Not Like the Storybooks

Charlotte was gentle and wise.

Charlotte's Web

Miss Spider sounded so sweet, making the softest silk hammocks.

James and the Giant Peach

Miss Flora Spider has amazing eyelashes and looks almost as friendly as she claims to be.

Miss Spider's Sunny Patch Friends

Then there was this:

In the Yard

The lovely, mild September days were disrupted by showers of heavy rain and strong winds today, though it it is still warm.  During the past couple of weeks, we have been trying to spend as much time outdoors as possible while daylight hours still extend past dinnertime. Other creatures have been enjoying the sunshine with us too.  Mischief Maker crawled on his belly to take photos of this beautiful red-tailed hawk who sat with us for a long while. Every once in a while, it would turn its head to look at the boy commando-crawling closer in the grass.  For the most part, it seemed to enjoy the gentle warm breeze while it looked for lunch.

As I was downloading photos from the camera, I found this one. I don't know which child is holding the grasshopper since neither is as squeamish as I am. The child who took the photo seems to handle a camera quite well too.  If I get past the ickiness of bugs, I can see why they found this one so striking.

Little rabbits and groundhogs and other creatures visit or live in the yard as well.  Once in a while, deer, turtles, frogs, and even a slinky fisher stop by.  It's all a treat and happy reminder of summer days which flew by too quickly.

a little letter-writing box

We needed a quick birthday gift to surprise a little girl. Inspired by this gift box project, we created a happy letter-writing set with things we had at home.  Pretty tape is magical!

I printed a few sets of cards from Sally Boyle's etsy shop. She used to sell various collections of her marvelous artwork as printable cards.  The itty bitty woodland stickers are printable circles from MariekeV's lovely etsy shop ages ago, when her shop was much smaller and design look was a bit different.  Postcards, a handmade notebook, and other goodies are tucked in, which the photo does not show.  For the birthday card, Tofu Girl colored a personalized paper birthday cake from the incredibly generous Linette whose etsy shop is called PaperGlitter.  See that photo of her milk carton favor boxes?  We sent that to her from our photo shoot with some cows.  Initially I tried to take photos of the cartons next to the cows.  Then we were licked by curious and friendly cows (they're huge!) and buzzed by bugs before we had the wits to traipse further along to take photos with cows in the background.  Anyway, we hope the birthday girl will have fun with the box.

A Feast

 My sister brought back various bits of paper from her trip to Cape Town up to the Bwindi reserve in Uganda years ago.  (She visited the Bwindi gorillas which involved trekking through the wilderness...guided by people with guns.  I think gorillas are amazing too but I'm okay with not seeing them up close in their habitats.)  In my ongoing, exasperating process of cleaning out the piles of "stuff" we have accumulated, I found a folder of things my sister had collected for us, including this fabulous advertisement for a restaurant called moyo.  Makes all that reorganizing worthwhile!  The ad is large, about two feet by three feet or so, and it's supposed to look like it has been stitched together with various colors of thread.  Is the backdrop supposed to be wrinkly paper or, more likely, hide?  Not sure.  They took the time to include details, like all of the knots and underside of the stitches on the back.  I have not been able to take this apart to make any envelopes or collages; it's too lovely!  moyo claims that it has overlooked nothing in providing customers with their own "personal visual safari."

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