behind the studio door

Catching up

Sorry I've been a bit neglectful...my daughter and I have both been a little sick, and things have been really busy.  I'm still feeling pretty icky, so I'll give some better updates sometime in the near future.

Baby Blues

Mr. and Mrs. Blue have come back to the nest box and seem to be starting a new nest...and look who they brought with them!  Two babies!  I'm so excited.  :)  They've been hiding out pretty well since they fledged, and I was a little worried that maybe they didn't make it...yeah, I got a little attached. 

They're so cute I can hardly stand it.  Mama and Papa are so good...they're really taking great care of them.  I can't believe how big they are already!

Not a very good juggler!

Ack!  So sorry...time has gotten away from me yet again, and I'm doing terribly at keeping things updated here.  I really need to do that reformatting I've been planning on (for weeks now), plus update my website, finish up some projects, clean, go grocery shopping, plus about a million other things.  I am not a full speed ahead sort of person.  In the story of the tortoise and the hare, I'd be the tortoise.  My head is spinning lately with all of the things going on, plus I've been having a rough time physically.  I'm beginning to feel like there is someone just ahead on the path who is determined to throw boulders at me.  I just keep picking them up and plugging along.  My poor hurting back certainly feels like I've been picking up boulders!   

At any rate, I'm still alive and working on some updates to my shop.  I'm getting a nice little system going for my pendants, and I'm really happy with how they're turning out.  :)  I'm not sure when I'll have new prints available...it's pretty labor-intensive to post process photos for printing in a larger format, and I'm just swamped, so you may be seeing mostly small-format items for a while (pendants, aceos, and magnets will be back soon). 

Time flies

Sorry...I haven't had much time to keep up with things here lately.  It's been incredibly hectic here.  My older daughter injured her knee about a week ago, and it's been craziness of doctor visits, x-rays, back and forth to the school, more doctor visits.  The general consensus is that she'll be okay...we're holding off on an MRI for now.  We desperately hope that we don't have to go down that path.  Not only will it financially kill us, but I have serious doubts as to whether our ADHD child could even lie still for long enough to make it a valid diagnostic tool.  Any positive thoughts and prayers are much appreciated.

I have been busy in the studio the last few days (after she went back to school).  It's been a two steps forward, three steps back sort of week.  I somehow managed to order not only the wrong moldmaking rubber, but also the wrong (wrong, wrong, wrong!) resin.  I must have been seriously sleep deprived or something.  My brain just disconnected.  For the past two or three years, I've always ordered the same rubber and the same resin, but this time the train of thought not only derailed but went crashing into the side of a mountain.  The sad part is that I ordered this stuff a while ago, to have on hand when I ran out of the batch I was using, and I'm sure it's long past any possibility of return. 

The rubber and resin snafu was not entirely in vain however.  It did put me backward on some projects I'm working on, but it also made me seriously rethink some others.  It's funny how serendipitous moments just sneak up on you sometimes.  I suppose that is the one bonus to working in so many different media over the years...I realized that I was putting far more steps into my creation of my pendants than necessary.  I have a very bad habit of making the process more complicated than it needs to be.  (If it's not hard, it's not worth it, right?  Eep.)  I won't bore you with details of how I used to make Christmas ornaments in polymer clay, got frustrated, then a couple of years ago learned how far the clays had come...blahblahblah...  At any rate, my simpler pendants are now incorporating polymer clay.  The process itself is so much more straightforward, and enjoyable to boot.  Since it's not taking me several days to make a pendant now, I feel much more optimistic and I can even charge a little less.  :)  Who doesn't love that?

If you're still awake, I figure I'll send out a little birdie report too...Mr. and Mrs. Bluebird had babies, and they fledged yesterday.  I cleaned out the box in hopes that they'll come back and raise a second brood. 

We also had a colorful visitor this morning - a male Painted Bunting.  I took this photo through our really-needs-to-be-cleaned glass door, so it's not the greatest.  He was so pretty...I hope he becomes a regular visitor!

   

Ducks in a Row

"I'm getting my ducks in a row."  That's a funny saying, isn't it?  How exactly does one proceed to put ducks in a row?  I spent a few mornings at the swamp last week, and watched the ducks in the image above hanging out for a while.  I don't think they ever got close to being in an actual row.  And of course, there's always the one, who has to flap around while everyone else is looking at each other and wondering why he can't just settle down already.  ;)  Life's a bit like that, isn't it?  Things can be relatively calm and organized, then something always pops up and starts making waves.  I've been working diligently this week, wrangling a few rogue (proverbial) ducks. 

So, if anyone has the great secret to a row of ducks, please let me know.  For now, I'm going to settle for a loose grouping of ducks.  :)      

Have a flower

Not much to say today...just wanted to share some pretties.  Oh yes...almost forgot...I am told that our visiting bird of prey could have been either a Sharp-shinned Hawk or a Cooper's Hawk.  Apparently they're very similar.  Either way, she was an amazing creature.

A fresh start and some pictures

Well, after a short investigation, I can only assume that my disappearing posts were the result of some absent-minded action on my own part.  I am going to look at these lemons and see if I can make a nice lemon meringue pie.  Or lemon bars.  I like lemon bars, not so much a meringue fan.  ;) 

I'll probably take the opportunity soon to re-format into a larger screen resolution-friendly version.  I've been playing around with different column widths and layouts, but haven't settled on one just yet.  (Hmmm...now that I think about it, I wonder if that's how I messed things up here.)

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, I'll tell you about my little field trip yesterday.  I decided I needed a sanity break, so went out to the swamp.  Wow!  Spring has really sprung over there.  The birds are nesting, the alligators (big ones!) were out and about, and there were flowers exploding in bloom everywhere.  I took about 400 photos, blew through my camera batteries, then came home to a Sharp-shinned Hawk on our front walk (sadly, making a meal out of a dove).  I managed to eek out one lousy photo from my near-dead battery before she flew away.  My daughter's screaming at the trauma of realizing that we had a murderous bird in our front yard didn't help.

So, before I ramble too much, here are some photos from yesterday~

Great Egret

Great Blue Heron (she also had chicks in the nest...they're sleeping in this one, and you can't really see them)

The hawk of doom

That's it for now...I'll try to share more later.  I've got work to do!