This is my favorite time of year. Not because of all the pumpkin spice lattes either. (I am not a fan of sweet coffee.) But the weather, oh how I love this weather! I also love that we live in an area with great fall colors.
The maples in our yard are gorgeous. I wish the leaves lasted longer. It seems like they fall so quickly once they change colors. We try to really enjoy them while they are here though. So much so, that we have learned the succession in which our trees tend to turn color. It is truly exciting when we see one start to become colorful. Simple pleasures, right?
In this family, Halloween is not a huge deal once you don’t have little kids around. But this is Covid and we are doing anything we can to keep busy. Remember when Julia and I painted rocks last summer and put them on our local walking trail? I suggested we paint pumpkin rocks and set them out before Halloween for the kids that walk the trail. (Or adults, we make no judgement!)
After our masterpieces were finished, we went for a walk and set them out on the trail for others to find. This is my favorite part.
Aren’t they funny? The nice, precise jack-o-lanterns are made by Julia. The others are the work of my husband and me (the less talented pumpkin artists in this house!) We haven’t returned to the trail yet but I am certain they made people smile to see them.
In an effort to stay busy and creative, Julia has been using You Tube to teach herself to embroider and to knit. She was wanting ideas of what to stitch and I asked her to do a word for me. She embroidered this pretty bit and I am now working on making a little frame for it. I will just do something simple and then add some bit stitch quilting. It will be so sweet.
Have you been wondering about Julia’s little chicks? Of course you have. She took a few outside to the lawn (they currently reside in a box in the laundry room.) At first they were shocked, never having seen the world outside of their box. But once they got settled down, they had a great time. The girls are at the awkward (aka ugly duckling) stage these days. The cute fluff is falling out and their feathers are growing in. They will live in the house until they are fully feathered and can stay warm out in the coop. It is a bit of a challenge though. As they grow their feathers, they like to try them out to see if they can fly. Julia keeps raising the cardboard walls of their home because now and then, they fly out and cannot get back in. Hahaha.
I was weeding out in the yard the other day and saw these little mushrooms. It made me think some fairies should (or maybe they do?) live there.
Ok – that is my update for now. I will be back with a couple of finishes soon. How are all of you doing? Coping, staying healthy? Celebrating the election results? All of the above? Hang in there – these are strange and unprecedented times we live in.
If you are in need of your own fall colors or maybe some Christmas fabric, they are 20% off in the shop (today through Friday.). Lots of cuteness to be had for a great price.
What a great idea, leaving the Halloween rocks for others to find. Julia’s stitching looks great; good idea on framing it, so you’ll have it for years to come. Those chicks are so cute – giggling about them flying out of the box. We have freezing rain and snow coming today.
Sounds like a lovely time painting rocks! I love seeing the chicks but can’t imagine raising them. Kudos to Julia for being such a good mom and trying out embroidery!
Thank you. We are just trying to stay busy and if it means painting rocks and having baby chicks in the laundry room, so be it!! Life is weird and we are all just muddling through!
What a fun idea! I hope people leave the pumpkin rocks for others to enjoy.
Leaving these little rocks has been fun – I am sure the kids pick them up. Just means Julia and I can paint more of them. We will do another batch soon. Gotta stay busy, right?? Plus it keeps us walking the trail1
Love seeing those chicks as they grow!
Hi Carol – this is the first time we have had chicks at this time of year. Usually we get them early spring and they go outside into the coop just before summer. It is strange to think about putting them out there during winter. She will need to be sure she can keep them warm. So they will stay in the laundry room for a while yet – need lots of feathers and to be a little bigger before they go outside all night. She does have a light in the coop that will help warm it up a bit though. quite the project!
Love the chicks! Growing up so quickly! Nice job Julia!
Bernie, I delivered three quilts to our local quilt shop last week and was surprised to learn she has a three month backlog…safe to say quilters have been staying safe behind our sewing machines. One of these quilts will be sent to you for Mercy Hospital Palliative Project. Heart warming project. Please advise if there is a specific label requirement. I’ve enjoyed making twelve quilts during this pandemic and have completed and gifted three of them to new babies; new beginnings, new hope. Three at quilter and six are flimsy stage while I prepare backings. Prolific sewing in contrast with most depressing and stressful year in my life. Thank goodness for quilting. Love your messages and inspirational photographs….Thank you, Dawn
Wow!!! Thank you Dawn. That must be really expensive to have that many quilts done at a time! We are really grateful for the donations though. It means a great deal to the families who receive them. Truly, it is such a gift of your time and creativity (and money). I can’t wait to see it. You are welcome to label it or not. We leave that up to the quilter. Twelve quilts is a great accomplishment. I haven’t done near that but am happy to have finished up several that have been sitting for far too long. Take care and thanks so much. 🙂
Bernie, yes this local shop is very reasonably priced and does lovely work. I hesitate to name the shop for fear of a six month backlog!!! They offer broad design pantograms to choose from which are far less expensive than custom quilting. My retirement income would not allow me custom quilting but the pantograms are far less than $100 each and I’ve worked to budget one quilt a month. I love to hand quilt and one of the three baby quilts I recently gifted was hand quilted by me. Lovely way to spend the long summer evenings in quarantine. I recently retired and moved from my hometown of 55 years to a very quiet small town in the Central Valley. I don’t know anyone here and my sons and their families are still in the Bay Area. Quarantine has a special meaning for me….lots of sewing time! I’m so pleased to send you a quilt for Mercy Hospital; truly a heart warming program. I will be in touch as soon as they advise the quilting is complete. Thank you for all you do to keep us quilters on track during these most challenging times. I painted a few rocks for my garden…fun addition.
