Art Project

This is the story of how I came to do an art project:

Josh: Graham and Mandi invited us over to dinner.

Jen: Yum.

Josh: It's art project night so bring an art project.

Jen: !@#$%^&*&^%$##

I appreciate art. I admire artists. I am secretly (or not so secretly) jealous of people who can create beautiful things. But, I've never had much success with the dreaded "art project"; this probably started with my attempt as a 5 year old to make an angel for the Christmas tree out of a toilet paper roll (what adult in my life thought that was a confidence-boosting art project anyway?!).

So, when Josh announced that it was art project night at our super creative friends' house I just about caught a deathly cold and needed to stay home for the night. Instead I mustered up all my courage, bought a $12 picture frame at Ikea, Googled "how to clean an old painting" (answer from the interwebs: DON'T DO THIS IT WILL RUIN YOUR LIFE), rolled my eyes, turned off my computer, threw some q-tips and cotton balls in a baggie, and threw them in my purse along with a bottle of Dr Bronner's magic soap.

After a lovely dinner it was art project time. This was my art project: cleaning and re-framing an old painting that had been in my family for a couple of generations. The painting was done by my great great uncle in Spain and depicts a flamenco dancer performing in a plaza. It's not valuable, but has sentimental value to me since I remember it in my grandparents' house when I was a kid.

I broke the old frame off (it was literally nailed to the painting, which was done on wood) and got started. Contrary to all the advice on the internet I dipped a q-tip directly into the soap and started cleaning (yes, I'm rocking a horse t-shirt).

See the line on her skirt where it's partially cleaned?!

Ta-da!

It looks great in the frame, but we didn't get any pictures of it and I am currently camera-less. I am so happy that I tried this and that it worked! Check out Mandi's blog to see her super-creative self: mandimakes.blogspot.com. Have you ever been pleasantly surprised by an art project success?

Catching Up

Well, well, well. It's been a while.

I have been wrestling a lot lately with the idea of self worth/value. Specifically, if I am not spending my days in a "social worky" job, am I still a human being with value. Now, of course, I believe that this is true for other people, but sometimes it is more difficult to apply to myself. Layered on top of that question is the guilt for feeling that way. I am REALLY good at feeling guilty.

Honestly, I am afraid of not spending my time wisely and feeling like a major failure if I'm not moving ahead in my career and working with a specific population. The truth is, I love my new job. I love the people I work with. They are challenging my assumptions about the human race by being transparent, kind, and genuinely caring. For example, today I cried at work because everyone was so fucking nice. I felt lame, Josh said it was good for me, and I remembered the last time I cried at work was because I thought someone was going to die or something.

Anyway, we are about half way done with our foster parent training and I am so excited to get some delinquent children! We are in the process of selling our condo (not cool that strangers walk around in my house and look at our stuff, not cool) and finding a new place to live. I keep showing Josh pictures of cute, little farm houses in the middle of nowhere and he says something about community and being able to use public transportation. Then I say, "What does it mean? Double rainbow!" But I digress.

In the meantime I hope to keep up on this blog better- writing is cathartic and I have read about 800 books this year already so I should write some book reviews to keep track of what I've read!

How is 2011 shaping up for you?

Thanks for reading and for your comments!