Busy Days

For the last several days we have been without phone and internet due to a bad cable.  As I tried hard not to stress out about all the wonderful conversations going on in my art froup that I was missing, I threw myself into busy work!  Last year we had an addition added to our home for my mother to move into.  The construction started last April and finished the day before Thanksgiving.  By that time I was a basket case! lol!  The new addition has given me something I didn't have here before and something that I was sorely lacking in my life.  I have always been a garden person.  I've built gardens at every home I've been at.  When we moved to a farm with more land than I had ever called my own before, I was paralyzed at how to garden.  I'm a small, intimate, garden room gal type and all this space was just too much for me to think about.  The last garden I built was in Massachusetts in a little city-sized lot.  I built a four room garden with nothing more than my sweat and hard work... but I was much younger then!  This time I am going to enlist men-with-machines help!  Below are the pre and post construction pictures of Pennwood Farm.

In this picture you see the original house.  The deck which extended off the back of the house on the right side of the picture has aready been removed.



In this photo this is all the new addition placed onto the back of the house (right side where deck used to be on photo above). 

I now have a wonderful new area for gardening!

And to that end, I, of course, need a new garden journal!  I ran across the cutest journal in the January/February issue of Cloth Paper Scissors magazine using a file folder.  It has pockets that hold little cards and/or books.  So I spent the day today making my new garden journal.

I started with a few booklets such as, "Plant List".  This will be a place for me to list all the plants I put in the garden so that I can go back later and know which variety I have. 

More pockets and booklets!










I've also been working on some ideas for a new garden gate book swap.

 These are poppies from a rubytuesday tutorial.  They are supposed to be made out of tyvek envelopes, but I was fresh out and the post office was closed so I tried it out using tissue paper.  I think they turned out pretty nice.

This next picture was made using some new fun things from my great wool swaper friends! I layered on circle stencils in different colors and sizes.  I then did packing tape transfers of the photo's of Xio and added those.  Then a little painted flowers and voila!

This picture is just a watercolor background on bristol board with flowers painted using acrylics and gel medium.  I love sunflowers!

So it was a busy several days.  I spread grass seed, fertilizer and 15 bales of straw, cleaned out the gutters, mucked out the hay bin and danced around with my paints and brushes!  It certainly was a productive time, but I sure missed my art froup!