"One Grecian Urn..."

Greetings and Happy 4th of July!
I apologize for the long gap between posts, but this post will give a little more insight into my distraction.  My son is quite the little actor and landed the part of the Conductor in our town version of The Music Man. The director needed a few "towns people" and my son asked me to participate. I landed the role of Mrs. Squires and we had a blast. My favorite part was when we ladies became the Grecian urns for the town sociable and it inspired my card. The urn is stamped, shaded, and cut out to pop up at the top.  I made some flowers by putting glue onto flower wire and sprinkling it with Flower Soft shavings.  Once they dried, I glued them "inside" the urn and glued the urn back onto the oval shaped piece of card stock. For the background, I took a bland piece of card stock, letter press embossed and then took my scorepal and made the score lines to form tiles.  A sentiment was stamped, circle punched, and pop up mounted onto the tiles.  A ribbon was added to "tie" (small joke here) all the colors together.  The entire thing was mounted onto a tan card base.

When it came time for the actual performances (there were three), I was surprised how calm I was and totally forgot about the audience. (Keep in mind that I had never done anything like this before.) I did my best the first two nights but I was not actually inspired...the excitement just was not there. However, the third and final performance was completely different.  As I pondered this, the difference finally came to me and the parallels to my survival performances jumped out at me as well.  You see, while the excitement of the cast and the audience were present the first two nights, my son and I did not have any personal supporters in the audience. Unlike many of the cast, we have no family in the area and did not anticipate any of our friends being able to come with all the summer conflicts.  However, the third night, my husband was in the audience and it provided that extra support needed to succeed and motivate. What a reminder of the power our support people bring when we take on new and difficult roles. Like the final performance, I know I fought harder when my family was by my side. I know my strength to perform increased when there was someone to clap for me as I made progress and hit my marks. But, most importantly, I know how much it meant to simply know I had support in the audience...I was not performing alone.

They say, life imitates art...now I have even more proof.

Thanks to all for the standing ovations!  "One Grecian Urn, Two Grecian Urns, and a Fountain.... ;)
Blessings, Jeannette