Ever since last summer I have been mulling over a conversation I had with my granddaughter Emma about art. At the time we were on our way back from a ferry boat ride to Kingston with most of the family. All the clan had gathered at my house and then trooped down Main street to the ferry, where we walked on and rode over to have breakfast. Mostly it was an outing for all of us and a fun thing for the grand babies to do. The cousins see each other only a few times a year and so, when we all gather, we try and do some "kid friendly" fun activities. Anyway, that was what brought us together this particular Saturday morning in July. On the walk down I pointed out to Emma that her Granty had artwork for sale in a local home decor shop and there was a lovely glass and shell mermaid window of Granty's prominently displayed in the store's front window. Other pieces were just visible, if you peered through the shop window, hung on the wall inside. Emma seemed rather interested in what Granty had done so on the way back Emma, Granty and I stopped to give the art a closer work. (And to compliment Granty, too, of course.)
We showed the shell artwork Granty creates to Emma. She looked at it, very interestedly. Granty told her a little bit about how she made them. Emma, big blue eyes wide, took it all in. Finally I asked her what she thought about all this art.
Silence.
I pushed a little. Emma announced it was pretty and she liked all the shells and the way the colors looked. And that the shells were shiny. And the sand Granty uses as background in may of her works.....but, they were not art. Now, Dear Reader, this was said in a firm and exceedingly confident voice. Emma knew what was art and THAT WAS NOT IT. I am the first person to defend any one's take on what constitutes art to that individual person. Art is, we all know, very subjective. If Granty's work was not art to Emma, so be it. Four-year-olds aren't usually that, er, what's the word I want here.....critical? Secure in their own taste? Emma, however, is. Very sure. Very, very sure.
Granty's canvases were pretty and she truly liked them, but THEY WERE NOT ART. Nope. Not art. Not at all.
We had to know what was Emma's definition of art and why didn't Granty's things live up to that (apparently) very high, Emma set, bar!
After a lot of questioning and conversation it came out that art is sparkly. Art is glittery. Art fairly glows. Disneyland is art. The opening credits of any Disney movie, with the castle and the fireworks and the fairy dust and the glitz is art, to Emma. Granty's work was, alas, pretty but not glittery or sparkly. It did not shriek of fireworks and Tinkerbell's fairy dust or anything. It was just shells.
So, the photo below is art. To Emma.
(It's a lovely photograph of Disneyland taken by someone with the Flickr name of 'Mastery of Maps'. Please give the photographer due credit for a lovely photo.)
And how did I come to feel the need to share this with you, you ask, Dear Reader? Well, every time I look at my Christmas tree and my eye falls upon a glittery ornament, or I look at the beautiful silver glass glitter stars I both saw and bought when I was at Wendy Addison's Theatre of Dreams last August, or a bit of glitter falls from a Christmas card I received in the morning mail, I think back to Emma and her very sure definition of art.
My house is decorated, inside and out. We even had snow yesterday, an unusual occurrence in the Puget Sound region this early in the season. We don't usually get much snow until January or February. Everything looks Christmas-y.
This is Edmonds' official Christmas tree and it's right across the street from my little house---a most festive view, I can assure you.
Even the local geese like flying over in the early morning to take in the decorations from on high.
It is a joy to walk around town these days, especially these nights, to admire all the decorations and lights. Twinkling white lights, sparkly ornaments and tinsel trimmings, fragrant greens, garlands and wreaths all drive away the darkness of these drear December days.
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I finally got my lino block cut and have now printed my Christmas cards for 2008. I have this yearly need to make my own cards. I've felt that way since I was a girl and it just makes me happy to do this little project once a year. I bought my cards for years when my children were younger but now that they are beautifully grown and gone, I have time to return to my favorite Christmas art project. 
This is a row of drying prints.
The prints are then trimmed and matted to the backing red cardstock with those adhesive spacer thingies....the ones I never know by what name to call them!
Once the cards are matted, they are then glued to the front of the card.
I baked DH a big, 
My Daddy, Joseph Bell Rawlings
and my father-in-law, Donald Paul Unger. You are missed.
It was a cold, wet and windy Veterans' Day, but the wind made the flags snap crisply and the cold rain couldn't dull the bright colors of the flags. 
Almost 18 months ago Deb Denton asked me if I wanted to participate in her Sensual Journal round robin exchange. The specifics of the project were that each participant would create their own journal, pick the theme and then send the journal off to be worked in by six other group members. What made it a 'sensual' journal project was that each person had to incorporate four of the five senses into their work. Now, let me tell you, that's a challenge! I was eager to participate and in due time got my journal ready to mail off and then I started receiving journals to work in myself. I have just finished working in Sheila Scott's gorgeous journal that had a 'journey' theme. I found a lovely box in which there were five completed folders, each one unique and wonderful. Deb did hers as a Passage to India. Catherine Anderson did her entry as Memories of Africa. Besides those there was Amelia Earhart's Last Flight, Route 66 and a Journey of the Mind that had to do with reading and books. Each of the women before me had set an impossibly high bar!
