Colorful Corn

This is some of the most fun corn to grow. It is called Painted Mountain and is a colorful dry corn. We have been harvesting and husking it. We will hang it to dry around the house and it makes a beautiful fall decoration. Later we will take the kernels off the cob then grind it into corn flour. It makes pretty and delicious cornbread.

Heirloom Tomatoes

Sweet Bouquet

This morning I made this little nosegay from flowers in the garden. I was experimenting to get ideas for my wedding flowers. I really like these flowers and colors. I am hoping to be able to get something similar.

Blue

My wedding colors are green and blue. We have been getting ideas for decorating and flowers. We have been finding pretty blue glass vases and jars at thrift stores. I am also hoping to use blue delphinium in the bouquets. Here are some of our blue finds.

Green

The other day I died some more wool with apricot leaves. It made a lovely spring green color. The picture is of: white, natural; pink, apricot bark; and green apricot leaves.



I can't wait to start using this fiber!

Painting Project

We have been working on repainting our whole house. It was all a dull gray before. Now The house is tan and the doors are red. We still need to paint the trim, it is going to be green. The red doors certainly add some color to the house!

Bright and Cheerful

Aren't these flowers cheery? I just love the color combination!

Wildflowers

Yesterday after church a group of us went out to see the wildflowers. It was a beautiful day for the excursion. There were fields of blue, yellow and orange flowers. There were patches of small purple and white flowers also. We enjoyed exploring the hillsides and picking lovely bouquets.

Here are some of the flowers we saw. I only know the names of a few of them.


California poppies and a few lupines



Cheerful yellow flowers


These dainty blue flowers were some of my favorites.


California poppy

Lilac

The first lilacs are blooming. I was playing around with the camera and liked the way this photo turned out.

New Cards

I have two new cards in the shop. In a way both of these were inspired by some adorable fabric I picked up one day. I made the skirt card first for my sisters birthday. I liked it so much that I created another one to list on Etsy. The illustration card was inspired by the colors in the fabric and the beautiful blossoms that have been blooming around here. I made it as a wedding card to go along with the hotpads I posted about here. Again I was so pleased with the way it turned out that I made another to sell.

Blossom Illustration Card














Blossom Skirt Card














Inspiration!

Cute and Practical

Today I splurged and bought these very cute baskets and boxes. These should be helpful for my next project; organizing my many craft supplies. I think this will make it more fun! I am looking forward to the chore more than I normally would.

Valentine Sweets

This morning I baked and decorated these sweet shortbread hearts.

Hand Spinning

Recently I have been spinning the fiber from my Pygora goat, Willow. Well actually attempting to spin would be more accurate! I really have no clue what I am doing. I have a fun little drop spindle that I have been using and a book with instructions. So, I spun up quite a bit but somehow it just doesn't seem quite right :) It is very uneven and lumpy. Oh well, I just look at it as practice, someday I will probably be a wonderful expert :) I am planning on making some kind of funny hat or scarf out of the resulting yarn.

Looking Like Spring

It is such a pretty sunny day outside. It is starting to look like spring. After the rain we had last week the hills are all tinted with soft green. These dainty Paperwhites are some of the first flowers to bloom in our yard. They look lovely sitting on our windowsill along with a blue glass bottle.

Texture + Color

We have new paper just in time for spring! We have been using Canson Mi-Tientes for all of our cards and just recently ordered some brighter colors. This paper is just beautiful. The colors are bright and it has a wonderful texture. We are adding new cards made from Melissa's photographs on this paper to our etsy shop nearly everyday!

Fascination

Both my sister and I have a fascination(or should I call it an obsession?) with colorful vegetables. I guess it all started when we decided to plant a garden last year. We started looking at different seed websites and catalogs. There was such an amazing beautiful variety. Of course we couldn't just plant "normal" red tomatoes, we planted orange, purple, white, and green! The same went for everything else, the more unusual the better. So, we have started to plan the garden for this summer. When we started ordering seeds I said "We really need to just limit ourselves and not buy every possible color of tomatoes". Well somehow instead of the five tomato varieties we had last year, we ended up with twelve varieties! Twelve! It's crazy! But it sure is fun.
Our favorite place to order seeds is Baker Creek. It was fun to look at all the varieties they have and make our order. The most exciting part was when a large envelope stuffed with seeds arrived in the mail! We ended up getting so many that I am not quite sure just where to plant them all...
I was reminded of all this yesterday while shopping at a local specialty market and saw this purple cauliflower. How could I resist?

Fabric Inspiration

I love new fabric!! It makes me want to sew up something fun. Here is my newest. Now the question is what to make? Oh, my there are so many ideas!

Pink and Brown

In a previous post I mentioned some natural dyeing I have been doing. Well, here are some pictures of what I've done. The most recent dye I used was made from apricot bark that I saved after pruning the trees. It made such a pretty earthy pink color.I started by dyeing just a little bit of Pygora fiber, then a little more, and finally I did some wool yarn that I had. The brown yarn next to the pink yarn was dyed using oak leaves. I have also used eucalyptus leaves which made a rusty orange color. Natural dyeing is so fun. I love the subtle colors it creates.