Backgrounding...

"Backgrounds" day at Susan's house. Today my friend Susan invited some friends over to share what she has been learning. She had some techniques to share, and many willing students. Below is just one of her samples. I think I took pictures of everything (for future reference) but I can't post them ALL here. She demonstrated at least a dozen great techniques.

Then she turned us loose with her supplies and tools, on her dining room table, and provided us each with a folder of ephemera and other goodies, like bubble wrap for printing with!

Some of the things I used are pattern tissue, a doily, a child's spelling test, music paper, a map, rub-0ns, acrylic paint spread with a credit card, with a cork, and with a plastic lid; and she provided us each with a canvas to work on.

At first it was SO UGLY, but the more I added, the more I liked it!

My semi-finished product! I am still going to add a top layer - a focal point, some words, maybe more music and I like to add in a postage stamp or two.

Later tonight maybe.

And the prize for all this creativity is a pot-luck lunch! You know when a bunch of women get together, the food is going to be good! It was!

The dessert was tasty and as colorful as our artwork was.

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Spring hiking around town

The weather promised to be "decent" today, so we planned to go for a town hike. Phil and I met at Marathon Park. We started around the lake, and them turned RIGHT to head up the hill (lots of switchbacks) to the Capital Campus. The view from below the Capital Building...

Along the way we saw a few things sprouting - I especially liked these. Horsetails? Or alien reptiles?

The trees around the campus were blooming with these beautiful blossoms!

The sky was so blue!

I've taken so many photos here, but I don't think I've ever gotten this lamp before. Intriguing!

and this is the base of it.

We walked around the campus, then around town, and started heading back towards the lake and saw this Fire Department exercise going on in this empty building. The firemen were climbing down the ladder, all decked out with masks and oxygen tanks. I took about a dozen pictures.

My last photo of the trip. It was beautiful. We are going to hike somewhere on Sunday too, which promises to be the nicest day of the year so far.

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Continue scrolling down for another post - I did two today. See what I did just before this trip.

A trip to Goodwill...

I had about 20 minutes this afternoon before my next appointment (meeting Phil for a walk around Capital Lake) and I dashed into the Hawks Prairie Goodwill. There was a 40% off everything in the store sale going on. As good as a garage sale! (almost). I bought these three demitasse cups. They are so cute, and lots of gold on them. There were quite a few of them there - someone's collection from a trip to Europe I think. This is exactly what I would want to bring home for souvenirs if I went to Europe!

Bavarian china. They each cost me $2.

I also found a neat skinny cigar box. It was sixty cents!

I bought this "record" book - totally unused - 500 lined pages - a very cool journal to fill. $1.50.

A close up of one of the china cups...

And a close up of another one. I only got three - I just couldn't stop trying to find good shots of them. Its probably a good thing I didn't understand that EVERYTHING in the store was 40% off, or I would have probably bought lots more. I would have liked to spend more time in the books. At 40% off, the hardcover books would have been a good deal.

What am I going to do with them? Well, I might try selling them on my new Etsy Shop. There's nothing on the "shelves" yet. I have some ideas for the cigar boxes too...

The first few pages of my journal...

I made the covers to my book before I left on my trip. Its not quite finished, but this is about the first half of it.
The page below is about all I accomplished in Minnesota. I finished the rest after I got home.

My favorite photo of me with the grandchildren, all seven of them!

Below is the baby page, and some of my thoughts about travelling and my first day there.

Day two, a trip to the park...

A trip to Starbucks, and a library pocket with what else we did that day...

hmmm, maybe this is the first third, not the first half... I'm really having a lot of fun making it, but that won't compare to the joy I have in the future when I relive my visit!

What do you do with your Easter eggs after Easter? When I was growing up, we always had potato salad for Easter Dinner. Except the time we three girls ate all the hardboiled eggs before our parents got out of bed. Unfortunately Phil can't stand hardboiled eggs. So, tonight I made myself an egg salad sandwich for dinner. Phil was not home. It was very very yummy. What do you do with your hard boiled eggs?

Family + Brunch = Lots of Laughing

Daffodils, wild currant, japonica, sweet cicely, hellebore on a bunny's back... Exotic eggs in a nest of twitters and song...
A daisy blooming unexpectedly on the dinner table...

Sweet family of 3 about to become four.

Rush Hour...Apples to Apples...Mikado...sharing photos from

childhood..lots of laughing.

