A study in contrasts

Soooo.... it's April, right? April 19th, in fact? Someone please assure me that it is! Last year at this time, corn planting was well under way. Contrast #1: This morning it looks like this (6+" of new 'stuff'):

Contrast #2: I took this photo yesterday at my sewing room window... just because I thought it made a nice contrast. Several, in fact... the drippy, rainy-looking window, yet the snow in the background (that was the actual depth of the drift at the window... and it got bigger), and the silhouette of the summery flowers. What a mixture!

Last week I showed you how the poor birds were struggling to find food. Here are a couple more pics I took later of different kinds of birds also searching for food. A blackbird...

... and a flicker:

Contrast #3: A much BIGGER bird, also searching for food. It's a pretty unusual sight to see turkeys around here while there's still snow on the ground. There were five others with this big ol' tom.

Okay, enough of the "winter" scenery (I've more than had enough, believe me!). This next photo is definitely a contrast from that. But it's a contrast in itself, because if you remember, the first flower stalk on this amaryllis had a problem. This is the second stalk, and there's not a blemish on it! Hurray! Yep, Contrast #4:

Contrast #5: The above photo's colors are accurate. The photo below is an example of what can happen if you don't have the proper white balance setting on your camera. Not such great colors:

There you have it. Hope you enjoyed our little "study". ;)

Crafting with Courtney - rain art

Time for some more COLOR! As I'm writing this Wednesday night to auto-post in the morning, we are once again officially under a 'winter storm warning'. Ugh... 6-9 inches of new snow expected... unbelievable! Enough already!!!

So we need a colorful post. This is what Courtney decided to work on last Tuesday... after she arrived here... after school had closed at 10:00 a.m.... thanks to nasty weather. Ugh.  

Oh, yeah... back to the craft project. She had learned how to do "rain art" in school, so she taught me how to do it. I had to follow her, step by step, doing basically the same things that she did. Using a pencil, first we drew a picture of a butterfly. Then we went over our lines with washable markers and added some pretty decorations.

After our pictures were finished, we sprayed them with water, like it was raining on them.

She was very careful and pretty conservative with the water.

I, on the other hand, was pretty generous with my water and sprayed the whole thing evenly. Here's how they looked after just a short time:

By the time they started drying, there was a marked difference, though. I think I overdid my water spraying. :) Hers retained the markings, whereas mine just kinda spread out all over the place:

But it was great fun. So fun, in fact, that she wanted to do it again the next day... when she was here again... because there was no school... due to the same stinky snowstorm.

This time I was a little more sparing with my water spraying. I do like this one better. Since I was an experience rain artist by then, she gave me free rein to make whatever I wanted. ;) We skipped the pencil sketches and went right to the markers.

Her picture turned out pretty cool, too:

That was fun, and I'm sure we'll be doing it again someday!

Sunshine and daggers

We had SUNSHINE yesterday!! It really helped (with the mood, as well as with melting the ice)!! Our ice is about 99.9% gone now, with only a chunk hanging here or there.

We had some rare sunshine for a while on Saturday, too, and I couldn't resist taking these pics of the ice on the trees, because they were very pretty, despite their brokenness. They were so sparkly! It's too bad it doesn't show up very well in the pics.

The ice melted in interesting ways, creating some mean-looking daggers. Some of them were even angled because of the wind.

These hanging from the evergreen tree the next morning looked downright wicked!

I guess there's beauty to be found practically anywhere. But I'm going to have a really hard time seeing it in our next round of rain/sleet/snow that's coming up this week. Ack.

Crafting with Courtney

Since Courtney was here for nearly two full days last week due to our nasty weather, we needed some extra things to do. Some time ago, I'd bought a package of this and saved it for just such a time.

It's pretty neat stuff. It comes in 6 individual packets, so you can use a little bit at a time. Instructions say you can color it with washable markers, and they told how to make a rose, so that's what we did. We just rolled little various-sized balls, colored them with a red marker, and smooshed them around to get the color mixed in. Then Courtney flattened them and cut them in half.

Josie insisted on being nearby, even though she looks totally bored with the whole thing. Maybe that's because we wouldn't let her have any of the little balls, although she tried very hard to help with them!

I took the little half-circles and pressed them together, one at a time, starting at the center and working outward. This is our little rose after it was finished:

Here's the infamous 'eye' photo. Now you have a better idea of the actual size.

That stuff was pretty cool. It's not like regular modeling clay. It feels lighter, and it's nice and moist, sticks together easily, yet doesn't stick to your hands. You can wrap up leftovers to keep them moist, and you can let your creation dry permanently. I recommend this stuff, and I look forward to making more things from what we have left!

American Girl doll skinny jeans and shirt

Subtitle:  "What I did last week to combat the gloom and whiteness around here."

Courtney had several "snow days" off from school last week, and she spent two of them here (the other two with her other grandparents). On Wednesday, I was so sick of the heavy weather and whiteness that I decided I needed to do something colorful.  I had Courtney help me pick out fabric for a shirt for her AG doll, Marie Grace. She chose a multi-colored stripe knit, which was one I'd used to make a shirt for Jess out of when she was little. I had even saved a tiny strip of the ribbing that was left, and it turned out to be just big enough to put on the neck of the shirt.

I cut out and started sewing the shirt while Courtney was here. I used the same pattern I'd used for this shirt, only I made the long sleeve version this time. 

I finished it after Courtney had left, and since she had taken her doll with her, I had no pants for my doll to model it with. So, I decided to whip up a pair of pants to go with the shirt! I used the same pattern that I'd used for the jeans, but I skipped the topstitching and the back pockets, so they went together pretty fast. I also trimmed down the legs a bit, to get rid of the boot cut, and I shortened them a half inch.

TADA!!!

Storm update:  Most of the ice has melted off the trees, etc., leaving a mess of downed branches. There's lots of snow left, and the birds continue to struggle to find food. Courtney's family finally got their electricity back, after nearly four days without it! Things are looking up a bit, but there's still that ugly 's' word in the forecast for later this week, and not much warmup in sight. Ugh. Guess I'll keep sewing colorful things!