When a girl gets desperate she turns to ANYTHING to fix her hair!

So, Chris and I went to the cabin again on Friday.  It was a beautiful day but seemed a little threatening, weather wise.  We decided to go on a long walk and took a different route-one not taken before.  One of our favorite places outside of our cabin association, Alpine Acres, is called Holiday Park.  The Salt Lake City pioneers started coming there in the 1800's for summer vacations.  It still has beautiful old log cabins from that time period.  We love to walk through it.  There are even some horses to pet.  Anyway, we were in awe of how gorgeous it all was when the weather changed and it started raining.  Oh, how I hate my hair when it gets wet and dries like a wispy broom.  Plus it's flat on the top.  So I wore Chris' hat to protect it some.  I needn't have bothered.  It ruined my hair.  Oh well but today I was desperate to make it look better.  In the cabin we have an old hot curler set that is probably over 30 years old.  It still works great but I didn't have any clips to hold in the curlers.  So, Chris said he would be happy to anchor them with tie wraps.  Oh, he just loved it.  The old "Blue's Brother's Movie" was playing in the background and he was dancing away while putting those things in my hair.  At one point he said, "Take me to your leader!"  He kills me.

But it was so radiant this morning and we went for an early morning walk looking for the wild life-hoping to catch sight of a moose or some deer.  Because of the rain the foliage was covered with tiny diamonds of light.  I tried to take a picture but the camera didn't capture how magical it looked.  As you can see it was very green and smelled so wonderful.  Unfortunately the nasty pine beetles have been devastating the lodge pole pines and there are dead ones everywhere.  It's so sad our favorite pine tree that has a twisted trunk is dead.  We have quite a few that we're going to have to chop down or they might smash our cabin.

As you can see I've included a small sketch I did of our funky hillbilly kitchen.  The combo sink, cook top and frige is probably at least 40 years old.  The burners still work great but the frige conked out a few years ago.  I made the curtains and we use the frige section for storage.  I actually drew this on the 5th of July but added color to it today.  Anyway, the cabin is very fun but way too small for our family.  We've got to build a new one someday-very soon.

Just a few little ditties/starting a new painting

Hi there.  Well, these, again, are my sketches from church.  The horses I just finished and I believe they are some from a place called Wheeler Farm by our house.  You know how much I love them and I would love to do more.  But my next painting is for my sister.  It's going to be some yellow and green birds because she loves them so much.  After that I owe paintings to our 2 married children (last year's 2 weddings), Cliff and Gracie.  They still haven't figured out with their spouses what they want.  I also have another wedding painting, small, for a niece.  I wish I could work on them more often.  That's okay.

The other sketch is of my 2 sons, Cliff and Charlie, and my niece, Wendy, with her daughter, Zoe.  I think I probably told you this before but I really don't worry about exact likenesses.  It ruins the freshness of the drawings and that's a crime.  Besides I kind of like the characterization of them.  It makes it fun and not like a photograph.  Whoops!  I forgot about Flounder, the birdie.  He's important too.

Speaking of Flounder-that reminds me of the time (about 7 years ago) when Flounder woke Gracie up (he lived in her room) by saying, "Hi there!  What's ya doing?  Floooouuuunnnder!"  He had never spoken before and he was an old bird.  That's rare.  But Gracie said it made her sick because he talked in my baby voice that I use to talk to my pets (well, what can I say?  I love animals but I do go overboard sometimes).  From that day on he talked a lot but it was always the same thing.  I loved that little guy.

Besides all of this going on I'm just a working fool.  Not much I can do about it right now.

This is what we do for fun around our house in the summer

My husband, Chris, gets these dreams.  You know something to build and build it big and very cool.  One of these dreams was to build a giant movie screen to show movies in the neighborhood.  Then everyone can get together and have fun-plus get to know one another better.  He built a prototype about 3 years ago and it was, well, okay.  It was mostly not great but when he secured it to a fence at a park by our house it worked well enough to watch "The Wizard of Oz".  But it was rickety, no kidding.

So, this summer, instead of buying canvas and dealing with that he bought an old sign from a sign company.  Flipped it over to the white side, built 20 foot high metal supports and bolted it to our trailer.  Charlie was his partner in crime.  They concocted some kind of complicated pulley system to hoist the sign up like a sail.  Well, guess whose trailer is out of commission for the summer?  You are right.  But we don't care.  Last week we tested it.  He drove it across the street (wiped out one of the big branches of a tree in front of our house) and got a projector connected to some speakers-we watched most of "Shrek" as a test from across the street.  It was a huge success!  So, several days later we invited some of our neighbors to watch "UP!"  As you can see it was just as great as going to the drivein movie theater-only it's free and not crowded.  Now it's going to be the traveling screen for the rest of the summer.  It works great in our neighborhood because we have underground wires.  We figure we can get in a least 4 other movie nights.

So what is going to happen to all the materials, you ask?  You know.  Stored like the rest of his "great junk" in our backyard or garage.  But where are 20 foot poles going to fit in?  That's what I want to know.  Hmmmm.  I'm not too worried now.  I'm too busy eating popcorn and watching movies!  Yea!

P. S. I retook the picture of my painting and it is better but I still have to get a pro to get it right.  Maybe it's just my picky perfectionist eyes.  Do you think?

Okay I'm cringing because of the poor photo of my painting! It's lopsided!

Just had to let you all know that I'm going to redo this photo when I get a chance.

At looooooonnnng last-"My Paradise" is done!

So, here's the finished product everyone!  Now take into account that I'm not a professional photographer.  I have to get some pro pics taken by Brady Donley.  At least I've got to get a hold of him first as he's often running all over the world taking fabulous pics of golf courses, Antarctica, Africa, etc.   As you can see this could be straighter but it was windy today and Char was having a hard time holding onto the painting while I tried to take some pics for my blog.

It has all the elements I want in Heaven, EXCEPT for my family and a huge body of glorious water to go swimming in (shark free, of course).  I am very happy about how it has turned out and even happier that it's all done now.  I can start on my large mosaic for my kitchen.  That will be my little treat.  Then it's on to the paintings that I have promised to do for others.

Oh, if you want to see the steps to this painting you can go back in the blog and watch the process.

It's the Albion Basin again!

My sister, Carrie, and I went on a very fun hike to the Albion Basin.  It started out to be a perfectly awful day.  We looked stupid when we put on cheapy plastic tarp rain coats that we stole from the men's backpacks in our basement.  But we weren't going to give up on a wonderful time together.  The parking lot was full that was by the beginning of the trail.  So we had to park in the first lot.  We had no idea until we got out of the car how far away it was.  By the time we got to the trail we realized that we had stupidly left our water bottles in the car.  The teenager that was in the guard's hut just happened to come along on a four wheeler.  It was kismet!  We asked him if he would go to our car and get the water.  I must admit it was an idiotic thing to do but I gave him my car keys, fully trusting that he wouldn't take off with my Subaru.  I know this would be a more interesting story if I could say he did. But he was great.  Saved us a hike back to the car.  My husband thought I was a nitwit and I was.

One of my favorite vistas on the hike is when you reach Cecret Lake.  Because of the strange late beginning of summer this year there is still some snow in the mountains.  We were so surprised to see a floating iceberg on the lake still in the middle of July! 

Now the only disappointment to me was the fact that probably 80% of the flowers were not out yet.  There were tons of Indian Paintbrush just ready to burst forth.  We missed it. I'm sure it's even more glorious up there now but we still had fun reliving our childhood memories of when we were little girls in Brighton happily drifting through the mountain meadows.

I should tell you that the clouds magically disappeared-along with the mist and rain-and the sun burst forth to make the day perfect!