Hello, dears!
This week it’s my turn for Art Lab, and I have something a little different than my usual watercolor art for you today. 🙂 Quite different, in fact: in this post I shall give you guys a tutorial on how to make a cute owl with graphite and colored pencil shavings! 😀
But first, the inspiration behind the art: Continue reading
Hello, dears!
First of all, I’m SO sorry this took so long to get up! We had a lot going on today and then it took us hosts all way longer to put together this post than we thought. O.o Anyway, HOORAY, today we announce the winners of The Summer Bored Games! WOOHOO! Be sure to also stay tuned for our favorite pictures that you guys sent in over the past month, near the end of this post. Continue reading
Hello, dears!
AHHHH I am SO excited about this post! Finally, after many months of working on my studio, I am ready to unveil the (almost) finished product! 😀 I absolutely LOVE it, and I hope you guys do too! If you need a refresher on what the studio looked like before (hint: it was a closet), click here to see part one.
Now. Walk right this way, please… And here we are! Won’t you step inside? Continue reading
Hello, dears!
I’m SO excited to post this photoshoot, because I think it’s one of my favorites ever! The evening was certainly wonderful. ❤ Plus, the lighting was so perfect I didn’t have to edit most of these at all! Definitely a bonus. Continue reading
Hello, dears!
Are you excited for the next round of SBG? I AM! WOOHOO! Thank you all for your participation so far, and for making it so fun to host. 😀
In case you’d like to review the basic rules of the game, you can check out my introduction post right here. Shall we begin? (That was a rhetorical question, by the way. I’m going to start whether you answered yes or no. *nods*) Ahem.
WHAT TO DO:
You have until the end of this week to complete however many of the 35 challenges below you wish to do. This is the only week that you’ll be able to complete these challenges.
When you’ve completed all the challenges you’d like to for the week, submit your points using the survey included in this post (see it below). Please try to submit your results just once per week. I suggest waiting until the end of the week to submit the survey.
Okay, guys, NOW FOR THE CHALLENGES. Are you ready for this? *drum roll*
What do you think? Which of those challenges are you most excited to complete? My favorites are #1 (THAT IS SO FUN TO DO, GUYS), #11, and #31.
If you have any questions about the challenges, the game, or anything else, don’t hesitate to contact us at summerboredgames(at)gmail(dot)com. We’re happy to help! Read on for a few more important details:
If you’d like to print off a checklist to help you keep track of the challenges for this week, CLICK HERE.
If you take any photos of your completed challenges (or your funniest challenge fails!), we would LOVE to see them! Send your pictures to us at summerboredgames(at)gmail(dot)com, and we’ll pick our favorites to include in the final post! (If you’re just completing the challenges just for fun and haven’t signed up, we’d still love to see your photos!)
We’ve really (REALLY REALLY) enjoyed the photos you guys have sent us so far, and we can’t wait to show you guys at the end of July! Keep the pictures coming, hee hee! 😀
Have you completed all the challenges you’d like to do for this week? Hooray! Just click the image below to submit your points:
Click that graphic and it should take you right to the form!
Please be honest – the game is no fun if you aren’t playing fair. Please follow the rules and make it fair for everyone!
And now… *drum roll again* the participants who got the most total points (points from the last two weeks).
10: Aria: 102
9: Enni: 107
8: Anna P. and Christina (tied with same number of points): 131
7: Ava: 148
6: Mandalynn: 161
5: Julia Rose: 167
4: Sophie: 187
3: Jo: 195
2: Chloë: 216
1: Laura: 259
Way to go, girls! 😀 Also can we just take a moment to appreciate the fact that Laura did EVERY SINGLE ONE of the challenges so far, minus one! *awed look* XD WOW, LAURA. I AM IMPRESSED.
You have until 11:59 PM EST on July 21st to complete as many challenges as you can and submit your points. Have fun busting that boredom! 😀
Thanks for reading, dears, and have a lovely (and non-boring) day. 🙂
***Allison***
Hello, dears!
