Artistic Satisfaction

I am not an artist, by any sense of the word. "Creative," perhaps, but only in the sense of words and writing, and even then, some may disagree. "Artistic" is a word I use to describe my brother, my cousin, and many of my friends. However, for the last few months, I've been on a quest to find good "art" to hang in my house. I've searched high and low for something I love. I went to Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, Kohls, even random art fairs in my area, but nothing jumped out at me and said "hang me over your couch!" Finally, after I was so exhausted by searching and so tired of bare walls, I decided to look at some of my own pictures from the last year or so. Turns out...I have some pretty good, "artistic" stuff!

As many of you know, I spent two weeks at the Dar al Islam Institute in New Mexico last summer. Not only did I learn some of the most valuable spiritual, emotional, and professional lessons of my life, I encountered some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen. I took loads of pictures on my morning and afternoon walks on campus, and the Dar al Islam mosque and madrassa are some of the most beautiful buildings I've ever seen. So, I chose my favorites and enlarged them. When I paired them with some Anniversary pictures, it turns out the colors matched almost perfectly and...voila! A beautifully deocrated wall with personal, meaningful pictures! (The frames are from Ikea, which was another Godsend as far as cheap decorations are concerned.)

When I was contemplating which pictures to hang up, I printed about thirty 4x6 photos from the last year. I laid them all out on the dining room table and asked Chud to help me pick out which pictures would go in which frames. I started lining up New Mexico pictures and found these three pics: one is a Catholic Church in Abiquiu, one is the White Cliffs, and one is the Dar al Islam Mosque. I liked them because their colors matched, but Chud liked them because the cliffs created a "divide" between the Christian and Islam faiths. Ooooh......deep! I was quite proud. Here they are on our wall - right next to the liquor cabinet.

I'm only halfway finished. I have a poster sized picture of a peacock from the Bahamas on order which should arrive this week. I also have three frames with more Bahamas and New Mexico pictures that will go on our shelves above the couch, as soon as Chud gets around to hanging them. Once all of these pictures are up, my next project is to work on the hallway, where I want pictures of family and friends to dominate the space. We'll see how it goes...but if you consider yourself "family" or "friend," you better start sending me your favorite pics of yourself now, because I'm hanging something in the next few weeks, and there's no telling what kind of pictures I have on file of you already!