May

Early May reminds me of the bluebells in a tiny wood a walk away, they expand each year and I delight in them and their soft perfume. This year I missed them as I haven't done the walk but instead I had a commission for three little flower girl necklaces from a lady in N Y USA who is getting married the necklaces are pale satin blue tiny pearls with silver blossoms and teal crystals to match the sashes the girls will be wearing, they are going to look so pretty! 

On a recent trip to Rome, Italy, I was amazed at the number of churches with exterior facades that one might pass right by. This is St. Mary Maggiore, one of the oldest churches in Rome. Some of the exterior statuary actually had dandelions sprouting from them.

Pass through the doors and you enter a completely different world. Simple to ornate... 

Ornate and Simple / May

Playing around with my new iPad, and getting two for the price of one.

May

My iris always bloom in May.

As you can see, I like the insides of the flower.

May = weddings

For some reason May has become wedding anniversary month in our family.

My son's anniversary is May 18 (coming up on 4 years).  My sister's is May 19 (coming up on 11) and ours is May 23 (coming up on 42!).

The two oldest weddings were pre-digital, but here are my son and his wife opening gifts, with a lot of help from our new granddaughter (now 13, and a lot more grown-up than in this photo).

When you have two sons you don't expect to be in charge of any weddings, and you know the rules for mother of the groom: wear beige and shut up.  But they chose to get married in our living room and I got to be the mom-in-charge since my daughter-in-law's mom had died a few years earlier.

This year we won't have celebrations on the actual day.  My son and his wife are vacationing in Italy and my husband is off to California for the Sacramento Jazz Festival the morning of our anniversary.  But we'll catch up later.

May - What do you think of?

May: the next Month prompt. What is special about May for you? What comes to mind?

Post a photo and let the image speak for itself. Or tell a little story to go with your May image.

Somehow for us May seems to be a time when visitors come from abroad. Often I go into London with them and since they usually don't have a great deal of time, we go round on one of the open top buses. It is fun for me, too, because you discover things about London you hadn't noticed at ground level or that you had forgotten before.

Here are a few photos of things I saw from the top of the double decker a few years ago in May.

My sister is coming all the way from Alaska soon, so I wonder what I will notice this time?

The label is set for May. I'm interested to see what May brings to your mind.

Ornate/Simple

Winding Ways quilt (detail) by my friend Heather Hasthorpe.. Both ornate/complex and simple/peaceful.  Note the extremely subtle use of colour..

Ornate and simple -- in the same photo

The Lorenzkirche (St. Lawrence Church) in Nürnberg, Germany, like practically everything else in that city was hard hit by Allied bombs at the end of World War II.  The artwork and anything else movable had been taken from the church years before and placed in bomb-proof storage; it was returned after the building was restored.  Replacement parts, like these altars, were done in stark modern style rather than trying to replicate the Gothic originals.

Here the intricately carved stone pulpit is lidded with a simple modern roof.

Ornate/Simple

Ornate the restaurant at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London

Simple the bricked up arch to a disused railway tunnel

Simple/Ornate

 

Images of gateways/arches taken in Vietnam.

Ornate/Simple

Ornate/Simple - and some Admin

The new prompt for April is Ornate/Simple or More/Less, or anything along those lines.

This should be interesting. I think we are often drawn to ornate architecture and other forms of craftmanship because we recognise the work which went into it. But simple...is that so easy to catch the eye?

You can post images of a combination of Ornate/Simple or two photos with an example of each. If you discover quite a few examples you are welcome to post several times. I am looking forward to seeing what you discover.

These photos are of a Victorian Gothic church in Leeds. My Sister-in-Law is the Vicar. I love the difference between the Doorway and the functional little door.

I will set the label to Ornate/Simple.

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