I love days like this!

We woke up to a nice cool summer morning with a crisp cool blue sky. These really are my favorite days -- a little fall like but still summer!

The state bee inspector visited today and looked at our three hives. They all seem to be doing strong with few mites. One of the hives must have swarmed a few weeks ago though. The inspector is really nice and I am glad that I had a chance to meet him since he sometimes visits when we are away from home. I love the smell of the bee smoker as he puffs in the smoke to subdue them a bit. He did get stung a few times though!

We spent the weekend in Ogunquit Maine and enjoyed a visit to the beach. Saturday evening we took the kids to "The King and I" at the Ogunquit Playhouse. It was a late night and our youngest was having a little difficulty before intermission. She perked up after that though! The next day we went to see "Fairy Houses" at the same playhouse. The author Tracy Kane of "Fairy Houses" was there signing her books. Our family has been making fairy houses since my oldest was about three -- nearly 10 years now so we were so excited. I used to take grape vines to make a little house and the kids would pick flowers and decorate the house! This play "Fairy Houses" was put on by children. Afterwards we explored the woods and fairy houses made in the forest out of natural materials. We spent about an hour and made a few of our own too.

Here are the fairy houses that other groups had placed in the forest...


The fairy house forest tour provided some sea shells, bird seed, hay and pine cones to make our own fairy houses. This is what we came up with using those supplies as well as those we found in the forest.



That afternoon after a yummy lunch outside we went to the beach for a swim. Along the path to the beach we admired these flowers and butterflies.

On becoming a hermit...

Our family enjoyed a long camping weekend at Hermit Island in Maine. I must admit that the packing and unpacking work involved in a camping trip is clearly not my favorite task. We keep all our camping gear in plastic bins now stored in the basement, but its been a few years since our last real camping trip so some of the gear has scattered. We did get a new inexpensive 3 tent (attached) thing to replace our older tent. When the kids were small the old tent was perfect but everyone is getting bigger now (too big to step over anyways).


This was actually an unexpected trip for us too and since we had just returned from a week away from home it was even more difficult to get things together. The campsite was beautiful and wooded and we were visited by a few deer and their fawns while we set up camp. The girls were great but we suffered through the usual grumbles about "too many bugs" and "yucky bathrooms" but those are the realities of camping for the most part. The beaches and rocky shores on the island were beautiful. My husband spent one afternoon working on a pastel drawing for me. This is a (shadowed but the best I could do) photo of his drawing. It depicts point of land/ocean on Hermit island called "The Bathtub". During high tide it is a deep channel but at low tide is a nice warm wading channel. We jumped in while the tide was still high and the water cold and swam up to the shallower end of the channel.



The kids explored and captured hermit crabs and built castles. We brought our large Frisbee and had fun with this too.

My teenage daughter carved her new boyfriend's name/initials in each beach and some trees too!





All starfish used to profess her love were returned to their home rocks after briefly being used. Her wood carving drew a little blood too and stained the log a bit.


She was also thoroughly immersed in the latest Harry Potter book. It must be good because at various points in the books she was sobbing with tears running down her cheeks. It was almost too painful to let her read further but she was obviously enjoying it.

After dinner we enjoyed a late night around the campfire visiting with friends and their two boys. We ate marshmallows and s'mores and told funny stories as well as a few scary ones (goat man, swamp monsters, and the bloody finger). Everyone had fun. Then after a visit to the flush toilets we crawled into our sleeping bags for the night. My husband started reading aloud the first chapters of the Harry Potter book but I was so exhausted that I fell asleep after the first few sentences.

When I returned to Etsy today I noticed I had 4 items from my shop in 4 treasuries. Wow! Thank you everyone for including my work!




I love the beautiful treasury called Pond Life submitted as a poster. It was created by beadedeyefairy. My own little ponds are enjoying the frog visitors and the many dragonflies! Their treasury would make a beautiful poster and I am honored to be included.

The treasury called UglyKitty's Grandma's Favorites by UglyKitty is so adorable too. So many beautiful things to look at!

The treasury Heartfelt Genius features one of my new little birds. It was created by heidihibbard.

The treasury Mine, all mine by Morrgan is another beauty!