BIG Brown Spider (hairy face, white spots, striped legs & large abdomen)

Above my front door is a spider couple, who invites their spider friends for awesome parties... they jam out to my satellite radio music while eating moths & flies who are attracted to my porch light at night.
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These spiders are actually shades of brown and not the silver gray color in these two close up pics below - the color looks different then reality because the flash on the camera washed out the browns, so when trying to ID this spider go by the markings and not the color.
There are two spiders (the ones pictured here) living together in the same crack above the door, and the interesting thing is they let other spiders live right near them too - although I imagine sometimes things can get out of hand and the big ones might eat their smaller friends. It happens to us all, at least metaphorically.

This pic below is more the true color brown...

Check out those GOLDEN Nugget Eyeballs!

XOxooxo

Jumping Right In

Tomorrow is my first day of school! I am so excited, nervous, happy, sick to my stomach! I love school and I hate school. I know I am going there in a working capacity, but I feel as if I will be walking through those doors like any other student, the new kid(s) on the block.

Believe it or not, I am a very shy person and meeting new people and being in new situations give me butterflies. Even the thought of being introduced to my peers at Assembly on Wednesday morning has my stomach churning and my cheeks flaming red, for all of the 10 seconds it will take to occur. But, you would never know it from looking at me.

My parents have always taught my sister and I how to behave, we were never allowed to hide behind them and not speak to people; making eye contact, a nice handshake, they have a gift for putting people at ease, my parents and they instilled good manners in us.

So come tomorrow morning, I am going to make eye contact, shake hands, hold my head high and no one will never know that a three ring circus is going on inside my tummy. I'm holding my nose, here I go... I'm jumping right in!

(Almost Dead) Lunar Moth

I hope I am this beautiful when I am almost dead.

XOxoxo

Riding JuJu the DOnkey (For The First Time!)

Things About JuJu that are easy:::::
Juju loves to go for walks with me... in fact she loves it so much she will bring me the rope halter herself and let's me put it on her face with no problem. She knows that walks with the halter means freedom outside her fenced area, it means adventure and fun, it means seeing neighbors, eating grass & weeds and along the rural road.
JuJu is sweet with people, easy going, calm, and will let children get on her back. I had never gotten on her though.... until today!
THINGS That JuJu makes REALLY hard on me::::::
Deciding when and where to go. I hadn't really planned on riding her, but because me and JuJu are still struggling with who is in charge of the lead rope, who is choosing where to go and which way to turn, we ended up at my neighbors yard , luckily a neighbor who used to ride horses. I decided to make the best of where JuJu had fought with me to.....
YAY! I got on her back and she stood there. She didn't seem to know what to do and wasn't interested in walking - which was fine since we were just getting used to each other. Of course, us silly humans thought it would be hysterical to put a carrot on the end of a stick and see if she would go....

Unfortunately JuJu saw the stick more then the carrot and after a minute or two she decided the stick was MAJORLY DANGEROUS and started running down the hill! Now since I am a new rider and wasn't using a saddle I kept slipping forward till I was practically about to straddle her neck. When I loudly yelled "WHOA" she stopped and I jumped off. (My 10 first WHOA's were not stern enough!)

She got the carrot anyway though cause I am a sucker and well, she did a good job.....

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Getting her home after though, was not easy. Two other people volunteered to help & I think I have a broken pinky toe (i'm too scared to look at it). Can someone tell me why this sh*t is so fun though?!!?

XOxoxo

Ben & Phoebe's Daybed

I recently helped my cousin and his gorgeous fiance {they just got engaged on the weekend} with the cushioning on this lovely daybed which they purchased from Cotswold for their beach house. We selected an array of brightly coloured exterior fabrics for the scatter cushions and a trusty navy and white stripe exterior fabric for the seat cushions and voila this is the result. I just love it and apparently they do too!!

Rural Entertainment: The Fireman's Fair

Ya'll know by now I love local rural events... they are nothing like the big splashy Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and French Quarter parties I grew up with in New Orleans - instead they are personal, down home, small crowds, nothing fancy, and people are just happy to see the other people who all live the same hidden mountain & farming lifestyle. They don't try to put on a show, they just are themselves. (I mean this even for our local wrestling matches, even if the guys do sport a few sequins!)
So Yesterday right around the bend from the Luck Cabin was the Spring Creek Fireman's Fair, I had gotten a flyer in the mail 2 weeks ago that made it hard to resist attending (see pic above) - seeing that Smokey The Bear was going to be there, they were going to play Bingo, have live music plus live Firemen....I HAD to see.

The first live band rocked the stage, i mean as much as they could rock out without scaring the other locals (aka slow and country).... they kinda rocked it Johnny Cash style, with the Beatles song "Act Naturally" thrown in the mix. And you best believe I danced - in fact a old, smelly drunk man found me (he said he lived "down yonder") and we were the only two people who cut a rug on that green grassy area in front the stage, while a crowd of maybe seven people watched & clapped.

