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!

What a lovely weekend we had!

We had a surprise weekend as far as weather was concerned. It was beautiful! Perfect for spending time outdoors! The leaves were dry enough to burn at the back of our yard so we spent some time playing and burning the leaves and enjoying the day!

The late day light was amazing!

All of these leaves were burnt by the end of the afternoon plus a zillion more!

Don't you love the smell of burning leaves in the fall?

A willing helper, our 8 year old grandaughter Kiera. What kid doesn't love a fire!

Ladybug, ladybug....fly away home........we found lots of them nestled under leaves in the garden. We rescued them of course from the fire!

The day wouldn't be complete without a climb up on the little barn roof to sit and enjoy the view and the wonderful weather.

Have a great day everyone! Today looks to be as lovely as the weekend so I'm going to enjoy it! Snow will be here too soon!

Neat nests!

Just thought I'd share a couple of pictures of wasp or yellow jacket nests taken in my yard. I couldn't find one of the pictures I was looking for, it was a nest in the middle of the apple tree, hidden by the leaves until they started falling!

The pictures of the pieces of nest are from the nest that you see pictured attached to the soffit (sp?) of our house. You wouldn't believe how secure it was to the surface of the soffit and it couldn't be removed in one piece. I kept a couple of pieces, they are fascinating to look at.

Last two pictures are of the nest currently at the back of the yard. I posted a picture last week that wasn't very close. These are better.  I'm wondering how it will survive the winter!

Click to enlarge the pictures

I took the above picture last year. Seems every year I have a nest to photograph!

Our current backyard nest.

Amazing work by those little pests!

Three Muses Challenge Fowl Play

I think they took a wrong turn on the way to the chicken coop in the dark! Now the little hen on the outside is going to figure out how to break them out. Takes a female!

Please read the whole post. I have only just begun to learn Photoshop.

I had no intention of entering the challenge, just went to look at the Three Muses blog and see some of the work done for the challenge.

I just about fell over when I saw on the list a link to a creation  by terri d. at Pixels and Paste titled Harold and Lucy ! My husband's name is Harold, I am Lucy (Lucille but go by both).

My husband has relatives farming in Saskatchewan and we go there to visit at least once a year. I  always take pictures of the chickens, cows, kittens, barns, etc. We are known to them all as Harold and Lucy!

Terri wrote a cute little story to go with her wonderful digital creation. Go see!

Notice the lucky little hen on the outside of the fence?

Here's my original photo taken at the farm in Saskatchewan last year.

I used a Creative Commons picture found on Flickr for the background, chicken tracks were found on an image search google.

Who....ME?

Sweet Susie atVintage Susie & Wings passed on this blog award to me and I couldn't have been more surprised! She is one of the nicest people! I love her blog, so make sure you go and see it. I am now going to pass this award on to 5 bloggers who in turn should pass it on.

It was so hard to make a choice! I visit so many lovely blogs and even though I don't have time to comment on each and every one, I am so happy they are there in blogland for me to view.

The blogs I have chosen are authored by some great gals who are so generous and sharing. Just want you to know you are all very much appreciated! I'm a fairly new blogger and new at digital art and you have all been so inspiring to me. I hope you'll visit them.

Abbie atThe Vintage Moth

Rian at Freubel-Art

Carol Anne at Carol Anne's Boutique

Elizabeth at The Last Door Down the Hall

June at Dezinaworld

A quick post

Wow! This last few days have been too hectic for my old body and brain! Just stuff! A combination of different things happening that has me spinning around in circles it seems. I'm on overload, LOL!! I have lots to blog about and will catch up when I can.

So, just so I don't feel like I'm not blogging at all, here are a few pictures I took. The first one I took today from my bedroom window, so glad I have a new camera with a longer zoom!!

At the back of the yard in the bit of bush, almost above where we sit by the firepit, there is a huge wasp nest way up high in the branches of a tree! I could see something there once most of the leaves were gone, and wasn't sure if it was a birds nest or a wasp nest!..........Today, enough leaves were gone to see it and yes, it's a big wasp nest! We usually find one each fall somewhere around the yard, but never this high up!

Coming around the corner into our development on my way home the other day, the sky filled with hundreds of geese.... what a noise too! I stopped to take a some pictures and also of some that had been sitting by the road at the edge of the field when I left home a couple of hours before, and were still quite contented to sit there until I got back!

They were not in the least bit interested in joining the geese that were flying above.  I took these pics after the flock had flown over. I took quite a few, but I'm not going to bore you, lol!!

Down in the Dungeon

Here is the image that I started with for this challenge over at Art Freebies blog. Haven't done anything for the last number of days, so just did a little quickie with the spiderweb and some images that I got over at Freubel-Art which is a really fun place to visit.

Have a great spooky day!

Some backyard pictures lovely fall colors

I'm really enjoying the colors in my back yard. We've lost too many leaves already due to that yucky cold snap with snow a week or so ago, but there's still enough there to give some lovely color.

One of our old wheels is slowly falling apart, but we'll leave it there , it still has alot of charm.

Some old weathered wood cuts that Kiera uses to climb up to her "swinging horse" branch of a tree. The clump of decorative grass is not affected by the cold yet.

Crunchy layer of leaves will be alot thicker around the picnic table before too long.

My favorite picture of all I took yesterday! This little concrete fella resides in the bush. Last fall I was cleaning up my clump of chives and plunked a big chunk in his wheelbarrow. Haven't watered or touched them since! He looks like he's concentrating on moving them somewhere else! They will likely just keep on growing in his wheelbarrow unless we have a very long dry spell.
Have a great day!