Photo Challenge - Day 22

"Sparkle"

Early evening view from one of the harbor towns near our cottage.

Summer is Winding Down. . .

My friend Cindy was a guest blogger on the Creative Connection blog last week. If you missed it like I did, you can still check it out right here.

I hope everyone is enjoying these last couple of weeks of summer before the kids go back to school (are you counting the days?) We were able to get away with some friends for a couple of weeks up to our cottage. The much needed R & R really did us a world of good. Sometimes we can forget how a simple thing like a change of scenery can give us a whole new perspective on life. It was hotter than normal for this time of the year, but we didn't let that put a damper on our time there. Evening concerts, boating, eating out, plays at the summer stock theater, movie nights, shopping and just relaxing and doing nothing with our friends was the perfect way to end our summer. How about you? What did you do this summer?

Summer Cottages

Blogger has been causing problems the last few days and so that is why I haven't been posting. It seems to be working for the moment, however there seems to be changes to the system that I am not exactly thrilled with. What a pain! I wish they would leave well-enough alone. So be patient with me as I try to adapt to all the new-fangled features.

After my last post about that cute little artist's cottage, I decided to do a search on Flickr to see if I could find some other fun summer cottages. During my search I was surprised at what some people consider a cottage to be. Wikipedia describes a cottage as "a modest dwelling, typically in a rural, or semi-rural location." That is sort of the same thing I picture in my mind when I think of a quaint little cottage. But some people have pictures of what I consider to be huge mansions tagged with the word cottage. I guess it's all in the mind of the beholder.

I couldn't figure out how to add the links to each of the cottage photos shown above with this new version of Blogger, but if you are interested I do have them linked up over on Flickr right here.

Etsy Update - Part 2

I'm continuing to update my Etsy Shop this week. I've added some collages and tags from my "Summer At The Beach" series, inspired by a weekend trip to our cottage.  Also added is a series of tags I created called "The Caged Bird Sings." I have more Destash items coming too, as soon as I can get them photographed and listed. The fishing themed rubber stamp sets from the previous post have all sold out. I'm so pleased that they will be going to good homes where they can have a new lease on life. I have LOTS more themed rubber stamp sets to put together and list in the shop. 

Summer. . . One More Time

Sweet Alyanna created this lovely summertime Treasury on Etsy and was nice enough to feature one of the items from my shop (see bottom left-hand corner). Oooh, what a lovely color scheme she chose. Thanks for the shout-out Alyanna!

Relax and Sit a Spell

Photo courtesy of April Cornell

Haven't done much of anything during the past couple of days. My sister-in-law was in town and we had fun visiting with her. She left for home this morning, but no time to start any big projects because our good friends are coming up from Florida on Wednesday. It seems as though this entire month will be spent traveling and visiting with friends and family. It seems odd to be taking so much time for rest and recuperation, especially since there are a million and one things I should be doing. But I guess that is what summer is all about. . .sitting back and taking it easy. Wouldn't you just love to do that in a pair of old rockers like these?

Home Again

We're home again, for a week anyway. We left behind beautiful sunsets like this to come home to thunderstorms and 90 degree weather. Ugh! But in a week we will return up north along with our best friends from Florida. They will be our first visitors up at the cottage. I am a bit nervous about it, as I hope they will love the area as much as we do. We've been thinking about what sights to take them to - there are many. Lately we haven't had time to enjoy any of them because there is always work to be done and so little time to finish it. That is the down-side to having a second home. As romantic and dreamy as it all seems, it is another place that needs attention, just like the one back at home. But the cottage is easier to maintain because when we had it built we selected as many maintenance-free features as possible. Also, there isn't as much accumulated "stuff" up there - and hopefully there never will be. And there is less square footage to keep clean. But it's the outside that is taking up most of our time right now. All the landscaping takes time to do, especially when my husband's busiest time of the year is the spring. We finally were able to plant the wildflower seeds in the front on this last trip, which took several prior visits to prepare for this so-called low-maintenance planting. We don't want a lawn to have to mow, so we are trying the wildflowers. It will be interesting to see what comes up and how it looks in the end.

Summertime Journal

I promised that I would show you my completed summer art journal I made for the Write Place Write Now E-Zine, so here it is. This was a perfect assignment for me because I love all the colors of summer, sand and water. Summertime makes me think of aqua blue water dotted with sail boats, green pistachio ice cream cones, ice cold glasses of yellow lemonade and pale pink sunset skies. Ahhhh....I can practically feel the sand between my toes from just writing those words. OK, I've got to go slip into my flip-flops and fix myself some chicken salad in a tomato cup right now! What makes you think of summertime?

Jewels of the Sea Swap

Heather over at Speckled Egg recently hosted a fun swap called "Jewels of the Sea." Each participant was to make 6 pendants in a vintage seaside theme and we get 6 different pendants in return. The darling images I used on both the pendant and the card above were purchased from Vintage Image Madness. To coordinate with the pastel shades of the images, I used copper tape, wire, beads and findings along with a tiny aqua crystal bead at the very top. I also made a discovery when I pulled out my squares of glass and realized that all I had was frosted glass. I remember hearing a long time ago if you want to change frosted glass into clear glass apply a coat of Diamond Glaze to the frosted surface. I was kind of doubtful, but figured I didn't have anything to lose and if it worked it would save me another trip to the craft store. So I gave it a try and sure enough, it worked! I just spread it around the glass with my finger, not worrying too much about getting it perfectly smooth, so it sort of has the appearance of wavy antique glass. Perfect! I can't wait to see what everyone else's pendants look like!

Boys of Summer

Here's a little collage I put together yesterday for the Write Place, Write Now journaling group. The boys in the photo are actually my DH and his brother. {My hubby is the one on the left.} Aren't they adorable? I found this snapshot while we were trying to scan all his family photos into the computer to make a CD for the family. {What a major ordeal that job is!} The funny thing is that I can still see those boyish faces on on the two of them today.