I see all kinds of cool things while we are driving down the road. Usually I don’t get the camera out fast enough to take a picture or just end up with a blurred image because, well, we are traveling down the road. I got lucky with this one because it was along side a gas station we stopped at.

This was the view at the first hotel we stayed at in Colorado Springs. When we were checking out the lady asked us how our stay had been and I truthfully answered that it had been like sleeping in a pot hole. I have a hard time understanding how hotel mattresses can be broken down so much more than a home mattress. I spent the night trying to steal Recliner Man’s side of the bed and the nice lady at the front desk refunded half of our money so it all worked out.

We spent two days cleaning out The House of Many Treasures. We were covered in grime and worn out but we could actually see a bit of difference where we had been. It was just a drop in the bucket though and I really feel for the other family members who have had the task of dealing with this for weeks. It can not be completed by the time the moving van shows up so they will sort through the pikes looking for things that need to be taken and return to deal with the mess after she has been shipped off to her new home.

One of the treasures that came out of the house was a sewing cabinet she decided to give to my daughter. We put it in the car and brought it with us to Illinois. Now we are enjoying a few days visitng with my daughter and her husband.

Whenever we visit they take us on the Shawnee Hills Wine Trail.  There are many fine wineries in Southern Illinois and most of them offer free wine tasting. We stopped at Hedman Vineyards and enjoyed a terrific lunch with Peach Wine. The kids are moving upstate soon so we took the opportunity to stock up on some of our favorite wines. We have fallen in love with the Chardonel from Blue Sky Vineyard. It makes an awsome White Sangria. Recliner Man made sure we also stopped at The Pomona Winery to pick up some of their Strawberry Dessert Wine.

There are still a lot of miles to go. On Monday we will be heading up to Wisconsin for a few days and then back down to Illinois for the big event, my son-in-law’s graduation. That hotshot has a 4.0 GPA and is graduating with double honors. I never feel very smart around this kid but I love him like my own.

This is another technique from Artist Trading Card Workshop by Bernie Berlin.  It is similar to the last one in that you begin with pictures from magazines and then alter them with some of your own work. In this one we covered the image with a thin layer of gesso then added doodles with markers and paint.

I was feeling less than creative with my doodles but the real trouble for me was drawing on the gesso layer. My fine point marker kept clogging up with the dried gesso and before long stopped working. Has anyone else done this technique? I’d love to know what marker you have used and how it worked out for you.

Painting over the gesso was fun. It might be worth playing around some more with.

Dang, I wish I had thought to take some before and after pictures. Oh well… next time….

I’m sorry I haven’t been posting. We’ve been planning to go on a trip soon and it suddenly got moved up a few days. That as kept me really busy trying to get things done in time. I did manage to get an ATC made for a swap I had scheduled for this morning. I decided since Earth Day had been this week I’d do a ‘Mother Nature’ card.

Posting will be spotty for the next couple of weeks. We leave on Sunday and will be stopping first in Nebraska to see what we can do to help there. My crazy relative with the hoarding issue is being relocated to TX. She isn’t real happy but there are no alternatives. One of the things that really annoys me about this is that I’ve been trying to sound the mental illness alarm for 30 years without any help. Of course the crazy person doesn’t think she is crazy and her husband found it better to ignore the problem than to deal with her wrath. That just allowed the problem to get bigger and now her entire world is falling apart. Why are people so afraid to get psychological help when they need it? Oh well, I lost my train of thought and went off on a rant.

What I meant to say is that after a stop in NE we will be heading to IL to help my son-in-law celebrate his college graduation. His life took some reality turns and he had to put school off in favor of a paycheck for several years. He found his way back and now he is graduating with honors and a great job all lined up and waiting for him. We are so happy for him and are really looking forward to sharing this milestone with him. By the time the trip is done half of May will have flown by. I’m not sure when I’ll be able to post or what I’ll have to share but I’ll try to check in once in a while.

There are 2003 ATC blanks and that means Charlotte is our winner. Way to go Charlotte! You are quite a math whiz, or a deep thinker, or something. Send me your mailing address and I’ll get the mini misters on their way to you.

When my daughter was in the 7th grade her Home Ec  class did a section on sewing. Even though she had been raised in a house with a sewing machine and had worn many clothing items sewn by her mother she came home from school with all the enthusiasm and excitement of a child who had just discovered cookies for the first time. She was so excited that she told us she really, really, really wanted a sewing machine for her Christmas gift that year. Because we always tried to keep our princess happy we bought her one. She was thrilled. She put it in her closet. It sat there for 14 years.

