Tuesday, April 29, 2014

THIS and THAT

While our PC and my  laptop have been under therapy for almost two weeks, I have not been idle.  A month or so ago I took a photo of our new bench in the back yard which overlooks the creek.  I liked this shot so much I decided to draw it.  It is about 4x6" in size and was drawn with prismacolor pencils.


There are now a couple of small bushes beside the tree on the slope of the bank down to the creek. We are told they are New Zealand Christmas trees.  They look very much like what we call the bottle brush tree, but are smaller in size.  Still they add some nice color on the bank and elsewhere in the yard.  We have four of them all together. 


The lavender ice plant has been a blaze of glory this spring, but it is over now.  And before that there was the vivid magenta ice plant (towards the right of the picture), although it is about over in this photo. The left side of the photo is lavender verbena or it might be lantana.  Not sure which.  We have planted three or four golden euonymous, some on the bank and a couple in pots.  Plants in pots take less water than having to water a whole large area, so since we are in a four year drought  we try to keep the use of water down.  The red pot on the left side of the photo has a kangaroo cactus in it.  Kind of an interesting succulent. Back behind it are an assortment of geraniums.  The blue in the top right is the water in the creek which was fuller than usual because it had just rained.

Here is a better close-up of the kangaroo cactus:

Don't you love my Mexican man too!

Our temps are in the 80's and 90's this week.  Scruffy is flaked out by the sun room door, which in spite of its name actually has a nice breeze coming through it.

Speaking of Scruffy, he has a new trick.  What a love!

There is nothing in my hand because we don't feed him treats or people food, but he gives the tips of my fingers kisses when I do this.

I think we are all fixed up about now on our computers.  It has been a while!  So maybe I will start posting more on my blog.

Blessings -- and I'll be back.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

CREATIVE TUESDAY -- BIRTHDAY CARD

Well, I really hope I've made it this week.  Our new hard drive is mostly up and running, but the scanner is not yet installed, so for now I have had to photograph my entries for Creative Tuesday.  The reproductions here are not quite all the color I actually produced, but I think you can get the idea.


FRIDAY 25th: Because I finally got my scanner working, today I pasted in below the copy of Wanda's birthday card after I was able to scan it .  What a difference!  

I have also done the same with the Nursery Rhyme picture further below.



Our theme was to design a birthday card for Wanda who has been a great supporter of Creative Tuesday for many months.

So -- a wonderful and blessed Happy Birthday for Wanda who has also walked along side me in my foray into blogging these past few years.  The background of the card is supposed to be a very pretty pink and the shading of the colors on the leaves have not reproduced as vibrantly as I had hoped.  But anyway, I' m sure Wanda will have an especially happy day with all her friends and family.

My entry for the last theme two weeks ago, Nursery Rhymes, was all ready to be posted when our hard drive died, so I have taken this opportunity to post it here this week.  I hope you don't mind.  Since I had put quite a lot effort into deciding what to do and then executing it, I decided I really wanted to post it, late or not.  So here it is:

  
Below is the scanned version:




Can you guess what nursery rhymes are represented here?

How about,
Polly put the Kettle On; Ding Dong Bell;  Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; Hey Diddle, Diddle; Little Boy Blue; Jack and Jill; Rain, Rain Go Away; I had a Little Nut Tree;  Humpty Dumpty; One, Two. Three, Four, Five...

It was a lot of work, but a lot of fun.

See you next time!

WHOOPS!  Forgot to do the link for Creative Tuesday.  Come over to see the other pieces of artwork illustrating our theme and why not consider joining us?  Here's the LINK