Gwen Frostic

I have been finding these really neat books while working at the Literacy Council in the used bookstore. I am attacted by the neat artwork that looks stamped on and the wonderful verses. I found a few more today and I looked up the author/artist. Click the title above to visit her site. I wish I could have had the chance to meet this lady before she died. She must have been such an interesting person to know. It's just amazing that she was so observant of nature and so patient and talented to be able to transform a block of wood into such a beautiful work of art. They even have rubber stamps and note cards with her art and poetry available on that website. I hope I can find all of her books. I certainly love the collection I have now.

Denali National Park

Well we're here and having a great time. We rented a couple mountain bikes and toured the area that way. It is such a beautiful place. Everywhere you look is beautiful!

More pictures

Mystery flower #1
This is a bachelor button that I didn't plant. I love them though so it was welcome in my garden.

Gladiolus close up. They are so beautiful. It got really cold a couple nights ago so I cut them all and put them in a tall vase with some of my delphiniums. It made a very striking arrangement.

Mystery flower #2 I'm not sure what this is and it's definitely not something I planted. It is very pretty though.

I have never seen nastursums like these. The yellow with red streaks is very pretty!

I planted Forget-me-nots--Alaska's state flower--but this is the only one that I saw actually flower.
I planted this yellow rose for my mom. She loves yellow roses. She wanted to come up to visit this year but didn't make it. Maybe next year.
These are the dark red lilies that I thought would be a different color. I don't know what happened to the other colors. They looked very pretty from the road next to my white fence.
One of my delphiniums. I really loved the white one but it didn't last long enough to get a picture.

My garden

I really didn't work very hard to make my garden beautiful this year. I spent nearly all of my time studying so I am really shocked at how pretty it ended up being. I took some pictures last week and then some more this afternoon. Some of the flowers are a bit of a mystery to me since I don't think I planted them. I guess I forgot to take pictures of my tulips that came up. They were very pretty. I also planted a white rose, a yellow rose, two ground cover roses in variegated pink and a wine. I also planted several gladiolus bulbs, poppy, sunflower, and nasturtium seeds. I planted 3 lilies last year which came back up this year but I planted three different colors: dark red, white, and a pale pink. I had three lilies coming up where I planted them about 3 to 4 feet apart but all of them were dark red. So I'm confused as to how that happened. At least they are still pretty and the dark red was stricking against my white rail fence.

Someone help me up!

I'm just floored over what happened this weekend.

Friday, I took my son's violin into the music store to get the bridge fixed and while there I checked out the electric guitars they had. I'd been thinking about trading my acoustic in for one. I'd been having such a hard time playing the acoustic. It was very difficult to form the chords and impossible to switch to another after I had it. I figured it just needed a neck adjustment and after talking to the guys there I decided to take it in and let them look at it. They looked the guitar over and said the action was way too high which meant the strings were too high off the fret board. They adjusted the neck but said the bridge also needed sanding down some and said that changing to lighter weight strings would also help. Either way it seemed like a lot of the problem I was having was because of the size of the body and so many of the songs I wanted to play were actually performed on an electric. My husband had also bought me a neat computer program a while back for learning guitar but it was for electric. So I stood there and drooled over these electric guitars.

Actually, there was one guitar in particular that I just loved but I knew it was probably way too expensive. It's smaller so it seems like it would be just perfect for me! Also it was the only one that wasn't black or too crazy looking. It's stained a beautiful teal blue color and has a solid maple neck. I took some pictures with my cell phone to show my husband but I knew he would not be too excited when he heard how much. Also, I had found out the trade-in value for my acoustic was not very much. I told him about it but by bedtime I had decided to just let them fix up my other guitar and stick with that a while longer.

When I woke up the kids said my husband had been called in to work. I didn't think anything of it since he'd also had to work a little the last couple of weekends but I wondered why he didn't wake me up when he left..... and when he came rolling up at only 10:30 am I wondered why he didn't work for very long. He burst in the house all worked up because he said R (younger son) had left his to-go box from Boston's in the back seat of the car. I took off to go get it and it was sitting on top of a black zip-up guitar case with a small amp box (which is amazing for such a little thing!). I almost cried but worked really hard at holding back the tears since I know he hates that. It is soooooooooo beautiful! My camera is still broke (which I will NOT complain about ever again) but I found some pictures of the same guitar on ebay.
I don't have a nice fancy case like this one but you wont hear me complaining. My case is much more portable! This picture just shows the whole guitar very nicely.

Doesn't that color just make you think of beautiful turquoise waters like these?
My husband said the girl at the store recommended this little amp because it has a lot of neat effects, one of them being acoustic. So even though he went ahead and traded in my acoustic I still get the sound when I want it. This amp isn't much bigger than a car battery but it is a lot lighter. I can also put a battery in it and take it with me. He said I could use it to practice in the park. Hmmmmmmmm does that mean he doesn't want to hear me practice???

The season just before spring...

I swear there is one and I just love it. It's still winter but it's sunny and beautiful. The air smells crisp and clean and the birds are out. I love to go on walks and enjoy the sunset since it goes down just about the time I'm coming home from work. I can see a bit of sunrise on my way to work too. On my lunch I go for walks with Blue dog and she tries to make me get some exercise. I really just want to walk at a more leisurely pace but you know dogs.... especially beagles on the scent of a squirrel!

Well, I just realized that I might actually have a life! I have several things planned for the next week or so. I actually had to plan out a schedule to keep track of everything. wow. Pretty soon it will be interesting when classes start. I would like to take a beginning sewing class also if I can fit that in. I have a sewing machine now....and I have material........ but that doesn't make me a seamstress! So far I have only sewn a washcloth together. Hmmmmmm maybe I could sell that on ebay....