ORNIE-PALOOZA

I am nearly finished with TreeFest 2009 ornies!

My theme is "peace & love". make art not war.

Hand sewn ribbon stars.

Ribbon stars finished with buttons and hangers.

Ugh! So glad this is done. I probably have lung cancer now. It's handmade garland fashioned from strips of silky material with teeny red hearts that shed like crazy! The construction phase was a mess and particles of it were everywhere, but I do love the finished result!

Handmade (sewn, stuffed, and painted) butterflies. These will grace the tree top.

Handmade doves in progress.

Fitted with nests.

Complete with peace mantra.
http://www.treefest.org/

SUNFLOWERS OUT, CHRYSANTHEMUMS IN

They were beautiful, but the sunflowers weren't all I had hoped for this year. Nothing in the yard did particularly well this summer....except the mums I put out behind the garage last fall. They are starting to bloom now and are just beautiful. Ryan wanted to know why the prettiest flowers are out where we can't even see them. Point taken.

After pulling the sunflowers, I put in this perennial bed. I'm hoping that a good mulching in the spring along with watering is all they will need next year.

The birdies are reaping the benefits of my efforts by munching on this sunflower seed feast. I even caught a squirrel with an entire flower head in his mouth, trying to run up the sidewalk with it! Happy to report that he made it wherever he was going!

TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

All my trials, Lord, soon be over! Tomato drama this year! Last season, they were taking over and this time around my two plants are just breaking a foot each and I have a total of 3 toms....1 red, 2 green. Pathetic! So I obtained a bucket full from another garden. The whole idea was to make and freeze spaghetti sauce. Well, I only had them three days and they rotted...putrid juice was all over my counter! Yuck! The resilient creature I am, I went and bought a ton at the grocery store. I had them overnight and when I opened them to make my sauce, several were moldy and rotting. OMG! In the end, I did salvage enough to arrange them (along with my beautiful peppers, onions, and garlic from the Bloomsburg Farmer's Market) into this lovely still life...and then cooked them into several batches of spaghetti sauce. All is well that ends well, but what a fiasco!

SCARLETT SHUTTERS

I have been saving these shutters for YEARS. Forever, it seems. Originally they were vintage with all the white paint peeling off and I really did love them like that. However, white wasn't going to cut it in the studio. For the last two years, painting these has been high on my list of priorities but I never seemed to find the time to actually get it done...

...until now! They're complete and looking sweet at the head of my desk. Eventually we will mount them right to the wall. Since taking this pic, I have loaded them up with artwork of clowns, berries, babies, naked ladies and such...good stuff.