Midsummer

 

Midsummer was last week and it's mainly celebrated in the Scandinavian countries. My good friend K has traveled to Sweden several times to see friends and she decided to have a Midsummer party this year. 

Upon arriving at her house, everybody could create their own flower wreath if they wanted. Here are K and I with our "head jewels".

Her youngest daughter, who is the same age as Kaefer - they were in the same Girl Scout troop. This is how K and I met 19 years ago. I think she is very pretty.

I was very proud of the Geek for making his own wreath and wearing it, too. Only three of the men did!

The table was set out on the deck. I loved the beautiful flower arrangements and the colorful napkins. Since K doesn't have enough plates for 18 people, she used compostable paper plates. Here in our county you are not allowed to throw paper plates or take-out pizza cartons into the trash; they have to go into the green bin and will be composted.

The food was delicious - there was smoked salmon and herring for appetizers, and the main dish was grilled chicken, potato salad, meatballs, lingonberry sauce and salad.

Of course there was wine, but you could also opt for Swedish juice concentrate that could be diluted with water. Thanks to IKEA for being so close!

After dinner some of us danced around the midsummer pole in the garden. K had found a traditional song and we tried to do the steps - it was quite hilarious and I'm sure we all looked pretty funny.

Oh, and then dessert - look at this decadent cake, baked by the man of the house. He wasn't shy with the whipped cream.

But the true star of the evening was Pinecone!

Look how she and her "mom" are laughing in the left picture.

I'm linking to Rain's Thursday Art and Dinner Date and Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Water Creatures

 

For this week's Thursday Art and Dinner Date over at Rain's place the topic is "water creatures". I start with a small watercolor painting I did last year in the spring. I think it was either Sketchbook Revival or one of those Taster lessons - I really can't remember and unfortunately I also forgot the artist who was doing the lesson.

Let's continue with birds - there are so many that are found in or around the water. Here's one of my favorites - a Black-Crowned Night Heron.

But I also love Egrets and Great Blue Herons.

Only once did I see at the lake what I believe is a Wilson's Snipe.

Watching pelicans is always a joy - either the American White Pelicans inland in the winter or the Brown Pelicans at the ocean.

At the ocean of course we have lots of gulls - since I'm not good at identifying them I hope that David will help me out here.

As you can see there are also other water creatures in the left image, albeit pretty dead - freshly caught salmon in Valdez, Alaska, where we also saw very cute sea otters, but I don't have a picture of them.

Another gull with its dinner.

If it's not dinner, it looks like this:

Angry bird...

Oystercatcher on Spiekeroog, an island in the North of Germany.

And a sweet Common Ringed Plover (I think) that I saw in Ireland.

A Bald Eagle casually sailing by on an iceberg in Prince William Sound - do they still count as water creatures? They catch fish...

A very special fish - made from pumpkins! Photo courtesy of Kaefer (she took the picture at the garden show "Blühendes Barock" in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart).

But back to the ocean - harbor seals are plenty here and this year we saw more elephant seals than usual.

I shouldn't forget seastars and sea anemones - and of course shells!

The following water creature is not only found in Hawai'i and California.

But in Hawai'i you find the Green Sea Turtle and at our lake the small Pond Sliders

Here's a fun one - this one lives in the Berlin Zoo and is one of the offspring of Knautschke, a hippo  born in 1943 that survived the bombardment of the city in World War II. He died in 1988 after fathering many many little hippos; he was the darling of Berliners, and of course there is a sculpture of him near the hippo enclosure.

And look at this cute water creature! Or is it a mud creature? She was 16 months old when we took her to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in Northeast Germany which is home to many lakes. She loved playing in the water and also did her first independent steps in the water (she was a late walker and very early talker).

What's for dinner? You guessed it - fish and seafood of course!

Some Watercolor

 

Last week I spent almost every day watching the Taster sessions for Kaleidoscope 2023. Other than in previous years, this time I actually did some of the lessons right away while watching the videos. I was mainly interested in the watercolor sessions and those were the ones I did with the exception of the owl class that was taught in acrylics and colored pencils, but I did in watercolor anyway.

This was also the first time that I didn't use the traceable images the artitsts provided, but tried drawing everything myself. Sometimes that didn't turn out that well since I don't have drawing skills.

First up is Kim Dellow's lesson - this is the class where the artist used acrylics and I used watercolor instead. The other medium used is colored pencils which don't work that well on cold pressed watercolor paper.

Next up are two sessions by Tamara Laporte, the host and creator of Kaleidoscope. The peacock was quite some work, and I decided to make the background much paler than in Tam's example. 

The colorful poppies were the first of the taster sessions, also by Tam. I loved this one, even though some of my poppies look a bit wonky. This one was a lot of fun.

My favorite class was the session by Australian artist Toni Burt who I find very inspiring. This time we did a painting with a little bird which, as far as I can tell, was a wren. In my painting it doesn't look like a wren except perhaps for the tail; otherwise it's on the well-fed side, but who cares? Toni used black ink for the outline of the bird which I didn't have, so I used charcoal which didn't quite react with water the way ink would do. No matter, I love this small painting.

Since this is a T Tuesday post I need a drink, otherwise Bleubeard and Elizabeth will kick me off! Yesterday was a beautiful warm and sunny day, so different from all the June Gloom we had until then. That's the kind of weather when I like to drink a glass of rosé in the evening. The sunflowers were a gift from friends who came for dinner on Saturday.

Have a lovely week, everybody!

A Face and a Walk

 

Several weeks ago I showed you this spread in my art journal that I had just started. It took me forever to work on it and eventually today I called it finished because honestly, I became fed up with it.

First off, I don't like the face. I traced it from an ad in a magazine, but during the process I found out that I'm really not that good with painting realistic faces. At least not with this one and I think I will take a break in trying to paint human faces. It also took me forever to get out of the "ugly phase" - that's when I decided to add flowers. This was a bit of an experiment, because I painted these flowers with watercolors. Now, the substrate - papers collaged with matte medium and painted over with acrylic paints - is less than ideal for using watercolor and of course they reacted completely different than on watercolor paper - and I actually liked that. As the final touches I stamped a few butterflies and of course birds. I like the right page of the spread, but not so much the left one.

This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Last Thursday my friend K and I went for a walk at Riverfront Park near Windsor, two lakes snuggled among the vineyards. I hadn't been there for several years, but it hasn't really changed very much.

We walked along Lake Wilson and when we arrived at Lake Benoist we were greeted by the following sign:

I remember when I was here last, we weren't able to get around the lake on the trail, but had to climb over boulders at the very end of the lake to continue the loop. It seems that this is an ongoing problem...

Even though the parking lot was rather full, we didn't see many people. It was an overcast day, perfect for a walk or hike.

Beautiful willows line the shore.

The trail for the most part followed the shore and only every now and then would lead further away. It was an easy hike.

There weren't as many wildflowers as at Spring Lake or Crane Creek, but we did see a few.

Natives on top: Blue elderberry (Sambucus mexicana) on the left and California wildrose (Rosa californica) on the right

Non-natives on the bottom: Greater periwinkle (Vinca major, very invasive) on the left and Anthemis cotula aka Stinking Chamomille on the right.

For our way back we decided to not walk along the lake again but take a different trail a bit higher up. It was a lovely walk and I always enjoy introducing K to new places. We have so many lovely Regional Parks here and I love to explore them.