Time Marches On

We have another graduate!!

Boy, it's been a full few weeks.  Our youngest girls were sick again and there was a lot to prep for the graduation party plus all of the year end concerts and award nights.  But, here we are on the other side of it, and so grateful for so many things:
the good health for the girls now, the accomplishments of our son, the great weather for the party, and all the help from my sister and the older kids!!!

We ended up with a bit of a "book theme" in our decorations.  Seemed pretty appropriate for a graduation!

My second daughter helped with a lot/most of the decorations.  The little sign is a book cover collaged with book pages then she simply used a sharpie to add the name and year.

The wreath is just a grapevine wreath with ribbon bow and the little sign hot glued in.  Now, I can easily remove the sign and bow and have the wreath for another occasion.

His guest book table used a house he built in one of his classes to hold cards.  Get it? A house of cards. :)

I made him what I call a  "Happy Day" bouquet sporting the colors and college items for the University that he is headed to.

There is a book page bunting hanging there too.

Another book page sign.  As often done, we used the book "Oh the Places You'll Go" by Dr. Seuss for his guest book.

Yeah for chalk blocks!  They make an appearance often around here.  If you want to make yourself some, pick up some scrap 2x4s cut to various lengths and add the chalk paint.

There was "congratulations" in chalk blocks too, but I didn't take a picture of them.

When not in use for lettering, they double as building blocks for my youngest daughters.  

Fortunately, my son's name isn't Bartholomew so, we could use books to build his name!

Book mobile art!  Inspired via Pinterest and made by my daughter.

The dessert table with shredded old book pages in vases and pennants made with black paper and a white gel marker.

Another book page bunting made by my daughter and 2013 was cut with an exacto knife from a piece of foam core board and collaged with maps and book pages.

Well, the plan is to be back now to more frequent blog posts.  There is a lot of garden to be planted too.  Not a single seed has been sown, nor tomato plant planted, but it's been so cold now lately that it probably doesn't matter that we are behind.  So, it goes.

Wordless Wednesday: God Bless America

Dancer Silhouettes

In January, I posted about our dancing snowflake ballerinas. And, in February, showed you more of our dancing silhouettes.  Well, this past weekend, I got a chance to take a couple quick silhouette pictures of our very own dancing ballerinas right before the dance recital held at the school.

 We have two in dance and it was a full two days for them with dress rehearsal and two performances.

I will not even remember the missing gloves incidents.  Yes, plural. Certainly not a big deal, just mishaps to keep one humble and to keep life in perspective.  

The costumes were beautiful and bright and I have pictures of that too, but the simplicity of a silhouette always speaks more to me.

And, in this picture, the bonus of great shadows too. :)

I hope you all are allowing yourself some time to slow down in this very busy month of May. 

It's warm here again so I'm heading out to paint!

It's Been Spring Here!

We took advantage of the nice weather and took some pictures of our one year old granddaughter!

We set up a tent for some of the pictures.  It seemed like a good photo op for everyone.  

The youngest first.

Then came along big sister.  

Then I hopped in.

And, along came Dad and the girls had to give him tea!

My son wouldn't crawl in....and my oldest daughter with the baby (toddler, now!) didn't get a chance to crawl in.

Ahhh...time under a quilted tent sounds pretty wonderful doesn't it?! 

Probably not going to happen for awhile here.  Graduation prep is well under way and as soon as the pictures were over we had to bring everything in and keep movin' on.  At least we had time for fun pictures.

Cold is back in our forecast for tomorrow.  Oh well!

Contrary to this Photo, Recycling is Not Negative :)

Since Monday was Earth Day, I thought I'd show you this art photograph I took a long time ago.

If you'd like to read about our local recycling center and it's beauty, click here.

I hope your days are going well and that spring will come soon!

So, the Baby Had a Party.

I thought you might enjoy seeing the party decorations for our granddaughter's birthday party.

There isn't a lot of natural light in there and I didn't bring my tripod, so I did the best I could with exposure.

Not birthday decorations, but house decor...you may note the nine frames in a grid on the right, these are all the photos from the "family tree" display at their wedding.  The history of the wedding of parents and grandparents hang in their dining room, so neat!

A lot of my daughter's projects were inspired by blogs via Pinterest. 

The book page table runner was one of them.  She used double sided tape to put the book pages together and the edges were punched with a border punch I have.  Very cute.  Very simple. The original is here.

 Free chalkboard print outs from here.

My second daughter helped my oldest make the cupcake toppers and crowns.  These paper hearts were sprinkled with edible glitter.

And, the crowns.  Oh my, tooooo cute.  I'm not one to go in too much for "princess this and princess that" even with five daughters.  But, these crowns were just really neat.   You can read the "how to" here. 

The "A" is just a chip board letter painted and glittered.  The silhouette is actually my granddaughter.  My daughter asked me to take a profile picture of her with a fairly plain and light colored back ground, then I used Photoshop to select just her head and printed it out.  Then my daughter adhered it to black paper and cut around the image.  She used the silhouette cutter to cut out the letters "one year old".

The silhouette, a couple of crowns, the A, and the banner will all go in her room now for decorations. 

I helped make the cake topper out of paper and ribbon.  And, this was my daughter's first attempt at decorating a cake.  Pretty awesome!!

Simple tulle bows on the light fixtures and chairs.  Very feminine, very easy.

I thought this was so fun! 

She took a lot of her instagram pictures of the baby from her first year and had them printed.

And, using tape, put them up on the wall in the shape of a "1".

I'm pretty sure this is going up on the wall in her room too.  

Won't that be fun for her to point at and look at pictures now in the coming year?

A vintage frame with a chalkboard to announce the celebration.

It hangs in this wall arrangement.  It also includes wedding pictures, baby pictures, and their ring pillow from their wedding.

The birthday banner.

And, a little banner for the high chair.

And, what's a party without snacks and balloons?!

Of course we all had to have pictures with the crowns.  But, I'll only show you a couple!

My littlest gals.

Queen mama and her one year old!

Her first taste of sweets ever was a couple of bites of her birthday cake.

About midway through the afternoon, a little royal nap was needed!

I'm glad you stopped by to "celebrate" with us. :)

I hope you have a great weekend!!

Texture Tuesday

Yesterday, while we celebrated our Granddaughter's first birthday, my husband and I sat for a moment on the bench in front of their home.

I noticed we were reflected in the front glass door. :)

Today's challenge at Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday is to use at least two textures to edit our photos.  I actually ended up using three:  Soft and Sanded Shakespeare Sonnet, Dotti, and Mere.