Happy

Apple Blossoms and Easter

Easter Festivities Even though I no longer have children at home, when Easter comes around, I have to color eggs! I have been using the same method/process for a few years, and I feel like I about have it right.
So many years (it seems like) I would be scrambling
the Saturday before Easter and all the egg dye kits would be sold out!
If only I'd had this recipe back then.

I love the "marbleized, eggs from an exotic chicken" look of them. The only ingredients are water, vinegar, food coloring, and olive oil. (Thank you Martha Stewart). It was still fun to do, and will decorate my table tomorrow.

Here is what I am making for Easter Brunch:

Orange juice

Spiral Ham

Farmer Blanchard's Breakfast Casserole

Steamed Artichokes

angel cakes

coffee

Today we had a grand turkey dinner at retired husband's brother's house. It was a gloriously sunny day which is not promised for tomorrow. These apple blossoms are from their garden.
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Tomorrow Alan and Sara and Tori will come here for Brunch.

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I love the holidays that bring families together.
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Photography instead of Valium...

My trip home.

I was very sad to leave, but we consoled and entertained ourselves on the ride to the airport with hilarious carsick...nausea...vomiting stories all the way to the airport. There's not much time for long goodbyes at the airport, which was a good thing.
How can you say goodbye to this sweet face?

Or this exuberant character?

Luckily my camera took a good picture I could see later,
because when I was taking this my eyes were filling up with goodbye tears.


I am usually somewhat nervous flying. The takeoffs for some reason are unnerving to me. I planned to listen to my zune turned up loud to soothe and comfort me. But, no personal music devices allowed until you reach 10,000 feet! So, I just took photos from my window seat.

That was great fun and although my palms sweated a bit,

I enjoyed the view so much I didn't really mind the take-off.

Notice the St. Paul area hasn't greened up much yet.

St. Paul - Minneapolis area freeways from the air.

Then, up above the clouds and for a long time all I could see was blue and white. I visited with the people next to me. A mother and son flying from Florida to check out University of Washington as a potential college for the son. They were great fun to talk to, having flown 8 times in one week checking out various universities. The mother confessed Al Franken was her cousin!

Somewhere over Montana (? just a guess) it cleared up and we could see tracts of land and mountains with a sprinkling of snow and rivers below.

Coming into Seattle was a beautiful sight. Puget Sound, all the docks around the water's edge, boats in the water with long wakes behind them.

And my sweet hubby happy to see me.

We went out to lunch right away.

Jack-in-the-box drive through.

I was pretty hungry and it was just the right thing!

I liked my friend's suggestion that I should go see my kids twice a year. I think she is so right and why didn't I think of that myself?

Working on it!

A snapshot of my week...

Baby of course. It is amazing how we see her change every day. Now she will grasp a finger, turn her head in the direction of her mama's voice, look at you intently, kinda smiling a little! We really packed our days. Below are just a few of the 200+ photos I have taken on my visit here.

T. taught me how to knit a hat on a loom. (I made three). We liked to do this while watching movies in the evening (Night in the Museum I and II, The Chronicles of Narnia movies).

The little ones had more fun with a bottle of soap bubbles. The day we went to the park was brisk, and you could even let the wind blow the bubbles for you!

Crafts! They were wild about this activity. cutting, gluing, punching, creating wonderful pages in their journals of Grandma's visit.

J. works at Jet's Pizza and we had pizza, breadsticks and cinnajets delivered one night when the parental units were out of town...

I got to attend the last day of the older kids' bowling league. I hope I didn't embarrass them too much with my cheering and whooping for every strike and spare.

The only two trophies awarded were to two of my grandchildren!

I had a lot of fun at the bowling alley and it was all over way too quickly.

I started craving Jet's thick crust eight square pizza - crispy bacon...

we had to get it one more time.

Watercolor painting was an exciting activity too. T and I even got in on this action. Everyone loved it and ended up with some pretty creative paintings.

It's a bittersweet moment to be leaving all this fun and activity. I hate to think the baby will probably be walking by the time I see her next. But my daughter has bounced back quickly and is more than capable of carrying on without help. It will be a good thing for them to get back into their non-grandma centered routines, and I am looking forward to being back at home and my own routine as well.

If you want to see some photos of me with all the grandchildren, pop on over to my daughter's blog at My Life on a Taffy Pull. Today she posted a very sweet blog and a couple of nice photos of the grandma-grandchild team.