Enjoying the colors

The trees outside are so beautiful this year. Every time I look outside I am stunned at the colors. Even rainy days look bright and warm.



I am off to chaperone a school canoe trip this morning. It should be a fun and wet day! We should have fun exploring the river banks and discovering all sorts of interesting things.

I finished up on these two birds yesterday. It was supposed to be my day to run errands but the hot water heater had leaked all over the basement floor so I was "hostage" to my home again -- waiting for a plumber that might or might not show up. Luckily he did and its all fixed now -- just a bit of a mess for me to clean up.





And finally I wanted to share this cute little treasury on etsy that includes my little bird by wildlifer78.



Another wedding treasury called "Going to the Chapel" by beadgaldesigns includes a pair of my wedding birds.

A nice rainy day.

One of my new little hand sewn birds is included in an Animal Friend Treasury on Etsy by PatriciasPalette.

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.

Clowning around....

Friday (of last week) was the final day of circus camp and it ended in an adorable skit put on by the kids. I am sure this will be one of the things that my daughter looks back on with fond memories.



I also finished up several of these cute ring bearer pillows with a needle felted nest of eggs. I was pretty happy to come up with such a cute idea but for weeks now haven't had the time to sit down and actually sew them. I was getting a little worried that someone else might come up with a similar idea in the mean time.



These are two treasuries on etsy which feature an item from my store. One features birds and the other chickens.




This weekend we spent Sunday afternoon at Tanglewood for the last concert of the season. The music was featured Gershwin's music and it was a lovely concert. My husband made up several salads and chicken wings and packed us up a nice picnic basket. After the concert we had fun with the girls running through the maze (hedges) and playing tag and hide and seek. Later we played with our "large" frisbee on the open lawn and again played tag. All the girls seemed to enjoy themselves -- which is harder to achieve now that some are teenagers.

A very BLUE day!

I finished up my custom order of bluebirds this morning and tried to get a few good photos on the porch -- its rainy today. They are going to be used as decorations on a bed skirt. I think they are just too adorable all grouped together! They were a lot of work though!



I need to get busy finishing several orders of wedding birds. I really love doing these. I remember how much fun it was planning my own wedding. We did so much of the work for my wedding ourselves and it came out so beautiful. But I really love all the color combinations that are used now -- so much more variety too!


Here is a cute painting my 6 year old did this morning while I finished up my bluebirds. She is using my watercolors this time and having fun with my messy palate. She is definitely a perfectionist so is not satisfied with what I find rather beautiful!



I wanted to share another nice Treasury on Etsy. This time it is a "buy and replace". It included one of my pottery chickens which someone purchased! It was created by tickledpinkknits. I love this cute knit wrist cuff from tickledpink's shop.

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!

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.

A few peaceful mornings...

Yes... that's what I need. The girls will finish up with school on Friday so these are the last few mornings I will have to myself until next fall. I have thoroughly enjoyed these past two whirlwind weeks and weekends (busy with the girls' recitals), but I am a little frazzled to say the least. I think the stressful part is getting everyone from point A to point B. And when there are timing issues involved too with three ... well it takes its toll. My husband just goes on oblivious to these issues but honestly I feel like an air-traffic controller here. So I am going to take a break for a few days and catch up on some much needed gardening and house cleaning. Its difficult to attend to these with guests visiting. And gardening outdoors and enjoying the warm sun is so calming to me.

I want to share a beautiful new treasury on Etsy called Nesting: Home sweet home by sheridesthelion includes my little bluebird in a nest.



I listed my hen and chick pairs yesterday. The sky was overcast and bright so I ran down to the field out back to photograph them. I guess it was a good thing I have been too busy to mow the field because the yellow flowers were beautiful. The bees are enjoying them too so I will probably hold off on mowing for another week. The mother hens are basically the same pattern I made several years ago but I have been modifying the chick pattern a bit with some successes. My family likes one pattern and I the other so I will probably solicit more opinions on this. If any of you have any opinions let me know! I love how they display in baskets.



And while we are on the subject of chicks I have to confess that I signed up to get 3 little bantam chicks when I was last visiting the Farmers Exchange. I had every intention of resisting temptation this year and look its already June and I have seen several batches of chicks come in and leave. I haven't mentioned this yet to my husband to avoid getting the "rolling eyes" look but the kids know now and are excited.

Sharing Treasures...

I did manage a bit of time out in the garden yesterday. I finished planting the window boxes for the front of our house. They look a bit pathetic right now but I am hoping they will fill in a bit. Its so easy to spend a small fortune at the greenhouse/farmstand so I try to get the six pack plants and use them sparingly. Meanwhile my daughter discovered a dead gypsy moth caterpillar (injured on a rock). This involved a rather dramatic two hours of tears and a rather elaborate burial at sea (in my small container pond). Many prayers were said and stories of this wonderfully kind caterpillar were shared. Even water spray "fireworks" went off. Most of this was her idea and she was genuinely distraught over this. I didn't want to dismiss it but played along hoping she would snap out of it. I loved her stories about the kind caterpillar and all the qualities he had that we would miss.

