Tickling the ivories

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The March Sketches with a Twist sketch and design team sample layouts are now live on their site. I am very proud to have created the sketch and really in love with all the design team’s samples based on it!

Sketches With a Twist is a new sketch challenge site where each comes with an extra requirement (for example, this month’s twist is to use 3 identical embellishments somewhere on your layout or card.

Here’s a little peek at my new sketch:

And below is my design team layout based on the sketch. Please head to their blog to get the printable version of the sketch and play along (there are two prizes available each month).

In this first photo I was 6 years old, and in the second I was not quite 10.

I was very fortunate that as a child I took piano lessons. My mother had always wanted to know how to play, and I think her enthusiasm for the idea must have made me want to do it, too. When I was really little my parents would walk into a room and find me sitting sideways in an overstuffed chair “playing” the arm. I think they must have told Santa Claus about this because in 1972 he left an electric organ (that’s what they were called then, instead of keyboards) under the tree! Boy howdy, was that a great gift.

The whole family played the organ, but perhaps I played it the most because when, in 1976, my parents finally fulfilled my mom’s dream of owning a piano, I was the first one to get lessons. Eventually Phil and Mom also took piano lessons from my teacher, Alice Shimmels, but I took lessons the longest (until I was 18, I think). Unfortunately, at that point in my life I didn’t think I had time in my busy teenager schedule to continue with lessons and practice, so I let them go.

It’s a lovely thing to have had music lessons in my past; it’s such a great skill to have and is a practice rich with opportunities for developing personal discipline. I now have that piano in my home, and I love to play carols in the winter on a cold evening when I’m full of Christmas spirit. So, another debt of gratitude is owed to my wonderful parents for filling my life with the ability to make my own music.