Clipartqueen.com
“Sybilla” – deviantart.com
Filed under Creativity, drawings
Healing-Plaza.info
Since I’ve been feeling really creaky lately, I’ve been trying to do a session of “Yoga for Old Broads” each day.
(This is actually “Gentle Yoga” via Sixty & Me designed for people like me, who always wanted to try yoga but were intimidated, who have health issues, who are 60 and over, etc. This is a pair of DVDs by teacher Cat Kabira, a wonderful lady who makes you feel that whatever you can do to TRY to get into the poses is doing helpful to stretch out your muscles, make you more flexible, feel stronger, and move more easily without nearly as much discomfort.
I actually have the 2 DVD set plus a second one in the same series, with yoga practices for each day of the week.
Right now, since I’ve really been sore and almost POP when I get up or sit down, I’ve been concentrating on just doing some of the poses on my mat by myself, at a really slow speed, just trying to relax into the poses, breathing into them and feeling my muscles finally ‘give.’
If you are also feeling creaky, I encourage you to go to their website and order the set of videos. You’ll be amazed how much better you’ll feel.
Filed under Challenges, Changes, exercise, taking care of yourself
StevoMosaics
The Red and Grey – Artist Unknown
Filed under Creativity, mosaic
Karen Saviskas Gourd Art-1L- Topanga Canyon Gallery
Maple-Leaf-Gourd-with-Lid- Brian Baity
Mark Donaldson saved to Gorgeous Gourds – Sue Fuller, Westminster, California.
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
India
“When I grow up I want to be an old woman.” ~ Michelle Shocked
___________
“The older I get, the more I see there are these crevices in life where things fall in and you just can’t reach them to pull them back out. So you can sit next to them and weep or you can get up and move forward. You have to stop worrying about who’s not here and start worrying about who is.” ~ Alex Witchel
__________
“As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning.” ~ Criss Jami
Filed under Faces, Favorite Quotes
Amber
Our sweet ‘puppy’ Amber was a year old March 7th. She now weighs 93 pounds. We’re HOPING that she is now as large as she will get, but people in the know say she could continue to grow for another year! They also say that this lumbering bull-in-a-china-shop with very little brain will continue being a puppy for at least another year….
Amber has improved a lot since I last wrote about her. She is adapting to us and our lifestyle pretty well for a pup with little brain. She is certainly smart and canny enough to manipulate her owners. We FINALLY got her to stop yelling at us when she wants us to take her out. She had been regularly coming to sit beside me while I was working at the computer and then yelling, “WOOF!” quite loudly, scaring my hair off. If I had a cup of coffee in my hand at the time, I would spend the next 10 or 15 minutes cleaning up before I could take her out. (We have learned that, at this point, we can’t trust her outside by herself. She tends to find something wonderful to chew up in the front yard. When she destroyed TWO NEW WELCOME MATS that had been in place for about 20 minutes, that was the wake up call for us to get off our duffs and take her out, rather than letting her out.)
When we’re outside, we tend to bring Amber and Molly with us. We did this a couple of days ago, using the time between rain storms to take them out and walk around the yard. When the doggies had taken care of business, I let them in, as it had started to rain. My husband and I finished looking at something and then came in – to find that Amber had decided to completely dump her water bowl all over the floor. We had a mini-lake!
She hadn’t done this for a long time, but she of little brain remembered THAT was fun!
We spent a half hour mopping and toweling up the mess. My husband got a larger, heavier metal bowl that has no rim to put in place of the one she dumped. We put it in the corner made by the wall of the bathroom and the doggie gate to the living room. We’re hoping that this placement is secure enough she won’t decide to ‘play’ in the water anymore…
Lesson: One cannot trust a yellow Labrador Retriever ‘puppy’ outside OR inside without pretty intense supervision!
Filed under Amazing Animals, Family
The mailbox decoration comes from an image we found on the net. My husband did his magic, writing code so that the computer recognizes the drawing and can replicate it. We cut it out with the computer-guided torch on the CNC table in the shop. The above is what the decoration looks like when we separate the cut part from the sheet of metal on the table.
My husband makes apiece that will allow us to bolt the decoration onto the mailbox and welds the two together.
We then attach the piece to a ‘holder’ so that we can use a transparency of the design and sharpies to mark the metal with the inner design so that I can paint it.
This is what the decoration looks like when it’s ready for me to paint. You can see where the attachment bar is welded onto the design across the bottom. I paint the back of the piece first so that I can work out any problems. The picture above is actually the front of the design. I finished painting the back a couple of days ago. I turned it over yesterday and “color blocked” the front. (I say “color blocked” because it looks really bad when I do the first coat. I’m mainly just marking where each color goes. The paint doesn’t stick well or show up well on the bare metal. On the first decoration we did, I almost gave up at this point because it looked so awful. Thank goodness I discovered that this is the way it is when one paints on metal.
This is the back of the piece I finished yesterday. I’ll work on the second coat on the front today, and then probably finish it up tomorrow.
Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, Lewis projects, metal art
GardenSeedandHoneyBees via MinionsQuotes via Doreen Adamson-Liber
This post is especially for Dezzi, since we’re both bacon-o-holics….
Filed under holidays
DesiComments.com
“Let the rain kiss you. Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops. Let the rain sing you a lullaby.”
Langston Hughes
Filed under Mother Nature
Turtle Food Art by Daryn Akossar.
WeTellYouHow
Working Moms Edible Art
Filed under Creativity, playing with your food?
