In her gummy smile

Yasmina, age 7, on her 1st. day at school (Gr2) 18-09-2012 

I love autumn, I always have. Becoming a mother of a school girl, I started to appreciate it even better. Besides loving the cooler weather, I love seeing people rushing to get ready for school. I even enjoy the busy traffic and the noise it creates; the shorter days, the sleepy faces of parents dropping their children to school, or bringing them to the buses. And then there are the mothers, nagging about their children not going to bed early, or about them not finishing their homework - unwilling to admit that they have anything to do with it. I don't mind any of that, in fact, I love it. This is the thing about Autumn, it brings order, routine and discipline.

I am probably one of the most chaotic people ever, but even in my own chaos, there has always been order, because of which, I was able to get things done in my life. So when Autumn comes to wash away any laziness and wandering that I found myself stuck in during summer, I welcome it with a smile.
I love the mornings when daughter goes to school, and I get to be more than just a mother, even just for few hours. I usually start my day with some time for myself, reading or writing, or simply contemplating. I then head to the office. I teach if I have classes, otherwise I design and make jewelry. In the afternoon I return home for house chores and I cook and get things ready before daughter comes back. It doesn't take more than that amount of time for any woman to feel fulfilled and useful, instead of just simply being a mother. I couldn't have been any more appreciative of the life I have created for myself.

The season of Autumn inevitably rolls into Winter, bundled with the Spring and Summer past, where all I really want to be, is a mother, and to bond with my child.  You can really miss those endless days at home, when your only fulfillment comes from watching her discover the world by herself for the first time; turn a page, crawl, laugh, stand up, walk… and when she has had her first taste of a juicy plum, and smiles at you (as if she owns the world – having already owned you), any meaning of order or sense in the world dissolves in her heart melting, gummy smile.

Yasmina, 8 mths old, eating her very first plum.

JMR and the new logo

So I was gladly back to work after the summer holidays were over, and just a while before schools started. My plan was to try and make some good changes to Jewelry Making with Rana. While I was mainly satisfied with the way I was running my facebook page - through which mostly people found out about me - but I just knew that there had to be an update, and I knew that the start had to be simply with a logo. 

I assigned that job to one of my students who is a talented graphic designer and a nice guy from the South. He actually lives there so he used to come all the way from Nabatieh to attend his classes, tiring but you could bet it was worth it. At some point he even took both beginners and advanced classes on the same day. So Ali and I met one afternoon to check the drafts together. He showed me 4 different beautiful logos. Glancing at them, it took me exactly two seconds to let him know of my choice. A logo that, had I been a graphic designer myself, would have done that very same logo with every little detail. That's a little exaggerated, but I you get the drift; that logo really spoke to me. A silhouette of a tribal lady's face with her jewelry and a shining star, beautifully portrayed with asymmetrical details above the newly chosen acronym for short; JMR. And to add to the fun, that girl's face looks like mine to some extent. Not a bad idea when you think that Jewelry Making with Rana was founded by myself, is managed, run and taught by myself too.  Here's the new logo, you may wonder why is it not a high resolution one, and I would simply answer that I have been too lazy to ask Ali to send me the final logo (since I had to choose the colours and get back to him about that). So this logo you see above was cropped from the facebook cover photo we uploaded together when we were still trying it (picture below).

Now that the logo is done, time to get on with the next thing on plan; re-decorating the office.