Around Here

Around here.....

My niece, Amy, and her family are taking a driving vacation this summer and came through the Denver area yesterday.   Paul and I met them in Golden for a fun visit.  Aren't they a beautiful family?

Paul really enjoyed reconnecting with his first cousins.

 

I love this photo of him helping Brandon and Sara cross the street. 

 I especially enjoyed catching up with Amy and her husband, Michael.  I hadn't seen Amy for four years and it was great to see her again.
 

The challenge this week in my online photo class is "Footwear" so I asked the kids to "stick their right foot in."   I think my pic is really cute but Rachel, one of the teens, took the same shot from directly above and it's even better!

It's summer boot time here in the Boulder area.  I had never seen people wearing boots in the summer until we moved here last year and I'm still quite fascinated with the phenomena.  Check out this reporter interviewing some of the "Tube to Work" participants on Tuesday; do you see her cool boots?

Here they are.  Love them!

 On Thursday I went to the summer picnic of the Quaking Aspen Quilt Guild, which is the Boulder guild.  I've been on its membership waiting list for the past year and was happy that space has opened up for me now.  I had a good time at the picnic and volunteered to be the Librarian for the guild during this next year.  Should be a fun way to meet people.  

A group of quilters from Longmont asked me to join them in exploring art quilts this year in their small group and I readily accepted that invite since I like the women and like working on less traditional quilts.   For their August meeting I'm working on this small piece and I'm enjoying how it's turning out so far.  I had already made the center a few years ago and ran across it in a recent studio cleanup.  It's several layers of organza on top of a felt background, with the layers fused down by soldering iron.   The theme is supposed to be "peace" and I think it's peaceful to look at and for me to work on, but I'm not sure that viewers will think of peace when they look at it.  Oh well,  it's making me happy and that counts for a lot, right? Right. 

Before I joined they were exploring complimentary colors so to catch up with them I found some pretty orange fabric and am stenciling it with blue Shiva oil paint sticks.  We'll see what comes of this.  It's fun to be working in the studio again, but I have just this week to get things to some kind of completion point.  Then I'll be on vacation after which we'll have guests using the studio for a while.  So I'd better get with it!

Ben and Paul are helping a neighbor extend his deck today.  They are digging the holes to pour new concrete foundations for the deck supports and it's a big job.

Meanwhile, our garden is blooming from all the rain.  The resulting flowers are so lovely.  I'll leave you with just one image to enjoy.