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.

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

Happy Birthday!

Yesterday was Melissa's birthday. We celebrated with coconut cupcakes and balloons.
I had fun baking and frosting the cupcakes while she was out having a shopping trip and lunch in town.

A Fun Week

I am back after a crazy week of activity! I spent Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday helping prepare and set up for the wedding. Friday was also the rehearsal. The wedding on Saturday was beautiful. The weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding. Several friends from out of state were here for the wedding. It was fun to spend time with them. Yesterday a whole group of us went over and spent the day at the beach. There was plenty to do. Some of the activities were football, frisbee, body boarding, walking, exploring tidepools, and just visiting. Nearly everyone has gone home now and things have settled down. Maybe I will be able to get back to blogging regularly.















A lovely spring day and a beautiful setting for an outdoor wedding!
















Sunset after a fun filled day at the beach.

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.

Unintentional Inspiration

The other night I had an idea inspired by a skirt I made for myself last summer. The skirt was an experiment using a pattern I made up. I was very pleased with the results. I thought why not make a card with the leftover fabric scraps? So I did. Somehow I didn't get the skirt quite centered on the card. Well I sat there wondering what to do about it when the brilliant idea to cut it into a square card came to me. Now I had this cute little 4.25"x4.25" card that I was happy with. The next thought was where will I find envelopes to fit? I quickly did some searching and soon found exactly the right size! I promptly ordered some. I may be listing some of these soon! A new fashion card line? Maybe.

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?

And the Winner is...

I would like to congratulate coco on winning my first blog giveaway!! I want to thank you all for participating. It was so much fun. Coco please leave a comment (comment moderation is on) or convo me at my etsy shop with your address within the next few days, and I will ship the cards as soon as possible.

Mini Card Giveaway!!!

To celebrate the opening of our shop and this new blog we are going to have a giveaway. All you have to do is post a comment on this post. The winner will be randomly selected. The winner will be posted in a follow up blog post, so keep checking back!

What are we giving away? I made this sweet little set of mini cards. Each card has a different flower illustration on it. There are six cards in the set. The cards measure 2"x3,5" and come with transparent vellum envelopes. These are the perfect size for attaching to gifts or bouquets or just for a fun little note.

Cinderella's Carriage

I grew some beautiful white Lumina pumpkins last summer. They have kept very well and I still have several left. They made some wonderful pies and baked goods. I recently decided to try carving an artistic design on one of them. This is the result. It reminds me of Cinderella's carriage.