PhotoHunter theme #188 "Bird(s)"

This week's PhotoHunt-theme # 188 is "Bird(s)".

If you are having difficulty taking pictures of live birds outside, one solution is

to show anything that looks like a bird that you can find in your home. So I searched for birds among my mementos:

A painted seagull.

More painted multi-coloured birds.

A ceramic bird, left profile.

Ceramic bird, en face.

Or a rubber-duck-police!

Happy Weekend!

Anna

PhotoHunt

Pink Fridays #40 - Elisabet and other favourite pink-things

Pink Fridays# 40

Here are are some of my favourite pink things:

my pink purse that is also a little backpack;

And here are my pink compfy slippers;

but most of all, my daughter Elisabet, who also likes pink things, is my favourite!

Happy Pink Friday!

Anna

Thursday's plant watch: Mountain ash / Rowan (Swedish/sv: rönn / Latin: sorbus)

Once again, I am out looking at the gardens of my neighbours. As always, I'm hoping to find something that will help me make a pretty piece of jewellery.

Along this nearby street is a row of mountain ash trees.

I find the appearance of these trees to be very strange. The trees have shed their leaves and yet the clusters of rowanberries hang from the branches like red parachutists falling from the sky! What shall I say?

It seems that not all red berries lend themselves well as inspiration for jewellery!

There is something ominous and foreboding about the image of these trees. We got our swine-flu-shots yesterday and both Elisabet and Erik are feeling poorly today.

Happy Thursday anyway!

Anna

(An Almost) Wordless Wednesday - My hero!

Wordless Wednesday: Little boys like to play super-hero.

This is my hero!

He has a very special smile right now,

that he only will have a short time and never again exactly the same way!

Happy Wordlessness!

Anna

Ruby Tuesday

This is the first time that I post something for the Ruby Tuesday-meme.

I found these over-ripe rose hips while looking for inspiration for beaded jewellery.

(The yellow leaves in the backgound make it almost qualify for "Mellow Yellow Monday",

but the red is still the most eye-catching).

Happy Ruby Tuesday!

Anna

Ruby Tuesday

Blue Monday Meme - "Blue Tools"

For this week's Blue Monday Meme, I would like to show some blue tools. Blue is a good colour for items that everyone needs for day to day work.

Here are some tools that I use every day for making jewellery: different kinds of pliers that have blue handles. These are my "blue tools"!

Other kinds of tools are needed when you are writing texts for a blog.

This is a tool that I often use when writing anything in English: a dictionary! The Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary is a "blue tool" too.

Happy Blue Monday!

Anna

Sunday thoughts: "Look, a squirrel!" (Spiritual Sundays)

Yesterday we walked along the promenade to the local music school to go to Elisabet's weekly violin lesson-group.

On our way home Elisabet happened to see a squirrel jumping from tree to tree. These are not very good pictures - too grey. But I thought I would share the children's enthusism for this one small observation of the natural world. To be a child and embrace everything that is new!

Why post this? I happened to have my camera with me when we went out. Ninety-five percent of these small everyday discoveries never get documented in any way at all. Suddenly the children have grown some more and moved on from one stage of development to another. Yes, sometimes, I am a frustrated mother. Time flies. I can't do everything. I don't see everything. But I am happy and grateful for what I do see and for what I have.

Happy Sunday!

Anna

("Sunday thoughts" is not an established meme. It is simply my own category for random thoughts that don't fit in anywhere else. But if you have something you would like to add, you are welcome to comment.//Later:// I've decided to let this post join "Spiritual Sundays" if they think it's alright. )

PhotoHunter Theme # 187 Music - Violas and violins

Saturday's PhotoHunt- theme # 187 is "Music", which is more for the ear than the eye. So what is visual about music and can be used for this PhotoHunt theme? I think musical instruments are beautiful objects, especially string instruments.

Here is our string family: a child's violin, a child's viola, a violin for an adult and a viola for an adult. The child's violin belongs to Elisabet. Here is Elisabet playing her violin.

Erik plays the viola and encourages Elisabet to play her violin.

This is Elisabet's and Erik's music teacher, Sonja Nichols, who uses the Suzuki-teaching-method.

Shinichi Suzuki, who developed this method, prefered to call it the "mother-tongue approach", because he taught young children to play the violin in a similar way that all children learn to speak their native language: with lots of love, encouragement and repetition.

Happy Weekend!

Anna

PhotoHunt

Pink Friday - Elisabet and her faery-wings

Happy Pink Friday!

Anna

Thursday's plant-watch: Elderberries

You may remember how green the elderberries [sv. = fläder, lat. Sambucus nigra] were in September.

Most berries look like beads and pearls, so I am looking for sources of inspiration for jewellery here.

See the change in colour? It's November now and the berries themselves are a very dark, blackish, blueish purple.

The birds eat the berries or they fall off, so the reddish stems are more visiable.

Is it possible to do something with these colours or am I being too literal?

Well, we'll see a little later what I do with this!

Anna

(Almost) Wordless Wednesday

Today's (Almost) Wordless Wednesday post is about what happened when I went out with my camera to the little alley behind our row-house. This is where I spotted the lovely bright red-orange nasturtiums, a couple of weeks earlier. There was a couple who were working in their tiny but beautiful garden.

They gave me four cuttings of orpine or livelong (kärleksört), that will root in water and then I can plant them in my garden!

"Orpine" or "livelong" (Sedum telephium) is called "röd kärleksört" in Swedish,

which literally means "red love-plant".

Best wishes

Anna

Tuesdays play-time: Erik draws a picture (All About Kids Tuesday Meme)

In August the children played Indians.

Erik wanted to build an Indian teepee.

I suggested that he first making a drawing of what it should look like.

This is Erik's drawing of a teepee.

He wanted to make one - lifesize.

He ended up making one using bed clothes, chairs and a step-ladder.

Anna