Something About Nothing

I had a wonderful visit with family last week in southern California. Em with a piece of the Berlin Wall at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. I LOVE the graffiti on this piece!  Can't go to Cali without sticking my feet in the sand!  Among our many activities we decided to do an evening of painting. We decided to do four collaborative paintings. We each took a canvas and painted on it for 5 minutes before passing it along to the next artist.  Nothing the last person did was sacred.     We had a great time and learned a lot too!   Next time we do this we will stop after one round of painting. Two rounds on the same canvas was too much.   The paintings were a lot of fun and I hope to have another play date like this with my family here in Utah.  Have you ever made a collaborative painting?

     My Mother and Grandmother were not really sewers or quilters although they had their moments of trying. Grandma told me she made quilts during her years as a stay-at-home mom living in a holler in West Virginia but it wasn't a skill she kept when she moved to the big city of Chicago during the 1950's.  After I made a few quilts in the late '70's, she decided to make one from patches of cloth she cut out from her polyester pants suits.       We affectionally called it "The Ugly Quilt." Grandma Marie raking the back yard in West Virginia      Unfortunately the quilt was not attached securely to the top of our car when we were moving one year and was blown away on the freeway, lost for all time.  I'm still very sad about losing that quilt, even if it was ugly, it was the only quilt I had from Grandma.  Grandma's real skills were in the kitchen.      She was a really good cook. ...

*Doing the Happy Dance* *Squealing like a little girl!* My copy of  Zen Doodle: Tons of Tangles   arrived over the weekend! My artwork was selected to be a part of this book!   I love doodling and putting together a piece for this book was really fun. I am humbled to be included with so many wonderful artists. There are instructions for every beautiful tangles included in the book. I will be spending a lot of relaxing evenings learning to draw all the tangles included. You can order your copy of the book here   and don't forget to download the free bonus content here ! The bonus content is awesome! Do you enjoy doodling and/or Zen Tangling? Can you handle ONE more exciting thing today?!? I am participating in a Blog Hop called: "My Family Quilt" Everyone will be posting about quilts they have been given by or made for family.  Lots of sweet stories will be shared.  I hope you will take the time over the next 8 da...

We started out with just my little family and then one neighbor came out, and then the neighbor's family drove by and joined us and more neighbors came until we had a good sized group.  We didn't have glasses to use but I read online that you could reflect the solar eclipse through a pair of binoculars onto a piece of paper.  We were so surprised when it worked! Our neighbor did have some welding glass we could look through and I attempted to photograph it through this glass but it didn't seem to work, but that didn't stop me for trying again and again.  Even though you can't see the eclipse in these I love the green surreal feeling to them.  A photo of the sun without the glass didn't do any better.  The binoculars onto the paper on the other hand worked fabulously and I was able to take lots of fun photos.  We thought the shadow looked like Wall-E from the Disney movie.  Our neighbor, Marco, to...