Oh my gosh – I didn’t realize we lived (sort of) close together. I lived for quite a while in the Fowler/Selma area – south of Fresno – when my boys were tiny. My son and his wife are both working at Gallo and living in Turlock. Small world!! Must be a tough time to move into a new community when it is so hard to actually meet people though. Hang in there Dawn.
I too would love the corona while sitting outside painting !! Sounded refreshing so it gave me a chuckle seeing it in the picture. Yes celebrating democracy and refreshing promises ahead.
Hahaha – the Corona was mine. My husband thinks it is too ‘watery’ but I love it. We had warm weather up until just days ago and now it has dropped way down. I am celebrating the cool weather. Summer got tiresome – too darn hot! Cheers Kathy!
LOVE the Halloween rock pumpkin idea! Also love that Julia is learning to embroider! Has she discovered Urban Threads’ web site yet? In addition to their awesome machine embroidery designs, they also sell quirky individual designs for hand embroidery that are especially appealing to teenaged embroiderers: https://www.urbanthreads.com/categories.aspx?category=EmbroideryDesigns.
Thank you Rebecca! I don’t know if she has stumbled on to that sight but I will show it to her. Right now she is trying to get the knitting down and is working on a Santa hat – white border and then a red hat. It is looking really good. Take care.
Love the pumpkin rocks! What a great idea….
We have a beach rental house, and when we went down for the first time after our last renter for 2020, someone had left a painted rock at the edge of the driveway. It had pretty daisies and said Be Nice …we loved it! We won’t be renting the house anymore, but will leave the rock there for family and friends who will be visiting in the future.
We have a neighbor who has a beautiful maple tree….each fall the leaves turn a brilliant yellow. About a week later, all the leaves fall off on the same day! It has done this for decades!! I have never seen a tree lose all the leaves at once. Every year, we wonder if they will gradually fall off, like all the other trees, but every year they do the same thing.
Hi Sandra – great story about the beach house. That is so sweet. Hope your renters take good care of it when they use it. We have rented beach houses a number of times and really enjoy that as compared to a hotel. I like having a kitchen to use so we don’t have to eat out so much.
Our maples are much the same. I love them though. We also have aspens and they are gorgeous right now. 🙂
Your trees are spectacular! We are finally getting some fall color here – much more than we ever had down south – and I am loving it. Makes me happy just to get out to get groceries – lol! Those chicks are adorable. I may have already mentioned I received 30 chicks as a gift when I was 10 and raised them with Mom’s help on our farm. I sold the eggs at $1.00/dozen to buy Nancy Drew books. I was quite the rich 10 year old! I hope Julia gets a lot of joy out of raising them. I am impressed with her embroidery – it’s lovely. How is she doing on the knitting?
That is so cute! 30 chicks is a lot of work – wow! Lots of eggs too. I loved Nancy Drew also. Those books were so much fun. I remember picking them out at the library. She is actually doing really well with her knitting. She saw this pretty ‘Santa’ hat and is trying to replicate it. Today she wants to join the red yarn to the white. She got the ridged border done and now needs to start the red part (moss stitch I think?). She is quite determined.
Good morning Bernie! I love all the photos but especially the ones of the pumpkin painting – creativity and family time at its best. I’ll bet there are plenty of folks out there who found and enjoyed the heck out of the painted pumpkins. {{Hugs}} ~smile~ Roseanne
Thank you Roseanne – the three of us have spent so much time together over the last 7 months. Gotta keep busy somehow!!
Pumpkin rocks are a great idea! I’m sure they brought smiles to those who found them! We made your mummy jars as our Halloween decorations! http://thedarlingdogwood.blogspot.com/2020/10/playmat-and-halloween-craft.html
I love hearing the reports of the chicks! Love Julia’s embroidered word. If she’s looking for other embroidery patterns, I saw someone else recommend Urban Threads. I also like Sublime Stitching, she does a lot of non-traditional embroidery subjects and themes. A lot of her designs are in packs with multiple designs on a theme so you can mix and match. https://sublimestitching.com/collections/hand-embroidery-patterns
This is great Emily. So glad you made the mummies too. I will pass along your suggestions for embroidery. It is fun seeing her learn these crafty things. She has no interest in sewing but is enjoying the knitting and embroidery. Take care. 🙂