Fortune Cookie Blogs

Swirls....girls...and lots of twirls in these adorable Bold Mary skirts at the Horne house! Mailey and I found Bold Mary at an art show last year, and then again at Virginia Highlands this summer. We bought a matching skirts for she and her BFF Gracie. Aren't they the cutest here below? Oh to be this happy and carefree. Don't you wish you could put on an orange and yellow dotted hoop skirt and dance around like this? So free, so independent, so innocent, so happy, so silly? Are we still allowed to be just plain old silly? I say yes! Sometimes I put on my favorite music and dance away in the den with Lily before creating. Really gets my juices flowing.....I say you try it. Seriously try IT! You'll feel silly at first, but then you will feel liberated.

It has been brought to my attention that lately my blogs have been a little heavy. Okay......then today I heard a fabulous line on Hannah Montana, "Oh I hate it when Dad goes all fortune cookie on me." Seriously....that so describes me lately! Many of my posts have been serious and "fortune cookie" like. Wow. So I artsy promise to add a sprinkling of fun to the fortune cookie posts. You do know that a blog is like the ultimate online personal diary though, right? So you are bound to get the occasional deep thought or two. But I do have funny Mommy antidotes and wife of a politician antidotes too. Just need to mix it up more I suppose!! So here are the swirling, free, adorable girls that I want to be again.....more art tomorrow. And my art is definitely silly these days!

A Few of My Favorite Things

Our last Field Trip was a trip down memory lane for me. The kids and I headed to Birmingham, Alabama for the weekend. And I swear, I ate my way through the weekend! There is something magical about the restaurants and bakeries in this town. Seriously, I gained 4 pounds. So here's the first stop: It seemed so much smaller than I remembered, but looks exactly the same. The menu is stillon the wall! Lag's was a place we ate at least once a week as a child. Mr. Lag retired years ago they said, but still comes in every Friday to eat. I was so hoping he'd come by!

After Lag's we drove around the old neighborhoods and houses I lived in as a child. There were many you see. My parents were the original house flippers. It was embarassing back then. If HGTV was around though, we'd have made a great mini series! Then off to downtown Homewood for back to school shopping at Sikes shoes and Jack and Jill. I spent some serious dollars on Mailey, the nostalgia of it must have gotten the best of me. After those dollars were dropped, we headed to the bike shop, Pink Tulip and last but not least here:

Yes, there is a heaven, and it is cooked right here in this little bakery. Smiley face cookies and petit four cakes are my favorite since childhood, and now I pass this gene on to my children because it's their favorite too! They have so many delightful treats it's hard to choose. I looked quite silly trying to photograph them. But here they are:

And a shot of the cakes that I had at every birthday growing up as a child. Yes, that is ALL icing. OMG is it good for you. You heart, you soul, your mind..........it's just very good.

We hit severel more fun jaunts and then attended my 20 class reunion meeting. It went so well, that we stayed out listening to old Show Choir buddies in a band until the wee hours. The children were nestled all snug in their beds, promise! I on the other hand, will be dreaming of these amzing confections until September 12th, which is when we plan to meet again! Hope you had a sugar coated weekend!

This Week's Field Trip Day 2

So today we went for day two of our outdoor adventure field trip. And this time we:
1. left Lily at home sleeping soundly
2. brought Mailey Grace along
3. brought floats for water rafting at is most redneck
4. left the Canon behind for fear of it falling in the water and brought the quick snap Nikon

5. stayed water bound for about 2 hours straight!

Look at these two cuties! It was such fun watching them do something I absolutely loved as a child. Our creek was called Bullfrog Bend. We would hike up the creek about a mile with real tubes. Once at the bridge, we'd sit our tails in the ice cold water and ride down to the "blue hole". We weren't allowed past that point except on Thursday PM when Momma let us ride past the hole to the ultimate natural waterslide area with all the counselors. Sometimes being the camp director's kid was the best!

I stayed mostly like this today. Feet under water. Note to other's who try this field trip, definitely wear old tennis shoes!

Sending You Flowers

I LOVE this new product I found in Michael's! It's by K&Company...the designer is Carolyn Gavin. And get this, it is a pad chopped full of paper flowers, leaves and birds ready to just punch out, attach to wire a voila! Instant adorable bouquet that will never wilt. Of course in the rain we have been having it might, but I'll just plan to keep these on the interior of my home. hehe..

I found these great tin cones at Scott's last month. My plan was to make paper flowers to place in them and sell the finished products in my booth at the Flea. Finding these adorable paper flowers made the idea oh so much cuter! I also found in my trusty garage studio area this yellow paper fringe and pink flag picks. The only hard part to the entire project was drilling the holes for the ribbon. The rest was such fun to make.

The to/from flag pick was stamped using my vintage stamp set and brown ink. Crimpy filler and decorative ribbons complete the project. I am sure these will be purchased by someone who wants to give their friend the best "happy" ever!

A Little Vacation!

The kids and I headed off to Gulf Shores, Alabama for a spell this week. I had asked the kids a couple of weeks ago what was one thing they wish we'd done this summer we had not gotten to yet. They both looked at each other turned back and said "THE BEACH!" Billy started a new job this summer which did not allow for a family vacation, bummer. So when my sister Molly called me to come hang with her, I packed the car and we went!
Oh, we love to play in the white sandy beaches here.
My little surfer girl!

Here's Mattie in the sand. She was so cute until about 5 seconds after this picture when the tide came and swept her away. We have always enjoyed making sand sculptures at the gulf. There is always an artist in me yes, but the sand is so fine and powdery, it's very hard to make a castle. So we made Mattie, a fish, and a panda. It was fun. It was too short a trip. I want to go back!

Art Camp-Two weeks of FUN!

I forgot to post last weeks camp fun! We went to the farm and painted roosters, watercolor horses, cow/bull collages and fingerprint ducks! It was a day that would have made Old MacDonald proud!
Today we hit the reptile unit. Oh, a classroom full of boys was a real treat! We made pet rock turtles, crocodile paintings, snakes, and geckos on cedar. It was a day to be squeamishly artistic!