Sunflowers

I have wanted to find a field of sunflowers to photograph for a long time.  I usually just miss them when they are in bloom.  Late last week John came home and said that there was a field on highway 6 that I had to check out.  It was a beautiful sunny day today and the flowers seemed to glitter in the sun.  We were not the only ones that had decided to snap some pictures...cars were coming and going constantly with people searching for that perfect shot. 

I took quite a number of shots, some better than others, but I was very pleased with the results.  It is impossible not to smile when you see a field of blooming sunflowers extending for acres into the distance.

Birthday for a friend

Tomorrow is my dear friend Ina's birthday.  I took an hour or so out of making swap cards to make this card for her.  I am planning on using the corner bookmark card layout as a shoebox project for an upcoming gathering I am going to in October.  This was a good time to try it out and see how it went. 

I used Staples 110 vanilla card stock as the base.  The DP is by K & Company, from the Sera Sera stack.  I matted it with Soft Sky and Close to Cocoa.  Ina's favorite colors are blues, especially turquoise, so I added some ribbon in a no tie bow and finished things off with some stems and felt flowers by Jolee's Boutique.  I scalloped the edge of the book mark with the SU! scalloped edge punch.  I used the same DP on the bottom of the book mark and matted triangles of Close to Cocoa and Soft sky.  I finished it off with some more felt flowers, and thought the red was a nice pop of color and didn't look too out of place because there was some red/pink showing in the DP.

Here's a close up of the bookmark.  I think she'll like it.  :)

Friends

We went to Wasaga Beach today with our good friends Chris and Margaret, their girls, our kids and a friend.  The weather was hot, but not too hot, until just after lunch when a fast moving storm came in over the lake, complete with thunder and as it came in closer, lightning.

We figured we'd just wait it out and carry on and then the skies opened up and delivered a deluge of almost biblical proportions.  High winds and large pea sized hail completed the picture.  We waited it out in the cars, after gathering assorted items and getting totally soaked. 

We had a blast!  The kids were in the water for quite some time but wisely came in when the thunder started rolling.  Fortunately they were well out of the water when the lightning started. 

On the way up we drove through Amaranth and we saw the huge wind farm there.  I realise that there is a lot of opposition to wind turbines but driving past them we thought they were pretty cool.  The sweeping blades of the turbines were almost hypnotic and we quite enjoyed watching them.  I snagged a couple of pictures from the car on the way up, we weren't able to stop on the way back, but will certainly have to go back sometime to explore them more closely. 

Summer

Despite the recent heat wave and it's accompanying issues, I love summer.  I love the smells and sounds, the colors of the many flowers and the opportunities to travel. 

We have a bumper crop of black berries out around the barns this year.  I've been getting a generous handful morning and night for the past several days.  Their sweet, juicy flavor is the epitome of summer, to me. 

Can't you just taste them?  :)

Oh the busy little bee...

We have an ancient lilac tree out front of our house.  In addition to providing shelter for nesting chickadees in the spring, the butterflies love the blossoms.  I was trying to catch a good shot of them one morning this spring and was lucky enough to catch this fellow going about his business...or should that be buzziness?  :)

This actually didn't look as bad as I thought it did...

My dear friend (and Stampin Up! demo extraordinaire), Margaret has been encouraging (?pushing?) me for a while to set up a blog and start posting. I went back to this one that I had set up last year and had a good look at it and realised it didn't look quite as bad as I thought it did! I guess sometimes I surprise myself. lol