I love May!

Everything is so green and vibrant! It makes me smile just to walk outside and see the flowers and the sudden greening of the gardens.

This weekend was a quiet one. The rain kept us indoors and my husband was taking it easy due to the emergency room visit for chest pains earlier in the week. I actually did a lot of crafting and then on my birthday spent many hours working on a fabric bird cake topper. With so many custom orders lined up its difficult to find time to do so and on my birthday I figured I was entitled to a little free time to make something on my own. I have several orders for fabric bird pairs coming up and I wanted to see if I could dress up my birds in wedding attire. I really think the eyes are so important on the birds and if the groom was to wear black his eyes would be lost in the fabric. So I added a little white "cheek" on each bird and positioned the eyes and beak a little lower than my typical birds. Its so funny how eye and beak placement change the look of the birds so much and yet they all are pretty appealing. On the base I used some pretty leaf motif craft paper by Martha Stewart from Michaels. I was also excited to use some coordinating tape (also Martha Stewart). I went with the green flower accents and added black glitter to the grooms hat as well.



I am hoping for at least one nice day this weekend for our may day celebration with our maypole. In the rain of last weekend no one was interested. My youngest is reminding me to do this soon.

These are my latest pairs of custom birds to be going off soon...

Getting into the spirit of Christmas, the first step!

I have been so busy finishing up my custom orders that I have had little time to start preparing my house for Christmas. My youngest reminds me of this fact nearly every day now. I have promised that we will cut down our tree this weekend and in the mean time I have carried down all the boxes of ornaments for her to see. We set up our wooden creche set last night. We started making this when she was very young or maybe even before she was born. The stable now needs a little repair on the moss.


We originally intended to paint each of the wooden characters but even though we added characters every year we never had time to paint them. Now I just like the natural wood where I can see how the little fingers have loved them.

I cleared the top of this cabinet for our display of cloth dolls depicting the manger seen. I made these when my oldest was about 4 years old. The little tin angels to the side are from my grandmother. They have little cork heads and I am sure that the metal was recycled from food cans. They are really quite cute.



The small cloth angels on the left are for each of my children. Two of them have a violin and cello like my daughters. My youngest reminded me that her angel now needs a violin too.

We also unearthed a little tea set that I had hand glazed for my daughter. I was so surprised to see it since being concerned about the lead issues in toys made in China I was considering retiring some of their tea sets. I spent hours and hours hand painting this so I cant believe that I forgot its existence. Anyway at 8:35 pm I was seated at the table enjoying a nice little tea party with my youngest. She was beaming and said we should do this more often. How true!



Let me share a few of the birds I have been working on lately

A nest for the birds...

The girls are enjoying our new little birds and they certainly add a little noise to the quiet house here. Last evening I needle felted a small white nest for them. They were so cute snuggled up in the nest together!

In between packaging up several orders to mail out and cleaning house I worked on finishing these little birds to go with my latest cake topper base. The flowers are tiny vintage millinery flowers which I ordered especially for this project. I made the base over a week ago now but was so busy with my custom orders I could only dream of finishing it. The birds are somewhat smaller than my standard size to fit under the arch.

Another busy week

Well I think I have finally adjusted to being alone in the house during the day. Early in the week I finally got around to fixing my hypertufa planter that I made and broke last fall. It was so large and heavy that when I turned it over I dropped a few inches and broke off one side into several pieces. That was a frustrating reminder that patience always pays off. I had made an attempt this spring at a repair but was interrupted by a visitor and the cement mortar dried fast and basically made the situation even worse. I think it looks fine now but probably not very strong so I don't intend to move it. Its really too heavy to move anyway and I know my husband hasn't enjoyed moving these planters around too much. I love their rustic earthy look!

I also played around and made a few cement mushrooms but the paper towel roll bases in my first attempt were much too small. So I made a rough cylinder form with some cardboard and tape that should make a sturdier base. I am hoping if I "plant" them in a shady spot I can get some moss to grow on them a bit. A buttermilk and crumbled moss mixture is a good starter for that.

This is one photo of my lopsided cement balls. I just filled in with concrete a few deflated balls the kids broke. I peeled off the plastic ball early so I could smooth it a bit too.

I took a bunch of photos of Mexican stone carvings down at the Museum of Natural History in NY this summer and would love to try making something like them in hypertufa. I think I will avoid some of the interesting "fertility" sculptures that might get too much attention from the kids though. They seemed amused enough at the museum!


I am busily working on my little birds and finished this one this week.


I just had to make something for Halloween and made this little display of pumpkins.



