Get comfortable. This is gonna be a long one. 🙂

A close up of the mural behind our stove.
And this is my friend Jean Tuzi Williams who created it for us.

Jean and her special needs bunny Nutkin.
Jean and I “met” way back in 2014 when we were searching for something fun to put behind our kitchen stove as a decorative backsplash. I was online and searching for bunnies, chickens, kitties etc. because we knew we wanted an animal theme. We saw some great tile by an extremely talented artist who loved color as much as we did. Here are some examples of what we found.

Cock-a-doodle GORGEOUS!

Baby Mulder!!!

Bun-TASTIC!
You can see why were were so in love with her stuff, right? We couldn’t decide what tiles we wanted to buy because it was so hard to choose. So we got the bright idea for her to do something custom for us. Two years earlier we had been forced by The Waters to give up our pet chickens Rosie, Daisy & Violet. It’s a long story and most of you already know it, but it was sad for us and we missed them a lot. I did find a lovely home for them though so don’t feel too bad. I wrote a blog about the experience back in 2011 & 2012. If you want to relive the saga you can find it on mychickendiary.com
I contacted Jean thru the interwebs and we became fast friends. Go figure, this chick was an animal lover/rescuer too, and she had pet bunnies! We talked on the phone and exchanged photos thru emails and came up with this lovely creation immortalizing my sweet girls.

She even captured Violet’s wonky toe, Daisy’s lazy eye, and Rosie’s weird mutton chops.
Go here for the story of this mural
https://kittybunnychicken.com/2014/07/09/he-did-it/
Are you still with me? Soooo….when we began planning the Green House we knew we wanted something special from Jean and we were NOT disappointed. I had a vision of Hannah that I always went to when I wanted to think of her in a happy way. After she died, Jim and I mostly thought of her as a little girl. Don’t ask me why. Perhaps because she was so fun and happy as a little girl and that’s how we wanted to remember her. I drew a cartoon of her at the age of three or four sitting under a tree with her cats and some other favorites.

chubby little arms and feet. Her arm around Tony her cat, who lives with us now.
I sent it to Jean and asked if we could create a beautiful scene where Hannah is happy and peaceful and surrounded by beauty and good memories. It took a lot of back and forth between us to get it right. Jean took my ideas and added so much of her own creative energy to the project and it turned out more beautiful than I could ever imagine.

Zoom in. Hannah under the tree with her cats Tony and Dexter. A pond full of lotus blossoms (her favorite flower) Buster and my pet chickens in the background. She loved owls. Jim and I are in the empty nest. and the cardinal is in the tree. He visited us for two weeks after she died.
I wouldn’t mind one bit if Heaven looked like this. Thank you Jean. Although we’ve never met in person, you feel like family to me. I hope to meet you someday.
Well, that’s the story. It’s hard to talk about Hannah without crying, but I try to talk about her every day and remember her kind heart and compassion for animals and people. Jean’s art is all over the internet and here are a few places you can go to get of piece of her remarkable work.
http://www.tuziwilliams.com
Zazzle
Amazon (She’s an author too!)
Facebook
Pinterest (Jeantuzi)
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