…In fact, the garden WAS the party!

I mean, look at all that COLOR!

The sky was a little gray that afternoon,
but that seemed to make the colors even more vibrant!

Mom and Dad have a knack for creating color contrasts in the garden!

Everything was in bloom, and very fragrant!

Even the tiniest of blossoms…

… seem to tug at your heartstrings.

So I went home, and brought some Outside In.

Go not abroad for happiness,
for see,
it is a flower blooming at thy door.
~Minot Savage~

So, just a few photos from this week…

It began with frames and yellow paint…

And then some brown paint…

And then some more frame parts took over the dining room…

(And laundry too…
…a basket of folded clothes decided to make an online appearance!)

And there were LOTS of little details!

We even got to spend a few hours holding little hands!

And there was sustenance in the form of Raisin Bran Muffins…

I am always amazed when making this recipe
that was a staple of Hubby’s Mom’s kitchen…

The bowl is filled to the brim with the initial ingredients…

…and then you’re supposed to stir in a box of of Raisin Bran cereal!

And somehow it fits!

And there are plenty to share… The batter can keep in the fridge for up to 6 weeks!

(Great to have on hand for Instant Hospitality!)

It’s amazing what can be accomplished with a pot of coffee on the back burner
and a stash of fresh, yummy Raisin Bran Muffins!

Grammy’s Raisin Bran Muffin Recipe…
(Originally from Kellogg’s, I think!)

Mix together 1 cup oil, 4 eggs, & 3 cups sugar in your largest bowl.
In a medium bowl, sift together 5 cups of flour & 2 tsp. baking soda.
Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients, alternating with 1 quart buttermilk.
(You will need the entire quart!)
Once the buttermilk, oil mixture, and dry ingredients are well mixed,
Stir in 15 oz. Raisin Bran cereal.

Bake muffins @400° for around 15-20 minutes.
(They should be golden brown, and not smooshy on top.)

Keep extra batter in fridge for up to 6 weeks…
…but I’ll bet it won’t last that long, they’re so yummy!

You can play around with this recipe…

Mix up your flours… white, whole wheat, spelt, oat?

Use brown sugar?

Add in some nuts or seeds?

Also… I never seem to have the correct size Raisin Bran box, so I look at the serving
size on the side and do a bit of math to figure out how many cups are needed.
This store-brand cereal ended up being 7 ½ cups for 15 oz.

I usually use between 7 & 8 cups.

When I picked March 31st as the ending date of my Giveaway,
I wasn’t looking at the calendar, and didn’t realize it was Easter!

So after a very long yesterday, I decided to wait
until this morning to choose a winner.

Hope that’s okay with you all… I’m sure you had a full yesterday too!

So, early this morning, I wrote everyone’s name on small slips of paper…

And tucked them into this basket…

…Which is amazingly perfect for picking Giveaway winners…

… And pulled out this name!

Kim from Touring with the Crists is the Winner!

]]> http://thistledewblog.com/2013/04/01/and-the-winner-is-4/feed/ 1 thistledewmercantile names Basket Kim http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/27/branching-out/ http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/27/branching-out/#comments Wed, 27 Mar 2013 16:56:07 +0000 Kim at Thistle Dew http://thistledewblog.com/?p=2367 Continue reading →]]> In the midst of a long-distance Mother-Daughter phone conversation, somewhere mingled with Design Ideas, Mommy Advice, Airplane Tickets, Business Brainstorming, Children’s Drawings, and Plans-for-When-We-Next-Get-Together, my oldest daughter Jordan and I came up with a Brilliant Plan. While we were talking about the possibilities for developing a single design, the idea of a Grand Collaboration popped into both our heads at just about the same instance! And so did a quote that we both liked…

Home is Where You Are

It’s been nearly four years since Jo’s family has been back on the East Coast, and a good part of our conversation was about  Jo, her Hubby Luke, and her boys Jack and Derik traveling back home to Delaware for a couple of weeks in the late Spring. We’d both been searching online for airline tickets, and let me tell you, the price of airline tickets for four people to go across the country is nothing to sneeze at… As a matter of fact, it could make one swoon and fall over in shock.  But, where there’s a will, there’s a way!

We gals had an Idea…
…Take that single quote about “Home,”
create some Art around it,
and get those designs on the website, post haste!

Home is Where You Are

Jordan was feeling rather artsy that day, and jumped in feet first,
and got the ball rolling by coming up with
a beautiful sketch in her loose, happy style...

Her Mama, on the other hand, was a tad bit slower, and took a couple days
to produce a matching papercutting in her somewhat-tight, in-the-box style…

And then we set to work to produce a sweet line of prints and cuts that we’ll be
selling on our Etsy shops and websites to help play for those tickets!

Click Here to Purchase on our Website!

Or Click Here to Purchase on Etsy!

