Welcome TAo My Little Corner of the World on Friendship Friday

Happy Friendship Friday!!  I love how the community at Create With Joy comes together and shares what is going on in their world with everyone else.  It has been a few days since I have posted.  I have just about figured out that the Blogger app on my phone and tablet turns all of my pictures sideways.  And for the life of me I cannot figure out just how to fix that.  So, I am having to upload all of the pictures from my phone and tablet to my computer.  Thank goodness there is a very easy app to use to do that with!!!!  So, first of all, happy Friendship Friday to everyone.  Hope your week was good.  Hope your spring is a wonderful one so far.  I have had a good one, especially with the weather we have been having here in Arkansas!!!!  I am going to share with you some pictures from around my house.  So ,welcome to my home everyone!!

This first picture is of a page that I completed in my art journal.  I bought some new die-cuts that go with the K & Company lines of paper.  I also found the "Nirvana is not a myth" saying from a magazine.  So, I just decided to put them all together, add some paint and just a little bit of everything!!  I think it turned out great!  Very different than what I am used to but I think I am slowly climbing out of my box and seeing things a little different.

This one is of the bushes that I carried home in my car.  I shall always have a beautiful yard and if I do not, then it is only my fault.  Want to know why???  My mother-in-law owns a nursery!!!  Yes, I still have to pay for everything.  I don't have a problem with that.  But, if I should ever have an ugly yard, then I am the only one to blame!!!  So, off to the nursery I went this Saturday.  You should have seen the back seat, too.  I almost couldn't find the kids when I got home!!!

She had this beautiful blue pot sitting out there at the nursery.  I fell in love with it since it has a vintage feel to it!!  I love making my own containers of flowers to add a little color to the beds with.  I got three plants that kind of grow and spill over the side to plant in the holes on the side.  Then I got a few that you may not always see to add a little bit of visual interest by the front door.  This has to be one of my favorite pots that I planted this year!!

Here is the front of my house.  Notice the green shrub followed by the two purple looking ones.  Those are new this year.  From where the water hose reel is down to where the green bush is, all that was bare and nothing was growing and it looked boring.  So, I got a nice tall bush along with some of the same ones that are in front of the living room.  I really think it looks good, now!!

This is one of the new arrivals around my house!!  I knew this nest was here but never thought about there being baby birds in there.  This one was built above one of my outside lights outside the garage.  Not sure if the egg is just a shell or if it just hasn't hatched yet.  This was the hardest picture to get since it was very high up.  Had to stand on a chair to get the picture.  Then I had to put my camera above it and take the picture all while hoping that the picture turned out decent!!

Our other nest in the back yard had four birds in it.  I didn't know we had this one until my little girl came in the other day with excitement telling me there was a momma bird feeding her baby birds.  So I took my camera out there (my phone was dead) to take the pictures.  All you could see at the time was four little baby bird heads with their beaks open sticking out of the nest.  It was so cute.  The next couple of days passed and one by one, the babies slowly started to leave the nest.  I was able to pet three of them and they seemed to enjoy having their heads rubbed!!

I took this when I got home today.  The momma bird in the front yard nest came by to feed the baby in there.  She kept making her rounds with food every so often throughout the afternoon.  Some of the times you could see the little baby put its beak up and grab whatever food the momma bird had for it.  So very cute, if I should say so myself!!!

So, there you have it.  A little tour of what has been going on around my house the past couple of weeks.  Now, it is off to work for Saturday and Sunday.  Oh, well, I guess I have to make the money somewhere!!!  Hope you all are having a great spring and thank you for stopping by!!  Please feel free to leave me a message and let me know you stopped by my little corner of the world!!!  Maybe next time we meet I will have some pictures of the hydrangeas.  One of them are actually going to bloom this year!!!

~hugs, mel

Inspire Me Monday and Coming to a Mailbox Near You

Happy Monday everyone!!!  Another great Inspire Me Monday at Create With Joy.  I am really loving the mail art thing right now.  Making an envelope is really refreshing!  It just seems to take you from the real world to the place where you would rather be.  I really like to get into my work and will work on a piece until I finish it.  I have been using my colored pencils a lot lately.  I really seem to love how the colors from the pencils just flow across the paper.  I also like to add some little something that makes it my own.  My main inspiration for most of my envelopes came from this first picture.

 

 This is a picture I had thought about while I was at work one night.  I will draw things to keep from falling asleep.  I work nights and it is really hard to fight off Mr. Sandman at times, to I started putting some of my thoughts onto paper.  I have really been working on faces lately.  So, I got to thinking about doing one to look like it was peeking out from the bushes.  I was only going to do a small amount of leaves around the face and then draw something else in the empty space.  But, I got to drawing the leaves and just couldn't stop myself!!!  So, this is the inspiration for the next few pieces of mail art that I did.