In many ways my daughter is like her father. One of the traits they share is what I call “faucet cleaning.” Faucet cleaning became a family code word one day when we were expecting my out of town in-laws to arrive and I was way behind on the house preparations. I still needed to fold laundry, vacuum, pick up toys and  make the bed. I asked Recliner Man to help me and gave him the list to choose from. I was running around like crazy getting things done, all the while wondering where he was and which items I wouldn’t need to worry about. After completing the entire list by myself I went and found him. He was hard at work scrubbing the water deposits off the back side of the kitchen sink faucets. Oh yes, I was sooooo worried his folks would come in the kitchen, twist their heads around just so, and see the water deposits!  Since then he has perfected the ability to work very hard at anything but what is really needed to be done. The time came that my daughter had something that she needed to do but didn’t really want to do and being Daddy’s Little Girl she did her own version of faucet cleaning. She pulled out the sewing machine and taught herself to sew.

With that act of procrastination Anodyne Design was born. She now sells purses and card wallets on Etsy. I love her card wallets and was very happy when she made one just for me. They are the perfect size to hold business cards. I’m really impressed with her sewing skills and quite proud of her.

So what does my dear friend Chris do? She emails me this photo and  tells me it’s easy, just walk outside with a bird feeder in one hand and a camera in the other! OK, so she wasn’t quite so sassy in her email.. but geeze… such a show off!

It’s my Lifetime Supply of ATC blanks. Do you have any idea how many cards that is? It’s a lot, I know, but do you think you know exactly how many? If you do you might just win a prize.

I’ll run this contest until 8pm (Pacific Time) on Monday, April 21, 2008. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment telling me how many cards you think there are. Whoever is closest to the actual number  will win the prize. If there is a tie I’ll toss the winner’s names into a bag and draw a winner.

Here is what you could win:

Mini Misters are fantastic. They have a very fine mist and are perfect for spraying water, inks and watered down paints. You get a nice even coverage without the heavy splatters that a lot of sprayers give you.

So start guessing.  (Here’s a couple hints to help get you started: There are NOT 4,765 ATC blanks in that photo! The three rows of cards are in a gallon sized food storage bag.)

This beauty is a Mourning Dove. We have several of them that visit our yard. You can usually find one sitting on the back wall or in the front yard sitting under the Jacaranda tree. I like the doves.

While I was looking at the Dove I heard a lot of bird noise coming from the side yard. A couple of Sparrows were fighting with a large Hummingbird. They both seem to be nesting in the same area.

It is really hard to get a photo of the hummers. They are so small and fast that the camera won’t auto focus and most times I am not quick enough to get the camera in focus on my own before they fly off. Add to that the fact that they like to sit in the tangle of dead branches (yep, that wonderful outdoor type neighbor)  and that makes the photo look very washed out. I’ll keep trying.

Something about that Palm tree doesn’t look quite right and I’m not just talking about the dried bits. (I’m trying to convince Recliner Man we need to take the Palms out because they haven’t looked good for a few years… but that is another story.)

There is a Dove’s nest up there. Mother Dove was keeping a very close eye on me. And what a big eye it was!

Part of the commotion was due to this fellow. He is a Great-tailed Grackle.  These birds are known to raid nests for eggs and nestlings so none of the smaller birds are very happy to see them come swooping through.

This is a female Great-tailed Grackle.  They are large, loud birds.

What is she looking at?

It’s one of those flying rats Pigeons.  We don’t like the Pigeons. For the first several years that we lived here the neighborhood was overrun with Pigeons. Our roofs were covered with them… and with their leavings. They are messy, nasty birds. Recliner Man decided to try and get them to leave our house so he and The Boy went up on the roof. The roof is made of tiles and even on a cool day it gets very hot up there. They spent two mornings cleaning off the roof and hosing all the mess down to the driveway for further cleanup. Our neighbor came over and said, “Where did all that Pigeon poop come from!?!” There was a lot of it. “From Pigeon butts” was Recliner Man’s answer. All that nasty, hot work had left him a little grumpy. Once he had it clean he covered the roof in bird netting and the Pigeons all moved over to our neighbor’s roof.

We had a pair of Mallards visit us one evening.  Boy did they look out of place! We live in a desert and our yard is covered in gravel. Not exactly the prime location for water fowl. I think they must have come from the open canal that runs along the edge of our neighborhood.

These cards are by Chris Herrmann, Charlotte Fern,  Fefe Leducq and Connie Cook.

These cards are by Billie Hall, Me and Me

When I admitted to being drawn into the “Vintage Lady” fad you didn’t really think I meant the whole ladylike vintage lace and bird’s nests look, did you?

I love all of these cards! Thanks to everyone who played along with me.