Things I Love Thursday

I'm not really ready for the cold.  However, one or two overnight frosts have began to transform the land into it's pretty autumn colours.  I love the colours!  Last year's fall was long and dry.  This year is different.  Things are still green but now there's this blast of deep dark orange and crimson.

I love my puppy.  His name is Buddy, a Border Collie.  I told you about him.  He's the nicest, sweetest doggie ever.  He takes me for morning walks.  I love him for that.  It's been too long away from the trails.  I love that I get to enjoy the change of scenery up close and personal.  Every morning, the colours are a little deeper.

near Sutherland Beach

I am still loving the weekend I had at the workshop.  It's inspiring so many ideas.  That's good - as an artist... but not so great as an artist with no studio.  My husband joked before I left for the weekend, "maybe I'll get the floor done while you're gone."  We laughed.  AS IF.  Then I came home to it started!  I LOVE MY FLOOR!

Floors = omg I can move my furniture in!!!

We were having some issues with slopes and dips even after leveling.  There's just not enough money or headspace for a subfloor.  The rest of the basement is carpet on underlay with no subfloor.  So he came to the conclusion that we need carpet.  I googled flooring and found this "LVP" (haha - luxury vinyl plank) which lies nicely and is not damaged by water.  It's a floating floor and so durable and scrub-able.  It comes in any wood grain and texture, even stone and cork look-alikes.  I am glad we found the one that looks like the hickory wood I had my heart set on.  Sweet.

There you go - a little inspiration from the changing colours. 

Enjoy your weekend.  I will be painting 100 feet of baseboards with a big smile on my face!

Sunday Snapshots

Look at the colors!  Can you see them?  Look close.  We don't get much red at all on the prairies (except for the fact that our skies get it all the time).  So when these 'plum' and red colors pop up without being planted... WOW.

dark green, light green, red, purple, yellow, cream.  click to view full screen

Love it.  Saskatchewan is FULL of dark green and bright yellow.  Those happen to be the flag colors.  (haha - go figure!)  There's a great mix of gold and blue and purples as well.  There are soft pinks and deep orange.  In the above photo, there are reds and plums in here too.  I love it!  If you click, you can see vertical red lines through the whole scene.  (ie: little stitches, right?)  Oh if I was a weaver, this would make a beautiful tapestry.  : )))

I notice similar colors in the next photo from the back yard...

the girl's pansy boots.  Doin' fine this summer.

Here are some of the same colors again!

Thistle as the sun goes down.

Happy Sunday,

Things I Love Thursdays

I love to be creative.  I also love nature.  

Here are some other ways I have been delving in to both.

I love my new pan pastels.  : )

This summer I am spending some time on a regular basis sketching up the clouds with my new soft pastels.  I have a couple perfect spots where there is an unobstructed sky view right at home:  one on a north second floor balcony, and one facing east from the middle of my backyard.  (no powerlines, no trees, no nothing.)

I love studying clouds.

It's oddly familiar to sit and do this plein air as they call it.  I feel like I channeling my mother.  I secure my paper to a board with wooden clothes pins and sketch quickly and loosely as the clouds drift by, ever changing.  Clouds change FAST, so this is kind of exciting - like trying to catch a butterfly.

You know I love to look down as much as I love to look up.  LUCKY ME - I found a terracotta flower press at a garage sale!  It came with a big book to boot.  To be more specific - it's a microwaveable flower press!

modern day wild-crafting?

No kidding.  I didn't know it when I bought it.  You can quickly dry a pressed flower in less thank 2 minutes.  Done.  The color retains VERY well too and there's no chance of anything going funky.

I did up a bunch of samples and it's amazingly fast.  This is wonderful.  I can collect prairie plant specimens now and save them indefinitely.  Love that.

As for these specimens... we shall eat them!  : )

Happy summer and happy Thursday!