Enchanting Night Sky

Last night I wished to lay under the beautiful night sky. Surrounded by pink river mist with a full moon waning. The trees were thick with frosted snow, majestic against the clear night sky, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, and stars bright, enchanting night sky. A sky to wish upon.
A new year is approaching, I wish for the best year yet, many milestones, anniversaries, birthdays, much to celebrate in 2013. Much to prepare.

2012

2012

It has been a year of visiting with family and friends, helping others, protesting, creative and destructive accomplishments.

I started out the year with a visit to Mom in Cincinnati, leaving the boys Steve and Mattie home to fend for themselves. Jessica was also visiting so Mom had a birthday with all her kids. I think Mom was the oldest kid at the restaurant in her pink, sketchers, with the white side walls, and plastic gems that light up with every stomp, a peace sign on the tongue and no shoe laces. She wore them everywhere we went and stomped in front of anyone till they noticed and she laughed. It was a lot of fun till she tried stomping her foot on the dash board of the car as we were over taking a police car, those shoes light up just like a police cruiser.

In the spring we had a great deal of flooding in BC. Steve and I are volunteers with North Okanagan Emergency Social Services or ESS. We were called to help the team in Sicamous an hours drive north of Enderby. Whole neighborhoods were evacuated. People vacationing on rented house boats lost their cars and had no way to return home; pet’s had to be cared for. ESS gives people care for three days, hotel, food, clothing if need be. Steve filled out forms and I took care of pets as they arrived. People came in bus loads all day. We have been on call through out the year. Last week all the teams and volunteers were honored at a dinner and given certificates of recognition.

To our ever annoyance our large back deck had to go. (Destructive accomplishment) As Steve removed it in stages we saw just how bad it was and how the rot was covered up making the porch unsafe to walk on. It was a big job, now we have a much smaller but safe porch built properly , it just needs the rails . Steve works on the porch when he doesn’t have work that pays, it so happened that when the weather was beautiful for working outside Steve had work (He works in the basement using his computer to design roof trusses) but when the weather was rainy and gross he had no paying work.

Another project of Steve’s was the gate made out of branches from trimming the trees in our yard, he also built a small fence of branches. This inspired me to built a deer of branches for the front yard , it goes nicely with the fence and gate.

It took two years to repair and paint our large straw bale fences. To me they are an open canvas and it took the two years to decide on what to paint on the wall. Wanting to bring awareness to the declining wild Salmon, due to fish farms, I painted life size wild Salmon on the fences. Don’t eat farmed fish please, unless they are raised in-land and not on the ocean.

I finished my first Competent communication Manuel in Toastmasters, giving 11 speeches. I now have two advanced manuals, I chose “The Entertaining Speaker” and “Humorously Speaking” . I have now given 13 speeches.

I hope this finds you well. May the new year be happy, healthy and prosperous for you and yours.

All our best to you 

I just ran out of free storage space for my photo's, I must consider how I am going to proceed. This isn't something I do just for me and I do not make money off of the post's for other people, there-fore I do not want to spend money to store photo's.

Primordial Soup At The Gypsy Bazaar

Susan Fleming The Treasure and the Orca's.

The Gypsy Bazaar has been rearranged to make way for their first art show, "Primordial Soup". The show is in two stages, today November 16TH 2012 was the start of Susan Fleming's acrylic on canvas, "Impressions From Minus 40 Feet" Susan lived on Vancouver Island and did some scuba diving. Some of the paintings are from her memories of the deep underwater weightlessness. She also has a greeting card collection of five Enderby buildings or homes, all snowy for Christmas. Ben Fulton was proud of her rendition of the Gypsy Bazaar.  I liked the pencil crayon Mandala  that sold, it was very earthy. The art work will be up till December 8TH. The Second part of the art show will be a book launching on November 30TH from 3 to 7 PM for Susan's cook book "Button Soup" Drop in on Ben, Sarah and Susan at the Gypsy Bazaar on Mill Ave in Enderby on the 30th and have a taste of soup. 

Susan, Ben and his Mom Sarah. Ben is holding the card of the Gypsy Bazaar.

For more information on Susan Fleming's art and her book go to cook book and  Susan's art

Hats, Hats and Hats

Hats have been on my mind lately,  they are much smaller to work with and fit in a big box to be transported to and from home and markets. I had fun with Steve's old worn out jeans designing a landscape around the worn knee. My next project is for the ARTBEAT of Enderby, for more information on the art show fundraiser click on Artbeat. 

