Bunny and Buck

I just HAD to share these pictures with you! The little bunny at the woodpile is one of our resident bunnies that scoot around the yard winter and summer, I watch them from the kitchen or sunroom. I have to act quickly with the camera, and not make noise getting out on the deck through the sliding door, etc. so I shoot through the window, and in this case, inbetween the deck rails. I love my zoom lens!!

How sweet is this little guy/girl? And look at that snow sparkle!! CLICK ON ANY OF THE PICTURES TO ENLARGE.

This last picture is of the buck that has been hanging around the field at the back, always too distant for me to get a good picture. He got a little closer a week or so ago, and I did manage to get a picture, not focused too well, but I'm happy to have captured a picture of him!
Would you believe, he was in our front yard last night? Around 10:30 my husband just happened to glance out the window and see him on the front lawn! He was gone by the time I got to the window!

HAPPY NEW YEAR ALL!!

Hoping you all had a wonderful Christmas enjoying your family and friends. It is such a busy time of year but in the end, we all love it!

 I will be busy, busy in the coming couple of weeks and hope to find some time to blog and maybe do a digital art challenge. We will be leaving for Arizona in a couple of weeks and I have alot to do before we leave so not too much free time to be here.

However........hoping to have more time for this when we are down there and settle in til April....oh I'm so lucky! To get away from the snow and cold and enjoy my friends down south!

Have a wonderful day and a super year ahead!

Dancing with Joy

Dancing with Joy is the Soartful Challenge this week and this is what I came up with.  I wish it was me! It's very cold here, not much snow, but the temperature was -29C with a -41 windchill this morning! I won't complain, as last year this was the norm through November and December with lots of snow too! I'm keeping cozy in the house and trying to catch up as usual, on everything! My escape into the digital world is a welcome break that I so enjoy! Have a great Sunday!

A note to Santa and Jaxon's Christmas haircut

Same doggie?........my sweet grand-doggie was pretty shaggy, but at least he kept nice and warm in this minus degree weather. Well, now he's all spruced up for Christmas, and looks like a proper Airdale Terrier!

My gal Sherri, Kiera's mom, sent these pictures. Below is a note she found on the coffee table, one of many assorted notes to Santa that she's been finding lately around the house. How does the mind of an eight year old really work?

Have a great weekend!

Three Muses Challenge

The theme this weekat the Three Muses is bottles and jars! The bottles in the window image is from Howard33 on Flickr, the ladies are from June at ArtFreebies. Being new at this photoshop stuff my skills are limited, so I was quite proud of myself to be able to get the ladies on the outside of the window.

Now if I could figure out to how to get things inside those bottles.....lots to learn, lots to learn....

I am trying to do one or two challenges a week to force myself to experiment with different tools in my Photoshop Elements 8 program. I sometimes start and don't get finished. I made sure I started right away on this challenge so here it is, hope you like it!

A big thankyou!

A special thankyou to my blog buddy Susie over at Vintage Susie and Wings for making me my own personal blog banner!  She used pictures from my blog along with her special Photoshop Super Powers and came up with that wonderful banner. I just love it! Thankyou Susie!!
When I started my blog, I somehow came across Susie's and just really loved it. I love her style and her posts and all the interesting little things she puts along the side. So pretty and so interesting.

We were both fairly new at blogging and also both had the digital art bug and were new at that too.

We love to visit back and forth and cheer eachother on. I guess we just clicked!

Thankyou my friend!

Soartful Challenge Home for the Holidays

I hope you like my entry for Soartful Challenges theme this week which is Home for the Holidays. I like to think that this young lady has just arrived home for Christmas in the country after being away from her family, becoming highly successful at her job in the big city. Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.

I played and played with the layers and colors and finally decided on this. I have so much to learn in my program and sometimes get hung up for 20 minutes on one little thing I've forgotten how to do!! I do love it though and look forward to learning more and more techniques.

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend and don't wear yourself out Christmas shopping!

Wartime Pictures, Power Outage, BLUE CAKE

Well, yesterday was interesting, especially the evening. We had Kiera after school for dinner and a visit while her mom and dad were busy with events. After dinner, it was "let's make a cake"....it was white but we decided we'd surprise Gigi (grandpa) and make it blue.

Into the oven it went, and throughout the first half hour the power would go out, just momentarily. It then went out for almost 2 hours!

Out came the candles, and we sat with a little flashlight looking at an old photo album of my mom's. It was the very first one she had put together when she came to Canada as a warbride in 1946. I had just happened to have it out to look at, so Kiera was very interested.

As we looked at the old pictures by candlelight, she said to my husband "is this what it was like when you were a child?"

The old album, and above a page with pictures taken when my mom was in the "Land Army". What stories she used to tell of where they were placed to work on farms while the men were away at war.

The old album

I might use this as a texture for a digital collage one of these days. It is rather interesting!

The surface of the blue cake may also make an interesting part of a collage!

The cake had to be put back in the oven, we took it out in the dark, guessing that it was done.......it wasn't...it was rather yukky......! of course Kiera thought it was wonderful, even without the chocolate icing that was ready to spread on it.

Just before she went home, she pulled out the tinkertoys, I'd picked the old set up at a garage sale a couple of years ago. Now that she  is old enough to read instructions, 8-1/2, she followed directions and quickly put this "swing set" together.

Lace, Ladybug, Lemon Curd/Butter Microwave Recipe

I had to show you this fabulous old lace tabletopper! I just took some pictures of it for Ebay and thought I'd show it here as it's one of those pieces you rarely see........a real antique piece of battenburg/tapelace...All handmade, old, with some breaks, but these pieces give me palpitations when I spot them at a sale, even with some damage. You just don't see them anymore! ...and you must know by now, I LOVE LACE!

