Absent, but having so much fun!

Before I tell you what I've been doing ... a quick update on Erin. She's going to physical and speech therapy still, but doing great! She's slowly regaining her strength and getting her life back in order.

Me .... I just got back from a week with Terri. I can't even tell you how much fun we had and how special it was! First of all, she has this basement that would be an envy for any artist. When I'm there, we rarely leave the basement. Her husband knows this and her children know this. We come up only for meals and the bathroom. And what a sweetheart her husband was over the weekend ... making all our meals ... and just hollering down the stairs when it was time for us to come up and eat.

I arrived Thursday early afternoon .... we made a quick stop at our favorite shoe store before heading home to start our first project.

We made our version of a class from the Club Scrap retreat earlier this month


The next morning we headed down to the basement in our jammies with coffee cups in hand and started designing what was supposed to be a big metal project. Throughout the day it took many shapes and changes .... a 360 degree turn and it became this. The frame is 22 x 28, and this photo does it no justice. Its cork background ... the words are distressed grungeboard and chipboad, embellished with rusty objects, woven trim and metal squares. If I had a suitcase big enough to hold this, there would have been a battle over who was going to keep this piece! But sweet Terri sent me home with the ingredients to make another!

That evening we added photos and embellishments to my most recent Carol Wingert book. I love leaves and autumn colors, so its full of photos that remind me of just that.

Next morning, back to the basement in our jammies with coffee cup in hand. Today we decided to play with wax. We played, experimented, added, deleted, re-designed .... and ended up with these creations.

Next was a project from the Farmers Market kit .... a magnetic board .... and here's what we did with it ...

Next morning, back to the basement in our jammies with coffee cup in hand ... decided to work with metal today ... We made the frames out of foamboard, covered them with dictionary paper. distressed them and went to work on the metal.

The best Hobby Lobby is in Appleton, and of course we made time to do our 3 hour shopping trip and found lots of treasures!

We started a 4-drawer wooden chest thats going to be covered in metal, but darn if it wasn't time for me to leave by that time, so that project is sitting upstairs in my studio waiting to be finished.

Thanks Mike, Jack and Greta for letting your mom and I share these very special times together!