And don’t forget to stop by THIS POST and leave a comment to enter my current Giveaway!

Sitting on an overflowing shelf were three “shapes,” a sphere, a pyramid, and a cube. Just what everyone needs, right? Well, immediately I knew what to do with them… They would be perfect hands-on thing-a-ma-jigs for art classes to help students learn to draw three-dimensional shapes. I’ve been wanting to buy a set for quite a while, but hadn’t gotten around to it, and here was a small set of three, for only $4! I didn’t know how heavy they were until we picked them up to carry them to the counter. Once I brought them home, I realized their intended purpose. The cube had the original tag from (insert famous brand store name) that said “Set of three paperweights… $58” Well! As you can see, we soon put them to their proper use while cutting backing paper for frames! Though I would have never paid $58 for three paperweights, it sure did feel good to know their value.

“Value” means “how much,” and in most cases we think about money or worth when we hear it. Value is also an element or building block of art and design. The last two weeks, we’ve been experimenting with Value in art class… the amount of lightness or darkness an object has. We discovered that extreme darks or heavy shadows can allow the light areas of a work of art to become focal points. And we played with making tints and shades by adding white or black to paint to create some interesting contrasts…

To add a bit more “Value” or “worth” to my Home is Where the Heart Is design, I played around with it by fancy-ing up the border. My favorite papercut border is a bit lacy or icy-looking, but it adds several hours to the cutting process, so I usually reserve it for “one-of-a-kind” paper cuts. But… if my new “assistant” can help with the snipping, I could add that border to the design! Sooo… I re-cut it!

What little things do you do to add value to your daily work?

If you missed my last post… There’s a Giveaway to sign up for…
Pop over and leave a comment!

I’ve been wanting to try cutting something larger with my brand new Silhouette Cameo, and this is the first cutting of this design that came “off the press,” so to speak! When I learned about the Cameo, I had mixed feelings. Something similar to how the lacemakers, weavers, and spinners must have felt when the Industrial Revolution hit and factories began making in a few moments what took them hours, or even days to create. Watching that amazing machine cut away at paper had me and my entire family standing there in awe… And in my mind I was thinking “I’ve just been downsized!”

But then I tried to look at the other side of the coin.

I’ve been cutting paper for almost a quarter of a century. Every day. I love it, but must admit that I often fuss about how my eyes hurt now when I push them beyond their daily limit, and  grumble about a sore arm and neck when I’ve been doing lots of papercutting. Maybe it WAS time to take on an assistant. So, during the rest of March, I’m going to play around with this design, exploring the many ways that it can be expanded into products… and hopefully make the best use of technology in the process. Stay tuned!

And… A Giveaway!

The above electronically-cut papercutting
Home is Where the Heart Is
(Mounted on Lime card stock, Fits an 8″ x 10″ frame)
will be given away at the end of this month!

Leave a comment on this post to enter…

…You can include ideas for ways to expand this design if you’d like…

… And we’ll have a drawing on March 31st to determine the winner!

]]> http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/18/expanding-a-design/feed/ 10 thistledewmercantile WhereHeartIsDigicut http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/06/nooks-and-crannies/ http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/06/nooks-and-crannies/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 01:29:33 +0000 Kim at Thistle Dew http://thistledewblog.com/?p=2343 Continue reading →]]> Where did February go?!?

Most of it went to straightening up, sorting through, giving away, tossing out, and putting back. And I’m still at it. Somewhere around the time that our girls became teenagers, and through the years of girlfriends and sleepovers, Civil War Balls and high school activities, and gentleman callers and courtships and weddings, and empty nest shufflings and me returning to college… the house got filled up with stuff. We could still squish most of it into closets and cupboards, and give it a “lick and a promise” cleaning when company came over, but in the back of my mind, I knew what was lurking behind cupboard doors and in spare rooms. Stuff, stuff, and more stuff.

This one was stuffed to the brim with homeschool resources.
Earlier today, the top shelf looked worse then the bottom.

There were lots of books I used as resources for art courses…

… And lots of papers and such.

After a bazillion trips to the Thrift Shop to donate stuff, phone calls to daughters to see what is really important, e-mails to friends to see if they want any of this stuff, re-readings of all the books on my “get organized” shelf, umpteen bags of non-donatable things headed to the dumpster, and several storage box purchases at the new Dollar General down the street, I’m seeing some light at the end of the stuff tunnel. I’m down to just the stuff in various unorganized cupboards. However, when I tackle a cupboard here near the end of the battle, it seems like I pull it all out, sort it into piles, and put most of it back. Hmph.

We have a couple of rainy days heading our way…
…I’m hoping a few stay-inside-and-hibernate days will
give me the chance to conquer the clutter monster once and for all.

I am quite determined.

