I Love October!

Why do I love October?

Fall!

Not nearly as showy as in the northern states, but even here in Florida there's a little Fall color and a definite change in the temperature! Loving these cool mornings!!! Fall is in the air!

Family

Cupcake Decorating Contest

We have an October Halloween-Birthday-OctoberFest to celebrate the many October family birthdays. That's always fun!

The invitations were sent

in their own special envelopes!

Friends

Aren't blog friends amazing? When I didn't receive one of her tags in Kimberly (ArtJoyStuff)'s recent Halloween Tag Swap, my friend Sherry of Createology sent me one.  Just look at this wonderfully creative wrapping!

And here's Sherry's oh-so-cleverly creative tag! Can you guess what that little item with the spider web on it really is? Go here to find out!

Sherry didn't receive one of my tags either, so I sent her one -

in a special envelope  - propped up here by one of my cats - looks like the party invitations!

 The tag I sent to Sherry - a little different from the others I made for the swap. I usually make several before deciding what to make for a swap.

Of course there are many other reasons for loving October - these are just a few!

Happy October!

October Fun.....

October is...

Birthday Month for our family - almost too many to count!  

We often have one big Halloween/Birthday/October Fest towards the end of the month to celebrate all the local birthdays - and that's what we'll do this year - if I can recover from these dratted Shingles in time to prepare!

  

October brings Fall weather, a welcome relief after all the hot and humid months of summer. Always enjoy the Fall and Halloween swaps too!  Such fun to see what everyone's making and swapping - so much creativity - Wow!

Kimberly's ArtJoyStuff swaps are always so much fun! This time we made 5 tags and received 5 back, along with some really special Kimberly 'goodies'.

Halloween Goodies Galore!

Look at the wonderful tags I received!

Carol Pohl - Front

and Back - EEK! HaHa!

Lululizinlalaland

Kelly Deal

Constantina

Michele Murray

Look what Kimberly added - this cute clip 

and

this spectacular wooden "witchy" tag!

Oh, Kimberly, you did it again - what a wonderful swap!  Go check out ArtJoyStuff to see all the other tags - over 20 swappers in all!

Rain Flowers and Sew Many More

Rain Flowers?

No complaints after months of drought, but we have had an unusual amount of rain lately, even for June, the traditional rainy month.  So when I noticed all the mushrooms or toadstools (no idea which!), I decided they must be our Rain Flowers!

Doesn't this one look like a little fairy home? So cute!

Different shades and different shapes 

Even the underside is interesting!

Sadly, no beautiful peonies or roses to show here - just these funny little "Rain Flowers"!  

BUT

A wonderful package of flowery goodness arrived a few days ago!

ArtJoyStuff's Sew Many Flowers ATC Swap

Our terrific swap hostess, Kimberly, always has a creative way of packaging the swaps.  This time she used actual pattern envelopes and pattern directions for packaging the Sew Many Flowers ATCs. What fun to receive this package!

Here's Amy's "Carefree" 

Love this little girl in the very pale blue dress!

Karla's  "Omas Buttons" 

Georgeous buttons - and so much detail. I thought the stick pin was real until I felt it (the jewel is real but the pin's part of the collage)

And Liz's  lacy floral beauty. Can hardly see the dainty fern background, but it's perfect.

Kimberly included this lovely tag for each of us. This was a 3/3 swap, so lots of fun! If you'd like to see my ATCs, take a peek here,  a post or two ago.  Thank you all so much! I love my new ATCs! And thank you, Kimberly, for once again being such a wonderful swap hostess!

It might not be too late to join this month's Mermaid ATC Swap. Check it out here! Can hardly wait to see all the mermaids!

What Do You Do While Waiting For a Tropical Storm?

Stormy Weather and Swaps

www.artjoystuff.blogspot.com

Living in Florida, we know the "Hurricane Season" lasts almost half the year, June - November.  As June approaches we start collecting our supplies: bottled water, non-perishable foods, batteries. Time to check all the flashlights, portable radios, portable generators, etc!

What's this? Work in progress ....

A few years ago after a week with no electricity, constant rain, mosquitoes,  high winds, and fallen trees, I was so jealous of one of my co-workers.  When we finally got back to school and started comparing stories, he said he'd spent the week watching movies on his battery-operated dvd player! 

Note the $.49 price sticker! Many beads left over from the original satin and lace project!

Now there's so much wireless technology available - a big help!  After that storm our local power company put all the electrical cables underground.  Before that we could lose our power any time, just by a small branch falling on one of the lines.

Last weekend we experienced our first 2012 storm - Tropical Storm Beryl - before the official start of the season!  

