today was a great mail day~!!~ full of fun and fabulous surprises.

i recently participated in a give-away from Cathy of Big Lake Quilter and low and behold ~!!!~
i actually won~!
a beautiful collection of moda fabrics as well as an Omnigrid Mini-FoldAway. i work small a lot of the time and expect that the miniature cutting and pressing station will come in quite handy. as for the fabrics . . . they are so yummy that i'm bound to find myself starting a (forbidden) new project . . . i could sure see these fabrics making a sweet little doll quilt or two . . .  hhhmmmmm . . .  maybe a great way to pay the give-away goodness forward . . .  it is about time for me to have another one i think . . .  how's that for a tease?
thank you so very much Cathy.

i also received a totally unexpected card from Jay of  Creative Crone from studio Q. she is a zentangle artist extraordinaire as well as a fellow quilter. she has challenged herself with creating regular zentangles as well as an accompanying haiku with each one.  i LOVE visiting her and seeing her newest creative tangles.
and today, totally out of the blue, i got a card from her that was full of loving kindness as well as one of her beautiful zentangles.
on the back of the zentangle is it's very own haiku written by Jay:

 "Giving is Pleasure.

No matter how large or small,

The thought is the gift."

how true and how blessed i felt to be the one thought of in this special way. thank you Jay.
btw: can you guess what proud state Jay is from? there's a clue within today's photo.

in addition to all of that goodness i received the newest issue of the Cloth, Paper, Scissors Magazine.
i've been so busy admiring my other goodies that i haven't even cracked the cover yet but am looking forward to taking it to bed with me and possibly staying up late soaking up much of what is within it's pages.
a fabulous way to end this abundant day.

today's gifts include:

• the generosity (of both spirit and gifts) from friends i've made while blogging
• a walk with River and my wonderful husband. the new hip is feeling really GOOD just lately
• the lovely feeling of excited anticipation

recently i visited Pom Pom and read about her love of drawing and seen some of her whimsical sweet work. it got me to thinking that i too love to draw and have, at various times of my life, done quite a bit of it but in my (ahem) 'later years' (mid-life later not later later mind you) i've sort of wandered further and further away from it.
i've done some sketching and a bit of zen doodling over the past year or so but only a very little bit. when i visit Jay (the Creative Crone from Studio Q) i frequently see some of her fabulous zendoodling and am once again reminded that i should get back to it. like really try harder. make some sort of commitment. or something. i've had the Blog Zentangle listed on my sidebar for quite some time and i pop over there once in a while for a peek at what they have going on but still nothing. it turns out one has to actually set aside time and materials to achieve a goal~!!~ so approximately a month ago i decided to try to zendoodle right before i turn out the light. that would be after actually tucking into bed, after the reading time and after the sudoku puzzle time but before the shutting of the eyelids bit . . . sheeeesh there's just not enough minutes in the day~! anyway, i put an inexpensive sketchbook on the nightstand along with a couple of pens that i like to use and i have actually followed through (on those nights when my eyelids cooperated with me that long). it's very relaxing. very pointless. very . . .  well, zen.

as you can see i like to zendoodle within an actual recognizable form. usually it's  done quite a lot more randomly but the control freak inside of me doesn't like to do it that way. i'll probably get kicked out of the zendoodling clan now that they know . . .

yep, i like pears. pears are beautiful, which is why every great artist has at least one (equally  great) pear work somewhere in their portfolio (right?).

look~! i didn't create any particular form for this session~! progress? maybe. i'm not making any promises. i did manage to sneak in some words . . . thought that was pretty cool and might do some more of it. i also tried using pencil for part of it. that's probably strike two and three with the zendoodle police . . . 
imagine those uniforms~!

this one is still in progress. i started with the leaf and then carried on outside of it a bit . . . not sure where this one is going but i guess that's the thing with zendoodling; you just begin. make some marks. don't worry. be happy. before you know it you find yourself all zenned out.

this is my helper, Gracie. She's all zenned out too.


next: The Sketchbook Challenge ~!!~
:-D



today's gifts have included:

• a yogurt/banana smoothie for breakfast: homemade yogurt, frozen banana, dash of Vietnamese cinnamon and a drizzle of honey
• some time to spend on my AAQI goals
• a piece of watermelon cold from the refrigerator and perfectly sweet

still unruffling my feathers from a few days out of town . . . hope to be back to a "normal" pace soon.

okay, i'm sure that you've all heard stories of the American wild wild west and that those tales were full of gold nuggets, cattle ranching, poker games (that every man cheated at), a few "loose" women and saloons full of men sitting at tables and setting back shot after shot of whiskey . . . (which quite frankly does explain all of that gunfire that you undoubtedly also heard about).
and maybe it did go something like that but this morning i am convinced that it's really all about our WILD "SPRING" WEATHER~!!~

on sunday i actually hung my first hummingbird feeder (this happens to be my own personal mother's day tradition). it's very early here for hummingbirds but every once in a while i get the special gift of seeing one actually pull up to the "station" in a feeding frenzy. to me this display means that the spring season can officially start and brings a smile to my face and an exquisite (nothing else like it) joy to my heart . this doesn't happen every year but it does happen just often enough to inspire me to put out one "early bird special" feeder. this year i watched the feeder all day long and it just wasn't happening . . . maybe it was a bit too chilly or too windy . . . i continued to hope and watch . . . and late in the afternoon i was rewarded with a tiny, beautiful, HUNGRY male hummer. imagine my delight. i continued to watch as he darted in and out of the feeding area seemingly elated at having found nectar-like substance when (be still my joy full heart~!~) in darted another tiny, beautiful, HUNGRY male hummer~!!~ yes, i received not one, but two mother's day hummingbirds at my feeder~!!!!~ now, i should have run for my camera in an attempt to document this wonderful sight but i was intent on enjoying every moment and not scaring them off with a barrage of my excitable and clumsy attempts and the assortment of lenses that comes with those attempts. i did consider it and firmly decided that there should be no paparazzi on this first day.

i was out of town yesterday so don't know if the hummingbirds continued to make themselves at home or not. i was imagining that they were though . . .

and then~!!~this morning was flabbergasted to wake up to quite the snow storm~!!~big wet flakes falling from a windy sky and even accumulating on the emerging green blades of grass within the lawn.

that was hours ago and it continues to come down like there's going to be no (spring) tomorrow. i did duck out onto the front porch and and snap a photo of my cactus garden with the snow coming fast and furious.


so what does one do when there's a giant spring snowstorm and one is feeling more than a bit annoyed and downright depressed about it? one practices their zentangling. i've been intrigued by this interesting form of doodle drawing for quite some time and finally jumped in and gave it an honest effort. i thought i would like more color in mine but . . .

it turns out that using (only) a black pen seems to make it quite a bit more graphically appealing.

i think i need a LOT more practice which i won't consider a hardship as it's very relaxing once one gets into the "moment" of it.


remember the collaged bit of stationery that i was working on last post? i ended up collaging away all of my writing space and had to stitch a small cloth bag (recycled from clothing tags) into the collage for the purpose of inserting a letter into.

you may have guessed that this will be going all the way to Honduras to my daughter. i wonder what the poor girl is going to do with all of the crazy mail art that i have sent her over the years~!?!~