“The lizard in the image is a Common House Gecko (also known as Asian House Gecko, Pacific House Gecko, or Moon Lizard), scientifically known as Hemidactylus frenatus.” ~Google
A common gecko was small enough to wander into the shower through a small drainage slit in the window frame. He was so adorable. I didn’t want him to die in the cottage we stayed in by becoming shut up in a closet or cabinet. With just a small prod to his tail, he jumped on my thumb; he was half the size of it, and I deposited him in the front garden. I hope he enjoyed the shower we shared.
We drove the fifty-two miles to Ocean City, New Jersey, on Friday, just because it was a glorious October day.
We had lunch at Manco and Manco Pizza, just becausewe think they make the best pizza in the world. Truly, it is!
We biked both ways of the 2.5 mile Boardwalk just because riding a bicycle close to ocean waves is wonderful.
We walked down to the beach, just because the October day was near eighty degrees, and I wanted to gather a few seashells to paint for Jersey Shore Shells.
At the 22nd street beach entrance, I was entranced by the strings of shells adorning every fencepost on the way down to the shoreline. Some posts even had more than one string. Beautiful. Why did the creative beachcombers take the time to do it? Probably, just because it was fun. I need to give into more enjoyable impulses, such as stringing seashells, JUST BECAUSE life is short, and really, why not enjoy every moment you can?
Creativity is intelligence having fun. ~Albert Einstein
We’ve had fun hiding the decorated shells over the past few days. On the weekend we went to Red Bank Battlefield in National Park and hid two shells, One in this cannon, another on a stack of cannonballs. I think both were most likely found, but only one was posted on the Jersey Shore Shells site. I was thrilled it was found, most likely by two small children we saw playing on the cannon later that day.
After the battlefield we walked beside the Delaware River and hid a pressed flower shell on the steps leading up the bank.
I also hid two shells in Fortescue while my husband fished. One was found and posted, the other on the sand was probably found too, not everyone who finds the shells posts to the Facebook group. That is okay with me, just the thought of someone feeling happiness when they find the shell is so worthwhile.
I’ve created a few more this week, I must admit, while I should have been doing chores. I am especially enjoying using pressed flowers with them. I found some decorating kits on sale for only $2.00 at Michael’s Craft store this week. Oh happy day! More fun on the way. Grandchildren and creative adults will be here on Sunday to celebrate Father’s Day. I’m going to have shells and decorating supplies on the tables for anyone who wants to paint and glue.
If you want to join this group, or just lurk a bit, the group is public: Jersey Shore Shells
Tomorrow, I will hide at least two of these shells, decorated with decoupage and pressed flowers. I belong to a Facebook Group called Jersey Shore Shells. I had so much fun painting the outside of them white and decorating them. On the back of each shell is a little laminated piece of paper with this message-
HELLO! I’M SO GLAD YOU FOUND ME…KEEP ME, OR HIDE ME AGAIN, WHATEVER YOU CHOOSE TO DO WITH ME IS PERFECT. IF YOU CAN, POST A PHOTOGRAPH OF ME AND WHERE YOU FOUND ME ON FACEBOOK GROUP: JERSEY SHORE SHELLS. THANKS.
I will update with part two after I hide them tomorrow. Maybe I will hide all four, maybe just a couple. So much fun. To answer your question, yes, the shells came from the Jersey Shore, a little town called Strathmere, between Ocean City and Sea Isle City. Although, they are from the Jersey Shore, they can be hidden anywhere.
One topic I really like to talk about, and participate in, is beachcombing. When I am on a beach I can’t seem to sit under an umbrella for very long. You can usually find me walking along the edge of the water, head down, attempting to find ocean treasures. I search for seashells and other drift brought up by the waves, I also scan the sand for sea beans. A former post on this activity can be found here: Sea Beans.
Sanibel Island, Florida, yielded quite a few sea beans this year. I threw out any I thought might be Castor beans since they are poisonous. The others I sorted, soaked a few, and planted. The small sprouts in the terracotta pots are the results.
You can search for sea beans along any coast. Most times, you will find local seeds that have washed into the waterways, but you might get lucky and find a sea bean that has crossed the ocean. The first sea bean you find will perhaps inspire you to start a collection, string it as a pendant, or do as I do and try to grow them for houseplants. Enjoy yourself as you search for sea beans. Finding them is free and brings happiness that can’t be bought.
