Small magic of roadside farm stands

A few months ago I started a series of posts  on finding small magic in everyday life. By small magic I mean the tiny charming moments that you create or stumble onto that make life fun and unique and full of quiet wonder. The first post that more fully explains what I mean is here.

Please consider creating a post that shares where and how you find small magic and adding a comment with a link to your post. I would love to hear about it. (You have until next month on the 13th, when I will have a new post)

This month I am finding small magic in little shacks....

I love roadside farm stands, how can you not?

All different types, all different times of year, with quaint hand painted signs  that are usually reminiscent of lemonade stand signs, and piles of colorful, fresh, local produce.

Little tables layed out with sweet corn 

Or

Stands with maple syrup or homemade jellies, or honey, 

Or

Strawberry shacks in spring....

At this strawberry shack you could buy what they had picked or you could pick your own. We actually got our son, Jace, to walk along with us at this strawberry patch last June. He didn't pick any but he plopped right down in the rows and played with rocks and spoke his own language, and was very patient while we picked and every now and then gave him a berry to eat. 

I am still using the berries we picked and froze for my breakfast smoothies.

 

And now the roadside stands are full of gourds and pumpkins. I pass by 3 on my drive into work and there are so many more on back roads and just outside of town. A charming piece of small town autumn. 

The art of being happy lies in the power to extract happiness from common things. -Henry Ward Beecher

Under the pumpkin spell

I have wanted to design packaging for years, so shopping at Wegmans this time of year is hard. (and of course will get even harder when they start christmas packaging soon). I get sidetracked by the autumn colors and pretty fonts. I am easily lured in by offers of homey comfort in a cardboard box or plastic bag. Images of creamy pumpkin desserts or caramel flavored anythings....

And my daughter keeps posting on her facebook page, images of fall, and saying how thrilled she is to  be able to wear leggings again. 

So i fell for it all, 

and bought all this autumn yumminess....

Just because of the packaging and some form of pumpkin spice fever!

Painted blocks and my newly decorated mantel

I love fall, and it is finally not so hot in NY. Still in the 80's some days but not humid anymore and nights are cool enough to sleep now. But it's late September and should be cooler. My daughter loves fall even more than I do apparently and she has gotten me into the mood to decorate......so here's my first of many fall posts. 

Materials:

2 rectangular blocks (i used my carving blocks and after the season i plan on carving them into birds)

Acrylic Paints in brown, off white, orange and gray

Pencil

Liner brush and medium brush

Step 1: gather supplies and get sidetracked right off the bat by the cat playing on your table.

Step 2: paint the edges of the blocks a dark brown.

Step 3: paint over the whole block in a parchment or off white. Mine wasn't dry yet so the brown smeared into the white. If yours dried quickly you can wipe the white off here and there with a baby wipe.

Step 4: draw the words you choose on each block in pencil.

I almost wrote "give thanks" but decided on "pumpkin spice" instead. Something even more random would be fun too..."candy corn" or "crunchy leaves" or "cider and donuts"or "caramel latte".... Whatever makes you think of fall....

Step 5: paint over the words in gray with your liner brush.

Step 6: draw lines for a border with your pencil, and add orange dots or squiggles as accents. 

I'll show you how I made the little green pumpkins soon. 

Happy PPF!

decorating

Been spending my creative energy on decorating at work... trying to cover ugly gray cubicle panels with cheap stuff to look festive for thanksgiving... we bought plastic tablecloths for $1 and i made little swags of bittersweet, pine, dried oak leaves, a few silk fall leaves and the painted pods from this tree below, (again, i don't know the name of this tree)... turned out pretty good for cheap, you'd agree if you saw the walls before we started...

 Happy Thanksgiving!

 I had planned a different post for today but the leaves and fall colors this week were just too pretty not to take photos of. I have also been working on the Bee Queen's message (Go here or  here for other posts about what I mean). I am even to the point of starting to use BLURB to publish it, but as I do that I am having to go back and do some new art. Here's some pieces...

 above is  the piece that will become a doll (using spoonflower) to go along with the story...

 You'll just have to wait to see it all and hear the queen message....

Happy First day of Fall!

Coi and crow, the new mother painting

It's mandarin orange monday and i promised a painting video...well it is lost in youtube, it seems it takes more  than 1day of being uploaded to youtube to make it visible even when i am typing the exact tags. I seem to have two accounts and can't sign into the correct one from google... All this makes no sense to me............. so today i just have photos of the painting, maybe tomorow the video will be available....

I can't exactly say why all these mothers are naked, it's just the way i see them. You can read into that what you will, and the same for the coi and crow, i had no actual symbolism in mind, it's just what I saw. This was actually reworked over and over, i had such trouble with the hair. I saw it as a mass of swirling moving coi getting tangled in her hair and I think it's finally like my thought but it took a bit of changing things to get there. I took out at least 2 more crows that were originally there. I wanted the leaves to be swirling away from the new mother, all energy coming from her.....


I am linking to mandarin orange monday, and creative everyday...