Gratitude #3672 ~ Summer Cherries



Scene:

A girl, donned in a pretty apron, is all alone in a house on a sunshiny summer day.  The smell of deliciously ripe Rainier cherries fill the air after having pitted them. 

She gently tosses the cherries with sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice

{ahhh... fresh lemons- makes her as happy as the cherries do}

salt and almond extract.

Plop, plop, plop

the cherries sound as they tumble into the baking dish.

She puts the ingredients away, taking one extra long sniff of the almond extract before tucking it away too.

As she dances around the kitchen in her bare feet to the tinkling chimes of Lenka's voice on the radio, she pulls flour, rolled oats, brown sugar, salt and butter out of the cupboards.

After mixing it all up, she stirs in some sliced almonds for good measure, pours it all over the top of the cherries and pops it into the oven.

Forty-five minutes can't speed by fast enough.

She is grateful for summer cherries.

This Summer....

I will

spend more time relaxing

read at least ten books

finish at least three WIPS

nap weekly

complete one art journal cover to cover

catch up on both my 365 projects

bake pies and cobblers

clean out and organize all the kitchen cupboards

stitch a sampler

make a quilt

What will you do this summer?

Summer Fun

Sometimes all one needs is...

a kiddie pool,
a rubber ladybug
and
a little, white pig.

*********

I know it's been awhile since I shared anything artsy.
I have been artsy, but everything I've been working on can't be or isn't at a stage to share just yet.
But I'm going here this weekend, so next week I hope to have some lovely creations to show you!
Have a beautiful Wednesday.

Summer's End

It now officially feels like Summer is coming to an end here.

It's been raining almost non-stop for a few days and the temperature has dropped some. That Autumn feel is beginning to emerge.

I'm ready to go to the State Fair, eat a Fletcher's corn dog and a funnel cake and watch the pig races.

Football season has started... we are three games in and Homecoming was this week.

Photo taken by the Farmboy.

Remember my "Summer To Do" list and my "Summer Reading" list? Let's recap, shall we?
On the "to do" list I think I managed to do about 4 1/2 of those items. And on the book list, I read 5 of them from cover to cover, started one and am halfway through another.
Hmmm, I had good intentions, but then again there was that unexpected health issue, so... I guess we'll see what Autumn brings.

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Seasons: Summer

First of all...

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

All of your comments, emails, prayers and thoughts have meant so much to me... thank you from the bottom of my heart! I have started regaining strength and, most days, feel like my old self again. Also, some good news, the Doc says I can put the surgery off until after Silver Bella! (That gives me "happy feet"!)

Now, let me show you a bit of "Summer". I got together with the ladies I'm doing the Seasons altered books with, and we swapped. We each did the first season, Summer, in our own books. Here's mine...

(sorry for the not so great photo)
When I think of Summer colors, two very different color combos come to mind. Turquoise and red with a bit of crisp white... makes me think of boardwalks and saltwater taffy and old striped beach cabanas. The other, and the one that always plucks my heart strings the loudest, are the colors of the Caribbean. This is the direction I went, softly.

I took the last quatrain, of Shakespeare's Sonnet 18, out of context to use on the page...
"But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives and this gives life to thee."

Here are some close ups.

The image is from AlphaStamps.

Layers of papers, gesso, paint and watercolor. Waves of sand and fine silver glass glitter.

I wrote the quote out with my dip pen. I've been doing a lot playing with this. Initially we did not see eye to eye and did a lot of fighting. I really wanted it to produce gorgeous mid 1800s penmanship. It refused. And that's okay, now. It showed me that I can be happy with my own handwriting.

The morning of the swapping, I decided I needed something to transport and keep my journal in, so I took a retired pillowcase and turned it into an envelope and closed it up with a pin and some millinery.

Next up, for this swap, will be Autumn in Nina's book.

If you are here in the US, enjoy the rest of your holiday weekend!

Home

We've been gone for a little over a week, but we are back home now. We took a trip up to Santa Fe and then to Durango, Colorado. It was a lot of fun!

I hadn't been to either town, which was good... I love exploring new places.

Santa Fe was more of just a stop over. We were there for only one night, but we showed up on just the right weekend. It was the last day for the Santa Fe International Folk Art Market. The boys humored me (E, a little more reluctantly than the Pirate or the Farmboy) and we spent half of the day there, before moving on to Colorado.


Here are a few photos of the Market. Everything was so colorful and festive. Each booth represented a different country. And the work of all of these people were simply amazing!