Marilyn Sunderland
Mike Munter featuring GourdMaster products
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
“Eggs for Easter” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under holidays, Paul Militaru Photography
Pixabay
“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t need to tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining – they just shine.” ~ Dwight L. Moody
“Easter is…
Joining in a birdsong,
Eying an early sunrise,
Smelling yellow daffodils,
Unbolting windows and doors,
Skipping through meadows,
Cuddling newborns,
Hoping, believing,
Reviving spent life,
Inhaling fresh air,
Sprinkling seeds along furrows,
Tracking in the mud.
Easter is the soul’s first taste of spring.” ~ Richelle E. Goodrich, Making Wishes
“Easter Mona” – Paul Militaru Photography
“Every ending will meet its own end, for every ending is destined to be swallowed up by a beginning.” ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough
HAPPY EASTER!
AND
HAPPY PASSOVER!
Filed under holidays, Paul Militaru Photography
Kurt Vonnegut via CrafterHours via Cathy Ruggiero
I’m taking this quote to heart as I work in the shop on the new mailbox decoration for December.
This is the decoration we THOUGHT we had already made, but hadn’t. We went out to the shop at the beginning of the month last December, only to NOT find the decoration! This is along the same line as being able to hide our own Easter eggs…..
I almost have the back of the piece finished. I have some accents to add and then when it’s dry, I’ll turn it over and start on the front. I’ll take a picture before I begin painting the front so you see what is done to ‘mark a piece’ using the overhead projector.
Right now the weather is really nice here, with bright sunshine. This won’t last, though, as the forecast is, “Saturday: Showers and storms will arrive mainly after sunset lasting until midnight.” This is bringing a strong cold front that may bring sleet and snow to NW Arkansas tomorrow, but will just bring US a cold, wet, Easter morning with temperatures decreasing during the day….
I hope you’re having a wonderful Saturday.
Filed under Lewis Art, Lewis Mailbox Decorations, Lewis projects, metal art
Menta Piperita & Co.
spider-creativefooddesign.blogspot.com
Filed under Creativity, playing with your food?
Filed under Attitude, Encouragement, Favorite Quotes, Good Thoughts
Me Amore 5 on Flickr
“In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you’re just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless.” ~ Victoria Moran, Younger by the Day: 365 Ways to Rejuvenate Your Body and Revitalize Your Spirit
Filed under Encouragement, Faces, Favorite Quotes, Good Thoughts
When our wisteria starts to bloom each year, my husband says, “The wisteria is wissing!”
Each day it get a bit more lush, a bit more purple. We just love it.
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening, Mother Nature
This is the Joseph’s Coat climbing rose bush that my friend Kay bought for me for my birthday. It’s putting on new growth, so hopefully it’ll be happy in its new home.
We planted three new Rio Samba rose bushes recently. All are showing nice buds, and SOME are about to open! Here’s bush # 1
Bush # 2
Bush # 3.
Filed under Favorite Things, Gardening, Mother Nature
“Meadow in the Mountains” – Paul Militaru Photography
Filed under Paul Militaru Photography
Afbeeldings resultaat voor portret China
“It is lovely to meet an old person whose face is deeply lined, a face that has been deeply inhabited, to look in the eyes and find light there.” ~ John O-Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
Filed under Faces, Favorite Quotes
“Gourd Art-Mixed Media” by Jill Robinson
Bonnie Gibson-gourdvisions.com
Filed under Creativity, Gorgeous Gourd Art
The Nourished Soul
I almost didn’t recognize the huge orb in the sky this morning. It’s been at least a week since we’ve seen it, and it was truly a glorious sight. On one of the many ‘walk-the-doggies’ trips I’ve taken today, I took some pictures of my veggie garden.
We built our raised bed veggie boxes with drain holes, but we’ve been getting SO much rain relentlessly, I was afraid I would find the boxes washed out and the veggies on the ground. Happily, everything seems to be doing well.
Here is iceberg lettuce and some onions.
This is the north side of the garden. You can see broccoli, spinach, onions, iceburg lettuce, and romaine lettuce.
Here’s a better pic of some spinach and some romaine lettuce, plus some onions.
This is the south side of the garden.
And here is the first group of tomato plants. I plan to plant more in a couple of weeks to extend our harvesting season.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca via SayingImages.com
Lunch Bunch this morning was its usual good time – and I realized halfway through it that that’s what makes it so special.
Kay made today’s lunch special because it is Good Friday by bringing Linda and me some miniature roses in sweet little bunny ceramic pots. Linda’s rose were red and mine were pink/coral. We shared what had been happening, what we had been doing, what we were planning, etc., as we usually do. Kay finally said she hadn’t been able to talk for 3 days this past week. THAT brought on a discussion about responses to “How have you been doing?” inquiries. We agreed that it could either be a simple alternative social phrase for “Hi,” where one should always answer, “Good, fine,” or something equivalent. That your answer depended on who was asking. And that your friends really wanted to KNOW how you’ve been, how you’ve been feeling, and more.
I’m lucky to have two long-time, dear friends to share the week’s ups and down with. Two ladies to shares big laughs with. Or tears. Or fears.
My good friends allow my husband to share the lunch, are happy whether he says anything or not. They even accept him enough to threaten him when he’s rude – and that’s true acceptance.
I hope that you have someone you can be real with, too.
Filed under Friendship
The Motivated Type on Etsy
“I’ve enjoyed every age I’ve been and each has had its own individual merit. Every laugh line, every scar, is a badge I wear to show I’ve been present, the inner rings of my personal tree trunk that I display proudly for all to see. Nowadays, I don’t want a “perfect” face and body; I want to wear the life I’ve lived.” ~ Pat Benatar
Filed under Encouragement, Faces, Favorite Quotes, Good Thoughts
creativeartworksblog 