Mundane Monday: Worn Quilt

The quilt has lost it’s sharp lines and crisp colors but old quilts have their own soft beauty. quilt

The faded colors a testament to the love the quilt has weathered.

The hole in the corner a memory of a long gone puppy.

The frayed fabric a sign that the quilt is good for beds, picnics and blanket forts.

While the edges, still bright, bring a memory of when it was crisp lined and fresh, a graduation gift made by my mother-in-law before she was my mother-in-law.

While I still have a hard time applying the label “mundane” to my things I am enjoying the Mundane Monday photo challenge. Click through the link to see more amazingly un-mundane photos!

Mundane Monday: Marble

Nov16

I am a pack rat of tiny things.

A plastic ring from a friend’s wedding, a tiny ceramic frog, dice, every bead that ever fell from a necklace, old buttons, a tiny alien… and a blue marble.

My marble is just one of many I had as a kid. It was not the biggest, nor the smallest. It wasn’t the one with the iridescent swirls or the one that looked like a globe. My marble is bright, light blue and shot through with tiny bubbles. If you hold my marble up to the light it looks as though the makers trapped a part of the sky, or perhaps a tropical sea, within it. Long ago, in high school, I put my marble in a yellow tin covered with sheep. I nestled it in a sea of paper clips, safe and hidden. As the yellow tin, the paper clips and my marble traveled with me over the years it was been joined by a pack of safety pins, a soda tab, part of a sea monster, a teeny dragonfly, a goggle clip and other tiny treasures.

I am a tiny pack rat.

Today I wanted to photograph my marble. My bright, blue, bubbly marble.

My marble was gone.

My children are not only tiny pack rats themselves, they are thieves.

A search of drawers, toy boxes and forgotten corners turned up six other marbles.

green marble

None of them were my marble.

My marble was going to be my contribution to this weeks Mundane Monday Challenge, but the green one will have to do.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Ornate

Nov12

Weekly Photo Challenge: Ornate

Interpreting this week’s different photo challenges had me all a fluster.

First it was “mundane.” Turns out I don’t really like the word “mundane.” While I was trying to take a “mundane” picture I took this one and discarded it as being far too fancy, or shall I say, ornate. keyhole

Later, when I went back to look at it, I felt that even though it is very ornate by my home’s standards, it’s really a rather mundane photo after all.

I was all set to look again when I discovered that you can call it an escutcheon plate and that sealed the deal. Something with such a fancy name must be ornate!

Also the strange twist in perspective both frustrated and intrigued me. I’m not sure why it was happening and I couldn’t make it not happen and still catch the afternoon sunlight. So I’ve decided that it just makes it more ornate.

I shall call it, The Twisted Escutcheon Plate. With a name like that how could it not be ornate?

Mundane Monday: Firewood

Nov9

The past few weeks I’ve noticed that greydaysandcoffee has been participating in Mundane Monday. And I thought to myself, “Self, you should do that too!”

And then I forgot.

Repeatedly.

But today- today I remembered! Camera in hand I went to turn something “mundane” into a beautiful photograph.

Turns out, I’m bad at mundane.

I keep wanting to give things a second chance. I don’t want them to be, mundane…

“Hmm how about this chair?” I asked myself. “This chair isn’t mundane! I got it out of my family’s garage and painted it brown and then I painted it red and I have to keep gluing it back together when it falls apart! This chair has history!”

The door knob? Anything but mundane. Look at it! It’s full of swirls and lines and hey! That could be an “ornate” photo challenge! But not mundane.

The wood stove? Couldn’t possibly. Not only did we move it from the old house, how many people have a wood stove? Besides it’s full of fire! Fire is not mundane.

The silverware? The table? The floor? My boot? Too many stories, too much history, possibly too much caffeine.

Yes, today I discovered that “mundane” is not my word.

I did make firewood all day though and firewood is pretty mundane. I mean, if you don’t think about what kind of tree it is and why it was cut it down. Also you need to try to forget how you hauled it to the wood pile and ignore the the different noises the splitting maul makes as you split it, and then of course when you stack it there is a bit of an art to get those stacks to stay up and hold tight and the shape of the pieces matters…

*sigh*

I love my firewood.

In the end, I took a picture of a piece of firewood. It’s just firewood. It’ll be burned in our wood-stove to heat the house. The tree it came from had a nest of ants in the middle of it and they smoothed the wood to a velvety appearance as they made their tunnels and did their ant things. Which possibly makes it one of the most un-mundane pieces of firewood I could find to photograph. firewood carved by ants

But like I said, I’m bad at mundane.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Careful

Oct29

Weekly Photo Challenge: Careful

I suppose one could call out to the three year old with the dozen eggs traipsing around outside in nothing but her swimsuit on a chilly October day to be careful.

But I don’t.

I’m not that kind of parent.

She knows all about broken eggs. She knows what breaks them and what to do with the broken ones. She’s been there and she’s done that.

And after a few run-ins with thistles, raspberry canes and other less desirable things, she knows how to watch what she’s stepping on.

And as for the swimming suit, all you grandmas out there shivering just looking at her, will be glad to know that after an hour or so she told me she was going inside to warm up.

I could tell her to be careful.

But I won’t.