The Wedding

Here's to hoping that you, Dear Reader, enjoy happy wedding photos as much as I do. All of these photos are curtesy of my extremely talented brother-in-law, Don Whitebread. My camera was broken the day before the wedding and I have had to rely of the kindness of family members for images to share with you.

My beautiful daughters, Annie (matron-of-honor) and the bride, Jennie.

My son Don and his eldest daughter, Emma, arrive by golf cart for the ceremony.

My oh-so-handsome son Don walks me down to my seat just before the start of the wedding ceremony. (That is the bride's camera I'm carrying.)

The flower girls were lovely. Emma (6) is on the left, Alex (5) on the right.

Jen and her handsome groom with flower girl Emma.

DH walks Jen down the "aisle" at the Calistroga Ranch, the wedding venue.

Jen & Chris' cake was delicious and carried out the hydrangea flower theme of the wedding with it's one layer completely covered with hydrangea "petals."

We were treated to a five course dinner (with wine pairings, no less!) in the wine cave at Calistoga Ranch. It was the perfect place for such a celebratory meal. The food was divine.

The cake was even better.

Welcoming Chris

My darling Jen and her fabulous intended, Chris, will be married this weekend in Napa. DH, his mother and I will leave tomorrow for California for the festivities. Daughter Annie and her Chris (this is going to become confusing, I'm afraid!) will arrive on Friday with their two children in tow. Alex will be a flower girl and will be joined by her cousin Emma, son Don's daughter. Don & Kellie and Flower Girl Emma also arrive on Friday. Friday night is the rehearsal dinner, Saturday the wedding and Sunday we all return home, with our family newly expanded and enriched. I would like to publicly declare that my children have excellent, EXCELLENT taste in spouses. Annie has her Chris, he of the wicked sense of humor, beautiful brown eyes and gentle heart. Don has Kellie, the beautiful and kind, who makes him light up whenever he mentions her name. And now Jen will have her Chris. Our newest Chris is very handsome and very smart, funny and fun, and the apple of Jen's eye. He enters into our family with a seamless and perfect fit and we know now we've always been waiting for him to join us.

DH and I are blessed with our children-in-law. They make our children happy and fulfilled. They helped bring us our beloved grandbabies. Each has made our lives richer. Now we have one more darling man to add to our family and we couldn't be happier, or prouder. He is a keeper.

Welcome, Chris! Welcome.

Day Late, Dollar Short....

Yet again, I forgot to post my self-portrait on Friday. Considering the last two weeks, I'm just glad I remembered at all!

A Good Thing

That's my DH. And he IS a Dear Husband. Dear, dear and oh-so-dear. And also home from the hospital.

He had to have emergency surgery last Wednesday. It was serious and time was a factor and we just had to do it. It was very scary. The surgery went well. His recovery went very well. DH was released from hospital on Monday and is now home, recuperating.

I am profoundly thankful. And relieved. I am also reminded of just how very dear he is to me. It's good to be reminded that those around us are as precious to us as they are. I wouldn't recommend using emergency surgery for this reminder, that method not being particularly gentle, but a little push to remind yourself how 'dear' and precious your Dear Whomever(s) is to you is a good thing.

I am singing my song of thanks, loudly!

Save Betty White PSA

Really. Save Betty White!

Saturday at Fort Worden

My friend Lise is visiting for a few weeks. She now lives in Haugesund, Norway, but for many (and many and many more!) years was my neighbor in Shoreline. Our children grew up together and our families have shared many experiences and good times over the years. She is here now for her son's 40th birthday. Here she is pictured above with darling Nonie. (Lise is the one in the red jacket.)

It was a beautiful afternoon and although a jacket felt good, so did the sunshine.

Some unknown beach goer had amassed a large collection of flat stones into a collection of cairns, all stretched out along a piece of driftwood. It was really quite beautiful.
We spend a happy few hours just beach combing and strolling. I got to get my feet wet and dig my bare toes into the sand for perhaps the last time this summer. Nonie scored the big find of the day when she discovered a whole chiton.

Fun with FishBoy

Last weekend I was lucky enough to take two classes from Fred B. Mullett. Fred has become a friend and a fine (and exceedingly funny) friend he is. He calls me silly names and I call him FishBoy. I can't claim to have coined the phrase, my friend Bee did that, but it fits him well. Fred manufactures some of the most intriguing rubber stamps available, in my humble opinion. As a member of the Nature Printing Society, Fred has fine tuned his talent for Gyotaku, or fish printing (thus explaining his pet name, besides the obvious). Many of his beautiful rubber stamps are of fish and they all have the beauty of Gyotaku.


