Anna 1930

If you want to know what inspires me....then read Anna 1930, - mom is blogging!

I love to read her stories because they will trigger a memory long hidden away. And with the memories come new ideas to design new things!

I love to see her paintings because they inspire me to do even more.

I love to know that she loves Jehovah.

So if you start reading her blog now, you will then have an idea of things I might decide to do in the future! Could I recreate that tractor? What could I do with that gorgeous sunset? Such yummy colors! Which one of her stories will I scrap for the grandkids I don't have?

Life really is a circle!

Walnut Grove Wolves

I started this blog saying I would write about my childhood memories. A huge part of that is my grade school, Walnut Grove. The address was either rural route Cicero or Arcadia, Indiana. Not the Walnut Grove from Little House on the Prairie....but not far off in concept! A very small school with only about 20 students per grade with all 12 grades in the same building. Those classmates are the kids that I saw every single day for 9 years (Kindergarten through 8th grade) and were my childhood chums.

Our school colors were Gold and Purple...and we were the Wolves. I remember a mounted wolf inside a glass case in the school as the official mascot. Note, we didn't bother with costumes with someone dressed up running around the gym floor...we had the real thing back then!!!

One day, mom asked me if I knew the story about how the wolf got there and of course, I had no idea, so she sent me a photo of the "capture" and I've posted what she wrote below it:


"Maybe I was 5 or 6 years old. I was spending the night with my Aunt Muriel
House who lived between Cicero and Walnut Grove in White River Twp.
Indiana. There had been a wolf getting into the farmers sheep and killing
them. So they organized a hunt to kill it. That was legal and encouraged
at that time. Every one who gathered took their vehicles out into a field
and were in a circle so they could shine their head lights together and
could see to kill the wolf, while others were chasing the wolf into that
direction. My Aunt had warned me to be very quiet, not to scare the wolf if
it showed itself. She warned me and warned me.. However, the minute that
wolf showed up in the circle of lights, I stood up and shouted "There it
is" I was so excited. What she did to me, I do not remember!!! Later,
the wolf was Mounted and put in a glass case in the Walnut Grove School and
was there for years. They were known as the Walnut Grove Wolves. I was
told my Uncle Charlie shot the wolf. If you know of other stories about the
last wolf in White Rive Twp, let me know."

So if you have photos or stories about the Walnut Grove Wolf, please email them to me and I will send them on to mom (Annabel House Moore) and I'm sure she will email you back!

Funny what I remember about that wolf....it scared the crap out of me! I never like it....but it was the source of great pride...and great enthusiasm. It was our mascot and we were the Wolves....and we cheered like nothing else at basketball games.

As an artist, perhaps we each need a mascot that can be our source of pride, can cause us to be enthusiastic, and can cheer us on as we endeavor to design new things for others to enjoy. Ah! That childhood spirit...the ability to scream at the top of our lungs about a ball going into a basket...the sheer joy of great victory when your team wins...we could all use that a little bit every day!

Happy Birthday Mom!!!

Today mom turns 77 and it's snowing and I'm going to miss lunch with her. So instead, I decided to write my thoughts about her because to me, she is the most amazing woman that I know.

She was born in 1930. I know the family didn't have much money, but I love that they had this photo taken of her.



She was a teenager during the world wars. She loved horses. I'd agree when she says she was a tomboy!



What I love is that she is so much fun! A few years ago, she said that she wanted to ride a horse one more time in her life. So I arranged a day with my friend Joyce....and mom rode her horse!




She was a nurse, then a family nurse practitioner. When I look back at her life, she took care of her father, her children, her husband, then her mother....she was a caregiver her entire life until Grandma passed away. That is when I say mom became the woman she was meant to be....when she had time to be herself rather than being the caregiver she always was.



She was 53 when she first picked up a paintbrush. And wow! What an inspiration to me. A reminder that I can learn anything at any age!

I don't know what I like the best. How she paints the calm quiet of an old pueblo building and the memories of our drives together to Santa Fe and Taos to photograph them:




or the grandeur of the Colorado mountains and her abstract interpretations of the gorgeous color that abounds on an otherwise snow-filled day like today:




Or is it her vivid flowers? Mom can look at a flower and see all the colors of the rainbow in it. She can make a bouquet burst alive and make you want to reach out and touch the painting just to feel the life that is in it:



She can paint a memory that no one photographed like the tulips that laid to rest on top of Grandma Hazel's casket:




But perhaps what I love the most is that she paints the memories that no one else has like this scene which was her Great Grandfather House's homestead...the farm that I grew up on:




She is the inspiration for the words for this writing that were turned into a stamp:



And I'm sure that about now, she is giving me this look:



I could write volumes about mom...but we will spread it out over future blogs. For today, I will just say that I am so blessed that Jehovah chose her as my mom, that I love her more than words can say, and that I am so grateful that she raised me exactly like she did!