Being out in the garden made me realize how much damage was caused by that hail storm Leaves litter our yard and many of the flowering plants are damaged. During the summer when I have more free time I like to make cement leaf castings of some of the larger leaves. The rhubarb looked so lovely this year but now the leaves are full of holes. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to work with cement sooner due to the weather and generally busy schedule. This photo shows some of the leaves I made last year for my porch and gardens.



The first Thursday night band concert of the summer began tonight on the town common. The girls were so excited. We ate chili dogs and cheese and the girls enjoyed cotton candy and popcorn. My youngest enjoyed the children's games but the older two were off socializing with their friends. Its difficult to let them go off without worrying about them. My husband's parents came along too (since they are still visiting us) and hopefully enjoyed themselves enough. I really enjoyed meeting up with friends too and chatting a bit while listening to the music and keeping an eye out for the children.

And now for the treasures...

Ever since I discovered Etsy treasuries I have wanted one but they proved much too illusive for my schedule. Too many interruptions go on in my life to sit patiently waiting for one. I figure that one rainy day in the future I might just have the patience to catch one. In the mean time I will enjoy the ones created by other Etsy members. One of my pottery chicken families is included in an Etsy Treasury called Little Jewels by Majo



My newly listed bee is also included in this Etsy Treasury called Bring Back the Bees by amianda.

Ahhhh! The sun.

I am enjoying the sun shining through the windows cheering me up. After a few morning chores I will make my way out to get my hands dirty a bit in the garden. I finished photos of this needle felted rooster and bee this morning and listed them in my Etsy store.



This little bee looks more like a bumble bee than our dear honey bees. Our honey bees were out this morning enjoying the sun and flowers. While waiting for the school bus we watched them gathering nectar and collecting pollen on their legs. They seemed to be humming happily.

We haven't heard any word from the sheep shearer that didn't show up so maybe today will be the today. He never did show up on Friday or over the weekend. I am looking forward to seeing the silly faces on those adorable sheep. Maybe someday we can get two to keep out in the field. We only have a single acre so I'm not sure if that is enough space for them.

One of my little birds was included in another Etsy treasury today. This treasury is called So Precious by cynmb.

The rooster crows

I worked on a smaller needle felted rooster last night. I have a little wooden base for him that I want to paint with the sounds of a rooster crowing as they are known from around the world. Here is what I found in my search on chicken sounds. Hen and Rooster animal sounds in several different languages from Sounds of the worlds animals from Georgetown University.

Chicken (hen) clucking
Afrikaans: kloek-kloek
Albanian: ka ko ko ko
Arabic (Algeria): cout cout cout
Bengali: cokor-cok
Catalan: cococ
Croatian: ko-ko-da
Danish: gok-gok
Dutch: tok tok
English: Hens cackle and cluck.
Estonian: kaa-kaa
Finnish: kot kot
French: cotcotcodet
German: gak, gak
Greek: ka-ka-ka
Hebrew: Tarnegolot mekarkerot.
Hungarian: kot-kot
Icelandic: gaggalagó
Italian: coccodè
Japanese: kokekokkoo
Korean: kko-kko-daek-kko-kko-kko-kko
Norwegian: Høna kakler.
Polish: ko ko ko
Portuguese (Brazil): cocoricó
Russian: ko-ko-ko
Spanish (Spain): coc co co coc
Swedish: kackel
Thai: gook gook (with high tone)
Turkish: gut-gut-gudak
Ukrainian: ko-ko-ko
Vietnamese: cuc-cuc tac


Rooster (cock) crowing
Rooster
Afrikaans: koekelekoe
Albanian: kiki ri ki
Catalan: kikkirikí
Chinese (Mandarin): gou gou
Croatian: ku-ku-ri-ku
Danish: kykkeliky
Dutch: kukeleku
English: cock-a-doodle-doo
Esperanto: kokeriko
Estonian: kikerikii
Finnish: kukkokiekuu
French: cocorico
German: kickeriki
Greek: ki-kiriki
Hebrew: kukuriku
Hindi: kukru:ku:
Hungarian: kukurikuuuu
Indonesian: kikeriku
Italian: chicchirichí
Japanese: kokekokkoo
Korean: kko-kki-yo
Macedonian: kukuriku
Norwegian: kykeliky
Polish: kukuryku
Portuguese (Portugual): cocorococo
Russian: ku-ka-re-ku
Spanish (Spain): kikirikí
Spanish (Argentina): ki-kiri-ki
Swedish: kuckeliku
Thai: ake-e-ake-ake
Turkish: kuk-kurri-kuuu
Ukrainian: kukuriku

My needle felted tree sculpture is listed in an Etsy treasury called a House wife's wish by wired. I love this nest of eggs from wired's shop.



This afternoon I will head out with the girls to watch a sheep shearing. I will let you know the details of this excursion.

I have my hands full the next few days trying to get the house cleaned up for visitors. Both sets of grandparents will be here later in the week. It is always a struggle to get all this done since nothing stays clean for long. Even the grass won't cooperate. I try to get help from the girls but only small self contained tasks seem to work. Cleaning their room definetly won't get anything productive done.

Earlier this spring Scoutie Girl included some of my etsy items in her blog in March.. At that time I had almost no clue what a blog actually was. But I was thrilled to have someone actually find my shop.



One of my needle felted birds is included in an Etsy treasury called Sing a Song by ayeyet.