Nothing like a cold to ruin a day...

I knew that I would eventually come down with a cold. The kids have been bringing home all sorts of fun little colds to share amongst themselves. I really want to go outside and enjoy the warm weather we are having but I feel pretty miserable.

We have two new additions to our crowded house -- a pair of zebra finches. They and five other birds were abandoned at the local hardware store. I suppose that the owner planned on trying to give them to the nearby pet store but they could not take them due to quarantine issues. He asked an employee at the hardware store for some water for them and while that employee was getting the water he took off leaving the birds behind. My friend happened to stop in the store for paint and agreed to take them home. Before we were married and later before we had kids we had quite a few little birds like this so it wasn't difficult to convince me to bring a few home. They are noisy little ones though!

This is what I have been working on this morning. Another pair of wedding birds


and this colorful rooster.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hot summer days!

The girls could barely move outside the pool yesterday it was so hot. So with a few neighborhood friends the pool was busy all day. My husband and I took turns keeping an eye on them.



We didn't do much house or yard work due to the heat but enjoyed a bit of reading and for me a little needle felting. I also did the final wet felting of some of the felted squares that I made in the early spring. With a little water and soap and two sheets of bubble wrap I rolled and squeezed until it firmed up quite nicely. I want to make some small purses with these. I took the bantam chicks out of their "house" and put them in a little wire pen that will help protect them from predators but give them a little chance to scratch in the grass and dirt.



These are a few pairs of wedding birds I am working on. One is a custom order.




We stayed up late playing "The Settlers of Cattan" with the girls in the air conditioned bedroom. It was a fun game now that the girls are getting the hang of it.

The start of summer...

Just a few more hours of school tomorrow and our summer will begin. I am looking forward to having the kids at home -- I just hope I can keep them from getting too bored. When they were younger it was so much easier -- just a little attention from me or a brief walk "around the block" with the wagon was enough. But as they get older they really crave more excitement with their friends. At the very least they will enjoy sleeping in a bit and less running around. I haven't signed them up for any camps so we can relax a bit more.

I took a few pictures of my new little needle felted bird named Rose. I love photographing outside because of the lighting and the scenery.

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 finished this little purple bird today. The purple matches perfectly with the purple lupines that are blooming now. I finished my latest batch of pottery chickens with a few cats too. I just listed this little funny cat.




Softies Central featured one of my needle felted roosters on May 29th. I particularly like the red and black color combination. I sold this particular one in early April. I have rooster with red and green spots that remind me of green olives though the green is much brighter.

Meanwhile I guess I am looking for any excuse not to keep cleaning house (for the imminent visit from the grandparents). Obviously I shouldn't be finishing up birds, photographing, listing new items, and blogging, when I have so much yet to do. But I just can't help but procrastinate. I even watched a PBS program about the possibility of life on other planets (I was supposed to be dusting the multitude of nicnacs I have in that room). I was so mesmerized by this that I didn't get much done at all.

Holiday!

I gave up the morning to set up our inflatible pool but in the end there were a lot of disappointed faces. The dark blue inflatible ring began loosing air shortly after we inflated it so we abandoned the idea of filling the pool with water. I wonder what we will do for the summer now and I was more than a little disappointed to do all that work and not get any results. It takes a bit of effort to put it away in the fall too and I usually do most of the work for this myself.

I set up a small kiddie pool for the younger kids and while I watched them I finished up this little bird and the veil on my bridal couple.

Another rainy day...

I finished this little french hen or "la poule" today. Craft night with my friends is tomorrow night and I'm really looking forward to it. I started work on another wedding couple and I may be doing a custom order for an upcoming wedding. Exciting! Anything to do with weddings is so much fun.

Well it looks like rain in the forecast for the next few days too. I think this will mean the end of the lilacs for us. My beautiful white crab apple only had 2 days before the rain spoiled the flowers. Here is the last photo of the lilacs I took while the sun was out. The deep purple is already fading.

Tuesday....

I finished up this little bear and his stand today even with my daughter home from school. We ruled out a fracture yesterday but the bump on her head is huge still. While I worked on this bear she sat down and drew up ideas for other needle felted works. For 6 she has some pretty creative ideas.
My bride and groom birds on Etsy sold yesterday after reaching over 3000 views! They were linked to on a blog called MightyGirl. I was surprised to see such a huge jump in views so fast!


This is a photo of the wind chime thing I made up on Mother's Day. The spring was found by my husband along the old railroad track. He was good to carry this heavy thing the rest of the way on our walk. It makes a nice sound when the door straps clang against the spring.