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!

Day 8

Been writing; up to 9000 words now and even though that seems like a lot it is less than i need to write if i am going to make the 50,000 words i need for Nanowrimo in November. So i plan to write as much as i can today to get ahead, i have lots of ideas now that i am back to thinking of the novel again.

But also, my mind skips around alot, and i seem to go from one hobby to another to another....

so i did just a little bit on this woodburning mandala i started months ago....

 It's still a work in progress....

cold and dismal

It has just been cold here

no colors

more snow and ice

I am ready for a bit of spring

but I have been creating these same colors in my wood burning and I do enjoy that...

 

metal melting wood

the hot smell I remember

images appear

I think I will add a bit of color to these with a wash of watered down acrylic in spots...

and, as you can see I have been playing with my blog design and banner, this is the third banner I tried this week, I will probably change it a bit more by next week if i have time, just not sure what i want yet...

Happy PPF and Haiku My Heart!