It’s been AGES since I made the last “Moving On” post, but I wanted to wait until I could finish up this mini-series. And now I can! We are all moved in to the big house now, except for one room of unpacked boxes… yeah, that might take us a while. XD But now, enjoy this account of the most recent phase in our moving process! I can’t go over every single part in detail, so I’m just going to highlight some major chunks: packing and unpacking the house, packing up Dad’s shop, and taking down the old log cabin. Enjoy!
Packing up our old house was exhausting and kind of sad. I can’t remember the rooms ever being empty, since we moved there when I was one. However, it WAS exciting to finally be ready to move into the big house! One day while we were packing I saw this box which used to hold bittersweet vine found on our farm, and I had to get a picture. Moving really is…
Often when I got up in the mornings, I would step between this curtain and the window…
and look out at this view, to see what the weather was like, and wonder what would happen today.
The last evening at our old house was gorgeous. It was sad to think I’ll never see these views from the upstairs windows anymore. I’ll miss them. *sigh*
Some of our family as well as people from church helped us pack up, which was wonderful! Dad got a (not the most beautiful) trailer for our semi, to load up all our stuff. We fit practically our whole house into one trailer. It was strange to see all our familiar furniture stacked together in an unfamiliar place like that.
And then we left. We can come back again, of course, but it will never be the same since the house and the farm are no longer ours. *sigh*
Goodbye, old farm. ❤
The semi trailer got to our new farm a couple days later, and since my Dad and brothers weren’t available to unpack as soon as we hoped, the girls decided to start in ourselves! We got probably 2/3 of the semi trailer unpacked with just my mom, my grandmother, us three girls. 😀 It was great. I didn’t get too many pictures of this, but I got a ton of videos! I want to make a fast-motion video of us unloading the trailer. 🙂 Here’s a picture of Logan helping us, at least:
It took us two days, I believe, to get to this: AN EMPTY TRAILER!
After we unpacked our dining room table + chairs, we sat down to the first “official” meal in the big house, with delicious food that some of our friends from church kindly brought us. ❤
HA HA, here’s one last bonus picture for this section. XD Gram was like, “Allison, where’s your camera? You need a picture of this!” And I hurried off to get it. 😛
In case you’re wondering, the package is a fridge. One of many, sadly. Dear me, the first fridge we got from Lowes wasn’t the right kind, the second one didn’t work, the third one leaked, the fourth was the wrong kind AGAIN, and we’re still waiting for Lowes to bring the fifth one and HOPEFULLY IT WILL BE RIGHT THIS TIME. Goodness gracious, WHAT ON EARTH IS WRONG WITH LOWES?
Once we got the house stuff moved, we went back to our old farm and packed up Dad’s entire shop (which he uses for fixing farm machinery). Let me tell you, that was a job! Over 40 years, the shop had accumulated enough nuts, bolts, screws, paint, ratchets, wrenches, etc. to seriously open their own hardware shop. XD Only it would be an extremely dusty hardware shop.
For some reason I think this looks really neat…
As you can see, Dad has SO many tools in all different sizes, particularly wrenches. I really like this picture. 😀
The best part of packing was having pizza for lunch. 😛
Remember this old, fallen-down log cabin in our backyard?
Well just a few weeks ago, we took it down the rest of the way. I was hoping to find some more neat old letters or other interesting artifacts, but sadly we mostly found… a lot of junk. It was a bigger project to take it down than I expected, but it’s nice not to have to stare at it from half the windows now. 🙂
First, Dad and the boys pushed it over with the telehandler. Next we all clambered up on the roof with a couple of hammers and started extracting the nails so we could peel off the metal. The tar paper under the metal was covered with dead ladybugs and stinkbugs. O.o That was nice.
After we dragged away the roof skeleton, we had to pick out all the leftover boards and junk. That took quite a while.
Thankfully we had the skidloader to help!
