Touring the Front Garden.

It's finally done.

After months of work . . . and months of procrastination . . . the front garden is finally done.

As a matter of fact, it's nearly immaculate. For the first time ever.

Here's the thing. I love, love to plan out a garden. I love playing with different ideas and trying to find ways to use a variety of plants and plan for bloom time as early and as late as humanly possible in my northern prairie garden. I do not love heavy digging or weeding. At all . . . I certainly don't find it therapeutic as so many do. But, I love to look at beautiful gardens. I love to pick bouquets for myself and my friends. And nothing is better than an early morning in the garden, still in pj's, sitting by the pond, with a cup of tea and homemade bread slathered with butter and homemade strawberry jam. Unless of course, I also have a good book to read.

So I compromise. I accept that my garden will always be a little weedy and slightly disheveled. I count on strong design and shrubs to draw the eye away from lurking thistles and that crazy purple bellflower that looks so great . . . until it takes over the entire garden and nothing you do will ever get rid of it.

 I leave room for serendipity in my garden. I can plan each detail until I think the design is perfect and turn around to discover that birds have planted seeds from a garden blocks away, and that one small thing can take a garden from lovely to sublime, even if  just for a day or two. I see God so clearly in those moments. A reminder that He is the ultimate Gardener, and those moments were created specifically for me, because he loves me.

 Serendipity can only happen in a slightly messy garden.

So messy is good right??

But, for the first time, I'm also seeing joy in maintaining my garden. So I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts, because as much as I might tell myself that this time I'm going to keep it up for the entire gardening season, I know myself well enough to know how unlikely that is.

While my garden is at it's best, I thought I'd give you all a little tour . . .

I made the concrete leaves as well as the hands decorating the front gazebo. I love a reason to play around with a little concrete.

And . . . for those of you thinking I'm exaggerating my inability to keep a well tended garden, feel free to drop by for tea in the back garden. But bring your machete with you. You'll need it to make your way to the gazebo . . .

Before

 I hope you enjoyed your little tour!

Life without Friendship is like the Dawn without the Sun.

So begins a poem on friendship by Marsa

I don't know about you, but I've found that making time for friends is something that's the first to go when life gets busy.

And these days, when isn't life busy??

I have several wonderful friends, all of them the kind you can go for months without seeing and then pick up right where you left off.

It's a precious gift.

However . . . there's nothing better than regularly spending time with the people you love , so a couple of months ago I made a commitment to myself to visit with a friend at least once a week. And the visit has to be a face to face visit. Virtual visits don't count here. (I'm not knocking a virtual visit mind you, that's the only way I get to hang out with my sisters most of the year.)

So far I'm doing quite well. I missed this week but it was a week filled with new people, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so that was nice too.

I'm still hard at work on my Photo Artistry course and as a way to practice some of my Photoshop skills, I tried out a tutorial on making a beautiful thank you card.

I made mine for all my dear friends.

Life wouldn't be the same without you . . .

Valentine's Day Party Printables

It looks like I'm getting this posted just under the wire but it's still Friday! I missed it by 7 minutes! Arghhh. . . .

I ran into a bit of technical difficulty in Photoshop when I wanted to do something and couldn't figure out how to do it. This is nothing new mind you, and most of the time Google is my friend. Sometimes though, no matter what words you type in, nothing comes up that helps . . . and that's when you try to call an expert.

The only problem is, I don't know to many people who know Photoshop, and none who use it for design type things. They sensibly use Illustrator.

However, I still managed to make these fun Valentines printables based on 1 Corinthians 13:4a and 7.

Minus the cupcake wrappers though . . . No amount of Googling helped me figure out how to curve a rectangle. Boooo!

I'll be hosting a Valentine's Party of my own with these, although I'll be holding mine early so I won't conflict with anyone else's plan. Valentines Day may be about all kinds of love but the sweethearts still like celebrating with each other. ;D

I'm going to bring these to Staples to have them printed. It will be a whole lot cheaper and they print much nicer than my home printer.

I hope you all enjoy these. If you use them for a party, share with everyone and post them on my Facebook page!

You can download the link here: Valentine Party Printables

Enjoy!

Learning how to make a Poster in Photoshop

I've always had a fascination with the visual arts. Graphic art in particular.

I've never even thought of graphic art as something I could do. After all, even my stick men are barely recognizable!

And yet . . . I love a beautifully designed poster, an eye-catching book cover and even a well presented flyer.

And so . . . being the curious,' I've got to at lest give it a try kind of woman', I decided to tackle some of the tutorials offered by Design Cuts to it's clients.

People . . . if you are at all into design you've got to check them out! I love all the beautiful resources they offer at an unbelievable price! And no. . . I don't get anything for saying that . . . I just love them. They are sweet and helpful and English, and they drink tea! I'm not sure how they could get any better. . .

I spent yesterday afternoon and evening working on this poster. There were many steps involved. I had to do a bit of googling when my knowledge was lacking but it was soooo satisfying when I was done!

I'm not going to be a graphic designer anytime soon and I've go an even larger respect for their skills now that I'm done.

That said, I enjoyed this so much I'm going to tackle another one next week. Learning new things is awesome!

Photography. Playing with Textures

I've been looking at more and more digital art and the first step seems to be adding texture and perhaps some text.

I'm quite intrigued by it all and decided to try out something super simple in PicMonkey.

It's kind of fun and I'm thinking it's long past time to dig into the Fine Arts Grunge Photoshop course I bought last summer.

Here's my first effort:

Original . . .

Textured and texted . . .

What do you think?

Concrete Pumpkins . . . I mean Apples . . .

I thought it would be fun to branch out a bit and see what else could be done with concrete.

With the arrival of fall my thoughts turned to pumpkins.

Hmmm. . . concrete . . . Pumpkins???

How would I go about that? Time to google.

I found a few concrete pumpkins tutorials but they all used the plastic trick or treat pails. Which works rather well, if you don't mind the face and the fact that there is only one size.

Since I do mind, I made a trip to my local art store to quiz them on what I might use to make my own mold.

I left with a jar of latex mold maker and a mind filled with possibilities.

I decided to act sensibly for a change and start small. The fact that there were no pumpkins in the store to try this out on had nothing to do with it. . .

Ahem.

My niece Clara had dropped by with her Grandma and left me a tiny apple. I was supposed to eat it but, well, it was just the right size.

I had a granny smith left in the kitchen so it was the perfect opportunity to try two different sizes.

Ten layers of latex later I brought them to the outdoor workshop for a test run.

Hmmmm. . . not quite what I had in mind. Back to the drawing board.

I found these Styrofoam pumpkins and squash at the dollar store. I'm on layer four of fifteen. Now all I have to figure out is how to support the mold so the top doesn't get all squishy and flattened out. I don't think they'll be done in time for my upcoming sale at the Ladies Night Out. . . .

Oh well, maybe next year. 

This year they'll enhance my fall display in the front garden.. At least, that's the plan.