scenes from the 4th...

 mister a-go-go and I joined the sister a-go-go jr. & family for a July 4th picnic and fireworks adventure on the beach. With the adventure bag full of picnic food; quilt and camera in hand, we were off! I didn't actually take many pics and only wished I'd wandered up to main street with it in hand to capture the splendidity of red, white & blue. Instead, you get happy colors and sand...

 Earlier in the day there was a sandcastle contest. Most of the sculptures had been washed away and/or destroyed by the time we got there. It didn't stop the nephew from a lickity-split tour only an eight year old could deliver. He dashed about from one to the other faster than we could approach the first one. Reminded me of a zoo adventure with some nanny charges years ago. Ah, the attention span of a child who has many interests and too much to see. It was especially nice to see him holler out "Hey! That man is destroying the crab!" as we watched an adult kick in a sand sculpture with barely an expression on his face. Ah, humanity (I know, my punctuation is horrible, it always has been).

 I wandered up to the main street once to accompany the brother-a-go-go (in law) for a cuppa. The tiny coffee shop we wandered into had almost been cleaned out. I wish I had remembered to bring my travel mug as they were all out of lids. However the cup did make a nice receptacle for our cherry pits.

 And I only slightly regret drinking that coffee as I forgot about beverage consequences and the need to relieve one's bladdery-bits. Relievance of such kind is never a walk in the park when at a happily populated event and portable privacy chamber (pots). Have I told you how much I love my p-style? Seriously. I really do. If objects could be married to, this would be my honey-bunny. Girlie-friends, if you do not have one, you MUST remedy this (and you, my friend, consider yourself remedied, times two).

 The nephew a-go-go dug himself a fox-hole in which to observe the fireworks (which were spectacular). He spent the entire day digging away and assisted a neighboring group of older boys in a hole so deep it filled with water and we were quite a ways away from the waves. My favorite moment was overhearing him scold an older boy who was throwing, THROWING  a real honest-to-goodness sharp-tippy-tipped shovel as if it were a missile. His words were..."Dude, seriously, you need to stop throwing the shovel. Seriously!" The boy has been hanging around me too much.

hope your 4th of July and/or Monday was dandy!

july 4th: odds & ends wreath

I am quite tardy in this wreath making post. I don't even have tutorialized photos of the whole shebang. Truthfully, I was stuckity stuck on it for more than a week but it all came together (somewhat) just in the nick of time. Phew!

To begin with, I think I asked mr. a-go-go to cut too large a wreath shape for me. That is what I get when I answer "steering wheel sized" to the question of "how big"? I had the egg cartons all painted up and imagined them to be all fire-worky but when I liberated them from each other they looked less like fireworks and more like...painted egg cartons?

My next mistake was gluing on the crepe paper ruffle before I had a chance to wrap any yarn or string or twine around the large white donut thing. That kept me quite limity-limited.

I kept playing around with the cut egg carton bits placing them all the way around the wreath, stacking them on top of each other, clustering them to one side or the other...balancing them on my head as if they were tiny hats.

Thank goodness I rediscovered a small stack of small white doilies. I think the doilies saved the day. Rather than plan it all out, I kinda just dumped them in place added glue and hoped for the best.

I would really like to thank those cupcake liners. If not for them I do not think the egg carton bits would be making any appearance except of course as tiny hats. I should have planned a parade. So there ya go, a holiday wreath created from scavenged recyclables. A cardboard box for the wreath shape, stitched crepe paper trim and bow and a smattering of paper doilies, cupcake liners and tiny paper hats...er...egg carton cups.

Happy Fourth of July! May you have all sorts of pic-nic-y fun on pretty blankets with oodles of homebaked goodies, fresh fruit and lemonade.

making lemonade {cake}

Last week was not of the hottest kind. I was out of whack and out of sorts thus not feeling too well. I tend to do that. Get physically ill when I am stressed out and I'm pretty good at stressing myself out. In an effort to cheer myself up, I picked up this magazine.** What? I know, see I told you I was old. Some gals go for Cosmo or People when they feel like sticking their heads in the sand. Me? I like to pick up recipes and crafty bits and sometimes even a new lipstick though lately I'm not feeling like I can pull off lipstick anymore.

So yesterday, I baked a cake. A lemonade cake, though this one was more of a pink lemonade cake as I happened to have frozen lemonade of the pink variety purchased a while back for some sort of pink project I wanted to do but didn't (the story of my life). We had some buttermilk that needed using up and summer is here so a lemonade cake it was.

The cake baked up nice and pretty and then I whomped up the frosting. I'm not really a frosting person but I still had a lot of frozen lemonade to use up and the recipe called for a whipped butter frosting using the frozen goodness so I thought, why not? I think the butter was too soft and the concentrate too melty. I had a whipped pink mess of curdledness that was so very not pretty. It was however mighty tasty and light on the tongue so I decided to ice up the cake anyway. It probably would have been less of a mess had I given the cake another hour to cool down. I didn't. What, me? Impatient? So I ended up with a not-very-pretty pink mess of a cake that was tastier than tasty, if not photo-worthy. I took pictures anyway after I had a hissy fit when everyone in the homestead started pestering me to slice it up. Baking with people around really irks up the photo-mojo and makes me feel rushed. I can't relish the time to take pics in different light and locations as the baked goodness tends to disappear the moment I wander out of the room. It's not a bad thing at all, being around people you enjoy. It just takes some getting used to.

So there ya have it, the life motto passed down from my mamos through an ill-gained gift plaque of utter tackiness*. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade {cake}.

**I also may have eaten more than three bowls of Lucky Charms (or, rather...Marshmallow Mateys) this week and watched far too many Netflix discs. We're talking seven episodes of True Blood, an entire disc from How I Met Your Mother and maybe a romantic comedy that I enjoyed far more than the critics or other public. Oh and I napped. A lot. but I also joined the family for a hike that had just enough ups and downs and wandered out after dark with the mister for a telescope date. Yeah, we're cool like that. I hope everyone has a delightful rest of the weekend and if yer in the states, Happy Fourth!

*I had thought I explained that story but I couldn't find it so it will have to be for another day. It's pretty twisted.

poppytalk summer colours week 2011

It was fun thinking outside the box to come up with photos that represented summer to me within the color theme. I hope you all enjoyed the view! I'm off for the weekend to recover from yesterdays hike, plant pumpkins and head out for a dark sky party with the telescope. Happy July folks! To get a looksie at the pics you can click here for original links.

crafting for craft: july 4th garland

You can make this in any color combo you like. All you need is a handful of household supplies and some paint! Check out the how to at craftzine.

poppytalk's summer colours week: red

It's time for summer colours! Check out the flickr group for more bits of happy and Poppytalk for a curated dose. Aaaand...if yer interested, you can take a wander and look through my previous colours week pics. Happy summer!