Fall Weekend

The rains ended, the sun came out, the weather was brisk...a perfect fall weekend, especially when the grandchildren came to visit!

Lots of painting projects on up my kitchen island...

Decorating pumpkins...Lily's has 360 degrees of pumpkin faces!

Avery went to his first college football game with Bryson  (NCSU vs Virginia Tech in Raleigh).

Lily and I went for a nature walk on the greenway.

Lily made me some cupcakes out of Play-Doh and decorated them with real flowers and berries...

 And after they all went home on Sunday, I finished a few art journal pages.

This one has watercolor background that I painted in the mountains last weekend.  I added some thick acrylic paint circles which became the flower centers.  The text is one of the styles from the Hand Lettering book I recently purchased.  The only chisel markers I had were Sharpie King-Size, and they bled through to the page behind it.  Don't use them in Moleskine journals!  The photo is of the view from Chimney Rock, NC, where The Last of the Mohicans was filmed.  That is only about twenty minutes from my brother-in-law Richard's house.

I enjoyed making my last house and tree so much that I made another collaged version using paper from a Keepsake Quilting catalog.  I saw a similar collage demonstrated on You-Tube, I think by Milliande. I used paint mixed with gesso for the dimensional quality on the tree trunk and branches.  The leaves, flowers, bird, and text are from a set of foam stamps.

Here is something that creeped me out on Sunday.  I found this discarded snake skin on the flat stones surrounding my garden pond in the front of the house.  My son is six one, so this is about a six foot long snake skin.  Wonder where its former owner is lurking?  I was about ready to go into my overgrown flower gardens and just start yanking out the weeds and gone-by flowers.  Nope---might have to wait until the first frost!