Older son daughter-in-law and grandkids came out to visit today; they took bike ride first on the rails to trails hiking trail then we met up for ice cream cones. Visited here for a few hours; they picked the blueberries which are ripening exponentially on the bushes now…. played in the guest room which doubles as their special place space. It’s working out very well for multi purpose. It means I don’t have to drive in town tomorrow which is great. I get a break this weekend from doing that drive.

Alice, I am also going to up cycle some bed pillows. Creating some new pillows with the stuffing. I’ll be interested to see the colour you mentioned… I would like to be able to use brown in this space and so far it has been unsuccessful for the most part.

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I had a great time yesterday with the visit; one of the notable moments was the grandchildren opening a “restaurant“ in their “playroom” (aka the guestroom) upstairs. They made various varieties of food, depending on what the customers wanted… out of some coloured air, dried clay that I had bought quite a while ago, which,at the time, was not a hit. They got it down off the shelf, and on their own devised the food game… the food orders included bacon wrapped scallops, corn on the cob, sausages, strawberries, (dipped in chocolate)… And pasta with meatballs. All rendered in air dried clay. I dug out the miniature China plates that I have for the gnomes and everybody had a very good time. 🤣🥂🎉The restaurant music was played on the little electronic keyboard that my own kids used to use. There’s a basket of stuffed animals there and my older son noticed the stuffed animals he had as a child, in the basket. We got them out of the basket and reminisced about the characters… which were in the category of the velveteen bunny at that point. Well loved…it was a meaningful nostalgic moment. We hold these in our hearts, as parents. They don’t come around that frequently.

Art journals in some ways are just as effective and more discreet however, the disadvantage is you don’t always remember exactly what you were thinking when you did a piece. They can be a little too discreet. Going through my journals of the 1990’s has been really helpful in letting me review my process at the time, although they only cover certain aspects. They also have their limit. This is a class I’m thinking of teaching at the library in the winter, likely. Mixed media art journals.

This all started when our homeowner’s insurance significantly went up. When searching for new insurance we discovered that no new insurance would accept us with the knob and tube except for very expensive high risk insurance companies-which defeats the purpose of changing insurance companies for a cheaper price.

Actually, it might not be knob and tube. I have ceramic ceiling fixtures in the upstairs. That’s what made me think it might be that but perhaps it isn’t.

We had our 40 yr old sliders were serviced today. Now they slide with a touch of a finger! The shutter people had to come ( last Friday) to remove a couple of posts from the living room shutter so the window people could do their thing today. The shutter people will return to reinstall the posts. But the window/slider guys damaged the deck seal. So it will need to be fixed and resealed. A several day process. 😳