Daylillies

After hollyhocks and poppies it's the daylillies' turn.

With our new home came a good-sized garden (and a HUGE front lawn that I eventually will take out) with mainly lawn and a few flowers, among them daylillies.

I have no experience with daylillies at all, but I was immediately captured by their beauty.

I will certainly keep them and take good care of them - they are lovely.

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Textured Hollyhock

Hollyhocks belong to my favorite flowers. They are happy, remind me of English cottage gardens and they thrive on neglect. They self-seed, so if you have them in your garden once you will probably have them for quite a while.

This partucular hollyhock stood at the front door of our old house. I had brought the seeds from a friend's garden in Germany and they took off here. I've saved the seeds so I can have them here at our new home as well.

For processing - I used one of Kim Klassen's textures - and unfortunately I haven't kept the recipe (usually I do) and am not quite sure anymore which one I used - I think it is "warmsun". I layered it twice, once at soft light 100%, but I forget what I did the second time. My apologies.

I'm linking this to Kim Klassen's Texture Tuesday.

Poppies

I love poppies. Of course the California Poppy with its happy orange color. But also the Iceland Poppy that comes in all kinds of color, like the fiery orange-red in the top photo, found in the garden of the Geek's aunt in East Germany. Or all the "fancy" poppies I had in my old garden.

Not only the blossoms are beautiful, the seed pods are pretty awesome as well.

But most of all, I love the "wild" red poppies that turn up everywhere in Germany as a sure sign of summer. They are on the side of the roads, spread out in fields and there are even entire meadows of poppies, like these ones in East Germany.

They are so incredibly beautiful. Nature's paint brush simply does it best. It inspired me to do my own mixed media painting of those red poppies that we call "Klatschmohn" in German. Honestly, I never am even close to nature's artistry.

"Bloom" is now available here in my Etsy store.

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Moving In

Boy, I haven't been here for a really long time. I did know that I wouldn't have too much time for blogging during our move, but I hadn't expected that the move would demand ALL of my time.

We actually moved into our new home about two weeks ago, but the weeks before that were full with painting (as in painting the walls of a room), remodeling, cleaning, packing, end of school year stuff, etc. It was a very hectic time, and of course it is still very busy.

The nice thing about owning your home (among many others) is that you can paint your rooms in any color you want. That's what Kaefer and I did - she painted her room and I painted the master bedroom, the entryway, the living/dining room and the studio - so far. Color choices are sometimes hard, but so much fun.

 One of Kaefer's color choices - "Carolina Parakeet"

Me painting the master bedroom - "Seafoam Pearl"

The work on the downstairs bathroom was in full swing and I couldn't resist to take a picture of how to cut tiles.

Kaefer and the Geek assembled the new worktable for my studio - a nice sturdy table we had bought at IKEA.

Then came the moving day itself. We hadn't hired a big moving company but a small local business who moved just the big items - furniture, boxes - but all the packing and everything else was done by us. These guys were phenomenal! Of course it was one of the hottest days, but that didn't slow them down. They were pretty amazing.

My friend Jeanne helped with her truck, moving all the garden stuff and our office.

On the morning after our first night in our own home I walked through the house and took some pictures of the chaos.

 My studio

The living/dining room

Kaefer's room

A wonderful surprise awaited us when Sergio, who was tiling our bathroom, brought some Mexican breakfast his wife had made for us. The day before, one of our neighbors welcomed us with a plate of Starbucks treats - we had a wonderful breakfast this way, hearty and sweet. I was so touched by the kindness of these people.

We went back to the old house that day to clean it and clear everything out. The hardest part was to say goodbye to my little friend who had visited me almost every day since April 2011 - Geeda.



Now we are trying to make this house livable - unpacking boxes, assembling shelves, constantly searching for things. Some decorating in between to keep up a good spirit, like hanging up these beautiful Moroccan lanterns on the porch. My wonderful backyard neighbor had given them to me before we moved out.

A few days into living in this house I witnessed a beautiful moonrise from my bedroom window. If I had had any doubts before, I now knew that we made the right move.



During these stressful weeks of moving we have been blessed with wonderful people who helped us, friends, neighbors and strangers. We experienced a wonderful community around us, a great support web. We couldn't have done it this way without their help, their trucks, their food. It's amazing how little things can make someone's life easier. We feel truly blessed.

As this house seems to be...

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