is going, can't you? The proverbial "safe place". I was going nuts looking for it last night. Well, I'm sure I'll find it soon, and as soon as I do it's going in the stairwell with the rest of the family pictures.

This is fun!