Happy Friday!

ArT NiGhT

After work yesterday I had a fun play date with Cara.
We talked and made masterpieces.
Vito and Herb came by after work and we all had a lovely dinner together.
Here is a few pics of my finished creations.

FrESh FrESh FajitAS**

Thought I'd post a couple pics of the yum yummy fajitas Vito made with the garden goodies.

SaLsA anYoNe???

Vito came in from checking on the garden with a couple plates FuLL of delicious yummies.
It has probably been a good 3 weeks since I checked on the garden. Around mid August I get burnt out on watering flowers and weeding the garden. Flowers begin to die, weeds take over flower beds... I don't even care. I put so much work into making it look nice and come August I don't care anymore.
Thankfully Vito steps in and helps out. I can't say the flowers get watered everyday, they look hot and wilty but at least he checked on things last night because the tomatoes and peppers would have been left for the bugs and birds if it was up to me.

Tonight, yummy salsa.

Fabric BoXeS

This weekend while Vito worked on the bathroom, I stiffened and folded fabric into cute boxes. Once I started I couldn't stop,
I must have made a dozen of them.
I have no idea what I'm going to do with all of them but they are really fun and will probably get used to wrap up Christmas presents.
I brought a few to work.. great for rubber bands, paper clips, little scraps of this and that.
If anyone is interested in making one or some, I can send you the pattern...
they are cute made with paper too.

It's EleCtion TiME...

This week at school, student government posters have been popping up everywhere.

I've been reminded of how much I detested Student Council when I was in elementary school.
For a number of reasons really.
It seemed that only the popular students ran for a position in student council, I was not popular.
It was only the pretty girls that put up posters, I was not particularly pretty.
I had braces, bad frizzy permed hair, super gangly thin legs and wasn't exactly sure of myself.

I wonder if the posters hung in the hallways of Valley View Elementary were as fascinatingly eye-catching as these..
I do remember the florescent poster board, pink,green,yellow... that apparently hasn't changed.
How comical is this..

"Vote for Nave because she's on Broadway"
"Cassie is my name, money is my game."

I'm now really wishing I would have ran...
"Vote terrific Tamara for a tenacious treasurer.."

**DinG.. DinG.. DinG... We have a WiNNeR!**

MICHELLE JO KLOMP You are the LuCkY WiNNeR!

Last night I stretched out some paper on the floor and put one lemon drop down for each participant. I numbered them according to the order in which they were received under my comments page.

Then... I let Cassius into the kitchen and sat him down in front of all the LeMoN DrOP temptation. He was the lucky volunteer who's job was to choose a WinnER.



I think he was a bit overwhelmed, since when had I ever ENCOURAGED him to PiCK a lemon drop. He started barking, he started rolling over, he wanted to shake... wanted a lemon drop but was afraid I was trying to trick him, teach him some kind of lesson on temptation.



He went in for a sniff... (lucky number 7)



...then backed up, laid down and belly crawled in for a shake...



I think his choice was clear.
He picked NUMBER 7.

Thanks so much for all of your great comments, I really appreciated it.
Michelle! E-mail me your address! yippee!

*FulFoRD CaVeS*

This weekend Heather, Ali, Vito and I went camping up at Fulford Caves. It's an entire underground cave system that is pitch black, damp and slippery. We've been up there a few time before but it was Heather and Ali's first trip.

Once you hike up to the opening, strap on your helmet and headlamp, there is just a large culvert sticking out of the ground with an old metal ladder you use to climb on down. I guess a while back some guys were in there and lost power to their headlamps and had no idea how far in they were so they started burning their money for a light source. The first time I went up there we got lost underground for a good 4 hours trying to find our way out. This time, we brought markers to mark our way in and out. It was great.

A bit up above the cave entrance is a massive open cave that is perfect to camp in, so instead of pitching tents we decided to just sleep in our bags in the cave. We got all of the way up there and realized that we had only 3 sleeping bags instead of 4. So poor Vito slept on the ground with a flimsy orange plastic poncho over him for a blanket. We built a fire to keep warm but Vito had to keep getting up in the night to stoke it because he was FREEzInG.