Jacksonville has been extremely fortunate - blessed - for many, many years by not having any direct hurricane hits, but TS Beryl came straight across our city last Sunday and Monday.  While not a hurricane, TS Beryl had pretty high winds at her peak (up to 70 mph - has to be 74mph for a hurricane).  Lots of rain and wind, but not nearly as bad as it could have been!  

The Mayor and other leaders cancelled quite a bit of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival and all of the Memorial Day activities. That was sad because the Jazz Festival is very popular and we had many visitors here for the US v Scotland Soccer  game too!  

Since Monday was Memorial Day the schools, government offices and many businesses were closed.  Everyone was advised to stay inside and "hunker down", after spending Friday and Saturday gathering supplies and preparing for the storm.

Sewing beads on bits of satin and lace carefully saved from  both my daughters' wedding gown fabrics saved me from just sitting here worrying while watching the treetops wave around in between torrential downpours.

Was it just a week or so ago that we were so thrilled to have some rain after months of drought? Between that week of rain and TS Beryl, everything's looking pretty green around here at the moment!  Best of all,  while there were plenty of downed trees and branches, no deaths or serious injuries were reported. Several dried up lakes a bit further west were filled up as Beryl passed by.

Now that it's June and officially "Hurricane Season" who knows what will come next?  The only good thing I can say about hurricanes, which have destroyed so much in many of the coastal areas of our country and others, is that we do get the warnings ahead of time.

Both my daughters asked me to make their wedding gowns. What wonderful summers those were! Precious memories!  As I collected the fabrics and pearls for these ATCs,  I realized that almost every one of the stores that carried wedding fabrics and lace at that time has since closed. That makes me so sad.

For the Sew Many Flowers ATC Swap, Kimberly asked us to make only three instead of the usual six.  I made an extra one for Kimberly and kept the first one for myself. I almost always make a few changes after the first one for any swap. I forgot that the Post Office would be closed Monday, so had to race out to mail them Tuesday morning - the drop-deadline day!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else did with this theme. Thanks to Kimberly of ArtJoyStuff for hosting this lovely swap!

Bonjour! "April in Paris" Mail!

Bonjour!

Kimberly's package with the April in Paris ATCs came a few days ago! She always includes something fun, like this super sweet tag!

ArtJoyStuff

All  six of the  beauties I received!

Danielle (Missdaniellerenee.blogspot.com)

Kelly (kellydeal.blogspot.com)

Laurel (laurelsquill.blogspot.com)

Marlene (uniquelyella.blogspot.com)

Sherry (Createology.blogspot.com)

Sylvia (littletreasures-sylvia.blogspot.com)

I forgot to take a photo of these little things I sent Kimberly to thank her for hosting another lovely swap. Luckily for me, she posted this photo! Hope you don't mind that I "borrowed" it, Kimberly! My father had brought the Folies-Bergere fan back in the late '60s or maybe early '70s, and of course we can all use a few pages of old French text and a 1970's National Geographic "Traveller's Map of France", can't we?!!

These swaps are so much fun because everyone interprets the theme differently and we receive all these unique little works of art.

Thank you all for these lovely ATCs, and many thanks to our swap hostess, Kimberly! 


Looking forward to the next swap, "Sew Many Flowers"! It's not too late to join, but don't wait too long.  Lots of fun!

April in Paris - and in Jacksonville too!

April in Paris ATC Swap

Kimberly's swaps are always so much fun, and this was no exception.  With a theme like "April in Paris", who wouldn't have fun?

The first one I made - I always end up changing them a little - 

or a lot!

They're pretty much the same, except for the bottom trim and the larger flowers. Also used a pearl to dot the 'i' in Paris instead of the tiny gemstones. I liked the girl's pose. She looked like she was dreaming  about something - Paris?  

Slightly larger view of one.  

and April in Jacksonville .....

At the time I was making these, or thinking about them, we visited one of the local museums, The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, to see the exhibit of Impressionist Art on loan from the High Museum in Atlanta as part of Jacksonville's celebration of our French Heritage.  Wonderful exhibit! No photos of the artworks, but a few from the gardens.

The azaleas and camellias had finished 

but some other flowers were blooming the day we visited

One of the huge old oaks leaning down into another part 

of the gardens. Perhaps  this ancient Live Oak was just a tiny seedling 450 years ago when Jean Ribault landed and claimed what became Florida for France. The settlements he left here were soon destroyed by the later-arriving Spanish, but there are still quite a few place names left from the French era.

A glimpse of one of the bridges going across the St. John's 

 This special exhibit of  the Impressionists - French and a few  American - must've inpired me to make my "Dreaming of Paris" ATCs! It's been a long time - maybe time to go to Paris (again)?!