Cloche with Garlic scape detail.

Medieval inspired with bleached and painted cotton knit and a rocket on top.

The Bee.

Floppy patchy.

Aviators helmet.

This was a special order for The Healthy Chocolate Company.  This symbol is the Mayan symbol for Chocolate.

The symbol on this side is the Mayan symbol for Healthy.

All together, in the foreground are Celtic belt/headbands, and the big dragonfly hat in the back I am still working on.

Had to have something for the Red Hat Ladies.

Cloche with grape vine tendrils. The fabric was dyed and painted by Anne DeVerteuil.

If you have any hat ideas for your own head let me know..............

NO Pipeline, NO Tankers, NO Harper

I like to stick to Art and Culture in this blog but we will have no Art and No Culture if we do not stand up for democracy and get ride of the H man. Today I drove to Salmon Arm for the pipeline protest, across the street from MLA George Abbott's office. 200 people stood in the cold with signs on this Wednesday at noon. We sang a protest song with too may words, even with song sheets. Kids were running through the crowd unaware of what their future will be. My fear is that human nature is so greedy, our children do not have a future. 

Deck Nightmares

The 2x4 deck

The nightmare started the first snow fall in 2010, try shoveling snow off of short crocked 2x4's. Steve replaced some of the 2x4's and screwed them down, he also had to fix one of the set of stairs. That is when we discovered the cover up. Ply wood over a rotten board. Walk softly and hope the refrigerator doesn't give out, it will not hold that weight, two guys and a fridge. Spring of 2012 came the invasion of ants in the bathroom. Everyday for a week we would vacuum them up, poor things. How were they getting in. I crawled under the deck, after I covered myself for protection of spiders and my imagination. I discovered someone used chip board to enclose the kitchen addition and it was rotting away. So continued the deck nightmares.

Rotting chip board under the deck enclosing the kitchen addition

Rotting corner post, it swiveled in position.

This summer Steve removed half of the deck so we could get a better idea of what we were looking at. Someone had nailed short 2x4's onto the rotten deck joists another cover up. Then  he removed the chip board and discovered the corner foundation post was also rotting and the insulation was a mess under the kitchen floor.

Under the kitchen addition, notice the electrical wiring, it's not meant to hold up insulation.

This is what you get when you take the 2x4's off.

Old stair foundations. Could they be from 1943 when the house was built?

We discovered many things under the deck, a little rubber duck with a sailor hat, a marble, rusty things, money, cement blocks and the old foundation for the steps that once were, too bad the grate is missing. we will us it for our new stairs. 

One of the large blocks we dug up.

The flower bed in front of the porch must be moved or we will be stepping into it when the new stairs go up.

The flower bed is removed from in front of the step foundation.

New location for the flowers, This is where the Old hot tub was located. The paving blocks were all moved to the side, ready for their new location.

A lot of digging and cleaning.

The back deck is gone, it has been a long journey to this point, days of hammering nails out of rotting boards and taking an ax to the smaller pieces. Being horrified at the though of what we were walking on. Digging down to remove all the soil and debris, soar muscles. After many ideas (dreams) as to what we would replace the back deck with we can only afford to replacing the deck with a smaller deck and one set of stairs.  The paving blocks will go to the side of the house for the new patio. I only hope we can get the stairs in soon, it's snowing today!

Steve loading the truck with the unwanted rotting boards.

BC River Days

Enderby finished off River Days September 30TH with a flock of 11 local birds portrayed by the Dawn Stilt Chorus.

Belvidere park was lined with lanterns all along the river walk. Cathy Stubington with Runaway Moon Theater put on many lantern workshop  months prier to River Days, in schools, and community centers. It was a wonderful ending to a day of cleaning the river, painting Salmon on wood, and walking the river walk. At dusk the lanterns were lit and placed in the river accompanied by canoes and kayaks. A beautiful luminescence of the river. 

Dusk approaching and the abstract photo's multiply.

It was so cute the way they hung out in the tree and surrounded us with bird calls.

The lanterns are carried  to the river to slowly float.

dancing of the lanterns.

Can you find the distinct outline of the swan?

The lanterns were all picked up out of the river. Thank you to all.