Head full of flowers

I've started an online class this week - Color Drop Flowers with Martha Lever.  This is so much fun, except for the fact that these pesky work obligations keep me from playing.  These are my first efforts.  I see all the things that can be done better, but for a beginner, I'm happy with them.  And I loved all the special techniques Martha uses.  I still need a good oriental brush - I can't believe that I have almost a dozen of them, but none are what I need (none make a good point at the end).  I did find a squirrel brush at Michael's that I've used some.  It's close to being a good substitute, but some of my petals look a little, well, squirrely.  Go figure.  I'm using the other brushes more for now, just to get comfortable with the technique.

Also, once I saw someone else doodling on leaves, I couldn't help myself. All my practice leaves now look just like birds to me. That's all I can see now. Birds, birds, birds...

Where's Your Head?

This is where I make a journal entry about being absent-minded.  It's one thing to come home with something that wasn't what you thought it was.  But several things?  I must have been either distracted, tired, or my mind was a million miles away thinking about something else. 

You are given permission to either laugh with me or at me!  Just don't tell anyone how loopy I am.

Blogger Ate My Homework

I had a new post here yesterday.  I'm sure I didn't imagine it.  Blogger says it is "fixing" something.  And in the interim, they had to remove recent posts from everyone's blogs.  They say they are in the process of restoring them.  In case they don't restore my post, just know that it was the most clever post I have ever, ever made!  At least I think it was.  I don't remember now what I posted.  It had something to do with this giant coffee bag...

Adventures in CoffeeLand

I'm so clever.  I keep accumulating interesting coffee bags.  I recently finished off coffee from Maui (yes, Miss J.La, it IS as good as Kona coffee) and from Alaska (coffee from Alaska?  Who knew... And yes, it is also very excellent!)

My cleverness came into play when I decided to order a burlap coffee bag and make a book cover for my coffee book (you know, the coffee book I am going to make some time in the future).  But I'm not as clever as I thought.  Evidently I did not read the description of the burlap bag very closely. 

See that little wooden stick in the middle of the picture?  That's a 12 inch ruler.  So the burlap bag is the size that Juan Valdez throws on the back of his donkey.  We are talking very large.  A couple of coffee beans even fell out when I unfolded it and held it up!

Maybe I'll make a tote bag instead.  A very, very, very large tote bag....

It's a Sign

Random things

that never

made it to

the blog.

This is not a Lake

I left the flooded Ohio River Valley to visit family in West Tennessee, near the flooded Mississippi River Valley.  Sometimes it's hard to comprehend all the destruction in the news from tornados and earthquakes around the world.  On a smaller scale, there is flooding in western Kentucky and Tennessee.  I know, because I drove through a lot of it.  This is not a lake. This is farmland.  Farmers should be planting their crops right now.  But they can't.  Water as far as the eye can see in some places.

I didn't realize how much wind damage Tennessee had. I saw lots and lots of huge trees snapped in half from the wind. Other trees just fell over, roots and all, partly from the wind, partly from soggy gound--or maybe from both.

But, as always, the trip had many up sides. Nothing is better for the soul than lots of laughs with family. We had a lot of fun trying to come up with our Royal Wedding Names (I saw it online somewhere--take your grandmother's first name or grandfather's if you are a male, then your first pet's name hyphenated with the street where you grew up. You know, something like "Dixie Pledge-VanHook". We moved a lot and had lots of pets we couldn't remember, so we had lots of options. None sounded very regal though!)

I would show you a picture of the most excellent catfish dinner from this retaurant out in the country--if I had not scarfed it down so fast, that is.
 

I took dozens of pictures of birds on my mom's deck, but rarely got any good ones in focus before the birds flew away.  At one point there were five of these indigo buntings on the deck at once.  They are the sweetest little birds and such a beautiful blue.

So, after driving in horrible rain all day and getting drenched when I stopped for gas, I'm ready to snuggle up in my jammies and take a snooze! 

P.S. - Those of you familiar with Land Between the Lakes?  Lots of "lakes", not much "land" right now!