About as crafty as I get

I finally finished the project that I was supposed to do last summer. When we moved into our place I noticed that right outside our back gate were four stepping stones, but they were that plain pink stone stuff. I decided I wanted to make some of my own to personalize our path. So I bought the huge bag of cement last summer, but that was as far as I got because I was so miserably pregnant. When I actually got around to doing the project it was a lot of fun and way easier than I'd anticipated.

The turquoise tiles I used in three of the stones are really special to me. Back in the 1960s my church installed a mosaic window with about 14 panels of tiny tiles. In the center was a cross. The tiles all came seperately, and the women of the church spent hours and hours gluing them onto large glass panels. Both of my grandmothers worked on the project. In the 1980s, when the sanctuary was remodeled, the design crew decided to take about eight panels out of the cross window to make it narrower. The extra panels were then stored away, and I later spent years looking for them off and on. Then one day I happened to mention to my friend H.K. that I was looking for them. He disappeared for a few minutes and eventually came back carrying one of the panels wrapped in a sheet. I was so excited! I took the panel to Nathan's parents' house and my father-in-law took a blow torch to it, melted the glue, and peeled all the tiles off the glass backing, which shattered under the heat. I took the tiles home in a paper bag and then spent days hunched over the sink, peeling the glue from each tile and washing them all. I didn't know what I was going to do with them, and I was saving them for some special project some day, but then I thought it would be much nicer to work them into a lot of little projects, so that I can see them all the time. I know that my grandma Kimber would be proud. I love looking at my stepping stones and knowing that they represent a little bit of family history.

I made one stone for each person in our family. The fish is for Judah, because he loves the movie Finding Nemo, and loves fish in general. He likes to eat at The Whole Enchilada because of their amazing fish tank. The river is for Nathan because he loves fly fishing in peaceful places. The blue flower is for me and has to do with C. S. Lewis's discussion of the blue flower, which I've always identified with. And the star is for Micah, because he's my little star (and it didn't stay that dirty, I had just finished it when I took the picture and the cement was still wet).