 

Since it was brought to my attention after I posted addresses of the people who will be receiving these great pieces, I blocked them out and just put the destination of the card.  I do apologize for posting addresses.  I lost my mind.  I guess I will have to go hunt it down!!!!

These three are inspired from some of my first drawing attempts.  I really love this type of drawing.  It is totally spontaneous and random and I LOVE that!!  It is kind of an "anything goes" type of drawing and no two will be alike!!  The bottom one is the first one that I made.  The top one is the second one and then I finally made it to the third one.  I really love these!!!

 These two are ones I decided to use some of my scrap papers to make.  I don't remember off the top of my head who made these papers.  I want to say 7 Gypsies, but not totally sure.  They are really cool papers that already look like a collage.  Then I pasted the large number, the stamps, and the typewriter and globe pieces.  The number along with the typewriter and globe are made by Pink Paislee.  After I got everything glued on, I decided it needed a little bit more.  So, I decided to draw on them.  After I finished, I stepped back and knew that is what they needed to be complete.  So, that is what I have for Inspire Me Monday (now Tuesday).  I started this post and worked on it several times between wrangling kids, cooking dinner, giving baths, etc.  So, here it is Tuesday afternoon and I am just now finishing up the post!!!!!  Thank you for coming by my little corner of the world.  Please leave me a note to let me know that you stopped by!!!

~hugs, mel

Inspire Me mondays

WOW!!!!!  I was one of the featured readers over at Create With Joy.  My mail art made the "front page" along with some other very inspiring ladies!!  This week I guess you could say my paints and my colored pencils are inspiring me.  First of all, I do take my colored pencils most everywhere.  My purse is big enough that i can slip one of my art journals in there for a quick picture wherever I go.  So, when the creativity bug hits, I can satisfy it right away!  This weekend I sat down and did a few pages in my journal.  I have never been one to share my feelings on paper, so i just write whatever comes to mind at the time I am working on a particular page.  My pages are totally random and may not make sense, but I guess that tells you something about my life.  The first two pages with the faces on them are really just practice.  You have to start somewhere in order to get better!!!!  The "LOVE" page was inspired by the big "love" from one of the pieces of paper that i used.  So, I went with that particular theme.  The last page was my first page I did where I totally painted all the person without drawing it out first.  I love red, so when i noticed that i was using a lot of reds, I went with it from there.  And yes, I love red, jeans and T's, my music too loud, and puppies!  Thank you for stopping by and leave a message letting me know you were here!!! Also, I do apologize for the pictures being sideways. My blogger app on my tablet turns them all sideways!!!

~hugs, mel

Friendship Friday and Some Other Random Ramblings

Happy Friendship Friday to everyone!!  I was sitting here just wondering about what we all do when we make new friends.  We sometimes wonder about who they are, what their life is like, and other things like that.  I don't consider myself anyone special.  I am a mother of three, two of them are twins.  We live in your middle class neighborhood in the US.  I don't have a fancy care or a fancy house, but I really like what I have.  But sometimes life isn't all roses.  Sometimes we struggle with many things.  I won't say that my married life has been easy.  There have been times I have just wanted to throw up my hands and walk out.  But, being the Christian person I am, I have done what needs to be done to make it work.  I may not have always been the happiest, but I do have a lot to thank God for in my life.  That brings me to the question of the week, how do I celebrate Easter????  I celebrate the life of Jesus.  I am thankful for the gift He has given to me.  Then I look around at all the other things I am thankful for and realize that Jesus died for everything I have done wrong.  So, Happy Easter to everyone, whatever way you choose to celebrate.  Now, on to the pictures I have for this Friday.

This is my daughter, Ashley.  They have an old tank that the kids can play on here at the park.  She had just climbed up the tank so I took her picture.  I took these with my phone.  I think they turned out great for a phone camera.

This is my son, Justin.  He was in the same place Ashley was.  I just love hoe the picture catches the part of the sun and his bright, smiling face!!

This is the two of them.  Yes, they are twins and no, they are not identical!!!  I got asked those question all the time when they were still babies!!  Just something to get used to as a mother of twins.

Justin decided to climb on the gun of the tank and go all the way to the end of it.  He was still at least 3-4 feet off the ground here.  He just giggled as he dropped down on the ground!!

These flowers really inspired me.  It shows just how beautiful all of God's creations are when they are living together in harmony.  These were some flowers a patient of mine had received.  I thought they were really beautiful, especially the pink roses, that I had to take a picture of them.  Again, this was taken with my phone and the lighting was a bright fluorescent.

I had to get an up close picture of the roses.  The color of them reminded me of some vintage roses.  They had that coloring around the edges of them.  I really love them and just had to have this picture!!!

