A beautiful day...

It was a gorgeous day today. I am sooo glad to see the sun shining and it was sooo beautiful. Has anyone ever noticed that the sky is so much bluer and everythings so much more brilliant after a storm or rain? It seems like it rains all the time lately and today was the first day in a week that we have not had a cloud in the sky. YAY! I just wanted to share some photos and a small video I made of the views from my front porch.

Everyone in our community and us call our home the house on the hill... because we are the only house on the hill overlooking all of the other homes. Our home is set in the woods and we have a long driveway that goes up the hillside through the woods. Its beautiful in the spring, summer, and fall... but a pain in the winter. Especially this past winter! We had so much snow and our driveway is so steep that its treacherous to try and drive up it in the snow. Soo we have to park at the bottom of the drive and hike up. NOT fun! Especially when we have groceries etc. Talk about a work out. On the bright side... 3/4's of the year its beautiful and so peaceful. I love the solitude, the views, and most of all nature! I just wanted to share!

This is the view from our front porch. Its absolutely beautiful. I love seeing the
mountains out of our living room windows. I love the way the colors are so vibrant. :)

Love this picture of the leaves :) 

I hope everyone has a beautiful weekend! =)

Tri-fold Card for PAMC Challenge #9

This week's challenge at PAMC was hosted by the lovely Deana. Tri-fold Cards! I have really loved making cards lately. Its so much more fun to send someone a card YOU created from the heart. I like to see or hear their reactions after they receive their card from me. I've never attempted a tri-fold card though. I wasnt sure where to start to be honest but I know I wanted something I could use at anytime as a greeting card instead of a specific holiday/occassion =) I drew out all of the shapes on different colored cardstocks and cut them out/edged them etc. Then put them all together. I really love my decorative scissors! You can do so much with them! The hills have script stamped in emerald on them. and the tree has a red gem.

Items used: 2 colors of blue cardstock, White cardstock, 2 colors of green cardstock, brown cardstock, emerald & black dye inks by stampabilities, script stamp from A Time to Stamp, Happy Everything stamp from Studio G, decorative scissors, self stick gems by Darico

Check out our design teams creations HERE. They all do such beautiful work! And feel free to jump on over & participate! We'd love to see your creations!

Happy Thursday all!

Andrea

Beautiful, worth sharing!

During the One World, One Heart Giveaway I was lucky enough to win a gorgeous handmade birdhouse from D&G Gardens and Crafts! I loved their creations so very much that I also ordered a second birdhouse to go along with the one I won. The pricing is wonderfully affordable! Today I was happily surprised when I had this fantastic package waiting for me! I wanted to share with everyone just how beautiful and well made and packaged my items were. They came in a large shipping box filled with peanuts and were individually wrapped. In the box was also an informative card about the type of birdhouses I received and the types of birds that are attracted to them, as well as hanging and cleaning instructions. There was also a beautiful magnet featuring a gorgeous photographed monarch butterfly. And finally a business card and a bookmark with the quote 'A good book on your shelf is a friend that turns its back on you and remains a friend.' Everything was sooo wonderful! I am urging anyone who loves gardening and nature to visit D&G Gardens and Crafts. I am so thankful to have found them! And I promise you wont be sorry!

God Bless,

Mural- Day 3

[ Day 3 began with painting a bird silhouette]

[Next I decided I wanted to add a butterfly too... so this is the outline I drew in pencil]

[then I painted the butterfly. I wanted to add a few warm colors to contrast the flowers :) ]

[At the end of Day 3 this is how it looks :) ]

Almost done I think, yay! More to come soon!

'Openings' ~ One World, One Heart: Give away

I will be giving this 4x4 away for the 'One Heart One World' giveaway :) Its a wonderful way for bloggers to come together and meet/interact, share your artwork and possibly win prizes :) To enter please leave a comment with your blog address or email address. I will use the random number picker to choose the winner and the winner will be announced on Feb. 12th.

For Wednesday Stamper the theme was 'Openings' and so I thought of a window. I created this 4x4...

The leaf stamps and bird stamp were all bought from Michaels on clearance. The leaf stamp was actually a stamp for decorating handmade soaps but I thought it would work for ink as well so I snatched it up *lol* I'm not sure if every dollar store is the same but here when you buy something thats fragile they wrap the items up in decorative tissue papers. So the curtains for the window is made from some of the tissue paper I saved from that. I always keep things like that just incase, you never know when you could use it for some sort of art project :) I wish you could see the clouds better in the 'sky' behind the bird but the scan just didnt let that show so well. I just love how all the colors go together. I'm a big fan of neutrals. :)

Finally, Autumn!

Im so glad that its finally Autumn! Its my favorite season. I love the crisp air and the beautiful colors! I'm in such an Autumn, and Halloween mood lately that I have changed my blog look for the season. =) It was fun fooling around with everything! I dont think we will be handing out candy this year for the trick or treaters, sadly. =( We live back in the woods on a private drive and there aren't very many trick or treat aged kids in our community. Thats ok... I still enjoy curling up on Halloween and watching spooky movies with my hubby, thats one of my favorite parts, other than seeing all the neat costumes everyone comes up with. We've never been to a halloween party and I havent dressed in a costume in years .lol. When I was a kid I was always a clown except for one year I remember going as Madonna when I was 10 or 11. It was an interesting year I'd have to say. I got tired of the clown get up. I'm not a big fan of clowns in the first place. But I suppose that was the easiest thing my grandparents could think of .lol. My brothers were always vampires or the hulk. They loved painting their faces with green paint and saying 'Im HULK' and the funniest year was when all of my brothers and my little sister all dressed up as power rangers lol. Too funny! What memories Autumn brings =D

