Front Door/Fall Decorating

I picked up this magazine the other day.  I loved the black door and all the different colored gourds.
It turned out the this is a design that P. Allen Smith built and it is a 1600 square foot cottage.  Now P. Allen Smith is a gardener so he probably grew all those different gourds, it would have cost me quite a bit to get all of those.  It has a black door like mine, I could have put a cat on the porch instead of a dog.  I have white pillars and a gold handle like is on the door.



Here is my scaled down version.  My pumpkin and gourds I picked up at Lowe's for half price.  The greenery kale in the pots I found for $1.50 each.  The full and beautiful mums were even buy on get one free or BOGO as in advertising now.  I thank my friend Theresa for finding that good buy!

I have moved all the pictures off the tall bookcase and am moving in pottery.  Some of it even dates back to my gradeschool days and both my son's also. 

The corner picture cabinet now.  I like it.

I also like my pineapple and the angel holding the pineapple.  The girl sculpture riding a crow with a little pumpkin in it's beak. 

Boy today was a pretty, we have to enjoy these days, they are numbered.

I hope you got out and enjoyed it. 

Halloween Faces 4

It was a very cold, windy, rainy, snow showery Halloween.  It didn't stop the trick or treaters, but the crowd did seem to be thinner than in years past.  I would ask the kids if I could take their picture and they happily obliged with big grins.  Can't you tell??

The woman in this picture and the man in the next told me they met on Halloween and love it.

This is a great outfit.  He was very intimidating walking up our driveway.

I asked if he was a mountain man....he said no...I'm Davy Crockett!

Thing 1 and Thing 2 are twins.

 

This sweet, little orange crayon was a special visitor earlier in the week along with her parents.

We had such a nice visit!

The swamp monster.  Scary but good.

Hope you had some good costumes visit your house.

Thanks for stopping by.

My Other Blog-please check it out

I work at The University of Saint Francis and have watched this project grow in just 7 years from and idea to a full blown action.  I am a totally in awe of this project.  It truly epitomizes the good that students and the rest of us can do.  I started following Formula for Life on Facebook when I realized that they were actually funding to build an orphanage in Haiti. 

I would see the posts and watched the construction and thought "how neat is this"!  Learning about Haiti when the earthquake hit was eye opening.  This country is so poor, when we live in abundance. 

When two new little guys were taken in but they had to sleep on the floor because there was no room for more beds.  Amy Obringer, the keeper of Facebook asked if anyone knew of ways to raise more funds.  I asked if I could build a blog for them and let the world know about this project.  Maybe this could help. 

 

 

This was taken in 2013.  The Formula for Life group was presenting Father Andre with the first raised funds to start the orphanage.

 

 

This is the most recent poster from the 5K run in April.  There will be another in April of 2015.

 

News Sentinel picture of the Formula for Life 5K run.

Poster for the Bike to Build in August 2014.
This was the first year for this project.

Biker participation

The sweet orphans of Our Lady of Perpetual Hope Orphanage.
There are only 29 the but Father Andre has to turn away children all the time.  The new orphanage will have beds for 160.

Sending construction supplies to Haiti.

The student group of Formula for Life.
Please help them with this project.
Visit Formula for Life on Facebook and the Blog.



Taken in October of 2014.  Not only does this help the orphans of Haiti is helps the area by providing jobs for the residents.  This is located 5 hours from Port-AU-Prince.

I ask you again to please check out the sites.
If you would like someone to come and speak to your group about Formula For Life please contact me or put a message on Facebook and someone will be glad to get back with you.
The children thank you and I thank you- from the bottom of my heart.


 

catching up

I comment on this every semester, that the classes keep me busy and I sadly can't blog so much.  I got the urge this morning to bring my readers up to speed on the fun things I have seen this month of October. 
We took a 3 day trip to Indianapolis, my son took a knife smithing class at Connor Prairie.  Tom and I did some exploring and visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Lilly House which is in the Old Country Estates style.  Unfortunately it was raining buckets when we were there and I couldn't get pictures of the outside but as I was walking up I did get some of the beautiful garden.  I also did not have the right lens on for the inside of the house.  Another time we will go again and I will get pictures.  It was free and well worth the trip.