Since me and the drunkard became BFF's, he also taught me how to play HorseShoes! I had never played before, but basically you are throwing heavy ass horse shoes like 40 feet into/across the air in order to hit a tiny metal pole sticking out the ground, in a pile of sand. I hit it once... out of about 30 tosses. :)

My awesome neighbor (remember the one who saved me in the night when I first got my donkey JuJu?) was diggin' into the atmosphere - as we watched the M.A.M.A helicopter fly in. The helicopter landing pad serves two purposes in our rural nook, and that is to bust people growing pot & for when we call 911. Yeah, we are so freakin' rural they can't even get us to a hospital in time before we'd die so they just fly this bad boy in and save us. (see pic above).

There was plenty food & drink --- including fried apple pie, hot dogs, hamburgers.... none of which I can eat since I have Celiac Sprue and shall never be able to partake.
There was also a silent auction. Well. There was a really odd assortment of things for auction, my favorite being this set up below.....

Faux Wiener Dog in a Baby Bed.

I had no idea why they had numbers spray painted on the ground in a circle either, till my neighbor explained this was for the Cake Walk.

I can't eat cake, but I can walk - so i joined in. Basically it's like musical chairs and each person stands on the big ole' number on the ground, they start up the music and everyone gets walkin' in circles (i was getting dizzy) till the music stops. Then they pick a number out of a hat... the kid who picked it picked his own number (little psychic!) and won a cake (go ahead and eat it little kid, cause i can't anyway)!

My Drunkard BFF took this picture of me and smokey the bear. Drunk people don't always get the main attraction in the picture, ya know. But you can tell SMokey The Bear reallllly was there, right?

I thought "Sparky The Fire Dog" was gonna be a real dog, but it was just a dude in a costume. He was not real, like Smokey The Bear. ;)

The BIG main attraction that it seemed so many had prepared for was the Lawnmower Race!! For real, a woman standing next to me during the race told me her son had spent weeks on getting his lawnmower ready for the race, by putting in a go-cart motor... and in fact he had fixed his lawnmower to race a few years back.

Right at the beggining one guy's lawnmower BLEW into smoke, another's broke down had to be pulled off, one older man road slowly on his, while just a few guys were blowing past everyone, nearly tipping over trying to come in first place.

Decorated with Hooters Stickers, numbers, southern flags, cow bells....

I was rooting for the grey Lawnmower, cause i was standing next to his Mama, but he didn't win.......

The Fireman's Fair though was a total WIN!

PS- I never did find tha' Bingo game? Where was it at?

Xoxoxo

Folk Art Schoolhouse Papercut

This is a smaller piece that took me about 4 hours to cut. It measures 17.5cm x 17.5cm.

I want to cut a series of vignettes all this size - all showing different traditional scenes. If you've got any suggestions I'd be very happy to hear them!

Peaches

Images of ..... Haworth

The Parsonage, Haworth - home of Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë and their family from 1820 until their deaths.



The Apothecary (Drug Store) where Branwell Brontë purchased the opium that was eventually to kill him

Looking down Main Street (on a quiet day!)

Main Street again

Images of ..... Brontë country

Looking down towards Stanbury and New Laithe Reservoir


Lower Heights Farm

The ruin of Top Withens, believed to have inspired Emily Brontë's novel 'Wuthering Heights'

View from Top Withens


Stream near the Brontë Waterfalls

Orange Salamander with Black Spots

Orange (some may call it red). Black spots. It speaks for itself.

Read more about North Carolina salamanders HERE.

Xoxoxox

Friday Flowers

This morning, whilst running very late for school drop off, I raced around my new old garden and cut some foliage for an arrangement I was wanting to create for the shop today. Here is the result above. The arrangement sits on a beautiful oval Antique table which actually just sold to one of my lovely clients this afternoon. I am loving big glass vases filled with masses of leaves at the moment. Luckily my garden seems to have the perfect plants for this type of arrangement.

Into The Cupboard

I ventured into the cupboard yesterday and began to get the lay of the land. I wanted to straighten some things up, clean some things out and just get a general idea of where everything is supposed to be!

In the process I brought along my camera with me to start to get a feel for how I want to shoot things: in a collage, by item, a mixture of the two? Do they look best on my work table? My desk? With a fabric background?

So, I played around a little, grabbed a few things and started to shoot. I had so much fun, cleaning and discovering some of the items in there, like an original box of violin strings from what looks like the 50's or 60's, there is a handwritten note on the side stating they are 20p each.  I also found an original handheld camera from the 1960's with the original receipt of purchase and Japanese instruction manual still intact.

These are just a few images from yesterday. Some, might be used in my new blog, others not, but I wanted to get a feel for things and how they would best work and be photographed. I can't wait for school to start!

Visit my new blog I will be beginning my 365 day project soon...

(Tape & Tag in image are Pugly Pixel Freebies)