Hedgehog love.

I recently made this cross stitch picture for a friend who is having a baby very soon. The pattern is from a Japanese cross stitch book. I wanted to add beads somewhere, so I used size 11 seed beads on the little flowers and acorn caps.

The squirrel and acorn border required a lot of counting and re-counting, but in the end it was all worth it.

I'm very happy with how it turned out.

Spider web.

A week or so ago we experienced heavy, dense fog in the mornings. One morning as I was pulling out of the driveway, I noticed this web on one of our bushes. I had to stop the car to take some photos. N thought I'd gone mad!

There is so much water on each strand that I cannot believe it didn't break under the weight of it.

Clear beads strung on gossamer.

Beautiful.

Work in progress.

I haven't been doing much beading lately, but today I'm revisiting the Laura McCabe kit I started a while ago. I have the base of the bracelet completed. One thing I really like about this kit is the buttonhole closure.

The way Laura has mapped out how to construct the buttonhole is very interesting. I messed it up the first time and had to pull it all out (this was all user error and had nothing to do with the instructions!). I understood it better the second time around. Practice makes perfect, no?

Next up for this piece is some embellishment.

A mystery.

I transferred some photos from our camera tonight and found some surprise photos.

The photographer obviously put some thought into the background.

No one in the house has owned up to being the mysterious photographer. I wonder who could've taken them?

Shower.

We recently threw a baby shower for my friend Debbie. Several people helped with the planning of the shower and one afternoon three of us got together to make the decorations and assemble the favors. Now that the shower is over, I thought I'd show you what we made.

The theme of the shower was butterflies and flowers with an old-fashioned tea party sort of feel. For favors we filled these muslin bags with tea bags. We found the bags on Etsy.

We made flower pom poms from a Martha Stewart kit. I do love Martha's kits. These hung in the doorway to our office for quite a while. N liked them so much that we had to buy more to make at a later time.

We cut out lots and lots of butterflies from Amy Butler paper and made butterfly mobiles. I'm not sure, but Debbie might have kept one of these for the baby's room.

And we made a lot of extra butterflies to hang in places around the room.

It was fun to get together and make the decorations with friends.

I also made a pink beaded flower picture as part of the shower gift.

Cottage painting.

I eyed this painting from Little Bird Vintage for a while on Etsy. Something about it is very charming. I also like the way the houses are sort of on a slant, as though they could go sliding down the slope at any moment.

It came without a frame, but luckily I found one at a local flea market. There were two of these frames and now I wish I had purchased both of them.

Charming indeed.

Milwaukee, Fonzarelli, and more.

Oh my, time flies! N is back in school and is enjoying 3rd grade. I think it's been harder for me to adjust to a new grade and a new class (he had the same class and teacher for 1st and 2nd grade) than it has been for him!

Right before school started we snuck away for a quick trip to Milwaukee. N had been wanting to ride the Amtrak for a year and we'd been promising to go during the summer. Before we knew it, summer break was almost over! N and Mark took the Amtrak to Milwaukee and I drove up there so we'd have a car.

Our first order of business was to find the Fonz. Mark's a fan. We walked all over to find The Bronze Fonz because it wasn't exactly where the book we had said it was.

N thought the statue was a little bit creepy. It's a life-size statue; I didn't know Henry Winkler was so short.

Next up was the Milwaukee Public Museum. We really liked the Butterfly Vivarium.

The entire butterfly wing was interesting.

A little something beaded...

Next was the Pabst Mansion. I wish I could show you the inside of the mansion, but photos were not allowed. The outside is something to see. It looks a little out of place with the newer buildings surrounding it.

I loved the architectural details.

Our final stop was the Harley Davidson Museum.We're not really Harley or motorcycle people, but the museum was really interesting.

Here's an early Harley Davidson from 1907.

Mark was on the lookout for Elvis's Harley.

And I was surprised to come across a very sparkly rhinestone Harley! Whoa!

At the end of the tour is an area to try out some bikes from different time periods.

Did I mention we visited all of these muesums in one day?