I loved the museum of art, especially the two authentic VanGohs, that I could look very closely at the Post Impressionism style along with many other well known artists.

At least 4 feet tall

Witnessed a fabulous rainbow while down there.

This is a great picture of my husband Tom on his birthday.  He is so tan from the pool.  October 13th they closed the pool down and it was a sad day.  8 months till we can stick our big toes in. 

I have been working on Kevin's quilt, here and there.  Seven rows put together.

The monkey quilt needs the binding and the tag.

Test tiles from clay to see how the colors work.

I may do these all in red, they have to have uniformity, with black.

Glazed my house tile.  The red on those flowers will be my red of choice for the other pieces, if they turn out the way I like.

I wanted to show off my little blue eggs in the nest.

Pretty trees that are changing.

Love the yellow one with the pine tree in front of it. 

A cooler morning with stormy clouds.

I found this artist in one of the two art shops I visited in Zionsville, Indiana.  I like acorns and this tea pot is great.  In my ceramics class we have to put together a power point presentation of a ceramics artist.  She is Carole Bell of Blue Moon Pottery.

Tom and I had our pictures taken for the church book and the photographer took one like this.  We didn't want to spend the amount of money for just one, so I had him pose like it at home before he changed his clothes.  For some reason this pose brings out a nice smile.  Many times his smiles are not as loose and easy as this one. 

I finished a Stephen King ebook, 11/22/63: A Novel.  It was very good and I will eventually do a posting on it.

Sam and I watched a movie last night: Extremely loud, Incredibly close and I will eventually do a posting on that also. 

My Into to the Bible class is very enjoyable and interesting to say the least.  We are now into the New Testament.

Making a new pot in ceramics and it will be pit fired so it will look old.

I haven't gotten to my Radiant Faces 1st assignment yet.  Maybe this weekend but I have to clean the house.  We have some settled dust that needs to be removed.

Lastly, I started a new blog to build up.  It is F4lifeorphanage.blogspot.com.  I will do an overview post on that in the future, when I have it to the point where I am happy with the layout and information.  Check it out if you like.

That's it in a nutshell. 

Thanks for checking in!

Radiant Faces

I am taking an online class from Effy Wild called Radiant Faces.  It will have lessons from 9 mixed media artists and then 9 lessons from Effy to go with the lessons from the artists.  Each lesson has a different kind of woman or character that is the topic.  The lessons are on video and they give instructions on how to draw these women and then you put your own spin on them. 

Effys 1st lesson was to make a notebook for the class.  It started out with a simple composition book, this one was a black and white one found in the school supplies.  It was shiny so I sanded it with fine grit sandpaper so that the gesso would stick to it. 

Open it up with the pages down so that both the front and back were showing.  Spread on gesso to the edges.  Then spray on colored ink (I used dylusions) in bubblegum pink and after midnight.

Effy's instructions were to brayer it to make it look marbled.  I also think it would be neat to run your fingers through it or some kind of texture. 

You then blot it using a whole roll paper towels just rolling it over, and if the towels have a design it looks nice.  I added another element and ran a rubber stamp roller over the wetness to give a little more design.
 

After it is dry, the class picture was printed off to glue on with matte medium.
Then washi tape was used on the edges. 

I then added spots of dimensional paint called liquid pearls in ruby red.

It was really fun to get into all the different mediums.
I think this may be a good little gift for someone. 

The class stays online until October of 2015 and if I get all 18 projects done my name goes into the hat for a really neat prize package along with everything that I have learned. So far it has been quite a few tidbits of information. 

There are 365 people taking this class from all over the world. It's been super fun to see how others interpret the lessons.

Thanks for stopping by.
Come back to see the other lessons.