Shiny metallic paint and glitter prompt me to create Christmastime art. This year I came upon a paint by FolkArt called Color Shift. I’ve been pleased with FolkArt paints in the past and Color Shift did not disappoint me.
The area above my Christmas village needed some color. A quick Christmas painting was my intent. I painted the background bluish-black to depict a nighttime sky. After the background was complete, I realized the composition needed something to break up the darkness by accentuating the outer edges. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time fiddling around with a complicated border. Hmmm, what to do?
Stenciling, or printing with an object seemed a good idea for a quick border. Outdoors on my lawn lay exactly what I needed, fallen leaves from my Bald Cypress tree. I also gathered a few ‘holey’ oak leaves while walking around the neighborhood. More on that later.
The Color Shift paint worked perfectly. Fluid enough to fill in the lettering without clumping, yet thick enough to dip my Bald Cypress leaves into for printing. (The paint looks a bit faded in this photograph, but it is only intense sunlight beaming across my work area.)
I needed a randomness of mind when I painted the stars. This is an artistic area I struggle with when painting. I find I quickly become uniform in design when painting a large amount of subjects such as stars or dots. The oak leaves came to my rescue and forced me to leave left brain logic behind and create with the bold randomness of the right side of my brain. I used the holes of the leaves to paint the stars. The pattern on the leaves, created by hungry bugs, quickly depicted the scatter of stars I wanted in the background. I’ve used this technique in the past and once again I found success using leaves as a stencil.
I also indulged the child within me and glittered the trees, top to bottom, with glittery balls and stars. The glitter, very fine in texture and easy to use, was found in the local dollar store in gorgeous colors. So much fun. This project was easy and under twenty dollars. The Color Shift paint was a bit pricey, but any other metallic paint could be used in its place.
We haven’t sent a photo Christmas card for years. It’s time. Yesterday’s sunshine and mild temperature was the perfect time to go outdoors and attempt to take a presentable photograph, but since it was just the two of us, we didn’t have the advantage of a photographer. We had to rely on the ten-second timer on my Fuji camera and a trusty tripod. Here are a few of the bloopers—
Blooper 1 – Clicked the shutter button without setting the timer. Who is that old woman? Yikes. How did time go so fast?Blooper 2 – Silly me, hit the two second setting instead of ten seconds. Blooper 3 – Tried to get tricky and run from setting the camera for ten seconds, smashing my way through strands of briars, slipping on damp leaves, climbing onto a log bridging the creek, balancing myself, managing to smile and maybe look presentable—all in ten seconds??? I’m amazed I got as far as I did. This was the first time my feet got wet during our photo shoot. I also fell, and the front calf portion of my jeans were stained by watery muck. Do you see the person standing safe on the log laughing? That’s my husband!Almost – This was almost our choice, but it is so sunny and somehow the camera has condensation spots on the lens. But still…might be a keeper. Can you see me trying to hide my dirty jeans?
Another maybe, but I’m pretty much blocking most of my husband out of the photo, and there’s a bit too much sun on our faces. Here’s the photo we decided to use, cleaned up, and cropped below. Our legs are a little off kilter, but that’s because to get back to where my husband stood in ten seconds, I had to jump a smaller creek that joined the larger one. He is actually helping me find my balance. I fell once at this location as I misjudged the distance and hit the sloped, wet bank too short. In this shot we are both laughing at all the trouble it was to take this photo. It was fun though, and after the photo was cropped we decided it was truly us. It’s a little early, but we wish everyone the best, and merriest Christmas ever.
I decided it was time to create a new avatar. The unfiltered, natural photograph was too lifelike; I looked all of my 60+ years. BooHoo! I was hoping for miracles. Smile! I decided it would be fun to use Lunapic-Free Online Photo Editor and tweak the photo into something a little younger. To be honest – too much fun! I had to make myself stop or I would have played around all day. Here’s a couple of my creations with Lunapic.
Warhol Effect x 9
Cartoon effect with Beauty Art Filter Applied First
Floating Art Filter
Toon Face – Cartooned without Art Filters
Which one do you like best? If you have a chance, and a good block of time free, take a few moments to play around with these filters. It’s so much fun. My choice: I think I like the two cartoons best. I guess it brings out the child in me. I can just see the last photo as a character in an episode of The Flintstones.
Valentine’s Day is a spot of brightness in the middle of winter, yet I often shortchange the house of decorations to celebrate this special day. This year I found a satisfying, but also easy and inexpensive approach to create a bit of February cheer.
