HodgePodge Update

good afternoon Faithful readers (all 5 of you, thank you, truly),

today's update is a hodgepodge of miscellaneous stuff, starting with Hairless Helen!

For those of you who remember Manny the Mannequin, you know he's no slouch in the modeling department; however, there are some tasks he just can't measure up to, literally, like modeling life size jewelry.  Enter the lovely Helen, a recent immigrant from the Eastern United States.  Helen arrived ready to work with camera-ready makeup and pierced ears, however she forgot to pack her hair, thus our first photo session is somewhat evocative of a young Sinead O'Connor.

 As soon as she gets properly settled in, we will be shopping for a nice wig.  She is thinking about medium length, wavy brown hair, I agree.

Onto: Another successful Treasure Hunt (aka Geo-caching)
We took advantage of the mild weather today to go treasure hunting around the Winters area.  The first one was a major disappointment.  The cache container was opened and empty on the ground, clearly it had been "muggled", bummer. 

The next 2 were easy to find (perfect for the little guy) and the last one had a super cool treasure that we swapped for.   This made me think of the Doomsday Preppers, it's a solar or hand crank operated radio/flashlight. 

Aidan had a nice, albeit one-sided, conversation with the AM radio weather station.

Next Up: Thinking of Spring Trees

I also put some of this long weekend time to good crafty use.  I am really thrilled with how this turned out.  The leaves are made of glass melted directly on the ends of the 22gauge bronze wire.  Then all the wires are wrapped together to form a little tree with roots clinging to the rock.

Now I'm practicing making teeny, tiny blossoms on the end of some 26 gauge wire.  It's possible, but this is really pushing it for me, vision-wise,  to even see what the heck I'm doing. I do like the idea of working with the lighter gauge wire, though, as the 22gauge was really hard to twist with all 50 strands together for the trunk.

random and cuteness
Aidan's wire tree.  He is very proud of this and made sure a good photo was taken, personally supervising the whole process and then carefully selecting the perfect spot on the mantle for display.

Pretty blossoms under the bike bridge over Putah Creek.  The creek side looks great now as the city just finished a huge renovation effort to break down an old dam, restore the floodplain and add walking paths.  I am looking forward to seeing all the new, native trees start to grow.

The first buttercup I've seen this year.

 One happy little camper with his Cars sheets, Cars pajamas and Cars slippers (on the floor).

 Bath time fun with googly eyes!

And last, but not least, simply the Most Fun Planter "Box" ever seen, San Francisco!