"Cultivate"

Here's my first ever commissioned piece!  It's being hung up and circulated around the area for the event "Cultivate."    I did it for the Valley Stewardship Network who's mission is  "to promote stewardship and inspire cooperative efforts to improve the sustainability of the communities and ecosystems in the Kickapoo Watershed region."  Organic Valley, who's headquarters is about 20 minutes from Viroqua, is hosting this event and all proceeds from the dinner will go to VSN.   Unfortunately I'm not attending, $60 a person is not in our budget, even if the proceeds go for a good cause, but hopefully others are going.  Dr. Fred Kirschenmann is the special guest and he will be talking about building a sustainable food system.  Rooted Spoon Culinary is featuring a 5-course meal with local, seasonal and organic food.  What a great way to spend a summer evening in the Kickapoo region!

Another daisy

Daisies remind me of being a little girl and sitting on the grass in the summer with my friends as we talked about  what boys we liked  at the time.  We would take the daisies and pluck off the petals one at a time and say "he loves me" for one petal, and then the next petal would be "he loves me not" and pull all the petals off one by one and see what the last one was, always hoping it would be "he loves me".  Of course if we didn't' get the answer we wanted, we would start over with a new  daisy!   While working on this painting, I began to wonder if the boys ever did this with flowers?  or just us silly girls!  I'm almost sure they didn't.  While the girls were sitting in the grass daydreaming, I'm sure the boys were off doing fun things like baseball, climbing trees, catching frogs and bugs and not thinking about silly girls and their flower predictions!

Have a wonderful weekend

Daisies, daisies

It seems like ages since I've posted a painting.  My garden is in full swing and consuming most of my time.  Painting gets put on the low priority list.  I did find a little time to paint some daisies.   They are such a sweet little happy flower!

small things forgotten

Remembering the excitement of loosing your baby teeth and putting them under your pillow for the tooth fairy.

small things forgotten

 

Having your first lemonade stand.

Pink

Summer Colours Week at Poppytalk, today is Pink. 

The dance of the dragonflies

Aren't dragonflies amazing little creatures?  The way they hover about, moving sideways and backwards, those big eyes and their brilliant coloring.  What a fascinating insect. I've been seeing a lot of dragonflies around lately and I love to just stop what I'm doing and watch them.   Did you know mosquitoes are their primary food source?  You gotta love anything that eats mosquitoes!

small things forgotten

Remembering how flowers in your hair can make you feel pretty.

Nature in Red

Oh my goodness, my lovely poppies are already done blooming.  It all goes by much too fast.  They lasted a little over a week and poof, they are done!  How can it be?






























I knew right away a poppy painting was in order.  I really liked how last years poppy painting turned out (pictured below) and wanted to do another one with the poppies in the same style.


 
I have to say, that I'm very glad to be finished with this painting.  It didn't come together very easy at first even though I knew how I wanted my poppies to look.  I think I was so afraid of ruining the painting, that I couldn't figure out what to do with it.  I eventually decided it didn't matter what happened and that's when things finally started to flow.  I need to remind myself to stop taking things so darn seriously and loosen up! (this is with art and life in general)  At the beginning this painting was putting furrows in my brow, but in the end,  it puts a smile on my face!   Yeah!

Sewing Basket Surprise

This morning I was looking through my sewing supplies trying to find a hook-and-eye.  I only needed the hook part for my skirt that I was repairing.  I've never bought  this type of closure, but I knew I had to have it some where in all of my thrift store/garage sale sewing supplies.  I looked in a few places, but no luck.  I  then remembered I had my grandma's old sewing basket and figured there had to be one in there.  I found what I was looking for right away, but then something else caught my eye.  I saw lying there in the sewing basket, a little white envelope that said, Great Grandma on it.



I recognized my moms writing on it immediately and I felt a little excited.  It was hard to tell if the envelope had been opened or not, it was sealed shut a little bit, maybe from time? but it opened very easy.  Inside was a little Thank You card.



Now, my family has never been good at writing thank you cards and I don't remember ever having to write thank you cards, but before I even opened it, I knew it was from me and sure enough, there on the inside was my little kid handwriting!  I think it is so funny that I put my last name's initial on it!  Was this just in case she wasn't sure which Tammy it was?



I was just so tickled to find this.  The funny thing is, I've looked through this sewing basket many times before and for some strange reason I had never seen that little envelope and then to add to it all, I ended up finding a 2nd Thank You card.  This time it was from my cousin, and he too was thanking her for money.  His card had the date on it which was May 1979.  So I would have been 7 1/2 years old when I wrote that card.  Doesn't $4 seem like a lot for then?

I called my mom to tell her about what I found and she said my Great Grandma would keep all of her cards in their envelopes and would store them in all sorts of  places.   My Great Grandma loved to sew, especially embroider.    I'm lucky to have some of her pillowcases and hanker chiefs that she embroidered, along with some blankets she quilted and also crocheted.  What better place to find a long lost thank you card from me then in her sewing basket?!