Catching up, Part 3

I decorated two nightgowns to give for April birthdays. The first was for Valerie and the second was for my mother. You'll notice a certain similarity... It was such a cute idea, I felt compelled to use it twice.

This is Valerie's present. She posted some pictures on her blog, too.



Here's the one I'm giving my mother for her birthday tomorrow. I think I like the composition on Valerie's a little better. Shhh, what Mom doesn't know won't hurt her.



A closer look.



I would have included a small brown cat in the photos for scale purposes, but she was too wiggly.

Window Hopping

Happy Day After Easter! (Alternately, if you don't celebrate Easter, Happy Monday!)

On this holiday, my family has breakfast together,* everyone gets something yummy from See's instead of a basket, and then we go to a potluck brunch** that starts a little bit later every year.***

Sometimes we make things for each other but unlike Valentine's day,**** this is optional. This year I made this set of three little cut-paper windows for my parents.



I think you can parse the first and last windows on your own (they're three separate vignettes and don't have anything to do with each other, so don't worry if you can't figure out the plot because there isn't one), but in case the middle one confuses you as much as it confused my parents, it's supposed to be a (very) simplified version of this painting at the National Gallery:



I notice the National Gallery calls this "Two women at a window," but the title I learned in Art History is "A girl and her duenna." I love this painting. I just think the scene of two young women (or one young woman and her guardian, who happens to be another young woman) looking out the window and giggling is incredibly charming. So when I started trying to think of window-related images, this popped into my head. See?



(Hey, at least the thing that popped into my head wasn't defenestration. That's window-related. But kind of depressing and un-holiday-y. AND probably even harder to portray in cut-paper than a Murillo painting.)

* Traditionally we have hot cross buns.***** When I was little, the name of this food confused me. My family isn't particularly religious and our version of the holiday had a lot more to do with decorated eggs and the Easter Bunny (or the E.B., as we called him) than anything else. I didn't get that the relevant word was "cross," not "buns." I did not realize that hot cross buns had nothing at all to do with bunnies and everything to do with the shape of the icing.

** Yes, you read that correctly. My family has breakfast together and then we immediately go to a friend's house where we eat another breakfasty meal.

*** 2pm-ish this year.

**** I made valentines. I forgot to post pix of them. I will do this soon. No, really.

***** If we can't get those, we have some other bread product that my sister dislikes.

Plus, here's my sketch for the bunny window.

Entry the thirty-eighth: Um...

I saw this tonight in a high-end antique/decor shop in a fairly posh neighborhood:



These rabbit figurines are two separate objects. Surely this is not what the manufacturer had in mind. Did someone intentionally place them just so? Do they look wildly different (and, you know, less provocative) when viewed from inside the store instead of through the window?

The situation doesn't improve from this angle:



Perhaps the store has an employee with a grudge.