I cut about 25 paper hearts out of red-toned paper, punched a hole, used leftover Christmas ornament hooks, and hung them on a lightly twisted ribbon of burlap. A little hint here: you can NEVER have too many ornament hooks. I use them for so many projects throughout the year. They are durable, near weightless, and can be twisted into so many shapes and sizes. I always keep a bag of them in my desk drawer. The green wire hooks are my favorite.
I also found some old cardstock tags I had crafted years ago with swirls of words and twirly lines. The pressed flowers I glued in place with rubber cement have faded, but still are holding on firm. I hung these on drawer pulls, clocks, light fixtures—anywhere an almost weightless tag could hang. I’m pleased with my easy and LOVE-ly decor. Happy February!
One of my favorite Christmas activities is cutting paper snowflakes. I usually start in October or November and cut several each day. I need near 100 to fill the windows.
I use washable school glue sticks to keep the snowflakes in place. When it’s time to take them down just pull the paper away from the windowpane and swipe with a wet washcloth once or twice. Let the moisture soak in for a minute, wipe again, and all the paper and glue washes away. Sometimes, if I use the right cloth, I don’t even need to use window cleaner. Anyone who has ever picked transparent tape off of a piece of window glass will know how tedious it is and how long it takes. Gluing the snowflakes to the windows sounds scary, but believe me, I’ve done it for years and it is SOOOOOO much easier than taping because of easy removal.
If you live in a cold climate, and put your snowflakes in windows, they will be more durable and condensation resistant if you iron them between pieces of wax paper first. After ironing, pull the wax paper apart gently, and the snowflakes come out intact with an invisible layer of wax on their surface.
ALWAYS start with a square piece of paper. Computer paper works great! Four through eight inches are the sizes I use. The larger squares are easier to cut, but a variety of sizes on a window looks more interesting. Have fun!!!
Did you hear about the Teddy Bear Scavenger Hunts? I don’t always follow the crowd, but this fun idea is too wonderful to miss participating in. Children, walking around neighborhoods, are going on scavenger hunts. Teddy Bears are fun to hunt! Since I have Teddy Bears in the house, I placed them in my front window. Two are very old, passed down to me from my grandmother. Since this is the grandmother who told wonderful stories about dolls and stuffed animals coming to life, I know she would approve. What a good distraction from all the mess surrounding us right now.
“God Bless Us, Every One!” ~Tiny Tim (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol)
In the same token, this activity reminds me of an amazing show I’ve begun watching, ‘The Chosen,’ on PureFlix.
Through this trying time of dealing with Covid-19, I want to live with the pure faith of a child.
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
~ Matthew 19:14(NIV)
It’s National Smile Day, not to be confused with World Smile Day, celebrated on October 4th. Every now and then I like to post a photograph of myself so you can see just who is writing this eclectic collection of blog posts. This photograph was taken by my husband. (You can see him reflected in my sunglasses.) We were gathered together with family for a Memorial Day Picnic.
This post is for all the wonderful people who create fun for the little people in their lives. My grandsons love scavenger hunts. It’s been awhile since they have slept over so I wanted to have a special movie night for them. First we’ll barbecue some shish kabob on the grill, then we’ll have a scavenger hunt all around the house. I’ve hidden quite a stash of items in various hiding spots, all with a movie night theme.
I’ll give each of them a basket, the first clue, and there will be some wild scampering around the house to find the treasures and the next clue.
I have several movies on hand for them to choose from tonight. One of those is Pete’s Dragon. We all saw it together a few months ago in the theater. It is now available on DVD, and because I loved the story as much as they did, I bought a copy for all of us to share. Disney Films, Robert Redford, Bryce Dallas Howard, the children who play the leading roles, along with Pete the Dragon, do a wonderful job in making this story magical.
Today I discovered that Jennifer Nichole Wells is running her Color Your World – 120 Days of Crayola challenge again. I enjoyed taking part in this last year, and hope to create several posts that fit in with many of the Crayola color themes.
The color of the day is Burnt Sienna. This is one of my favorite colors to use when painting in watercolor. Burnt Sienna brings an earthiness to any color it is mixed into.
A good example of burnt sienna in nature is fallen leaves, much like these my backyard squirrels have woven into their winter nest.
Seen from a distance, this nest appears precarious. Perched on the end of a trimmed branch it seems likely to fall.
