Art Fun on a Rainy Day

My daughter Robyn says I create art for everyone but her.  So this is a gift for her -- she will be coming over later and I hope she'll be surprised and pleased.

And these are little water color flowers a la Martha Lever http://marthalever.blogspot.com/2010/04/5-minute-watercolor-flowers.html   I can tell that I need to practice, but please don't miss her lovely tutorials for making these.  It's a wonderful way to feel creative in a hurry!

Some photoshop play

I'm working on a set of notecards featurning "Heartland America"  This is the one I did yesteray.  I think it's a little dark, but I'll keep playing with it and see what happens.  It's hard to stay inside -- the weather has been so wonderful lately!  And the seeds I planted last week in my garden are starting to sprout -- time to put my rabbit fence up before they get gobbled up.

Garden -- Phase One!

Here are a couple symbols of all the hard work I've done on my garden in the past two days.  A master gardener friend of mine said that it's time to plan snap peas when the daffodils are in bloom, so I ran to the garden center and bought what I would need to get started.  Then yesterday I planted the peas, radishes, lettuce, spinach and arugula.

Here's Skyler, keeping me company as I worked on my gardening journal this morning.  I'll post the pages when they are a little more developed.

Finally, I was DELIGHTED to see that I hadn't killed my rhubarb afterall -- here it is looking quite healthy in the morning sunshine.  Mmmmm -- can't wait for strawberry rhubarb pie!

Road Trip!

Today my husband and I took advantage of a beautiful spring day to venture to the heartland -- central Illinois.  We had to go there to pick up a quarter of a cow -- our daughter convinced us that free-range is the way to go, so we now have a freezer full of meat to enjoy.  Above, I am standing on a 100 year old suspension bridge.  There were signs everywhere warning that if we made it swing, we could be fined $200!  So we walked across carefully!

In town (Pontiac, Illinois), there was this great old advertisement painted on the side of a brick building.  I have no idea who Bensons is, but "Pleasing you Pleases us" so they must be nice folks.

Finally, here's a picture I altered of an old fashioned swing set we played on for awhile.  I'm not sure, but I think I need to do some additional work on this.  But I wanted to share it anyway.  I hope everyone is enjoying this lovely weather as much as we are!

A Treasure in my Mailbox

On Monday I found all these treasures in my mailbox!  They were sent to me by Ramona, "The Paper Princess" at Create With Joy.  I won a bloghop contest that she sponsored, and she sent me all these wonderful goodies!  Thanks, Ramona -- you'll be getting an official "snail mail" thank you from me soon! 

And here's some ATC's I made with my new toys.  I tried THREE TIMES to get them to load horizontally onto this blog -- sorry!  I will figure this dilemma out someday!

Garden Journal!

I have been very inspired by fellow bloggers who are making some really artistic journals (like Martha Lever -- she's amazing!) And my friend Luce recently blogged about a journal that she learned to make from Teesha Moore. (Teesha has the best tutorials on her web site. I followed one of them to produce this! You can find it on http://teeshascircus.blogspot.com/2009_10_1_archive.html)

This is going to be my record of my garden this year. I do not have a green thumb -- I can produce weeds, mint and daisies (I'm pretty sure mint and daisies ARE weeds). So this year I am going to try some new approaches, one of them being from the book, Starter Vegetable Gardens, 24 No-Fail Plans for Small Organic Gardens -- specifically the "easy care bag garden" from chapter one. I plan to document it all in this little journal, so if nothing grows, at least I'll have one beautiful reminder of a summer's worth of effort!

My first two pages are a record of inspiration that I have received from the Chicago Flower and Garden Show (the pictures are from there), and from some articles in the newspaper. I usually clip ideas and then forget about them until waaaay after summer's over and then I just pitch them. So now they are in one place, and I have a couple of weeks to pull my Master Plan together! Stay tuned . . .