Rainy Saturday

Woke up this morning to a rainy day..... as I type, I can hear the frogs outside by the fountain.  We have two little brown frogs that have made a home in that fountain, swimming around in circles for part of the day, then climbing out and sitting on the ledge as if they're garden ornaments.  There is also a family of frogs out by the coop (the kitty-coop now, since the chickens are all gone).

Every morning when I go out there to get the coop ready for the cats, five little frogs pop out from under the wood board just outside the coop.  I've put a shallow dish of water in the grass out there for the frogs, and they seem to wait for me to refresh the water each morning.  As soon as I do that, our outside cat Gatsby takes a drink, all the while being watched by ten little froggy eyes.  He doesn't bother the frogs, and the frogs just sit around the dish waiting for Gatsby to finish.

Mickey and Sweet Pea watch the frogs from inside the screened-in coop, and the frogs watch the cats.  It's like kitty-TV and frog-TV at the same time. But they're all happy, and that's what counts.

This month is almost over, and I don't know where most of it went. Busy with the house, my space in the antique shop, getting ready for the Halloween party, and just the usual day-to-day stuff. Plus reading. Always reading. I've finished the book on Vincent Van Gogh, this wonderful volume filled with his sketches and paintings along with the story of his life. He didn't even live long enough to see the impact of his talent on the art world.

Last week, we had an afternoon of card-making here...... me and J and J...  the three of us sitting around my dining room table, which I had filled with everything we needed to make Halloween cards..... happy Halloween cards for family and grandchildren--- no gory ghouls allowed.  We picked out card stock and papers and pictures and embellishments.... put them all together and ended up with original cards for my cousins and their grandchildren.  There were a few times in that dining room when you could have heard the proverbial pin dropping...... we were all concentrating on what we were doing, barely breathing till we got the cards just right.

I think I've created two card-making monsters...... both J and J will now be looking for seasonal pictures and embellishments,  and saving greeting cards that they get throughout the year....... and we're going to have a card-making afternoon once a month here.  Last week, Halloween cards...... next month--- Thanksgiving cards............... and then just wait till December..... greeting cards, place cards, gift tags.  

All of this paper crafting is part of my Aunt Dolly's legacy...... my aunt saved every bit of pretty paper, pictures from magazines, greeting cards that were given to her..... all of that went into hat boxes (one for each season)..... and when we had rainy days with nothing to do, or too-hot days when we didn't want to be out in the yard, my aunt would go up to the attic and bring down the hat boxes and we'd start making cards or gift tags or paper dolls. Endless hours spent at my grandmother's kitchen table, with the scissors and paste, papers and pictures and colored pencils.

I've tweaked Aunt Dolly's method just a bit.... using shoe boxes for each holiday, filling them with the fronts of greeting cards, pages from magazines, pretty embellishments from the hobby section of the store...... double-sided tape has replaced the messy paste, fancy-edged scissors are a must.... and as Mary Engelbreit would say: "Let the crafting begin."   And my Aunt Dolly, still busy and thriving at 99, probably has a hat box up on her closet shelf, filled with card-making supplies.