I love you mom! Happy Birthday!!!

Thankful for then and now.

I have said that a lot of my designs come from my childhood memories. And I am ever so thankful for them. But mostly, I am thankful for my family. I'm so glad I was raised on a farm. With a huge family. With lots of big family gatherings like this one.



It must have been Christmas as we are holding dolls. Colleen has a ballerina. No idea what I have, but I'm holding her tight. If you grew up in White River Township, you might remember some of these aunts and uncles of mine...Charley and Nellie House, Lacy & Muriel House, Tad and Geneva House....long gone, but the memories of huge family gatherings lingers on.

And here we are ...FIFTY years later. Oh! It just doesn't seem possible!!! But it is. Well, this photo was taken a year ago when we were all together. April, Elaine, me, mom, Nelson and Colleen, from left to right, with our spouses.



And then this year. Not all of us could be here, but we still took our annual photo. Nelson, me, Colleen and mom.



So if you knew us as little girls back in Indiana, this is who we are now.

I love that we take photos on Thanksgiving Day. I think I want to start a new series..just mom and me.



But this is my favorite photo. Mom and Colleen. Giggling. LIke they were both 10 years old. It's what makes this age so wonderful...you can act yourself and no one cares!



I am truly thankful for then....for my childhood, for the way I was raised, for the memories I have.

But I am most thankful for now. For a mom that I love beyond words, for sisters that I adore, for a brother who I still find fascinating...for all their spouses...but most, for moments like these when we are together and share our day.

I am truly blessed. Then and now.

Colorbox has come knocking!

This is truly amazing. My Ranger Design Team gig is officially over on 10/31. Colorbox (Clearsnap) has contacted me and asked if I would like to do some design work for them!

OK, I am NOT a stamper! I am NOT a stamper! I am NOT a stamper!!! And I think it's mind-boggling that I'm not really done with Ranger and their competitor is at my door. Now, we all know that I LOVE Ranger products.....but before Ranger, I LOVED Colorbox. So....I could not turn them down and will be busy designing a few things for their Winter CHA booth.

I'll be working with their fluid chalk queues.

Wow! ya gotta love those colors!!!

And I'm designing a few things for my friend Judi who owns Scrapperdashiery....I truly love her papers. I've been playing with them again tonight. I will post them here when I'm done as a sneak peek to one of my classes in San Diego in December as well as to what might be in the Scrapperdashery booth at CHA!

And if that's not enough, I'm still designing for Shalom Scrapper.

I've been playing with glass and silver again today. Have a couple of samples that came out the way I like!




I had to ask myself why I like dichroic glass so much. I think I'm going to blame it on my great Aunt Muriel House. She had so much pretty glass in her dining room....red, clear, carnival....I remember being scared to death as a little girl that I was going to break something in her house...yet I love to go sit and just look at all the pretty things. Now I can have pretty glass surrounding me all day long! These are just the first step....cabochons that I will turn into jewelry, so stay tuned as I've got another load in the kiln tonight!

Every piece of art has a story

Twinkle, twinkle Find Jehovah's star
Looking, seeing everywhere they are!

Snowflakes shining, each one with six sides
Star of David oh! Where do you hide?

Wondering if Jehovah's bright star
Is inside all The snowflakes there are

Wonder always how He could design
In the heavens this most perfect sign

Believe and see His artistic ways
Fall down, worship, all my live-long days.

We had 4 inches of snow last weekend and it reminded me of this layout that I did almost 3years ago. I've used this poem that I wrote in a new layout that's been published in the recent release "Flip, Spin & Play". But as you know by now, everything I do has a story behind it:

When I saw this collage that mom had made, it reminded me that when I was just a little girl, I drew stars with 6 points. I thought all the snowflakes that fell from heaven were stars. And since they all had six points (at
least that’s what dad said), I wanted my stars to look just like snowflakes. They were so easy to draw. I just made 2 triangles and each star turned out perfect. When I was in the 2nd grade, my teacher, Ms Leatha, told me that I was drawing them all wrong. She showed me how to draw a 5-pointed star without lifting my pencil off the paper. She told me that from now on, I had to draw my stars her way. I didn’t like that because I could never make them perfect. I always had one or two points bigger than the others. I didn’t draw many stars after that. In the photos, it looks like mom is telling my niece a story. I think she's telling her to draw whatever she wants exactly the way she wants to!

The photo of mom opens up with the star and inside is where I hid my story.

Every piece of art should have a story. Does yours?