Stampin' Up! Dragonfly Dreams

Believe it or not, I got some crafty stuff done today!  I was so excited to make a card and do a little watercoloring.  I colored this dragonfly last night and wanted to use him for the current sketch at Fab Friday.  The pink background was done with distress inks and the dragonfly colored with Copics.   Dragonflies are so neat.  We have one that visits the garden every now and then.

It's been a weird day here. We were supposed to have rain all day, but not a drop as of 9pm tonight.  They kept moving back the start, so now it's more of a midnight storm.  I'm glad I went ahead and watered my garden.  Jason swears we live in a bubble that keeps our neighborhood dry, so we shall see if we get anything tonight. 

These guys have kept me busy this weekend.  They are almost ready to pupate, but are eating like teenage boys!  One of them managed to escape while I was feeding them on Friday and now we have a chrysalis hanging from Laila's playroom curtains.  I have to climb up and move it to an enclosure tomorrow.  Silly thing.  It's definitely been a busy process this spring.  We have a wide range of forms, from egg to almost ready to eclose.  It's never boring! 

We've also enjoyed watching these guys!  They haven't been by in a few days, so I switched out to homemade nectar today. I had used some I bought at Lowe's and they seem to have left after that.  Hopefully they come back as we love them.  

Watercolor Deer

Here's another watercolor card I managed to put together.  I'm so behind on birthday cards.  This is going to be a month late, but I hope my dad still likes it.  My mom's birthday is coming up, so I'm hoping to just bundle a gift card for a dinner date and both their cards in one package.  Maybe I can be better for Mother's and Father's Days.  :)   Pretty simple card, green watercolors, deer cut out from Cameo, and a sentiment from Stampin' Up!

On Monday, eight of our butterflies eclosed from their chrylasides.  It was so exciting to see that process and release them.  We had one late one come out yesterday and we released her as well.  Laila loved the whole process. Now we are waiting on six more to eclose next week and we have a lot of caterpillars eating us out of house and home.  :)

Shining Watercolor

Still alive!  lol  The weather has continued to be amazing, so I've been outside instead of stamping.  I'm also in a bit of a slump creativity wise, so gardening has been my choice of hobbies for April.  I have so many books and seed catalogs now.  I feel like I'm back in school with all this learning and studying.  Anyway, I did decided to try and make something. I have a board on Pinterest with card ideas that I like and browsed that to get some ideas.  I loved this card by Penny, so it became my inspiration.  I want to learn to watercolor so bad, but man it's hard!  I did try though. :)

We are caterpillar crazy at this point.  We have 11 chrysalides and a lot of caterpillars. We are going to need a lot of milkweed this spring!  lol  I just had more seeds germinate, so hopefully we can grow more instead of running to the nursery in a panic to have enough to feed them.  I can't wait to release our first butterflies this week.  This beautiful lady below left us quite a few eggs last week and we apparently had another visitor this week as I've found more eggs in the garden.  It's been a good project for us this spring.  Who doesn't love helping the Monarchs?

That's about it.  Gardening and Weight Watchers... maybe I can fit a bit more stamping in there.  :)  (Down 9 pounds so far by the way!)

I'm off to check the garden and go for a walk.  Have a wonderful Sunday!

Taylored Expressions Birthday Grumplings

I couldn't get a good picture of this one, but I thought I'd post it anyway.  I love these grumpy guys. I have a few friends who they are just perfect for. :)  I wanted to use more than one of them, so I tried to come up with a layout/plan to do that.  I think it works okay.  Too many sequins, but I wanted it to look like a party.  A grumpy critter party.

So here's one reason why I haven't been posting much lately.  I haven't been stamping much because I've been working on the garden.  I added more plants and have been babying these caterpillars!  I decided to raise them inside this year so that more could make it through the stages successfully.  Right now I have about 8 that are this size, 1 small little guy, and three eggs.  I have three containers with them and have to keep them in fresh leaves. Man do they poop a lot!  Clean, clean, clean! It's been amazing to watch though.  Tonight we sat outside and watched a lot of different butterflies, bees, and birds visit the garden.  Our weather has been perfect for it.  I'm going to be sad when summer starts and it gets hot and gross.

 My other time consuming thing is Weight Watchers.  I decided to start back almost two weeks ago.  It's been a lot of work with grocery shopping, meal planning, cooking, and walking, but I feel great.  I haven't taken any depression or anxiety meds in a few weeks.  I don't know that I won't ever need them, but it's been nice to feel okay without them for a bit.  I am glad they worked and helped me get to the point where I can try to start taking better care of myself. Five pounds down so far!

Laila and I have also been busy going plant shopping, going to parks, and just hanging out. So that's what is going on with me.  I'll be back to stamping more once I get a better routine going.  :)