Yes, I am still drawing faces.  I want t become better with them.  Maybe one day I will.  But, for now, I am just going to keep drawing.  The faces that I have posted so far were all drawn in pencil, outlined n black pen, pencil erased, then colored in with colored pencils.  I love colored pencils.

I took out my tablet the other day and found these pictures on it.  This is my little girl playing around with the front camera on it.  I just love this picture.  The sun's rays showing through the window overshadowing the actual picture of Ashley making a heart just makes it that much more precious.  I love this.  It would make a great picture to hang on the wall.

This one is almost the same as the last one, but the way you see mostly her hands with the shadow made by the sun is just beautiful.  I love this one, too.  I may just have to make these into some wall hangings.

Thank you for stopping by my little corner of the world.  I think I rambled more than usual today.  But, I just had some pictures I really wanted to share and hope that you enjoy them as much as I enjoy them.  Feel free to leave me a message and let me know that you stopped by my little corner.  Happy Easter to everyone.  He is risen!!!

~hugs, mel

Wordless Wednesday and Some Other Various Things

I am trying to figure out what I can post for Wordless Wednesday.  Wordless Wednesday is something really fun you can find at Create With Joy.  I really don't have anything in particular to post, so I am going to share a couple of my pages from my art journal that I am currently working on at the moment.  I sat down tonight and decided to do a couple of pages in my art journal.  Since I am still fairly new to art journaling, I still haven't found my style yet.  So, I am trying a lot of different things.

 I don't have very many vintage pictures to cut out or anything like that, so i used a nice picture from a Travel & Leisure magazine. I made my background first, using acrylic paints and some old foreign money. Then I just put my scrap paper and magazine cut outs on the page. I did a very light watered down wash of them before I did some accent painting. I then added some words to it. I think I like this particular style, the randomness is so fun to play with.

The next page I did is a little more organized. I like the night skylines of the big cities. I made me a big full moon, some buildings with some lights on, and some stars. I saved our fortunes from when we went out to each Chinese food last week. There is the randomness on that page that I really like!!!!! 

 

Oh, wait, I found my picture for Wordless Wednesday!! I almost forgot, we went to get strawberries today. No, going to get strawberries does not mean going to the store to get an overpriced carton of half ripe and no taste strawberries, we actually go to where they grow them. We go to a place called Holland Bottoms. They grow most of the produce that they sell. I always look forward to the strawberries. Arkansas strawberries are so very good!!!!!!! I took the last picture of the strawberries I cut up for dinner. They were SO VERY GOOD!!!!!! I just love the color of them. Pictures of peaches to come in a few months, once I get the juice cleaned off my hands and arms!!!!

Thank you for stopping by to say hello!! Leave me a message to let me know you were here!!!

 ~hugs, mel

Mail Art Going Out Today and Inspire Me Monday!

Whew!!!  The title says it all!!  I recently joined the site for mail artists.  While I claim to be no artist, I have made some quite colorful envelopes and some quite colorful stuff on the inside!!  I am doing the random mail art thing.  I think it quite fun, especially when you don't know what is coming your way from the snail mail bag!!  I guess you could say that sending this colorful medium to people across this great planet is very inspiring. 

As you can see, I was just going to send this in black and white, but as the hours were dragging at work and I had completed everything, I decided to pull out the colored pencils and put a little color to it!!  I didn't want to color everything, so I just hit the main part of it.  I think it looks really great colored only part of the way.  I am loving the spring colors on this one.  A lucky person in Florida will be receiving this piece of mail.  Hope she likes what is on the inside of the envelope!!!

This little beauty is going to United Kingdom.  I love the fake name on here!!  In this profile, it stated that they would like for people who send mail to make up a fake name.  So, I am using the name ROADDUMMY.  I use it for a lot of things.  I stole it from my dad, who is a truck driver.  Trust me, if you ever need a screen name in any forum or message board, this one is definitely NOT taken.

And last, this little gem is going to Germany.  I feel a special connection to this country since a lot of my family came from Germany in the 1800's.  In doing my family history research, I found out that as far down as my maternal grandfather was full German.  That makes my mother half German, and then me.  Now I know where some of my personality comes from.  Anyway, I just hope all these cards find their way to their new home safe and sound.  I hope that the people who open them love them as much as I do.

I love making cards and stuff with paper.  I may not be the absolute best at it, but it is something that I love to do.  I guess you could say that I put my heart into what I do when I am creating something with paper.  So, now I am off to play with some new paper that I found.  I will have more cards to show later this week.  I am thinking about making some postcards this time.  May be a little cheaper to mail, who knows!!  Thank you for stopping by my blog.  Leave me a little message and let me know you stopped by.  I don't know, maybe a little special something to a random reader!!!!  Just be sure to leave me a way to get in touch with you just in case a little RAK (random act of kindness) wants to make it's way to your doorstep!!!!

~hugs, mel