We learned a lot of very simple but extremely effective ways to turn a rubber stamp print into something much more interesting. With watercolors, embossing powders, colored pencils and a little patience, you, too, can turn your rubber stamp into a wonderful tool.


These are examples that I made during class. I was only trying to learn the techniques, not to make a perfectly enhanced print. (Process rather than product, as my ceramics instructor always said!) I know they are rough, but you can get the idea of what can be achieved with Fred's techniques.


It was really fun to take a couple of classes from Fred, and wonderful to see him again. (He recently moved from the Northwest to the Midwest.) If you get the chance, don't hesitate to sign up for anything Fred might be teaching.

O Canada! O Butchart Gardens!

You know how people who live in an area just don't usually go see the local sites? They think they'll go with friends from out of state or they just haven't gotten around to it? Well, that's me and Butchart Gardens. I've lived in Western Washington my whole life, yea these sixty years, and have never been to Butchart Gardens until last week. I must say, I wish I'd gone much earlier. And often. The gardens are spectacular! They are even better than the "hype" you hear about them.
Two of my friends who made the trek to Vancouver Island with me. We had our annual 4 Ses trip. (All our names start with the letter S.) It just wouldn't be August without our reunion.

Beautiful vistas abound.

The two Sandy/Sandis.

My favorite part was the Japanese Garden. It was breath taking.

I love all the little details of a well thought out garden, how the greens are varied and the textures, the different heights of the plantings. The designers at Butchart Gardens are masters at this and it's a gardening education to walk around and see how they paint with plants.

I had a really good time. (Can you tell?)

Nantucket Journal

I'm back from Nantucket and thought I would share a few pages of my travel journal with you. I always (well, almost always) do a journal for a "major" trip, and Nantucket surely falls into that category.

I collect all sort of ephemera and have a great time cutting and pasting my daily finds into my journal. I like to take a business card from favorite restaurants and shops. I often want to revisit them the next time I'm in the area and having the card in my journal is a great way to be able to refresh my memory before visitng the next time.

I love to use my Polaroid Pogo printer to print out copies of a few of my photos to add to my daily entry into the journal. I like the fact that the Pogo is small and easy to take along and I can add the photos I want as I go, not having to save space in the journal while I wait to get prints made. The 2 by 3 inch format is perfect for journaling, too, as most of my travel journals are 6 by 6 inches (small enough to fit into my pocket or handbag, large enough to allow me to add ephemera up to regular postcard size).
I take a few Copic markers with me on my travels, a glue stick, small pair of scissors, several pens, a travel watercolor box with brush and some sort of tape. I need a white out tape, too, as I am always making mistakes! I usually take along a small alphabet stamp set and one small ink pad. I like being able to stamp in place names or phrases to give some parts of the page special emphasis.
I don't worry about my journals gettng too "fat" as I just add a ribbon to tie the covers together.
I try to work on my journal every day, but if that proves to me impossible, I just make sure I've take some notes about what I did and collect the ephemera for that day so that when I do have more time for journaling, I have the material I need to catch up.
Often I find that I am too tired to work in the journal at the end of a long day, but since I am an early riser, I often get caught up in the early morning hours. It's a uiet activity that you can do even if your DH or travel companion is still asleep and it keeps me from going stir crazy waiting for my companion to wake up.
Often I will collect three or four postcards that I want to add to the journal, and using tape, attach them to each other and then add the accordian of cards to my journal at the spine with more tape. I have found that there is a Japanese masking tape product on the market now that comes in a rainbow of colors and patterns and I really enjoy using that tape to add some pizazz to my journal pages. I like having to unfold and flip over additions to the regular pages of my journals.
Using edge punches is fun, too. I loved how the "hydrangea border" turned out. I use rubber stamps occasionally, too. I bought a few different stamps while I was in Nantucket so I incorporated them into the journal.
The bathing beauty shown above is a Polly Minick design for a hooked rug. Polly taught at the 1800 House while I was in Nantucket and I was lucky enough to take her class in a hooked carpet bag (more about that in a later post). I took one of Polly's postcards advertising a show she had in Nantucket and cut it up and made the collage above with the bits and pieces. The postcard was too large to use in its entirety so I made it fit!
I collect feathers and bits of shells and rocks and often add them to my journal pages. They add a lot of texture even as they add a lot of bulk. I don't mind, though, as they are keepsakes.
ACK is the airport code for Nantucket.

I had a wonderful visit to Nantucket and will be posting more about the trip in a later blogpost.