And this was what I purchased... love it! We met the artist, Claudio Jimenez Qiospe. He is from the Republic of Peru. Amazing work!


Santa Fe is where I stopped taking photos. I LOVED it there! I loved everything about it... the desert, the adobe and stucco, the people. I would fit in perfectly there. Unfortunately, the Farmboy and I don't see eye to eye on Santa Fe. He is from Colorado originally and the mountains are what he loves. Retirement time may be an issue for us.... we'll see. ;)

Please bear with me, I am SO far behind on reading everyone's blogs and you three ladies, whom I owe a little handmade something too, they are going in the mail this week... I promise!

Have a beautiful Monday!

Summer Reading

Here is my list.

Spanish Daggar by Susan Wittig Albert. This is a China Bayles mystery. I like this series. Easy reading with interesting herbal knowledge.

Three To Get Deadly by Janet Evanovich. A Stephanie Plum mystery. Another easy read series I love. Can be a bit crude at times, but I love a book that makes me bust out laughing.

The Body in the Bookcase by Katherine Hall Page. A Faith Fairchild mystery. Can you tell I like mysteries? This series shares some good recipes.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. Classic. Love this book and it's been several years since I read it, so it's time again.

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall. This is a young reader book, but it's a "summer tale" and sounds nice.

A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle. I've been wanting to read this one for awhile now.

The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton. I picked this one up at Target the other day, on a whim. Sounds like it may be a bit Ya-Ya Sisterhoodish.

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. I've been trying to read this book for years now! I'm going to do it this summer!

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. What is a book list without some Austen in it, I ask?

Little, Big by John Crowley. I have owned this book for over 10 years now. Every time I purge the bookcase, I hang on to this one and say I'm going to read it and then promptly forget about it. I bought it when I was in the "fantasy" phase.

The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. I read her first book, Garden Spells, last summer. I read it in 10 hours. I really enjoyed it, obviously. I'm hoping this one is just as good.

Collaborative Art Journals by L.K. Ludwig. As soon as I heard this was out, I ran to B&N as fast as I could. Enough said.

So, there you have it. More than likely, I will "revamp" Twilight and New Moon too, since the movie is coming out in November.

If you have any books you think I should add to my list, please don't hesitate to leave the title!

And before I go, Thank You for all the well wishes. I woke up this morning and feel SO much better than I have the past few days!

Have a beautiful Sunday!

This Is What I'm Doing...

It's not really what I would like to be doing.

This is what I want to do...
*have picnics at the park with my boys
*bake (weekly)
*read ALL the books on my Summer reading list
*organize the kitchen
*make the last two kits I purchased from Posie: Rosie Little Things
*sew a skirt
*start a quilt
*bike down to the ice cream parlor (and then eat some)
*art journal (I slacked off again)
*relax in the hammock at least once a week
*paint the dining room
*eat lots of grilled veggies from the farmer market
*watercolor (it's been a very, very long time)

This is my "Summer To Do" list. It's started off, well, not quite in the direction I had hoped for. But we'll see what happens.

What are your Summer plans?

I *Heart* Berries

In fact, the whole family does.

Berries signify Summer for me. Despite that, we eat them year round. But, our intake definitely increases in the summertime.

We eat them all kinds of ways. Straight off the plant if you are E... by the handful (literally) if you are a Farmboy. One of our favorite ways is for dessert, on top of a slice of wondrously light and fluffy Angel Food Cake. The other night I made fruit and yogurt parfaits for dessert. They were good. The Farmboy's comment was, "Mmmm, wonderful! So much better than McDonalds." Uhh, yeah. I'll take that as a compliment... regardless of standards.

I love to put strawberries in my salad. Here's a good one...

(measure as you like)
Fresh Baby Spinach
Fresh Strawberries (hulled and quartered)
Sliced Red Onion
Bacon Bits and/or Walnut Pieces
Crumbled Feta Cheese

Toss all of this up with some Poppy Seed Dressing

DIVINE!!! If you need it to be a bit more heartier, slice up a grilled chicken breast and plop it on the top. Again, DIVINE!

So, is there a food that signifies Summer for you? Do tell!

ScrapJacked Challenge

Here's my Dina Wakley jack.
Thanks ladies!



Took these pics back in the summer of 2005. Brian's nephew came down to stay with us that summer. As with every summer, the kids and Bri had lots of fun pool time.