Stop and stare

I didn't mention this the other day when I wrote about our Countdown to Spring pastel paper chain, but when I was at Hobby Lobby buying the paper for the chain, I also spent a couple of dollars buying some red, white and pink paper to make some Valentine hearts.

Ma was the person who taught me to cut Valentine hearts out of construction paper, and I can whip out a whole bunch of them in a matter of seconds, big, small, medium-sized, take yer pick. So I sat on the sofa on Sunday afternoon and cut out about a bajillion Valentiney hearts and handed them off to the girls with some Scotch tape and told them to go for it and decorate the big front window (Aisling), the glass in the front door and the upstairs bathroom window (Meelyn) and create some festive cheer. We live on a busy corner in our city's historic district and we all thought it would be uplifting, giving pedestrians, passengers and drivers something more pleasant to look at than all the giant heaps of dirty snow piled up everywhere.

My husband covered quite a few of our windows this winter with those sheets of clear plastic that are supposed to keep the heat IN and the cold air OUT -- I know, I thought it was an aesthetically unappealing idea, too, but as it turns out, it's not nearly as bad (read: unacceptably tacky) as you might have first thought -- so we couldn't go heart-wild and decorate every single one of our many large windows, but we felt that the few un-plasticked windows we had to work with created a happy effect.

We were confirmed in this thought just yesterday, when a school bus stopped at the stop light right in front of our house. Meelyn happened to have just gone out to get the mail, and she came in and said, "There are some little girls on that school bus looking out at our Valentine windows. They're smiling and pointing."

"Really?" I said, smiling myself. "That's very cute."

She peered out the front door's big window again and said, charmed, "Oh, look! That's so sweet! Now a whole bunch of kids are smoodging off their foggy windows with their coat sleeves and looking out!"

And indeed they were. I snuck a quick little peek myself before the school bus trundled on, and it was a great pleasure on a snowy, yucky winter's day to see all those bright little faces framed in the bus's windows.

It inspired us so much, I think we're going to do a show for St. Patrick's Day as well. although I have firmly resolved that nary a leprechaun shall appear on my house.

I am already practicing my cutting of this slightly more elaborate holiday decoration and am already contemplating the several different shades of green that will add interest and artistic depth to the display, 'cause we are all about the Art.