Nature Sketchbook

We found a dead bird in the front yard recently.  It had obviously flown into the window and perished.  The kids were pretty excited about this nature find, Pookie especially.  She spent a long time observing the bird and kept saying, "I've never seen a real bird this close before!"

My sister (who was here visiting for the week) whipped up a little sketch book for Pookie and then the two of them settled down, pencils in hand and proceeded to sketch the bird.

I was surprised to find that, a half hour later, Pookie was still contentedly sketching the bird.  It was the first observant drawing that had ever done and she was really enjoying it.  She really took her time examining the bird and adding all the details to her drawing.

A few days later, I started searching online bird identification guides in the hopes of naming our mystery bird.  Every time I settled on a bird, Pookie was quick to point out why it couldn't be that bird.  "No, it had spots here, remember? No, it was all brown here, remember?" No its eyes were yellow, remember?" she kept asking me.  And no, sadly, I didn't remember.  Without the pics I'd taken, I would never have been able to identify the bird.

We finally determined that our bird was a Brown Thrasher.

I wanted to keep the bird around for its skeleton, but sadly something took off with it during the night.

I think I'm going to make Pookie a larger nature sketchbook.

And I think I'd better make one for me too!

Change of color...

We're supposed to be moving here in just about a week, so I'm back to packing boxes.  Or maybe I should say I'm "repacking" boxes.  While I am very excited about the new home (more space!), I'm hating the process of boxing up everything again.
So for now all sewing, drawing, painting, crafting, you name it, has come to an end.  It's all in boxes.  Except this one thing...

...which you may remember.  It's been sitting unfinished for a very long time.  I kept intending to go out and buy more embroidery floss so I could work on it, but it just wasn't happening.  Finally, as I wasn't feeling wild about the color scheme anyway (what was I thinking? white and light pink? those colors would never show up! no one would ever even notice all my hard work!) I decided to just work with what I had.
And I have a huge pile of embroidery floss to work with.
I finally settled on using various shades of red and so far I'm liking it.  I'm still feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of flowers (yet again, I tried counting them, but there are just too many!), but I'm gonna give it another try.  And maybe, seeing as it's the only thing not in a box, I'll actually finish it this time.

Sunsets

Today was entirely unfun.  My husband had to work, which meant I largely forgot (or more likely ignored) the fact that it was Saturday.  By seven this evening I realized what a truly horrible day the kids had probably had--a Saturday stuck at the house with a very grumpy, short tempered mom, who insisted on doing housework all day, ugh!

Determined to squeeze some fun into the last few hours of our day, I rounded up everyone and drove down to the corner store for some ice cream treats.

Then we sat by the lake and enjoyed them.  And by the time we were done eating, talking, and giggling, Saturday seemed like a pretty good day after all.

Summer Skirts

Pookie is both incredibly tall and incredibly thin, so it's hard to find clothing for her that fits.  Occassionally, we find something that works, but more often that not we just end up with clothes that either fall off her or are way too short for her to wear.

My frustration with her wardrobe reached an all time high yesterday, so I finally just raided the fabric stash and made her a skirt.  I loosely followed the Lazy Days pattern over at Oliver + S and just one hour later, I had two skirts ready to wear.

Two identical skirts because Fig would not let me leave the sewing machine until I'd made her one too.

I ran out today and bought some more elastic so that I can whip up a few more of these.  Once we are settled I plan on getting out the patterns and making Pookie some dresses and stuff, but for now I'm sticking with these skirts.  I can whip one up in between packing boxes, which currently makes the Lazy Days skirt the perfect project for me!

And Back Again...For Now...

Well, I'm back...again.  My apologies for that really long break there.  It took two weeks to get internet access installed here at the new house and then, shortly after we got it, we lost it.  Some kind of problem with our internet service provider meant yet another week without internet.  So three weeks of no internet plus two weeks of packing, moving and unpacking equals a very long blog absence.  Sorry.

So what's happened since my last blog post?  Well, we have quickly progressed from winter to summer here.  I suppose it is technically still spring (the trees are still leafing out and the daffodils have only just begun to fade) but seeing as we went from wool coats one day to swimsuits the next, it does feel a bit like we skipped spring.

Not that I'm complaining mind you.  With the return of the warm weather, we've been able to spend a good portion of our days outside doing all the summery things we love.  We've already blown bubbles, licked popsicles, played in the sandbox, had a picnic, planted flowers, splashed in the kiddie pool, and covered the patio with chalk drawings.  Good stuff.

And when I haven't been busy outdoors playing or indoors cleaning up sticky faces, hanging up wet swimsuits, sweeping up dirt, and mopping up puddles, I've been working on a few summery projects.  Hopefully, over the next few days, I'll get a chance to share some them.

It's good to be back!

As concerns that "for now"-- I  might be missing from here, yet again, sometime soon. Word is we're moving...again, so at some point there might be yet another blog break while we pack, move and get settled...again. I'll let you know when I'll be disappearing though!