Lemon Tree Tales

Verity and I wish you a happy Thanksgiving

Verity has wet hair in this picture but she still wanted to join me in wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving! We're not having our dinner until Friday or Saturday. I'm still a bit weak from an unfortunate stomach flu/virus thing (I was feeling so badly that I told my mom not to make the drive up for much anticipated visit - hopefully she'll be able to come up in December sometime). Also a dear friend is still in the hospital recovering from an emergency appendectomy - never a pleasant thing. I'm still not sure if she'll really want to have a traditional meal when she comes home or not.

In other news, it's definitely fall in our part of the world as you may gather from this photo of the front yard before I attacked it with the rake.

Of course it's a relentless battle at this time of the year. As soon as it's clear then the tree gleefully drops more leaves. I know that it's just giggling behind my back! I was only able to get half of these into the green trash can. Guess we'll have to wait until next week to get more off the street.

Here's to the many things that I'm grateful for: loving friends and family, access to good doctors and medicines, plenty of good food, and the freedom to enjoy all of them! Have an abundant weekend my friends, wherever in the world home may be for you!

Twilight and the laundry room

I've been out of town for the last two and half weeks and didn't plan far enough ahead to have lots of interesting posts scheduled for my absence. I returned to a fairly clean house (had enough time to plan to clean before leaving) but am now catching up on all the laundry. Wow, two weeks worth of laundry plus the entirely full hamper that I left for later and it's still not done. Rather than attacking it non-stop I took a little bit of a break to check out the Twilight movie.

I've read the first two books and will get to the third one soon. You know it's always interesting to see a movie based on a book - especially if it's a book that I really enjoyed. Somehow I'm always a bit disappointed. Oh, don't get me wrong, the movie was pretty decent. It's just that I didn't feel the same intensity between Bella and Edward that you get from the book. I'm undecided whether this is purely on my part or whether the actors weren't 100%, or if they didn't have enough of the movie's time to devote to that before getting to the action of the book. I still walked out of the movie theater with an overall good feeling about the movie so it's not all that big of a deal. Still, when it comes to movies based on novels, my first love will always be the written form.

The soundtrack was enjoyable to hear. Oh and they did an outstanding job with the ballet studio scene. That did live up to expectations very well. If you're a fan of the series then go and see the movie. Let me know what you thought. Perhaps I'm being a bit too harsh. I do wonder if they already have plans for the sequel?

Okay, it's time to attack the laundry again so that this weekend can be devoted to more enjoyable pursuits. Maybe I can finish Verity now?  :-)

Link to Deb Wood's Wings Tutorial

I've never made wings for any of my dolls before. The only ones that I've made were a pair of the stocking wings for Miss L's birthday a couple years back. I've found a tutorial by Deb Woods on how to make fairy wings using Fantasy Film that you can buy from your local craft store. These look pretty amazing and simple to do. I'm thinking that some fairy dolls may be in my future.  :-)

Take a look at her tutorial here:

Lorell Lehman's world of fae

I've discovered an amazing new doll artist thanks to a tip from one of my doll lists. Lorell Lehman is an artist in South Australia who makes all sorts of faeries and woodland creatures. Her site's name says it all, "Not all faeries are beautiful" but they are indeed very striking. Go take a look and enjoy!

Here's just one of her gorgeous creations:

Verity Doll - painted features

This is probably the most that I'll paint my Verity doll head. I could keep tweaking the colors but at some point you just have to call it a day and complete the doll.  :-)  I think that next time I'll go for a more natural colored lip. At first I wanted to try a crackle finish on her, but I'll save that for another go as well.

I did try the crackle finish on her boots. Here's the boot before:

And here's the after:

I like how it makes them look more like leather. Well now that the painting is all done I just have to sew her arms and legs on and then clothe her. Wow, at this rate I'll have a finished doll by the end of the month. Yay!

Have you voted today?

Steve and I voted .. actually we mailed in our ballots early last week. While I may not make public my political tendencies, I do urge all Americans to take advantage of their right to vote. A democracy is only as strong as the people who participate. If you don't agree with something - vote to change it. Otherwise you're just going along for the ride. That's simply unacceptable when there are other countries whose citizens are literally dying for the privilege of choosing their leaders. So go out there and vote! :-)