Every year our family spends a long weekend in Michigan on the beach at my daughter's house. For the last couple of years I have brought a craft of some type for my nine grandchildren to do. It's great when the weather isn't desirable to go to the beach. This year I wasn't sure if what I chose as the craft would be something they would want to do. I kept it a secret until the moment I brought the supplies out and told them we would be painting on rocks. They loved the idea! I had planned they would maybe paint two, but they wanted to keep going and later at the beach picked up more rocks for them to paint on. They had a wonderful time and I was so impressed with their creations! It was such a fun time!

Marth Stewart I'm not. Grandma I am!

I recently went to Michigan where the whole family gets together at my daughter's house a long weekend in July. I thought my nine grandchildren would get a kick out of a rainbow cake I saw on Martha Stewart. You can get the recipe on her website and I highly recommend following her instructions that I did not. I think they made a buttercreme frosting and I thought I'd save time and trouble by using canned frosting. Well, it wasn't stiff enough and the six layers kept sliding. We finally put a straw down the middle of it and left for an afternoon at the beach. When we came back several hours later there was a stress fracture from the middle of the cake and who knows how long before the whole thing would topple. So, like the saying, "Life's short, eat dessert first", we did! It took three of us to cut and hold the sides together with big spoons, knives, but once it was on the plate it tasted wonderful and everyone did enjoy the rainbow colors!

Journal Pages

A Start of Another Journal

So I'm in a journal making kick phase now and even tho they're not great-they're fun to make! For this one I cut the cover off an old book. I pasted on torn scraps of wrapping paper, coated it with clear gesso, then added acrylic paint scraping over leaving paper showing thru. I pasted more wrapping paper on the inside of the covers. Then I taped the front and back together with colored duct tape about 1/4" or so apart. I cut a long strip of poster board the height of the cover, folded it the width, and then folded back and forth to make a zig-zag of paper and glued one page to the back cover. I then took different sizes of scrapbook paper and covered each page. I really need to start writing in them!

Baby Doves

June 27th in my post called "Birds of a Feather," I posted a picture of a dove nesting on our roof support. A robin built a nest right next to her but was very nervous and would fly away when you drove up the driveway each time. I guess that got old for her because she flew the coop! It seemed like the dove was nesting FOREVER and I was beginning to wonder if the eggs died and she couldn't come to terms with it and just kept nesting and waiting. Well, today I saw two babies (mom must have been food hunting) and they're adorable! Aren't they?

A Fun Journal I Made

While I was laid up with foot surgery, I watch "how tos" videos from Teesha Moore (you can find her on Youtube.com)on how to make some fun journals. So I tried my hand at it. I've not made a journal before so this was all new to me. And it was so fun! You make the border with pieces of patterns from magazines and whatever you can find, add pictures of people, etc. that you alter into something quite different. Teesha has a journal retreat that I would love to attend to become better at this. It was quite a fun time cutting and pasting while I recouped. Now for the writing....

Picture of Journal Pages

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Last month I posted a couple of pictures of my broccoli and zucchini plants. I started container gardening on my deck because I had ankle surgery and wouldn't be able to go down to the yard to maintain them. I was so excited when I got broccoli buds and zucchini flowers! Here are pictures of how they are today. I have two zucchinis! They're so cute, only 4 inches long and probably won't grow to be big, but they're a snack size! And the broccoli, well it started growing and then went right into flowers. But pretty flowers! I'm liking them!

Empty Nest Syndrome?

Seems like just yesterday they were so tiny and naked stretching their neck for food from mama. Now they're waiting patiently for mama's nudge to take their first flight. It was so fun to watch the nest being built, then encased in loose straw covering and soon hearing little peeps. Soon the nest will be empty again and I feel a little sad...am I having "empty nest syndrome"?