Merry Christmas!

A few photos of the holidays...





We are thankful for the good company of family and friends, good food, warmth and light, and good health.


The girls had their holiday concert at NEC. My middle child plays cello in first chair.


My oldest played viola and was lucky enough to have a few soloist parts.



Three little green monsters that I made for each of my girls...



A few cake topper sets which I completed just before the holidays...

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...

Happy New Year to All!

Another year goes by so fast! It's been a fun one though!

We woke to another lovely snowy morning with the pines weighed heavily in snow. It was beautiful! A snow plow had pulled our phone line off our house so no phone or internet all day. The kids enjoyed the packing snow and had fun with their snowman family making project. I worked on a few fabric bird sculptures while enjoying watching a BBC Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice. My husband gave me a collection for Christmas and even though I am familiar with these stories it is nice to watch these versions.

These are a few of the birds ...




A cute treasury to share!

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

Bird's nests

I have never been interested in planning for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. My only exception to that rule is that we start working out the details on our own homemade holiday cards towards the middle of November. I have always hated seeing Christmas stuff even before Halloween is over.

This year though I realized that if I want to sell any Christmas things in my shop I am going to have to get an earlier start. And so I have been thinking on this a little and came up with these little bird's nests on tiny clothespin clips for the tree. The majority of our own tree decorations are birds though we include all the special vintage ornaments that we have treasured over the years. Last year's tree falling disaster really destroyed quite a few of our ornaments so I am determined to make a few more this year.

So here is my first set of ornaments for the holidays which I am selling in my shop...



Our school canoe trip which I chaperoned was a lot of fun. The wind was crazy though and made the canoing a little difficult. I can't include the pictures though because there were so many school children in them. But I think the kids learned a lot and had fun too.

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 visit with friends

We had a wonderful weekend visit with friends this weekend. They came all the way from outside of Montreal to see us. The kids are missing them so much now.

There is so much going on right now in my art/business life and I will be sure to share the news soon (when I have a moment to breath!). I had to take a short break with the needle felting due to my carpal tunnels problems. But this meant I had a chance to make these little handmade birds that I have so long been thinking of. They are each hand sewn with wire legs and glass eyes. With some I will use vintage fabrics and other will have soft fabric tummies.

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.

Rainy days, clematis, and a cute little squirrel

We are enjoying our first rainy day after pretty much a month without rain. Everything was turning brown and the asters are flowering early this year due to the drought. My autumn clematis is blooming and looks so beautiful along our fence. So many white blossoms.


I can't help but taking more and more pictures of it. I am so glad I remembered to keep it watered during the drought.



This little squirrel is a custom order gift for bride's maid and will accompany a pair of wedding birds to the wedding. I love the cute little eyes!



We survived the start of school last Thursday but I am missing my youngest now that she is at school all day. She talks so much and it is much too quiet without her. Normally she can drive anyone up the wall with her chatter -- but I love it sometimes. Am I the only mom out there to miss their kids when they finally go off. No one else seems to mind and most are celebrating.

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.

Autumn Beauty

I woke up a little early this morning and took a few photos of this little bird. She seemed to enjoy her first exploration outside!



The morning glories are looking so beautiful now. These are the purple and pink varieties that seem to grow so well.

Little Sunshine explores my garden treasures

I love overcast mornings so much for photographing items for my shop. It makes such a difference in the photos. I brought my little yellow bird, named Sunshine, out for a photo shoot early this morning. Instead of struggling to get 5 good pictures almost everyone I took was pretty.

Here she is sitting in my hypertufa bowl amongst the moss. I love the rounded stones we collected up along the coast of Maine. I still haven't filled in this bowl with plants yet but the moss is slowly spreading outward.




Here she is exploring my cement cast split leaf philodendron. This leaf was difficult to cast but I gave up on trying to get the slits and cast it as a solid leaf. I love how the green algae is filling in the indentations.




Here she is eying my hypertufa Tibetan stone. I love the rustic carving on this cairn. Eventually I would like to make a larger stone for one of the gardens. The creeping jenny that is dangling down the stone walls are so beautiful too. They are spreading like crazy too!


I think she likes the nasturtium as much as I do! I have them planted in an old metal chicken waterer (that rusted out and leaked). I planted some sedum in the ring at the bottom.






Sunshine has discovered my pitcher plant terrarium. Last fall I scooped up some of the pitcher plants my husband gave me for my birthday and planted them in this terrarium so I could enjoy them during the winter. They needed to be misted regularly (with rain water I collected) but did amazingly well. Collecting rain water during the winter was a little fun though! Of course they are loving the outdoors now and are doing so well that I decided to leave them in the terrarium. Every now and then a big rainstorm drowns them but then I just drain it out with a little tube (siphon).


I love these these bright red Impatiens that brighten up the garden all summer long. Sunshine is sitting in another leaf casting while she admires the garden.






She has found my bright blue glass globe and copper waterer. I love the blue on this copper sculpture. If connected to a hose water will come out the copper ring and everything will rotate as it sprinkles the garden. It was handcrafted by an artist in Maine and we bought it at a town craft fair as we were driving through.