Take a look at this cute Etsy Treasury! Its called "I do ... do you?" by terbearco.

Birds of a feather

I finished photos of this pair of birds this morning though the wind was not making this an easy task.



I adjusted the groom's head a bit so he looks at the bride and he looks so cute. The teal and white colors on the groom are quite attractive too. The bride's veil is a birdcage veil and I am pretty happy with it. I love the feather and the pearls.

Woof woof! I do!

As promised I dressed up my needle felted pair of dogs for their wedding day. The groom is sporting a rather dashing top hat and the bride has a sweet flower veil. They are wearing matching turquoise collars with the groom having a bow tie and the bride a jeweled necklace.







The will be off soon to serve as a cake topper for an upcoming wedding. They are so cute I am going to miss them.

A nice day for a hike

We are meeting up with my sister's family to hike Mt. Kearsarge this morning. It should be a fun hike and the day is nice and cool. We are bringing some cucumber sandwiches and snacks to eat at the summit. Now if I can just get everyone out the door ... including me ;)

These are two more sets of wedding birds that I finished and sent off last week.







.... We had a lovely day hiking. The young kids pretty much ran up the mountain on a very steep rocky trail. We brought along our younger dog and my sister brought theirs too. What fun those dogs had as they wrestled and tumbled up and down and up and down and up and down the mountain. Overall they probably traveled the equivalent of several mountain climbs. And they never seemed to tire at all. I with my knee and recent ankle sprain and my oldest daughter with her ankle sprain were a little slower going up. The view from the top was breathtaking and so clear. We enjoyed the panoramic view of all the other mountains surrounding us. The trail we took down the mountain was considerably easier than the trail up.

Late afternoon we drove to my brother in laws parents house to enjoy their new in ground pool. It was heated so the kids were in heaven. They didn't want to come out of the pool. We left for home when it got dark at 8pm and even then we had to drag the kids out. The young kids were making a lot of progress in their swimming too!

The last days before school starts

We have a few more days before school will start next week. I am really going to miss summer with the girls. The school year always seems much too hectic. But this year I will have more free time with my youngest in school for the full day. It will be an adjustment for me. I know most people can't wait for this but I think I will miss my time with my youngest.

Anyway I did get to photograph two of my wedding bird couples this morning and wanted to share their cuteness.

How does your garden grow?

I woke up early this morning to get a little time in the garden before everyone woke up. Everything is growing so well with the warmer weather and a bit of rain. I tied up the tomatoes and cleaned up a few weeds. The plants are getting big enough that they are shading out the weeds now. We have been enjoying the lettuce, spinach, arugula, and snow peas so far. The basil and broccoli are coming along nicely too.

Our raspberries are awesome this year. We enjoyed a raspberry pie over the weekend. Berries and cream for dessert every day this week!

The red bee balm is out now and we are enjoying the occasional visit by tiny hummingbirds. The bees love these flowers too. I can't seem to figure out if these plants like sun or shade better. One clump of bee balm was so awesome one year but the next year the plants were tiny.

I am sending out my wedding birds today. They look so cute.

This is what childhood memories are made of...

We had a busy week with my sister and having a fun time with the cousins. Cook outs on the 4th of July, late night board games, walks in the woods, walks along the old railroad tracks, hide and seek in the graveyard, a beach day, movies, swimming in the pool, catching frogs, the tire swing, and a day at the amusement park kept us pretty entertained. I have two sisters and there are now 7 children among us. The kids really had fun together.

Today I am enjoying a quiet house but still missing our guests. The rainy day seems to fit my mood since I don't like goodbyes. I did have time to work on a few projects and finish up some too.

A sweet custom order robin's nest...



A custom made pair of needle felted turtles...



My biggest project for the week was a custom order pair of wedding birds with a cake topper base. I often got up early to work on these or found a quiet spot to work while the kids had fun.

Tuesday

I have been busy working on a sweet wedding couple based on a request I had on Etsy. The bride is a sweet white bird with a veil and white flowers. The groom is black and white with a tuxedo appearance and a cute felt black top hat. I was going to work on a base for this couple so they would work better as a cake topper. But I am still thinking out how I want to do this so I went ahead and listed the pair in my store on Etsy anyway.


Tommorrow I am going to the local hospital for my first mammogram. I am seriously dreading this but being 43 now means I am definitely overdue. I hope it doesn't turn out to be too bad. Getting older is NOT fun.

Enough whining.... One of my chicken families was included in an Etsy Treasury titled "Family" by ayeyet. It is such a cute treasury.