stuff about artstuff.

Things That Make Me Smile: Vacation Edition

Dog walks every morning and afternoon are an every-day attitude adjustment around here, but on the beach, forgetaboutit.  It turns into an ear-to-ear grinning until my cheeks hurt thing.

At the beach, little things become fun events.

Some birds.
A boat.
A pattern.

The perfect latte in the morning is enough to bring a smile to my famously-grouchy-morning-lips (yes, we actually pack up the Breville and take it to the cabin) but it's even more fun when I pull a random mug from the cupboard and realize it's designed by my talented friend BJ Lantz!
Her cute beach design made me smile every morning (those who know me well will attest, this is a tall order).

And finally, 2 weeks of perfect sunsets, how can that not make someone smile?

A Day at the Beach.

Sometimes you just need a day at the beach.
Sometimes you need to stand and stare into the surf.
Just stand
in one place
while the waves
wash
over your feet.
Like this guy.
 

Sometimes you need to watch the birds

and search for treasures in the sand.
Like this guy.
Or have fun finding tracks in the sand
like this raccoon's
or this deer's
or even the little tracks left by grass in the breeze. 

Sometimes you need to fantasize that there's no one around and you could just live in a fort.
Sometimes you just need a day at the beach.

Lodge

Looking for some outdoorsy lodgey fabric in bright, fun colors?  Well, your local Joann store has just the thing: the new Artstuff Ltd. "Lodge" designs: 4 patterns planted firmly on the playful, whimsical side of mountain.  You know, where the sun is always shining.

My friends at Robert Kaufman did a great job with these!
I especially had fun designing the map.   It's a lighter, brighter take on my Trail Map scrapbooking paper in my Great Outdoors collection by Momenta.  I had so much fun imagining the places, drawing the details, and figuring out how to make it all fit together.
I wouldn't mind hanging out in this little cabin about now.
What?  Too close to the bear caves?  Don't worry, they're nice bears.  I made them.

Anyway, here's how to find them:
And as always, please show me what you make with my designs, I absolutely love that part!

More Flotsam & Jetsam

Just for fun, a few more bits of eye candy from the beach a couple months ago...

 
As a kid I was fascinated by monster-sized bull kelp.
 
I guess I still am.



 
Extreme tides exposed all sorts of treasures, mostly tied into knots by the waves.

 
One super-low tide exposed a magical sugar-frosted wonderland, it just sparkled in the evening sun.

Flotsam & Jetsam

Buoys, floats, barnacles, rocks.  Little offerings from the tide. 

Thanks, tide.










   

For the Birds.

 
All week the beach was full of birds.
 
Several hundred at a time would fly past in a cacophonous swarm
 
and settle in on the sandbar, at the surf line, to stand there.
Sometimes they would float on the surf 
but mostly, just stand there.
Facing the surf.
Molly tried this too, she found the standing still part quite Zen.
They were there in the fog and mist 
and (the few times it made an appearance) in the sun.
Crows joined them in the mornings 
and sandpipers would take over in the evenings.
Extremely high and low tides all week seemed to be bringing in a feast on the surf 
and a feast below the sand. 
All day, they'd just stand there
 
until the sun set 
then little by little they would lift off and fly away until the sun returned.

 
One of the little guys I made while playing with my Paperclay is now doing the same thing from the cabin window ... just staring into the surf all day long. 
Like the real gulls, he seems quite content to do so.

And I Think They're Cute, Too.

Looking back I notice a sort of unexpected recurring theme from the week at the beach.

From the handful of books I grabbed to take with us 
where I read lots of stories about how Coyote helped create the World, gave people fire, taught ancient tribes how to fish and other real practical, helpful things...

...to the visitor who joined Molly on a walk one morning. 
Not surprising then that he showed up a couple times in my little sketchbook and drawings during the week.

Really just a pleasant character overall, in my opinion.  The Coyote of legend just wanted people on earth to be happy.  He sometimes gets a bad rap for the means by which he accomplished stuff, but his intentions were usually pretty positive.  The coyote on the beach was unobtrusively and politely curious.   And if you're an animal lover and haven't ever followed the Daily Coyote link in my lurk-list in the sidebar here, I think you should.

Our Little Wrens

Alright - one more for the "better late than never" category; here's another post I found in "drafts" from early July.  I know, who does that?

Well.  Me, I guess.

Here you go:

I am a fan of these spunky little guys, what with their perky little tails and extra-pointy beaks and much-bigger-than-their-actual-size personalities. 
Our own "Porch-Wrens" fledged last week and are currently flitting around nearby trees.
 
I've been watching this guy leaping across the roof and into the trees on the other side to flee the Wrath of Wren after finding himself in the wrong tree (even though his nest is up there somewhere also).  It's hilarious to see him scrambling through branches at top speed with a teeny tiny bird right on his butt until he is an acceptable distance from the rest of the Wren Family.

A more attentive and thoughtful blogger might have shared adorable pictures of this same house with occupants peeking out (ohmygosh that was cute) but we hated to harass them any more than we already were by simply going in and out the door ... so we would pass quickly and quietly, even attempting to avoid eye contact as much as possible.

A couple times I actually ventured to the front yard with camera in hand, but was met with that beady little glare that filled me with guilt for even thinking of standing there another moment.  What is it about wrens - they always look mad at me.  I kind of dig that about them.

Why the house right inside the front porch?  I know, not exactly the most practical place to encourage birds to nest.  It started 5 winters ago during an 85-day rainstorm (yes, 85 days).  It rained so hard and for so long that apparently this guy's normally dry nighttime roost in the nearby Douglas fir had become soggy, so he relocated to the holiday garland over our front door, inside our covered porch.
 
The garland stayed up as long as we noticed him still using the roost (yes, sad dry holiday garland circled our front door well into spring) and in the mean time tried to encourage him to move a foot or two over to a nice dry house placed nearby.  Shortly thereafter he began filling the little house with sticks, moss, and clumps of dog hair; he managed to impress a mate with the new digs and that first year they had 2 nests of little babies.  And during particularly soggy periods in winters since, he has returned to his little garland-spot, although never for as long as he did that first year.

One summer the little house became inhabited by honeybees (not as tolerant of people opening and closing the front door as a wren) so the whole thing was carefully relocated to a remote area of a friend's (much larger than ours) yard for a season, and when the bees moved on the birdhouse returned home ... and without thinking better of it, we hung it back in the same spot inside the porch, and this year a new generation of our little family of wrens  returned ... and now have moved on.  Godspeed little wrens ... see you next year.

Is the Ocean Made of Diamonds or Glass?

More from my February visit to the coast.

On one afternoon walk, I was convinced it was diamonds.


 
Or was it glass?

 
I suppose it is just made of ocean.

A Conversation with the Surf.

Day 1:

Me: "Hi, Ocean."

Pacific Ocean: "Hey there ya big wuss, why ya wearing boots?"
Me: "Well it's still actually winter. I was afraid I might get too cold."

Pacific Ocean: "Really? That's never stopped you before. Whaddayer gettin' old or somethin'?"

Me: "Sigh. The Ocean is right. I totally need my toes in the surf. What was I thinking?"

Day 2:

Me: "I'm back."

Pacific Ocean: "That's more like it. Here, watch this - I know you're gonna like this one."
Me: "You're so right, Ocean. Thanks for making me come back barefoot. That's the stuff...
"This is exactly what I needed, just a little-
Hey!"

Pacific Ocean: "Gotcha! Heh heh heh."

Me: "Wait a minute - who were you calling old, anyway?"

Score: Pacific Ocean: 1, Me: wet pants.