Today I started a new drawing. Its a large closeup of a large sea turtle. I loved all of the details in the shell and the face/body. Its going to be a great challenge but a fun one. I am hoping to perhaps donate 10% of the proceeds to an animal organization, such as WWF.. but its going to take me at least a week or more to complete the piece =) I hope tomorrow to work more on the drawing and also create a few atc's or arches, or maybe participate in a few challenges. We'll see. Tim has to work this weekend (except for Sunday) so I'll be home alone. I'll figure something out to keep me busy =) I want to thank everyone who has left me such great feedback for my recent creations. You are all very kind! The Edward and Bella piece has received the most comments I have ever received, and I really truly didnt expect it. I didnt realize how popular Twilight has become =) Again thanks for all of your kind words and motivation! Its greatly appreciated! I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. I should be back very soon to share some creations! Happy Fall Yall! ;)

“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the
summer is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!” ~
Percy Bysshe Shelley

The Glory of Spring- an original

'The Glory of Spring'
(Click to Enlarge)

This isnt the best photo of my newest piece but I was so excited I just had to take a quick pic and blog about it =D I just finished this piece about an hour ago... its been an on going project for 2 months now. SIGHS... Im sooooo relieved that its complete! I wanted to challenge myself with something on a large scale with ALOT of detail and I thought the contrast of the darks and lights would be a nice challenge. =) This piece measures 19x24. Im hoping to add it to my shop in the coming days, but I do want a better picture of it to show more of the details and everything. Im so thrilled with its outcome, and more relieved than anything. =)

"To see a hillside white with dogwood bloom is to know a particular ecstasy of beauty, but to walk the gray Winter woods and find the buds which will resurrect that beauty in another May is to partake of continuity.” ~Hal Borland

Naturally Inspired...

(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT: a picture I took looking through the canopy, Tim and I in the forest, and the tree carving my hubby did [so sweet!])

I was inspired by nature to blog about my weekend (well my Sunday anyway.) My hubby and I decided to go shopping on Sunday and well its about an hour drive to get to any decent stores in a big town (like walmart for example) but on the way we saw a sign that we pass almost weekly that says 'Twin Falls State Park' with a large arrow on it, and every weekend we comment on how we would love to stop there and see the falls and everything. My hubby's coworkers told him it was a nice place, very peaceful and pretty so this Sunday we decided to actually go there for a change. We drove along the path through the woods to the parking area, and there were signs there pointing towards a paved walking trail in the woods. So we started walking... Keep in mind this was spur of the moment decision so I was wearing flip flops of all things! My husband had made the comment 'Im glad that its paved, so you wont trip and break your neck on stones or tree roots' and then the pavement magically disappeared and we were left with guess what... mud, stones, and tree roots lol. Im not scared of getting dirty and it was nice and quiet, very beautiful and cool under the shade of the forest, so I continued hiking. We were the only ones on the trail and it was nice spending the time talking, joking around, and just enjoying the beauty of nature. The trail seemed to never end, it continued to go deeper and deeper into the forest, the shade becoming denser as we went. We could hear the running water and we were surrounded by the neatest rock formations and fallen tree's covered in moss and all sorts of nature created sculptures. We took a few pictures together to document the occassion, and continued hiking. Eventually we ran into another young couple who were ironically from the same area we are originally from. They were really nice and we chatted for a little while. My hubby asked if there were any falls farther down the path and the guy said 'no, we walked 15 more minutes and found nothing but more of this' and so we decided to turn back after hanging out for a while, and my hubby carving T and A in a heart on a tree :) The other couple took off after our talk and left us alone once more. Eventually he found a small path that went down a steep incline almost like stairs carved from the ground of mud. He climbed down it and found a small pool with a small waterfall and took a few pictures of it. I couldnt climb down or possibly back up in flip flops so he did that for me, otherwise I would have been down there with him in no time. *sighs* On our way back the clouds were blocking the sun and it made the forest darker, and more eerie. I was a little spooked by the fact that we were about 45 minutes deep into the forest and were the only couple left there with no sort of protection from animals, or a phone to call for help if we needed it (well we had the cell phone but of course there was no service there... ) We were talking and I was going to step over a tree limb but my hubby thought I didnt see it and held his hand out and was going to help me and step down on the limb... well I didnt realize he was doing that and the limb hit bushes that were behind us making them shake and I jumped with a scare because I thought there was some sort of animal around us and he was stopping me because of that lol. My hubby thought that was the most hilarious thing to happen and joked with me all the way back to the car... in all honesty it was a nice hike with nothing but natural beauty surrounding us, and the peace and quiet that you could only get in the forest alone... but I was let down by the fact that there wasnt really anything I would catergorize as a waterfall there... it was more of a trickle of water onto a rock in a pond lol. but hey what do I know about these things.. Im just a simple girl, hoping to experience a natural beauty that will take my breath away. One of these days I hope I will see something like that, but for now... the forest was beautiful, but it wasnt breathtaking... my dream hasnt happened yet.....

New Drawing- "Dogwood Blossom"

Today I completed this drawing... I simply call it 'Dogwood Blossom' because well thats what it is (lol). I took the photo at the beginning of April at the park and just knew I wanted to draw it. So I did :) Its not a large drawing, just an 8x10 but thats ok. I didnt want to do anything too huge. I have this drawing for sell at Ande's Custom Creations for $40. Thanks so much for taking the time to view my artwork!