We got a teensy bit of snow on the weekend, it's pretty well gone now, but Kiera was over for a visit, saw the snow on the deck outside the patio door, promptly removed her shows and socks and carefully stepped out and made these footprints!....what a girl!!

I shooed her back inside for her shoes and socks and jacket and she spent a few minutes out there making a few snowballs and making more prints and handwriting in the snow.

As for the ladybug? Well, I went to the garage for some potatoes and there she was atop a potato in the pail. Brought her in and perched her on a little potato in a dish so I could take her picture. She has since disappeared in my kitchen and I hope she winters well.
Now for a recipe that a girlfriend swears by for

Microwave Lemon Curd (lemon butter)

3 eggs

3/4 cup sugar

1tbsp grated lemon rind [I put more]

1/2 cup fresh lemon juice

2tbsp soft butter

In microwaveable bowl, whisk together eggs & sugar. whisk in lemon rind & juice & butter.

Microwave on high for 2 minutes, whisk until smooth.
Microwave for 2 to 3 minutes longer until it boils & thickens slightly.

Whisk again until smooth.
Cool, pour into jars & refridgerate.

I sterilise the jars & it will keep for several weeks. If it lasts.

Great on toast, in tart shells or on icecream.

I can't wait to make it but will make it after Christmas when we're in Arizona and I have TIME, and luscious fresh off the tree lemons are  a dime a dozen!! Off to make dinner, have a good week, hope I'll be back here before the week ends!

Soartful Challenge

Well, I actually got the Soartful Challenge done! I had no idea what to do with the image but once I got going it seemed to come together and as I always have loved blue, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out! I have yet to learn how to work with text so, a very simple NOEL was added.

Below is the image given, the rest is up to each individual!

I'll catch you up on the weekend later

New tree stamp for domino pendants

I just last week received a couple of new stamps I ordered, I was just sooo wanting to do some bare branched trees! I had some inked backgrounds waiting. What do you think? I just love the look! There are also a few others I thought I'd share with you that I like....the smaller squarish ones are made with rummy tiles.....rummikub tiles?

These were a few I dropped off yesterday at the consignment shop......I had saved a picture that I found somewhere on the interenet quite awhile ago of a domino mounted on a card. I figured it out and for the shop I mount them as they are more easily displayed. The ones I make into pins I  pin onto the outside of a little organza bag. When they are hung, they sit nice and display well.

One of the many things I'm up to these days! Have to go out this evening to a surprise 40th anniversary party. I have to go dig around in my closet now for something to wear.

Hope all of you USA people are enjoying your holiday today.

Bye for now!

UPDATE

MY FINGERS ARE INKY!

but I love how these turned out!!

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Happy Thanksgiving to all of my American friends who celebrate tomorrow. Ours is long past already. Stay safe, don't eat too much, enjoy your families and friends.

Magpie on the Wasp Nest

If you look back in my blog, you'll see some better pictures that I took of the wasp nest high up in the trees at the back of the yard. Well, just as I'm about to rush out the door this afternoon, I see a magpie sitting right on top of the nest! So, run for the camera and just stood on the deck and took as many pictures as I could before he (she?) took off. My zoom is not quite long enough to get in as close as I would have liked.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The bird was pecking at the nest from above and below. I'm sure that nest will get alot of attention from the magpies, they are very strongly woven into the branches and will withstand alot of wind and weather before finally falling apart and to the ground.

There is also a big buck (male deer) hanging around at the back, always a little too far away for a picture, but I'll eventually get one I know! Have a great evening!

Lovely! Soartful Challenge

I just had to take a little time for myself and do this challenge piece for Soartful Challenges.The lovely lady was the image provided. I used a background of my own photography of the lace and sheet music. The bird and flower frame came from Painting with Brushes on Flickr, the bits of handwriting, I just don't remember where they came from!! Anyway, it was fun to do, hope you like it!

Family fun and rescue horses

It has been crazy busy around this house lately! I have out of town company coming for a couple of days this week too, so it's not over yet! I'm enjoying it all but am craving to get back at some digital artwork and take part in a couple of challenges!

The end of last week saw our sweetie Kiera having a sleepover at our house! Fun, fun....she keeps us hopping! We played, crafted, baked, played, created, inside, outside...all over the house and garage...non-stop! We are exhausted when she goes home!

We had a housewarming to go to Saturday night, then on Sunday, Kiera had a ringette game so we all went to cheer the team on. That was all three daughters and their spouses, besides my husband and I. All 8 and 9 year old girls skating their little hearts out, ....too cute...and they are very good! Ringette is sort of like hockey but instead of a puck it's a ring that looks like a donut, and their stick is straight, they have to place it in the hole to "shoot" the ring across the ice.

Here's Kiera after the game, minus her helmet/mask that they all must wear. We all went back to our house for chili and buns and strawberry/raspberry shortcake and alot of fun!

Wondering about these horsies? Well, our oldest daughter Sherri, (Kiera's mom) has always been a big animal lover and when she was young had a horse and a colt and loved to ride and be around horses as much as possible. Maybe at some future date she'll be able to have her own again, but for now, she has been looking for an opportunity to be around horses without actually owning and having the full responsibility of one.
Well, she has found through an ad a horse owner that needs someone to ride and excercise one of her horses and she also has in her care, 2 Paso Fino horses, rescue horses, a mother and daughter, who were badly neglected and taken in by this kind lady. Sherri took Kiera to meet them on Sunday morning and of course Kiera was thrilled!
Both horses are quite nervous of humans, but surprisingly took to Kiera, no problem!
Sherri and Kiera will be visiting them at every opportunity!

Kiera loves animals, she was certainly not nervous around the horses and she's little.....could that be why they were not fearful of her?

Such lovely animals, it's hard to think how they can be neglected the way they were.

I'll be back when I can get here!