Outdoor Altars

Okay so here I am, nearly 39 weeks pregnant, aching in the pelvic region, unable to stand up for 30 seconds now, unable to tie my shoes or put on pants and STILL I can't stop with the creative projects! Since I can't remember NOT being pregnant anymore, I had to ask my husband if I was always this way. He seems to think I was. I guess the major difference is that I wasn't asking him to come cross my legs for me.

Anyway, I was at the bay window in my kitchen, looking out at the squirrels and chipmunks and several varieties of birds who come to eat the seed that I put out for them every few days. There's this area by one of the trees that is just...lacking. Nothing grows there so a plant is out of the question.

Then I thought, well, I don't have any outdoor altars. Why not?! I thought about getting a lawn statue, but those can be pricey and frankly we're saving every cent. But how to represent the Goddess? We have lots of big rocks on our property so I decided I would paint a Goddess. But I was tired of painting the general goddess shape. So I decided to paint the Venus of Willendorf. When that was done, I thought it best to also do a god figure. I wanted to do a horned god, but I didn't find one that I liked. So I started looking into the Greenman. I found two I liked, one of which had horns! So I combined them and painted them up this weekend.

Here's what I have so far:

Here's a close up of the Lord and Lady. Sorry so dark:

Now I'm gathering all sorts of weatherproof stuff like shells, pretty rocks, those shiny glass stones that you put inside vases and stuff. I strung up some old tiger eye and jade beads and I'll probably come up with a bowl that has drainage so I can leave offerings out there. Maybe a 7 day candle would be nice to keep out there too.

I'm so excited about adding to this over time. I might start another one outside of the baby's room so she can rest her eyes on the gods whenever she looks outside.

Do you guys have outdoor altars or special place in nature? It would be great to see those on your blogs this week!

ALSO:

Okay I had to do something while the paint dried, right? My best friend gave me an iris plant at my baby shower (the baby's name is Iris). It gave us a great bloom and I took a photo of it and printed it out to put on the baby's door.

Well, I couldn't just stick it up there with no frame, could I? But I also didn't want to put a hole in the door. Voila! Foam core board!

One day last week I was feeling really bad. I was dizzy and in pain and totally uncomfortable. The cure? Creative projects! Seriously, it worked. So I cut this piece of foam core and left it there for a while. I didn't want to do MORE rainforest stuff. I wanted something really different. But I was stumped.

When I lived in New York, I bought all these India pillowcases and never really used them. I gave them to my sister since she wanted to decorate her living room in Indian colors. But she never used them and recently returned them to me. Like many Indian pillowcases, these are done in a patchwork style, using bits of gorgeous fabric. I almost cut them up, but decided to work a bit harder. I painted the frame with irregular rectangles and used three basic colors: tealish blue, a rich, reddish purple and foresty green.

That's all I have so far. Here's the frame and the inspiring pillowcases:

I've been sketching out patterns so this week I'll be painting them all. Then I'll add some gold string from a curtain tassel that fell apart and maybe some little rhinestones or something. I'm really excited about this project so I'm going to take my time.

Maybe if I learn to relax, Baby Iris will take it as her cue to make her entrance into the world. Off for some valuable couch time.

Blessings