We took a disposable camera inside the caves so once those get developed I'll post some of those. Until then, here are some good pics of the hike up.

This is the entrance to the caves. That piece of wood slides over and you slide on down. It's super muddy in there.

This is the cave we slept in.



**AND.. I will draw a name for the painting ToMoRRoW! *** Wooo HOOO!

**FREE** PainTiNG

I've noticed that a lot of people in BloGlAnd give away FrEE stuff. So now I'm doing it so I can get in on all the fun.

Yesterday I was at Michael's and saw that they had lemon drops on sale for a dollar! I don't particularly like the taste of lemon drops but I did like the packaging.
...I thought, "I will paint a lemon drop painting." So I purchased the lemon drops for my inspiration and drove home. To my bewilderment, after a few minutes of searching, I realized I was OUT of yellow paint.
Everything yellow was used up.
Paint, Oil pastel, chalk, even my cow marker was more orange than yellow.

So.. I decided to paint my lemon drop painting with REd, I have lots of red.
So instead of painting lemon drops, I painted WITH the lemon drops.

All that to say, this lovely ReD drop painting (18"x24") can be shipped your way. Heck, I'll even throw in the fabulous tools I used to create it. All you have to do is tell me you want it and promise to send me a tube of yellow acrylic paint once you receive my masterpiece in the mail. I'll do a drawing for the lucky winner.

Yee Haw!My "tools" that now look like olives instead of sugary lemon drops.

Gilman, COlorado*

Vito and Ali hiked Tuesday afternoon into an old Colorado mining ghost town, Gilman, CO. They stayed the night up there.

Spook, spook, spooky.

Apparently the town was evacuated in the 80's, contaminated waste from the mine started killing off the residents. They took tons of pics and I stole a few to put on here. They searched through an old bowling alley, gymnasium, bank and lots of houses. The pics even look creepy I can't even imagine sleeping there at night. yikes.

Back at IT.

This is my first week back to school (with kids) and so far so good. I'm at a different school with a different classroom so it's been taking me awhile to get organized. The teacher that was here before me retired and had been here since the school opened in 1978.. you do the math. That's a long time. I was negative 3 years old when she started working in this room. So... there is a TON of stuff to go through. I still have at least 10 cabinets that need organizing but I can only go through so many bags of beads, feathers and felt before I get overwhelmed and just close the cabinet door. Here are some pics of my new room.

*New PaInTiNgS*

Last weekend I built a couple of canvases (3ft x 5ft), it has been quite a while since I've painted on anything this large. In college it was my favorite size to work on but now that I have to build them by myself without the help of friends, the whole process takes a bit longer. Heather and Ali wanted a painting for their house that reminded them of when they were in Greece for their honeymoon. She sent me a few pics for inspiration and I had at it. I finished them yesterday and they really like them. pheew. This is the pic they gave me, it's hard to see. I think they said it was from their balcony..picture of a picture doesn't work too well. fuzzy.

I took some pictures of my progress and liked this one the best. Just getting the first layer of paint on is my fav. If it was up to me I would have stopped here and hung this on MY wall.

On each panel I hid each of their names.
I

ahh... nothing like Saturday morning coffee**

This was my first week back to school and I'm ready for a relaxing weekend. This week was just meetings and classroom setup. Having the whole summer off made it hard to get up at 6 every morning. It took me all summer to get used to sleeping in past 6 and now that's when I have to get up.
NoT ToDaY ThOuGH.
I slept in until 9 and LOVed It.
I made myself a nice coffee and did my garden walk about.

• Tomatoes- not good. black plague.
• Lettuce- growing strong
• Jalapenos- hot. looking great.
• green peppers- 1 bad plant and 3 good ones, we'll probably get 8 keepers.
• Yellow and Red onion- no bueno
• Scallions- 25% of them growing good. The rest... something bad happened.
• Basil- dreamy delight.

I think that's all. I know that we had a couple other kinds of peppers but I can't remember which one is which.

FiNd PhYlLiS***

I quick took pics.
I put these photos on the wall a good 6 weeks ago. My ma's pic is in ReD. I need to do something with them that's a bit more permanent instead of just putting them on the wall.