Cleveland Botanical Gardens

Over the weekend we traveled to Ohio for a friends wedding. Before our trip, I did a quick Google search of places to visit in north eastern Ohio and found the Cleveland Botanical Gardens. The Botanical Garden consists of ten acres of different outdoor gardens, as well as the Eleanor Armstrong Smith Glass House, two indoor rooms that replicate the environments of the rainforests of Costa Rica and the spiny desert of Madagascar.
Inside the "Cloud Forest" they did an incredible job of making it feel like you were really walking around outside. There were also bridges up above the trees that gave us a bird's eye view of the forest below.




These leafcutter ants are really doing a number on the plant in the left corner of the photo. If you look closely, you can see them carrying their leaf pieces across the vine in the next picture.



The Cloud Forest was filled with beautiful butterflies...





This tiny bird lives in the Madagascar section of the Glass House,


along with a VERY slow chameleon



and a Mossy Tailed Leaf Gecko.


Outside, the spring flowers were in bloom. The hostas are coming up and getting ready to cover the tulips after their blooms fade.


The Japanese Garden was beautiful... I have new plans for my hill garden at home!

New Banner!

Wow. It took me less time to paint the image than it took to get it on the blog. Ok. Now that we're over that hurdle, maybe we can get back to posting! That I can handle.

Winter wonders

So I've been living in awe of nature over the past three days. Everytime I think I've seen the most beautiful winter landscape ever, God taps me on the shoulder and points out something new. EVERYTHING is completely covered in white, and with the deep gray of the sky, it just takes your breath away. It started three days ago on my way home from work- deep gray sky, totally white trees, deer in the field. I ran inside to get my camera as soon as I got home. But by the time I was suited up to go outside, all the light had changed. Still beautiful, but everything was blue. The next day I brought my camera to work with me and took pictures on the way in. Interestingly, it turns out that our little town was the only place that had this type of landscape. Once you dropped down a little in elevation, there wasn't any ice or snow on the trees at all. So Dan had not seen this yet because it's dark when he goes to work and dark by the time he gets home. I kept telling him how amazing it was and he listened, but I could tell he didn't know what I was talking about. So this morning we got up and went for a drive all over town because the trees are still covered. We went for a walk around the back yard and spent a good chunk of time today staring out the windows after we were too cold to be outside anymore. I know a lot of people are not big fans of winter, but I can't imagine being without it.

Traditions

Oops. I guess I got a little behind in my blogging. We'll see if I can keep up in the new year. Anyhow, this post was inspired by a post on Penelope's blog titled, "good things- traditions". I love the holidays and I really enjoy hearing how other people celebrate. My family has so many traditions I thought I should share a few of my favorites. One of the newest is the wreath making party that my husband started. He wanted a casual, adults only gathering with something fun for the guests to do. So we covered the studio with plastic tarps, purchased some bundles of pine boughs and invited people to come over and make a wreath. Or to just stop by and say hello. Last year the party divided- men in the kitchen talking and having wine and the ladies (and one brave male guest!) made the wreaths in the studio. This year, a few more men got brave and ventured into the "wreath room". They all did a great job!
Another yearly tradition is the "Tree Hunt". The whole family gets together for breakfast at a restaurant and then we head out to a tree farm to find a tree for my parents' house. Usually, Syracuse University hosts the Hendricks Chapel Christmas Concert that same evening. My aunt and I have attended that for at least the past nine or ten years. I like to hear the handbell ringers and at the end of the performance, the choir lights candles and everyone sings Silent Night.
Some of the other traditions are:
- Mom and Dad's White Elephant Party
- Driving around the neighborhood to see the Christmas lights
- Dan and I open gifts to each other on Christmas Eve
- making cookies
-watching Christmas movies
-Girls scrapbooking night

Daily Paintings

Here are all 5 daily paintings from last week...







And in case YOUR garden is overflowing too, here is a great marinade recipe for veggie kabobs:
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
4 cloves of garlic (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste

Marinate veggies in sauce for about 20 minutes and place on skewers (remember to soak wooden skewers in water for 30 minutes before grilling!). Grill on medium heat for about 20 minutes, basting occasionally with leftover sauce.

I had enough marinade leftover to pour on top of a veggie pasta dish the next day.

Try again...

It was probably a bit optimistic of me to start the whole Daily Painting project the week we had my grandma's memorial service and out of towners flying in to stay with us for the weekend. So I forgave myself and started over this week. And hopefully by tomorrow I'll be feeling like an artist again. The past two days I've been feeling very uninspired and not too thrilled with my work. But I painted anyway and I'll post later. In the meantime, you can enjoy this picture of my studio friend that I have been trying to photograph all summer. She's very timid.



Don't know why I can't find anything to paint when I'm surrounded by this all day...



And here are a few images from the weekend. We all went for a nice walk after the memorial and we got some pretty good family photos. It takes a few tries to get good kid shots, though. B likes to help out by holding the other kids down by their heads, but he wasn't holding down the right person. This is one of about four shots that look almost the same. G thinks it's pretty funny to jump up as soon as we're ready to take the picture.

Daily Painting: Day 2

So I put off my daily painting even later yesterday and this is what the sky looked like while I was working. And now I have even more to distract me now that this arrived in the mail:


It's a sketchbook from the Hand-Book Journal Co. that I discovered on Geninne's Art Blog and then ordered from Dick Blick. It's hard to find a nice book that will take watercolor that doesn't have the big, thick watercolor paper, but this one is supposed to be able to handle it. We will see!