Bicycle dreams...

Plucked from a life of cobwebs and dust, for the price of a large brandy and a couple of draft beer....a dream come true.....

...with a bit of purple spray paint, a wire basket and a snappy (fake) sunflower....

...I shall be taking the streets of Burlington by retro-storm.

I am LOVE, LOVE, LOVING my *new* bike....and my kids aren't quite old enough to be embarrassed by me yet.....

Oh, but they will......

Free wheelin'...

Strictly a scooter-kid until a few days ago....Savannah wanted the pedals and training wheels put back on her bicycle. She hadn't much interest in her bike last summer and preferred to either scoot or run....

It helps when your BFF hops on her new bike and is tearing around the neighbourhood....

It also makes a difference when your BFF takes the training wheels off her bike....

Inspiration? Motivation? Affirmation that anything is possible when you have a true desire?

Whatever.

Sneaky shots taken with the zoom...I wasn't supposed to be watching her practice...

BFF, M -is Savannah's personal cheering squad and coach....

*sigh* "My work here is done...." says, M.

Nature therapy...

A walk to Kerncliff...long post-poned due to timing and weather but finally...spring has arrived in one of our fave places.

Bored with the standard Burlington-issue postcards, B suggested I snap some pics of our hikes and use them....a grand idea...these are a couple of the future postcards...

Oscar, mid-shake...he just rolled in something stinky...

A bit of life in an old stump.....

Evidently our favourite 'view' was a good spot from which to launch Victoria Day fireworks...and have a campfire; Tyler, mid-leap

Back on the high trail...it was VERY windy....which made it even better

Some snapshots of Bliss...

Some random shots of Shine...as it happens around here...

The Muse sleeps...


Sleeping in...

...followed by breakfast in bed

The 'finished' work...

Nothing like a haphazard stack of reading material to make you feel all warm and fuzzy and craving a rainy day....

And so we Shine on....

Gargoyles!

In case you didn't know - gargoyles are placed at entrances of buildings to warn of evil spirits. We had some at our old house but time, weather and a clumsy dog took their toll....

At long last....we have found some more....

Devilishly cute, no?

A work in progress...

So I've always wanted a 'water feature' in my garden. My ideal water feature would be a stream running through but...well....one must make do....

My bff C's Beloved is a marvel with stonework - it's what he *does* - so he was given the task of designing me a wee something that would trickle and burble.

He found it, cut it, set up the pump...the rest was up to me.

First, to dig the hole....of which I don't have a picture, but I do, for some bizarre reason, have a shot of the big pile of dirt that came out of it.
Put plastic tub inside aforementioned hole and fill with water...which is immediately murky from all the loose dirt. *sigh*

Then, put lid on tub, put rock on lid and......well.....this isn't even the final version. I had to schlepp that sodding rock about fifty times back and forth, getting the water pressure right, adjusting everything so I could recapture the water etc. etc. It took about five tries...I was not friends with the rock (weighs about a thousand pounds) for a while and my lower back is not friends with me at the moment.....

When I'm friends with the rock again, I'll take its picture.

Mother's day....

Knowing my preference for viewing blossoms in their natural state and my aversion to the pesticide-drenched, resource-draining florist offerings...or perhaps because it was to be a homemade affair....either way....Aunty S once again facilitated a marvelous creation.....

The Recycler's Dream Bouquet as a Mother's Day gift from my darling Shinies...

And then a hefty chunk of my day spent immersed in some art therapy.....

The park and the man in the tree....

A beautiful Friday at the park....

...relaxing in the shade. Sebastian has developed an aversion to t-shirts - he's not keen on his arms being exposed..thus, he was a bit melty in the heat. And I thought the strange clothing quirks belonged solely to his sister....

An interesting find...the man in the tree.....

..the Green Man? Perhaps. That said, I hope he didn't mind a little extra watering from Sebastian.....

Bugs galore...

A tad peeved that the real thing aren't out yet in more abundance, we *made do* with the plastic variety from our vast entymological storehouse....

Our first Postcard!!

VERY exciting....our first postcard from Postcrossings. We've sent six so far...two to the U.S., two to Finland, one to Singapore and one to Lithuania. Two of them have been received which means that we are now in the 'pool' for a card.

This one came from California...it's a photograph of an art installation on the beach. Those are plywood cut-outs, larger than life, and represent a visit that Buffalo Bill made to San Francisco in 1909.


It will be the first to go onto our Postcard Wall of Fame...right beside our big world map which has pins in from everywhere that we know people or people have sent/brought us stuff.....

Way too cool...

An award!

Anna, over at sugarbootandweasel, has kindly bestowed this lovely award upon our humble efforts here at Out of Clutter. And here's me being so lax in my posting these days....


Many, many thanks to Anna - her blog is quintessential unschool cool, btw -for thinking of us and now for the pass-ons....


I'm meant to pass the award on to blogs I've newly discovered but, truthfully, the only one I'm passing on to is Rose, not new, but the most important. She has two blogs -if you're afraid of witches and pagans (what are you doing here?)- then go look at her creative one, it's brilliant too .

Of course, there are many lovely and *new* blogs out there that I very much enjoy and are so very worthy of accolades but I'm just not into the whole award thing......and Rose is probably the only person who understands why....;)


Anyone catching the surrealness (is that a word?) of bestowing of awards on unschoolers?

Just in case...

...you thought we only did art when it rained.....


A quiet draw 'n doodle morphed into a bit of an art-party under the growing shade of Ye Olde Maple tree....



Yes, that's a panda bear tucked into her pants - her BFF M. won it for her at the fair....how else could she keep it safe when her hands were full of paper and markers?

Easy Rider...