When I zoom in with my camera though, I see it is a masterful design, the leaves held in place by dozens of small twigs that have sprouted from the cut end. What a great squirrel condo, and also a good example of the many tones of burnt sienna. I would love to take a peek inside at the interior of the nest.
I’m also adding another photo of our friendly neighborhood biscuit-loving dog. He is definitely blessed with a heavy coat of burnt sienna…many tones of brown and orange make up his fur. My blogging friend SusieShy asked me if he was a stray. I was able to say no, with surety, since he is wearing a Christmas kerchief around his neck.
I recently read a good post about a daft plane. I’m sorry I can’t explain, but the daft airplane reminded me of this post from 2014. I thought today’s Throwback Thursday was the perfect day to allow it to resurface. If you want to read the post that jogged my memory, you can read more about the daft plane on the Mehrling Muse WordPress Blog.
As a child, my husband saw an episode of the Twilight Zone in which William Shatner, before his Star Trek fame, is horrified by a scary (at least at the time of limited media special effects) monster on the wing of an airplane. My husband says this scared him for years as a child. Guess What? Whenever we fly I always find a moment to whisper in a frightened tone in my husband’s ear, “Shatner.” We always laugh, and he knows exactly what I mean. Seriously, he still tends to look out the airplane window at the wing when I say Shatner’s name. Funny…and true!
I felt immediate happiness when the Slinky song started in this YouTube video. I had a Slinky, each of my sisters had a Slinky at some point in time. Slinky did live up to the commercial hype and could walk down the stairs. The spring was fun to hold and set into the ‘up and down’ motion. The down side, Slinky inevitably became a snarled ball of ‘precompressed helical spring.’ It’s fun to read the history behind the popular toy. The History of Slinky.
When I was young we played several games in the car to occupy the time. One of these was ‘Padiddle.’ The rules of Padiddle are easy: If you spot a car with only one headlight, be the first to say, “Padiddle,” and earn a point. This game could only be played at night.
Another game my sons played, that sometimes caused spats in the backseat due to too much ‘ooomph’ given to the punch, was ‘Punch-buggy.’ A Punch-Buggy was a nickname for a Volkswagen Beetle. The first person to spot one would yell, “Punch-Buggy,” accompanying the shout with a punch in the arm for his/her seatmates.
A few other backseat games:
The Alphabet Game – finding the letters of the alphabet in order on roadside signs.
The License Plate Game – Trying to find all continental state license plates on long trips.
Do children/teenagers still play these games or are their eyes always focused on a phone or tablet?
Can you think of any other games such as these that you played in a car?
Jamaica is one of our favorite places to visit. I love the land, the sea, and most of all the people. The DeCameron, a lovely hotel in Montego Bay, is one of our favorite places to stay. They are expanding in size, and we enjoyed watching the work going on around us. We were very impressed by this man’s ingenuity in shielding himself from the hot sun with a large piece of cardboard. The cardboard is light in weight, but its broadness cast a large shadow, protecting him from the heat. I would never have thought of such a good idea, but I will definitely file it away in my thoughts as a perfect solution for blazing sunshine.
A few weeks ago I was sitting in my back yard, minding my own business, when lo and behold two chickens strolled into the yard as if they owned it. I was instantly IN LOVE with them, grabbed my camera and documented their visit. (Their home is on the street behind mine.) Their visit provided me with quite a giggle.
I’ve wanted chickens or ducks of my own for ages. Town ordinances have changed in many areas and it’s now permissible to have “pet” chickens or ducks in the backyard. On the other hand I am thinking of the feistiness of Blue Eyes the goose. Maybe a pair of geese would be a better idea. I wonder if it’s true that geese can be good “watchdogs?”
“Police in rural parts of China’s Xinjiang Province are no longer turning to dogs to stand guard at police stations at night. They’re using geese instead. And it works.” ~ Honk if You Think Geese are Good Guard Dogs – National Geographic
I’ve had most of my gardens devastated this year by a horrible groundhog who invades my yard weekly to eat my foliage and garden plants. Would a big white goose honking like mad and chasing him do the trick? The key word might be big. Should I get a goose now and coddle it all through winter, and have a big, big bird come Spring? Hmmm….I’ll have to think on it a bit and let you know!
“Chinese geese, like Africans, are a more talkative breed of geese. Due to this characteristic, they are the best breed if you want to be alerted to intruders or other strange occurrences. They love to talk back to you – especially if you have raised them from babies.” ~Metzer Farms
