Something About Nothing

The grade school Band leader gave out discounted tickets for Lagoon , a local amusement park, which were only good this past Saturday. Lagoon is actually quite a large park and is quite entertaining if you are into that kind of thing. I suppose there was a time when I enjoyed amusement parks, but with each passing year I have found that rides just make me sick to my stomach. As a result the whole idea has lost it's appeal for me. As a result my younger children have not had the outings their older siblings had (although I am sure the older ones would beg to differ). When the tickets came home, I tried to think of everything I could to get out of the excursion - "I think I'm busy that Saturday. I may have to work." I didn't have to. "It's too expensive." They saved and pulled the money together to pay their own way. "It's going to rain." It didn't. It was a beautiful day. "I don't really want to go." But Mom you hav...

I decided to be a follower. This isn't something new really, I follow a lot. . .my children, my husband, my cats, magazines, blogs, facebook, twitter. Perhaps I should lead a bit more, but for now I am content to follow and play. My latest following is of Video Prompts from artist/author Melanie Testa over at Quilting Arts Magazine/TV/website. Melanie wrote a book called Inspired to Quilt: Creative Experiments in Art Quilt Imagery . In her blog, Melanie, has asked her readers to come and play along with the ideas she explores in her new book. Our first play prompt is to doodle and then based upon those doodles, make a craft foam stamp and a glue stamp. I have doodled: And based upon these doodles I am making stamps. I decided to use some foam stickers I have left over from another project for my first stamp. Aren't they the cutest little things? But I'm only going to use the egg shaped stickers. I found a wood flooring sample at home depot and decided it would be a per...

"A garden is never so good as it will be next year."-- Thomas Cooper This year, I'm looking forward to an explosion of blooms. I finally have all the tomatoes planted. I'm trying out a new spot on the side of the house. My neighbor had a large pile of soil left over from her water fountain project and so my husband, daughter and I shoveled up wheel barrow after wheel barrow after wheel barrow of soil and dumped it over to the side of the house. I didn't add compost or fertilizer so I'm hoping there is plenty of nutrients already in the soil. Keep your fingers crossed. I am also experimenting with a few plants in pots with a drip line installed in each to see how they grow. Remembering to water is usually one of my worst gardening faults. Not that I don't have other gardening faults - like "forgetting" to go out to weed when the weather gets over 90 degrees. I prefer to hide indoors when the temperature gets over 90 or under 45. Eight tomato pla...

Today was a beautiful day up the canyon. We haven't been up here in years. The first part of the hike is all uphill and I thought I might die. Here is a view of the parking lot from one of the places I stopped to catch my breath. You can see the cars through the trees. This part of the hike was nothing for these girls. They are all tough and in shape, unlike their mother. There were some beautiful flowers blooming. Here is another spot that was straight uphill and I thought I was going to die. See how far up we've come! The girls had to stop quite often and wait for their out of shape mother. The mountains were so beautiful. And there was a nice breeze blowing every now and again. There were also shaded and covered areas that were so beautiful! I finally made it to the other end! Now only 1.6 miles back. I think I'll die. Isn't this a beautiful view? This is why the trail is called the Pipe Line Trail - it used to have a big pipe that carried water. They ...

We discovered Millcreek Canyon in 2002. My littlest girls, age 5, loved playing in the creek and climbing the waterfall. My neighbor was the one who first took us there, and as we were leaving she told us the story of the Troll that lived under the bridge. My girls have talked about that Troll ever since. The questions just never stopped, until the Easter Bunny forgot his candy in our cupboard, and then everything changed. The same year we discovered Millcreek, we sponsored some students from China for a week. We took them to Millcreek, but I can't seem to find those photos (more than the leg in the above photo). When Grace and Violet climbed up the waterfall they became too scared to climb down. I had to send the twins up to help them get down. It was a very big ego booster for the twins. I have that episode on a video tape, but not on digital - yet. I love this photo of my girls with Grace and Violet in our backyard. We were all so young.

Last week I received my weekly " Quilting Arts Embellishments" e-newsletter which demonstrated a photo transfer technique I had never heard of. As with most new things that I find interesting it has occupied my mind almost 24/7. I searched through a few stores for the product the technique required without luck. I then searched the products website and not only found a list of stores which carry Citrasolv but I also discovered a few other things. Citrasolv's website has great coupons on their website as well as instructions for using Citrasolv to make photo transfers. I finally found the product at Harmon's yesterday and I am so excited to give the technique a try. After having my photo printed at the copy shop, I put everything together to try this exciting new technique. I stretched the fabric around my 16" square ruler to make the fabric nice and tight. Then taped the photo on to the top of the fabric. I applied the Citrasolv lightly to the paper w...