Strawberries and a banana with Udi’s Hawaiian granola, greek yogurt, and honey. + One cup of vanilla rooibos chai. I love it!

I tried out embossing several weeks ago and I finally got around to taking photos of the results!

With this type of embossing you:
1) use a rubber stamp and make a stamp with a watermark ink pad
2) sprinkle the watermark stamp with embossing powder and blow off any extra powder
3) set the embossing powder with a heat gun

This is the result:

It creates nice, raised, dimensional lines. I used the rubber stamps I carved and posted about a while back.

One of my favorite parts with embossing is the little powder particles that get left behind get heat set too and they are these little tiny dots… it may be an imperfection (they actually sell a tool to prevent this) but it’s my favorite part!

I borrowed the embossing tools from a friend, and in the end, I’m not convinced on investing in my own tools quite yet… but it is pretty cool. I think I need to practice rubber stamp carving more to get my desired results. I might first invest in stamp carving knives as right now I am just using a simple craft knife.

I had never been to Tosohatchee State Reserve before, so yesterday my friend Marissa and I checked it out. This place is on 28000 acres. It is VAST. We did a trail at parking spot “29″… yes, there are at least 28 more parking spots…meaning… 28 more trails!! My goodness! I really can’t wait to explore more. We saw a few armadillo, and a lot of birds, including a Bald Eagle.

Strawberry picking was successful this morning! It was cold and windy, but always fun!

Scout likes to eat the leaves.

Yummy yummy, how long will it take me to eat 6 pounds of strawberries? Probably not long enough.

Over the weekend I did some beading with my Mom. I NEVER do beading, but my Mom had started making these peyote stitch bracelets and she showed me how to do it. Once you start going it’s kind of addictive, they take several hours to make but I didn’t even notice the time passing.

My bracelet turned out pretty crazy. I looked up the peyote stitch on the internet and most of the bracelets are pretty organized. The ones my Mom made have little sections of one type of bead, and they look very elegant.

The next bracelet I made is a favorite style of mine that I have made before, but it had been several years. It’s a little easier and faster to make than the other style.

Bonus, while I was at my parents for beading I saw a gorgeous Leopard Moth that has been hanging out by their front door.

Here are some pins I recently made out of polymer clay.

It was fun to play around with polymer clay again. I hadn’t made anything with it in so long- 10 years or more? I only had three colors of clay, so most of these have been painted in some way to ad color. I then sealed them with a glossy finish, and added the scalloped edge which is a piece of stiff dark brown felt cut very carefully and full of imperfection! But I sort of love them. I’m keeping half of them for myself! I did put up a few of the mushrooms in the shop.

Yummy yummy lunch! I love it when I get to use my cafeteria style tray!

Moroccan veggie salad, chili-lime sweet potato salad (I like this cold), grilled cheese, and some dried fruit for dessert.

The Moroccan veggie salad is especially a favorite of mine. My Mom found the recipe somewhere many years ago, I couldn’t find the recipe on the internet, but basically you make this sauce:

2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 1/2 teaspoons orange zest
1/4 cup orange juice
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons apple juice
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cumin

After you make the sauce, put it in a container and throw in a variety of vegetables. This time I used cauliflower, snow peas, and carrots- they all marinate really well. Leave it in the fridge overnight and it is so good the next day!! I make a lot so I can eat it all week. (Gives you garlic breath but it’s worth it.)

p.s. I finished the Mushroom Print and Mushroom Stickers, both now on etsy.

Here are some photos taken today at Spring Hammock Preserve. It was such a beautiful day, cool and bright. This preserve has a trail that follows along Soldiers Creek, then a boardwalk through a swamp up to the enormous Lake Jessup. The best thing about this place is the HUGE cypress trees. They are gorgeous!

It seems like it is always FREEZING, so I’ve spent every night this week on the couch watching the Olympics and drinking tea. Nice as that is, I have been feeling very unproductive! Well, we had a quick warm up making for a beautiful weekend with a high of 75. After all that freezing weather it was weird to see people walking past my window on their way to the pool!

Sadly I had to work this weekend, but as soon as I got home I opened up the windows for some beloved fresh air and got to work on this mushroom painting.

I painted it with the intention of making stickers, but I think I will do some prints as well.

Every winter I go birdwatching at Black Point Drive, on Merritt Island. It is a beautiful trail that you drive and has many places to walk around. Today was cold and VERY windy so we didn’t get out of the car much. The water was high and choppy and the birds were sometimes having trouble flying in all that wind. There were not a many birds as usual, although still plenty, and we also saw an alligator and an otter that walked right across the road! It was lovely, I am never disappointed when I go there, and always inspired! Here are a few photos from the trip today.

Many birds in flight.

There are so many ducks! Always dipping their heads underwater, so cute.

The bright pink birds are Roseate Spoonbills. They are always stunning.

Alligator sunning itself, it was so cold today, you usually see a lot more in the water.

(Sadly my camera doesn’t zoom worth anything so no close ups!)