Happy Valentine's Day!

Wishing everyone a happy Valentine's Day!

Paul has been ill lately. He has had pain in his chest radiating down his left arm and poor circulation. He has been really cold, not even able to heat up by sitting by the fireplace. He finally ended up going to the ER, kind of convinced he was having a heart attack at age 30. Well, no heart attack, thank goodness. It isn't a re-assurance of his cancer either, thank God again. He has pleurisy. A viral infection of the lining of his lungs, which is quite painful and causes you to breath more shallow, which, in turn, causes his circulation to decrease. Since it is a virus, it has to work its way out naturally. Antibiotics won't work. He is doing better now, especially that he knows what it is. Needless to say we have been even more stressed than usual. This makes this valentine's day even more meaningful, just being aware of our thankfulness to be together and semi-healthy.

Paul's business has been so stressful too. The economy here is awful. Most of his clients are not being their bills, which is so hard on us. In fact, he has stopped work completely with two clients until they pay their bills. Paul has been interviewing for jobs, but it is a competitive market here, due to so many qualified people being unemployed. He also has two job opportunities in Ohio and one in South Carolina. We have been praying for a long long time about Paul leaving the business sector and going into ministry. More and more we feel the push to go into ministry. The South Carolina job is for director of technical services for a church. It is funny how things happen. After another restless night, Paul picked up the bible. Long story short, he opened the lap top and stumbled upon the job in South Carolina, and the Pastor emailed him right away. God works in his time, sometimes it astounds us how quickly things work! We will see. Right now, Paul is at his second interview at another promising prospect. We only have one car now, so the job that he is interviewing for now would be great because we have a good friend that works there and they could carpool. We just hope that something happens soon! If you are so inclined, we would appreciate every prayer!

Ok, onto the Valentine's day celebration. I was greeted with breakfast in bed and Caden wrote valentine's to us (and himself :) on his own. So cute. We have such a loving son. I attempted my first encaustic collage/painting. Encaustic medium is a mixture of beeswax and resin. I was inspired by Amy Ruppel and Meredith Baxter.

The deer symbolize our family. The clouds are maps....button flowers, the deer are etched and filled in with a charcoal pencil.


P+M+R=C (Paul +Michelle +R (our last name and date of marriage) = Caden. The measuring tape I used is vintage from my grandmother's sewing kit that I inherited.


close up on some of the flowers. The hills were made from grouped shades of green punched circles from sheets of scrapbook paper, paint chip samples and magazine paper.

Paul really liked it. He had no idea that I was making it for him. He, of course knew I was making something,( it is difficult to hide the sound of a heat gun triggering the smoke detector!), but he has absolutely no idea that I was making it for him. All and all I am satisfied on how it turned out, I need more practice to be as good as I would like, but for a first try, it is ok.

Happy Valentine's Day!

ps..I found it extremely difficult to photograph the encaustic...it is much brighter in person.