]]> http://thistledewblog.com/2013/03/06/nooks-and-crannies/feed/ 0 thistledewmercantile MessyCupboard Books Papers http://thistledewblog.com/2013/02/06/how-do-i-love-thee/ http://thistledewblog.com/2013/02/06/how-do-i-love-thee/#comments Wed, 06 Feb 2013 23:52:46 +0000 Kim at Thistle Dew http://thistledewblog.com/?p=2329 Continue reading →]]> Are you getting geared up for Valentine’s Day?

I didn’t realize it, but over the past year I’ve been decorating our new
hand-me-down bedroom with some really sweet memories!

I didn’t want to “over do” the decorating,
or just quickly fill the room with a lot of “things,”
but as special little treasures caught my heart
I tucked them in our room, sort of here and there…

Some have a REALLY special place in my heart,
like this tiny little painted rock…

…which I got for my 12th birthday…

…from Guess Who?

Sometimes a little trinket like my rock will be
tucked away in a box or drawer for many years.

Or maybe a special card will be saved…

We just added a few new designs to our shop…

…Just in case you haven’t found the perfect card yet for your Valentine!

I used one of the Bare Books for this year’s journal, divvied up the pages to about 4 per month, and added some tabs so I could easily find my place throughout the year. I’m not sure how the tabs will hold up over an entire year, but they are a fun addition! (Thanks, Martha!)

The tree sketch was a simple line drawing exercise… The crabapple is my favorite tree in our yard, and I think it’s been here since our first year in our home. I wanted to capture the movement of the twisty, tangly trunk in simple lines for this first sketch, instead of being super detailed about it. These pages  also include a quote, and a poem, and a prosy little bit about the snow we’ve had this month. For more January journaling ideas, follow this link… Or for February, head here instead! Or, for all the art journaling posts, scroll down and click on the “Art Journaling” category in the sidebar!

Something I noticed from my original January Journaling page… the Doodle of the Month for January  was “Snowflakes.” And I doodled snowflakes all over that page. But all those snowflakes had a major flaw. Silly me… Snowflakes have 6 sides, not 8! They really should look more like this…

I drew the mittens from “out of my head.” Don’t you just love mittens strung together? I was *ahem* 20 years old before I knew WHY mittens came on strings. Here in Delaware, where snow is not usually a huge part of our winter, we snipped those strings as soon as a new pair of mittens came home from the store. I honestly thought it was part of how they were packaged. Then I got married, moved to upstate New York with my new Hubby, and got a job working at a nursery school. And guess what? There’s a reason for those strings, and I think preschool teachers in snowy regions must be the most appreciative people in the world FOR those mitten strings! All the little children in that school kept their mittens strung through the two arms of their coats, so when they put on their coat the mittens were dangling from the sleeves, just waiting for their little hands! No missing mittens! No wondering whose mittens were whose! Amazing!

I tried to get a little bit of shading and texture on the mittens…
…maybe you can see it if I crop the photo…

I tried to think of the mitten as a “round-ish” object, and darkened the color around the edges to give it a bit of depth. And then took a good look at a knitted sweater to see what the texture looked like… Knitting sort of looks like little “V’s,” so I used a darker blue colored pencil and made a bunch of rows of V’s, sort of following the contour of the mitten. It took less time than I thought it would to add that little bit of texture. And I think it made the mittens look just a little  bit warmer.

Something else I’m doing with my art journal this year is adding in little thoughts about habits I’d like to establish or goals I’d like to accomplish. I do have a “written” journal where all that daily stuff gets recorded, but sometimes things get lost in there amongst all the wordage, so tucking goals in my art journal makes them stand out a little more. The little boxes with “#2″ and “#3″ written in them are actually mini summaries of a really great blog series I recently discovered… Click on the picture below to visit Daniele’s 52 Ways for More Serenity in Life and Home! She’s adding a new tip each Monday, and they’ve been a great encouragement to me so far this year! Go visit if you get a chance! (Daniele writes much more graciously to her readers than I do to myself… I need some “tough love!”)

How about you? Anybody doing some Art Journaling?

We’d LOVE to see it!

2. I was not the one taking a shower when it was
discovered that the water heater was not working.

3. My parents live next door, and their shower works just fine.

4. My Dad’s a builder, and his long-time plumber (and fishing buddy)
gave him a couple of slightly used water heaters that were removed
when clients decided to upgrade to gas hot water.

5. The new (to us) water heater holds 10 more gallons than the old one.

6. The new hot water heater was free.

7. My Hubby knows how to replace a hot water heater.

8. The vacuum and I got to spend some quality time in a hard-to-reach
place that hasn’t been cleaned since the last major appliance broke.

9. Ditto the mop.

10. It’s supposed to snow.

In every thing give thanks:
for this is the will of God
in Christ Jesus concerning you.
~I Thessalonians 5:18~