The calm before the storm...

That is what this weekend feels like to me. As the school year comes to an end we find the next few weeks and weekends are scheduled back to back and overlapped with activities. Music recitals, band concerts, dance recital, church activities, orchestra concerts, and school programs keep us busy and a little crazy. But it is fun and exciting to think that summer will soon be here.

So this weekend really is relaxing and the weather this year is cooperating nicely. My husband finished work on our blue stone patio area and I worked on the window boxes and my hypertufa troughs. I haven't put in the tomatoes yet but I did dig up most of the tarragon that was invading my herb garden. I stuck a small tarragon plant in a pot dug into the garden hoping to contain it a bit.

Work wise I have been very busy making up my little bird sets.

Exercise and allocating some time for myself.

Life is getting so busy with all the kids activities and my custom order schedule. Sometimes it so difficult to find time to relax when I have so much work I need to get finished. And sewing and needle felt work is not an active sport so my level of exercise has dwindled. I'm just going to have to set aside time to walk or garden because health-wise this is not good. So with the nicer weather I am promising to get out and walk and do some yard work.

I haven't had time to look much on the Etsy treasuries but someone sent me a nice note to let me know I was in one. I think these are so pretty.

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...

Earth Day!

Our little art cooperative/store known to us as "Stonebridge Artworks" had a table at our towns local Earth Day fair. I wish we had spent a little more time planning but it was a beautiful day and a fun activity. My camera was left at home so I will have to borrow a few photos in a few days.

We met up with someone who recognized my work from Etsy. She has a blog and a shop called speckled-egg which looks lovely! She lives in town and seemed very excited about our new brick and mortar venture!

These are a few of the little birds nests I brought to the fair along with sprigs of my happy yellow forsythia. I couldn't help playing with the photo in photoshop a bit. I was working on labels for our "store"



Below is the label I made for Stonebridge using some of the photos of the bridge I took last fall. I should go out and get a few spring photos as well but these colors are pretty.



My latest pair of wedding birds was sent off and arrived safely. They are so adorable! I love the spring colors -- perfect for a May wedding!

The cycle of a year!

It's been a full year now in keeping this little blog!

A year later finds me doing pretty much the same thing this time of year. Yesterday, my younger daughter and I sat on the banks of the river watching the annual town canoe race. Her 3 favorite dolls were sitting in the sun in my grandmother's old suitcase situated safely on the upper bank. We played along the bank, fishing with a stick, string, and a pebble and then when the pebble was lost made sand castles and told a few "swamp monster" stories.
And of course the other right of spring -- burning the brush. The blackberries are as "evil" as ever invading everywhere. My arms bear the scars of my work since it seems there is no avoiding the thorns. I suppose its a "fruitless" endeavor to contain them. Though not completely fruitless -- we do enjoy the berries! The fire was a bit scary to contain with the wind catching the dry grass on fire more than I liked.

The little flock of chickens has pretty much settled in to a peaceful bunch with only a few squabbles now and then. They are contained in the pen now and my gardens will have a good chance of growing now with out being scratched out completely.

Today we are contemplating a family canoe trip down the river or even a trip into Boston after church. It's patriots day tomorrow and a vacation day.

I'll just share a few photos of my latest projects too of course...

Pecking order...

Last evening my friend brought over 5 of her chickens and a little hen house as she can no longer keep them. We tried introducing my 3 chickens (a hen and two small bantams) to the little flock. My nice big hen turned into a mean aggressive chicken and pecked at the others so I had to remove her from the group. She slept alone. In the morning my little bantams had been pecked at a bit on their combs. But another rooster (rescued from a nearby chicken farm) had been hen-pecked by my friend's larger hens. I let them all out in the yard to relieve that poor rooster from its tormentors. I love chickens but I do hate this particular behavior in chickens (and people too). Sigh.

We are finishing up on our maple syrup and should be closing down the sugar shack and cleaning up for next year. We still have a lot of bottling to do though. This was a great year for syrup but too much work for me!

I sent out two cake toppers today and finished up this little bird I started yesterday.







These are the birds I finished last week ...

Sugar time...

Well I can't say that its been easy fitting in maple sugaring into our busy lives this year. And physically we just aren't up to the late nights anymore either. The girls help out a bit more -- collecting sap from the buckets -- but still we are exhausted. Basically I spend my days working on my art and tending the fire. Since I can't work in the sugar shack that means trudging up and down the long hill from the house. It certainly is exercise I need though.

Our sugar shack is a little makeshift but is so much better than working under the sky or tarp as we used to do. We recycled the framing and barn board from a small barn that was taken down. But as you can see we still don't have a proper roof though the tarp works well enough (it just needs to be replaced several times a year).

We had an unexpected spring snow which is still sticking around on the ground. The trees looked so lovely draped in white and the dreary green/brown of the yard was restored to winter beauty.