Sunday Postcard Art - Patchwork

This postcard is a little of both this week, hand made and digital.

The background is made using various papers (in reds/pink), digitally altered in PS, with a digital overlay of a hummingbird.

 

See other patchwork postcards this week at SPA.

Salem Art Fair & Festival

This event was held over the weekend of July 16-18. It was our second year attending. It's held in Bush Pasture Park, which is part of the Bush historic residence (built in 1877).

The weather was much more pleasant this go round, being in the low 80s, whereas last year it was 100+.

The glass baubles are what greet people at the entrance we took inside...They know how to display them to their best advantage. The colors absolutely sparkle in the sunlight!

These caught my eye again this year, and I still didn't buy one.

These were fascinating, and very well done.

I believe this one is titled "You Are What You Read".

These artists (a husband and wife team) had some fabulously whimsical things....

And for the rock n' roller in all of us...

This fabulous pottery is made by an Oregon artist at Our Town Pottery.

See that dark blue bowl in the upper left hand corner? That now resides in my kitchen. Right now it's got homemade hummus in it, but I plan to use to for salsa too. Well, I had to justify a reason to buy it after all.

And I don't know why, but these faces never fail to fascinate me.

One thing I did talk myself into buying was one of these egg collages by J. Brooke. They are unlike anything I've ever seen before, so different. Not only from an art fair goers perspective, but from an artists perspective. She was doing so much business that it was hard to step inside her booth. After looking at these little miniature works of art in person it's easy to see why.

Difficult to photograph without getting all kinds of glare (and I'm too lazy to work with it). This is the quail egg that I purchased. A delicate little egg, a tiny nest, with tiny eggs (I assume made out of polymer clay), then the piece is filled with resin. The eggs used are from domestic farms (so no wild birds are harmed). She also makes art out of larger eggs, including a storybook series.

 
So much neat stuff to see, so little time.

Friday Freebie - Pretty Girl

This photo was found in a junk shop for $1. It had obviously once been part of a scrapbook, based on the snipped corners, and the glue and black paper evident on back. There are no markings, and no name (unless it resides hidden underneath the remains of the scrapbook page).

Check out that coat and those button shoes!


I'm still trying to figure out what it is she's holding.

Postcard Friendship Friday - Berchtesgaden Germany

Happy PFF everybody!

This week I couldn't decide which of the following postcards to share, and since they all go together I decided to share all three.

These cards are all part of the big box that I found for $2 at a garage sale a few weeks ago. I won't have to worry about coming up with material for PFF for a long time to come. lol

The only marks are on the back in pencil where someone wrote 1-July 1955 on each. One also has EIN Ernst Baumann Foto in the upper right hand corner, where the stamp goes. I did some research and discovered that Baumann was a professional photographer, and took many photographs during the war.

Our tour today is in the town of Berchtesgaden...which sits at the base of Mt. Watzmann.

Berchtesgaden is in the German Bavarian Alps and is located near the border with Austria. Mt. Watzmann is the third-highest mountain in Germany.

Nearby visitors can take a trip on an electric boat down the Königssee lake. The Königssee is the third deepest lake in Germany. It was formed by glaciers during the last ice age.

 
Then we take a ride on the stop at Jennerbahn cable car, located in the Berchtesgaden's national park.

I'm sure the view is fantastic from up there, but all I can say is, better them than me.

And this concludes this weeks tour. Please visit PFF and see other postcard entries.

This was one of those days...

I spent running around on tired energy. I haven't been sleeping all that great for the past few nights, and after so much of that I get these bursts of energy. The next day usually involves not moving at all. lol

Hubby left for work a bit after 10 am, and by 11 I had unloaded and reloaded the dishwasher, started a load of kitchen towels, turned the drip on in the garden, cleaned the birdbath and refilled it, prepared yogurt makings for the yogurt machine, and had the chicken poaching for tonight's dinner.

By days end I had added getting the chicken limed and chilling, changing the beds, doing three more loads of laundry, two more loads of dishes (I really need to stop cooking), cleaning the kitchen, uploading 30 items (plus a gazillion photos) to Etsy, and various other small things I can't remember. lol

I wonder if I'll manage to concentrate on anything at all tomorrow?

Lime Coriander Chicken

Serves 4 (this recipe can be successfully halved for two people)

4 chicken breasts - poached or grilled (I poach, then brown lightly in a skillet)
6 ripe vine tomatoes, halved
5 Tbs. extra virgin olive oil
Grated rind and juice of two limes
salt and freshly ground pepper
small bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped

Cut the chicken breast into thick slices and place in a non-metallic bowl. Gently squash the tomatoes with your hands (or cut into chunks) and stir together with the chicken.

