irises in boulder

Hi, there!

Eric and I just got back from a lovely trip to Colorado.

There was so much good about it, and the timing was

just right as today marks the end of the school year.

Good to get a nice dose of chilly weather and rain just

as we head into the ninety degrees of summer!

Also, the trip was a nice blend of structured and unstructured

activities, time with friends and with just the two of us,

lots of walks down bricked pathways in downtown

Boulder and Denver, and GREAT FOOD. 

This patch of irises was growing outside the window at 

one of the coffee shops we discovered, and it may be

the first watercolor I've painted in over a year. It felt

good to pull the ol' paintbrush out again. I hope to do so 

more in the months to come! Light-colored watercolors

don't scan well, so I've attempted to color correct; however,

you may get a better feel for it by clicking on the image for a close-up.

the flower boat

 Last week we took the old sandbox boat (the "Sandboat")

that the kids have grown out of and turned it into a flower boat.

 We moved it into the new garden, filled it with soil, and planted 

a bunch of flowers in it. As well as some canteloupe that

Elliott really wanted to try out. Maybe one of these days I'll

go after the boat with a paintbrush to spruce it up a bit. 

Until then, we'll let the flowers do that work for us!

 The original cover was too opaque, so I took the netting that was

previously used to cover the sand, added strips of burlap around 

the edges, and created a new sunshade. The main purpose of this

is actually to keep the rhus lancea seeds from the overhanging tree

out. It's not the most sophisticated sewing job, but it does the trick!!

 Here are a couple of closeups of the flowers we planted in there.

stop sign

These are a couple of signs I finished recently to go 
in the kids' wing of our church building. We have a 

cool, free-standing metal sign frame from an

old department store to put these in, 

one on the front and one on the back.

I've been working on them for -- I'm not kidding --

eight months now. It was somehow intimidating to

collage layers together after shutting off that

part of my brain. Which seems to have happened

once I started digging in to sewing. Anyway, last week I 

printed the stencils and cut them out with a craft

knife, and today I got to the spray paint part.

It was quite fun -- I might try out more spray 

paint in future collage pieces. Also, I'm trying to get

back into painting on a regular basis. I'm looking

forward to lots of fun projects with the kids this summer!

garden lights

 For the hubby's birthday this year, we planted a little garden on 

the west side of our house. Much of it is container-based, and it

looks like it will flourish into a beautiful nook. 

At the moment, my favorite part is these frosted cafe lights we hung.

Yummy!