Tornado warnings and...

thunderstorm watches this evening. We kept an eye on things, prepared to invade Adam's dad's basement if necessary, but now it's a beautiful evening with blue skies and some pink bits of clouds.

I just remembered that I'd taken some pictures a couple of days ago. Do you see the little fellow in the upper right of this photo. He's our little hummingbird. That's his (or her) favorite perch. He/she seems dangerously exposed up there. There were a couple of hawks flying among my trees yesterday. Watch out, hummer!

And I caught a thief in the act. I think I'm going to stop putting the bird feed out. I'm mostly feeding the squirrel. I'll probably keep the suet out.

I bought a few things at the library book sale. I don't think I have pictures of everything, here. I've already incorporated them into my bookshelves, so I may show more later. Or not, lol.

I thought this was kind of sweet. This is from a book he wrote for his children, but never intended to have published. It was only published, with permission, after the death of his children. 

I got this little book, which is a history of some little town in Indiana. Why?

 Well, it contains some cool old pictures for my collage materials stash, but...

 ...mostly because it contained this old envelope which had some cool old stamps on it! More stuff for collage. There's even a letter inside! I know. I'm weird. I love old historical stuff like this.

This book is about decorative screens of all sorts. It looked interesting just to look through. These books were all from the 10 cent room, and everything was half-price on top of that!

This old cookbook has several full-color, 70's style pages like the cover. Those will make good artwork for ATCs.

You know how I love foreign language text. Well, this tattered old book is in Norwegian! The title translates as, "Do not hug a miserable in the gate", lol. I found this in a box of freebies. Had to give it a home.

 Some others that I found. Every so often I get rid of my copy of War and Peace. Then, later, I get another copy. Have any of you read it? Is it worth the time? I got the Kinfolk book to add to my Pearl Buck collection. I'm not sure I like her that much. I've only read one or two of her books in the past. I got the Father Brown book because I've watched the TV version and I know it's nothing like what Chesterton would come up with. So, I'm curious to see how this compares.

I actually follow Patsy Clairmont on Facebook! She's a grey-haired little old lady now, but she has lots of good spiritual insights. I like her. I thought I might like this book other than the icky artwork on the cover, ha ha. I hadn't read this Corrie ten Boom book, I don't think. And, MK, I found this little book of selections from Gift From the Sea. It seemed like a good way to see if I want to read more by Anne Lindbergh.

Then a couple of little, old books.

 My bookshelves are getting full. I try to cull books now and then, and I usually donate books back to the library after I read them. So, hopefully I can keep things under control.


My current read is this one. Yep. Back to the smarmy Christian/British/historical romances. Pure escapism of the most innocent kind. I need that these days. ;) I went through a Julie Klassen phase a while back where I read all of her novels. They are very similar to this one. They're published by the same company (Bethany House) and the cover art is the same style. This is the first book I've read by this author and I like her style. But she does copy some of Julie Klassen's little phrases, which bugs me. It's so flagrant. Everyone's always "biting back a smile" or some such thing. (That bugged me in Julie's books because she used it way too often. What a critic am I!) Otherwise, it's a nice bit of entertainment.

Josh just got his car back from the shop. It cost a pretty penny to "fix" it. Now something else is wrong, so he and Adam hauled it back into town tonight. Praying it's something simple. Life. It's always throwing you curve balls!

The newest fad in ATC-land is Faux Postage Stamps. I made these for a swap. I'll have to make decorated ATC cards to attach them to. These stamps are 1"x1" or 1"x1-1/2" approximately.

Here's a sample of what I mean by attaching them to an ATC. I didn't make this one.

Okay. Probably more than you wanted to know about faux stamps!

Hazel and Audrey (with cousin Cali in the middle) helped their "other Grandma Lisa" with some strawberry slicing. I call her "the fun Grandma". She always has something fun for them to do.

It's past my bedtime, so I'll say adieu for now. Thanks for listening!
Shalom!