Whisk together the olive oil, lime rind and juice and season with salt and pepper. Add the coriander and stir into the chicken and tomatoes. Cover and chill in the fridge to marinate for at least two hours or overnight. To serve arrange on a platter or individual plates.

Serve with Pepper and Spring Onion Couscous (recipe below)

 

 
Pepper and Spring Onion Couscous

Serves 6

1 1/2 cups whole wheat couscous
2 teaspoons olive oil, preferably extra-virgin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 red pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
1 yellow pepper, deseeded and thinly sliced
4 spring onions (or some kind of sweet onion or leeks), sliced

1. In a large bowl, combine couscous, oil, salt and pepper. Stir in the peppers and onions. Pour 2 cups boiling water (or hot vegetable stock if you prefer) over the couscous and cover. Let stand until the water has been absorbed, about 5-10 minutes. Uncover and fluff with a fork. Let cool slightly before serving.

Organizing the house...

It's that time of year again....

Well actually, just about any time I get the bug is that time of year. lol

I go through the organizing and cleaning out 'thing' every few months. Hubby always shudders, but he helps where and when he can, and in the long run we both feel better having a clean (or mostly clean) house. 

We can't understand why it seems to be a never ending battle though.

We don't even have the amount of stuff that most people do. We live relatively sparse (too sparse for many people I'm sure), simple, easy going. Since we live in a relatively small house we try to keep it to a minimum. Too much stuff in a small house makes for cramped quarters. 

We're even fairly careful about what comes into the house in the first place (except sometimes I overdo the art supplies - yes, art supplies can be overdone - trust me!). How then, does stuff seem to accumulate like it does? It obviously spends time co-habitating in the dark recesses of the garage, closet spaces, and cupboards, multiplying at will. That's the only explanation there can be.

Books are case in point. Where do they keep coming from? We've got a closet full (and by closet I mean several shelves), a bookcase full, and even the night stands are full, behind the closed doors. Though there are books that will always be keepers, we purge the others quite often. The small local library knows us well. We're always bringing in books/movies and magazines for them to shelve or sell at the book sales.

In the garage there are bikes that need to be hung and gotten up off the floor. A carpet machine, ShopVac, and various other pieces of equipment (jigsaw, bandsaw, circular saw, etc) that need a place of their own to stand uncluttered and ready to use. Right now every time we need to use one of those things it's a major hassle to uncover whatever it is to make sure it still exists.

Plus, the laundry area is out there. There's nothing I can do about that unless we build on to the house. And that isn't going to happen any time soon.

When we first moved in to this house I thought I was going to love having the washer and dryer out there. I don't. I hate it. I absolutely hate it.

It's not even the hike from one end of the house to the other, it's the whole 'laundry in the garage' thing. I don't have a room, I have a space. And it's not even a good space. When I'm sharing my laundry area with tons of other stuff it's stressful. And if I drop some newly laundered piece of clothing on the floor? I say choice words, throw a tantrum (yes adults are prone to tantrums under these circumstances), and am generally cranky for the remainder of the day.

A car in the garage? Surely you're joking. We've never had a car in the garage - ever. Not just this garage, but any garage, and we've owned three houses since we've been married. Our last house was no larger than this one, but it had a ridiculous three car space (new development), and there was no way we'd have ever gotten a car inside of it.

Of course we had an excuse then. We had to move quickly and didn't have time to get rid of anything. That however doesn't explain why we never got rid of it after moving in. It just didn't seem all that important I guess.

My dream for this garage? Move everything out and only put back those things that we can't possibly live without.

In the meantime, I'm tackling the house, room by room, closet by closet. I hate that type of work because it's not like you can wave your arms around at the end of the day and say 'hey, look at what I accomplished today'. It's one of those tasks that goes unnoticed by everyone but the person who has actually done it.

Sometimes it would be nice to be Samantha, Sabrina, or even Jeannie. Just a nose twitch, the swish of a finger, or a blink, and everything would be done and as you like it.

Actually, that would be a fantastic way to remodel a house and get it finished in one fell swoop. *Sigh* But that's a story for another day.

Sunday Photo - Vintage Chevrolet

Sunday Postcard Art - Owls

When I saw the prompt for this week I thought, this will be a breeze. It wasn't.

This is what I finally came up with. Since I haven't been in the crafting mood lately it was a real struggle. lol

I used bits and pieces of paper, acrylic paints, inks, and various rubber stamps (the owl is from Hampton Arts).

See other works of art at SPA.

Thanks for looking and have a great week!