All posts filed under: Uncategorized

Get Messy Art Journaling – Season of Happy Continues

Published by

Simple pages this week. I am pleased with the black gesso and white paint pen on the first spread, it is so effective. When I began these pages, I had plans to add lots to it and when I stuck down the moon (thank you National Geographic from the 1980’s), I didn’t want to add any more collage or cuttings. I don’t usually make the finished page in one sitting mainly because the layers need to dry before I can add any pen work or extra bits and bobs. The background was painted with my fingers but kept more orderly than normal finger applied paint! It was a fabulous full moon this week too, so that must have influenced me. The second spread may or may not be finished.  It is hard to stop sometimes and sometimes the opposite happens and I don’t know whether to add more and run the risk of ruining the pages.  What I might do is make this page again and continue to add to the new page and see …

‘Waiting’ Entertainment.

Published by

What do you take to do when you know that you will have to wait for a while?  Do you check all of your social media?  Read the online newspaper? Read a real newspaper?  Read a book or a magazine?  Draw? Colour in? File your nails? Stare at people? Listen to music or a podcast? This morning I had to catch the Metro train and then a bus to get to an appointment where I would most likely be waiting.  Entertainment would be needed. My phone will do for a few minutes, but my social media life is not that exciting and I am not about to watch a webinar or TV show on the bus.  So, I check my phone then delve back into my bag for a ‘Werthers Original’ and something to read. I like a paperback so that I can read it standing in the bus station as well as sitting on said bus.  I am reading ‘The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend’ by Katarina Bivald at the minute which is a …

Through The Lens Thursday #51. Alive.

Published by

This week’s prompt is ‘alive’.  This tree is alive and it has made it through the year ready to grace our living room again. We bought it last year at this time and it has lived outside happily ready to be decorated for Christmas for the second year. We used to have an artificial tree which over the years got scrappier and more sorry looking, then last year it ended up with water in it’s storage box and ended up rather moldy.  So that was the end of that.  The intention was to buy another artificial tree, but we ended up at a tree lot with living trees rather than poor old hacked down dying trees. We all liked this one, decided to call him ‘Fat Albert’ and brought him home. I took these two photos of our Christmas tree today at the same time using different settings on my camera in the spirit of ‘Through the Lens Thursday’ which is a weekly project to practice using our DSLR cameras on the manual setting.  I …

Six Word Saturday

Published by

We went to the local winter farmer’s market at Schlafly Brewery this morning and had a lovely wander around veggies and bread and various farmed and homemade goods.  We bought this massive bunch of beetroot and I can’t wait to boil it and cool it and slice it into a salad. Do you like beetroot? Raw or cooked? I have never had it raw, I bet that would be nice in a slaw or salad. By the time we left the market, it was snowing, but the rain had left the ground wet, so the snow was just flurrying about, rather than settling. I hope you are having a lovely weekend, happy Saturday!

Through The Lens Thursday #47. Cut.

Published by

Ironically I took this photo nice and early when I was cutting down and pulling out the last of my tomatoes, and now I am posting late! You might have noticed the change in surroundings around here. I have moved (or rather am moving, so excuse the empty boxes and bare walls) blog house back to my original blog, here at CatsEatDogs. All of my old posts and bits and bobs are here too, so feel free to have a look around and if you want some old old posts, I started this blog in 2012 so there is lots to look at! So I am sneaking in late with Through The Lens Thursday, sorry Greta! Hopefully normal posting will resume next week when the prompt is ‘Muted’ and it is my birthday! Whoo hoo! I love birthday’s, don’t you!

One + Four = Life. Weekly Photos 42/52.

Published by

    1. Ikea has recently opened in St Louis and I went to check it out this week, I haven’t been to an Ikea in over ten years, so it was nice to have a look around and get stocked up on Elderflower cordial and Swedish chocolates.  The cookies/biscuits in this picture are like mini ‘jammie dodgers’ which makes them a winner! 2. My purple hair is fading rather nicely I think and I have had many conversations about the radical application of colour on top of grey/white rather than bleaching to start with.  The lady in the post office informed me helpfully that a very popular colour to dye hair at the minute is grey, so that is handy to know! 3. Over the weekend we had our first ‘frost advisory’ in the weather forecast – be advised, there may be a frost.  So I picked some of the green tomatoes from the vines and I chucked a tarpaulin over the rest.  What to do with green tomatoes which won’t induce a nasty …

How my Garden is Growing.

Published by

I thought I would share my little garden today, everything has just started to grow really well.  It is all green green green with a extra touch of green. The sunflowers are growing fast, followed by the tomatoes and rocket.  The kale and chili plants are coming along nicely, chilies always seem to grow so slowly, I am happy I have any leaves at all! My lavender bed didn’t all survive the freezing St Louis winter, but I have a couple of tough plants and I have put some more in the bed to fill it up again.  Hopefully I will get a bumper harvest again this year and make some lavender bags and maybe some lavender infused oil to use in balms and perfumes.  Then it’s fingers crossed for the winter months. The rhubarb is looking good, but I think I need to leave it this year and wait to harvest next year.  Seems a little too long to wait for rhubarb crumble, maybe I will buy some this year and let my little …

Philomena and Ruth

Published by

Philomena and Ruth is the name of a newly opened shop close to St Louis.  They specialise in hand made and local products, everything from clothes – new and vintage – to soap, accessories and jewelry.   It is in the lovely town of Waterloo in Illinois and about a 30-40 minute drive from St Louis.  I have never been to south Illinois before and I enjoyed seeing the countryside on the way and checking out the old barns and pretty towns we passed. We stopped on route at the fastest drive through McDonalds ever!  Filet o fish ordered and eaten within 10 minutes. We were hungry and on a mini road trip!  This time warp speed set the theme for the rest of the afternoon because we were on a misson, a mission to plant. Elizabeth the gorgeous owner of Philomena and Ruth, needed us to fill and plant the enormous planters she has installed outside the shop on the sidewalk. You can see the empty planters in the above photo.  They were crying …

Through The Lens Thursday 18/52. Upside Down

Published by

  I took this prompt very seriously indeed.  I thought and thought about what I could take for upside down and ended up laying in my back garden with my head upside down and taking a photo of the grass and the white flowers which currently reside there. Let me tell you, it is not easy trying to set camera numbers and settings and look and press buttons while upside down in grass which really needs mowing.  Yes, my grass needs cutting, but the white flowers are all over it and so pretty, I can’t do it (or won’t do it, I will leave judgement up to you!). I suppose I could have made it easier on myself and just taken the photo right way up and flipped it afterwards, but no, I wanted to fully experience the upside down and bugs eye view (if you are an upside down bug) of the world! There were some shots which were a mite more in focus than this one, but I slapped the f stop right …