June 8th Weekly Post

 Hello, Friends! Happy Sunday!

I have a backyard photo and video further down, but first the art:

Sandie is our hostess this week at Sunday Postcard Art with the theme of Aviation.

Now, Sandie and I are old art friends, having bonded over our mutual love for Artistic Outpost Stamps.

She has 32 sets of them and I have (blush!) 61 sets! Can we say Obsession?

I should probably tell her that if I die first, Honey will mail mine to her in England!

Anyway, as I suspected, she used the Charles and Amelia set to make her fabulous sample.

In fact, she did such a fab job at collage stamping (at which she is a genius) I did not even try to compete, and although I could have used the French Flight or Paris Exposition sets, I went another route after seeing my art friend Erika using stickers from a book we both have.

I went down a rabbit hole on Google (hereafter called a Google Hole, haha) reading all about the Montgolfier Brothers from France and how they were from a wealthy paper manufacturing family in the latter 1700's. And how they discovered that hot air made a paper bag float in air. And that led to their first hot air balloon, which began the aviation race in earnest. The younger brother also created vellum!

Hence, my card's French elements!

A sort of homage to the beginnings of Aviation, if you will.

The background of my card was stamped with a 4x6 Flourishes clouds stamp, then I added the air balloon sticker, a Fiskars Eiffel Tower stamp and Avery Elle Hats Off arms and berets, stamped, die cut. and colored. I did use the vertical sentiment from the set Sandie used (tracing over the letters with a black gel pen as it did not stamp that darkly enough to see good, quite skinny type), as well as the Par Avion from French Flight set. C'est magnifique words are from the Paris Exposition set. So I managed to get in some AO stamping anyway, which always makes me happy to pull out the sets.

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And while I'm at it, I'll show another Christmas card I made for Splitcoaststampers' June Decorations theme.

Kraft card base, Lawn Fawn designer papers, WPlus9 label stamp and die, Crafters Companion sentiment stamp, white german border scrap, a couple of snowflake sequins, and Gina Marie snow globe die cut with holographic card and scraps. I decorated the little tree, so it's technically decorations within a decoration -- HA! I love it and will hopefully use it again.

And the sketch I used (which screams snow globe, doncha think?).

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Now, to the backyard stuff:

A hottie-up week down here on the Third Coast, complete with high humidity.

While we are supposed to get a few days in the 80's (F), the 90's are becoming the norm.

I really should cherish and enjoy, for the dog days will be here soon.

Honey got a new bird feeder for the backyard, but I think he put it too close to the house (strapped it to the hurricane fence using his beloved zip ties), because it's attracting more squirrels than birds as the fences are a perfect runway for the squirrels. I told him to move it to the back of the yard on a taller pole, but...men lol. In the photo, you can also see his tomato plants on the right. The jalapeno plants are behind the tomatoes and already producing peppers. His basil bush in the raised bed to the left has taken off as well.

And now, my first ever video, hope it works, I did compress it.

Once you click the start button in the middle, you can click on full view icon then click the red start button and you can watch it enlarged.

Here you see our turtle family in their "pond" (aka our swimming pool turned into wetlands, lol).

We now have 4 turtles (Yes, Virginia, turtles will be incestuous in captivity, I Google-holed it.)

Honey feeds them iceberg lettuce because it stays crispier in the water, and they love it.

But I've been worried about the baby getting enough to eat because the bigger turtles steal all the food!

Yesterday when I did not have my camera, there was a giant food fight!

So today I made Honey feed them again so I could video it.

That little one is scrappy, so that's good.

One day, hopefully this year, we will get this pool demolished and back-filled with dirt, but we will have to relocate the turtles. I'd like to dig a little pond for them, but we'll see.

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Well, that's all this time, folks.

Thanks for the visit and have a great week - stay cool and hydrated!

XOX