Treasures in the Mail

I've been somewhat emotionally consumed this week. One of my very close family members is considering divorce. It's upset me greatly since the family member has young children. So please forgive me for taking so long to post lately and posting so infrequently. It's amazing how stressful things like this are.



Monday was a great mail day! I had been out of town since the Thursday before at a quilt retreat. When I got to the post office, I had lots of wonderful packages! So fun! I got two of my prizes from the One World One Heart giveaways. The first one is this lovely print of a painting done by Karen. The photo I took of it does not truly capture its loveliness. To see it in Karen's original post on her blog, please look here. Her blog is called Daily Creations by Karen Benvenuti. Thank you Karen! I love birds and bird nests with eggs. I'd love to find one like this in a bush near my home. Just lovely.





The other prize I have to tell you about tonight is from Nikki. She is so sweet. She sent me her amazing little book charm and a print of a volcano world. Here is the posting about her OWOH winners. She has great photos of both of the prizes she sent me. Much better than my sorry photo. I really wish I had a camera that took different lenses, but my hands shake a lot and I need one of those no-shaky cameras. I haven't found one that lets you change lens. Times like this, I really want a macro lens so that I could take a great photo of this charm. When I get the courage, I plan to write the dates of my son's and grandchildren's births in the little book. Then I'm going to hang it on a necklace. Nikki's "wee planet" photos are really cool! You can get to all of them from her original post about the giveaway here. Nikki's blog is called Nikki Smith - Book Artist. If you have time, please check out both of the blogs of these talented ladies.



The last thing to tell you about was something that I ordered and it just happened to arrive in the mail on Monday with the other goodies. I read about this on The Bright Side Project. It's a subscription of 500 colored pencils -- 25 pencils a month over 20 months! I'm going to have a lot of fun with these over the months and, I hope, for years to come. I can't wait to share them with my grandchildren when they visit the next time! CV will especially love them, I think. The colors are wonderful. And something equally fun -- each one is named. Just listen to these names -- Raccoon Dog, Sambal, Truffle, Windsor Rose, Mahogany, Caffe Latte, Tea With Milk, Soldier Suit, Hopscotch, Tragedy, Vivien, Coconut, Aubergine, Anaconda, Tobacco Road, Black Coffee, Earth Brown, Buster Brown, Walnut, Secret Past, Pecan, Semi-Sweet, Apricot Brandy, Creme De Cacao and last, but certainly not least, Tiramisu! Now, these names are not in the order of the pencils in the photo. I didn't think of it in time. I'll try to remember to do that next time. Or if I get really wild and crazy over the weekend, I may lay them out as I've written them and take another photo.

Hope you have a great one! I'm done for tonight. Off to practice my knitting. At least three rows a day so that I don't forget the knit stitch.