Walking stick

One of our hobbies started last year, along with my carving birds was originally to make walking sticks. The first one my husband and i worked together on. It was for my Dad for Christmas. I can show the photos now that we have given it to him. I carved the rattle snake, then my husband deepened it with a dremel tool. We stained it 4 colors and then i woodburned the scales and painted the eyes. my husband carved out a spot for two arrowheads at the top and we added a purchased leather pouch.

Since one of our goals is to hike weekly when the weather gets better, we have a few more to make for ourselves and our kids.

Looking back

Looking back over this year i have accomplished quite a few things i had hoped for in 2014.....

I tried out a few new hobbies and really liked them....

Wood carving, see the post here...

Woodburning, here

I also had fun hiking with family...here

 And did a lot of paintings....some are  here, 
 here,  here, and here

And tried some new foraged foods.... here., and here,

And started a garden...here, here

And canned tons from our garden...

and made a lot of smoothies from my garden... here and here...

 And i worked on  a children's picture book..here and here..and .. The bee queen's message

And wrote almost a complete novel... here and here and  wild phlox season

I joined Nanowrimo, ICAD, PPF,, and Creative Everyday month in November...And i am sure there's more.... But i am starting to really plan goals for 2015 over the next couple days... Once i get the tree down and all. I'd keep it up longer but with the extra pets here over Christmas it's too hard to keep them all out of it. (With my two cats and a dog and with the two cats my oldest daughter brought home with her for the week, and the 3 animals that belong to my second daughter who is living back home again, that makes 5 cats, two dogs and 1 bunny).

It's almost as hard as keeping my son (or myself) out of everybody's christmas chocolate or the christmas fudge!

Hope everyone had as nice a christmas as we did here!

a carved bird

I showed you this little carved bird last week... my first attempt at carving. 

Well here he is in his progress to completeness... 

a little woodburning.... 

a little watercolor.... 

covered by white acrylic 

and then some of that rubbed off... 

Introducing...

Blakely

Sitting with his buddies

well... his buddies are still hidden in their blocks waiting to be created.

Happy paint party friday!

Favorites...

 My favorite spot to go on my lunch hour....

My favorite wildflower......

A new Hobby....

my first try...

a fat bird with a fan tail!?!

I am linking to paint party friday as this little guy will get painted this week...

I am thinking yellow...

with a needle felted nest...


and in my last post I asked if anyone knows what this is? anyone?