Like I said, we didn’t find many valuable old things, but we did find some interesting junk! Including…
We are keeping the second half of the aforementioned items. Also some of the century-old heart pine wood.
It was finally cleared away about supper time. We were planning to make a patio around the chimney, but it’s not in the best shape so we might take the chimney down later after all. 
And there you have it! A VERY abbreviated account of some moving-related things that we did recently. We are all enjoying living in the big house immensely. It’s just so huge and beautiful! Maybe once we get it decorated I can give you guys a tour. 😉
What was your favorite section of this post? Do you think Megan should fix up the flamingo? Ever have troubles like we did with our fridge? And what is your favorite kind of pizza?
Thanks for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!
***Allison***
Hello, dears!
Just recently I got to meet one of my dearest blogging friends, Aria. She and her family stayed at our farm for a weekend and we all had SUCH a great time together! We had never actually seen each other in real life, but we’d become super close through emailing, letter writing, phone calls, etc. It was almost surreal to finally meet her, but SO, SO EXCITING AHHHH.
I won’t go tell you guys everything today or it would be as long as three posts, but one of the things we did together was a best friends photoshoot! We both love photography and Aria actually has a photography business over at Aria Photo! Some of these pictures Aria took herself, and some we asked my sister Megan to take (well, to press the button) for us. I basically did nothing with these pictures except be in them, heh heh.
Still, Aria gave me permission to post my favorites today along with some amusing behind-the-scenes tidbits, after which you can check out Aria’s post to see HER favorites, and read about how we became friends.
_____________________________
The first night Aria came, we took the Mule (a brand of UTV, similar to an ATV, not a literal mule XD) and drove around our farm, looking for good photography sites. It was SO much fun and the land looked gorgeous in the golden light. The evening we started with this path leading into the woods.
We wanted to get coordinating outfits for the shoot, and then Aria came up with the idea to get matching skirts but in different colors. (You might remember mine from the barn dance pictures.)
It turned out so well! This skirt is SUPER twirly and fun to wear, although it’s a bit delicate and has to be handwashed. It also has like a bajillion color options. You can see the Amazon listing right here.
HA HA we had such troubles with this pose. XD Actually no, I had troubles with this pose… and several others, actually. XD Poor Aria. But in my defense, some poses are a LITTLE difficult when you’re very tall and your best friend is only an average height. It was hard for me to bend back far enough without pulling her with me. XD
I LOVE THIS PICTURE! I just think it’s so cute and sweet. ❤ Also Aria kept exclaiming over how much more tanned her arm was than mine in this picture, but I said IT WAS JUST THE LIGHT. XD Seriously though, in real life our skin tone looked the same. *nods emphatically*
Ahh, I love this photo location because of the stunning light! We tried to twirl each other, but… ahem, I kind of kept messing it up. *facepalm* Thank you so much for being patient with me, dear Aria. ❤ I’m not USUALLY so hard to pose. XD
Ahh, the backlighting is just… INCREDIBLE. I took some more golden hour photos of this location last night that I can’t wait to show you guys! In another post. 🙂
Now the third location. Megan thought we looked like midgets here, and also Aria kind of fell backwards while sitting down, but it was worth it. XD I love this picture.
Oh yes, Aria wanted to do my hair AND my makeup for me, and she did them both beautifully! I never use full makeup and don’t normally style my hair much, so that felt different. I wouldn’t want to go to all the trouble and time normally, but it WAS fun to just be stereotypical teenage girls for a little while. 🙂
❤ ❤ ❤ (Also SEE. Now MY arm is tanner than hers. It’s probably still the lighting. *nods wisely*)
This pose, the outfits, the lighting, the location… they all went together PERFECTLY on this one!
Now we’re into the photos Aria took with her remote. This is by an old, rustic shed we have by our driveway. It’s a great backdrop! By this point my hair was getting kind of frizzy from the humidity, but Aria’s still looks gorgeous, don’t you agree? ❤
The whole time she was there we were both like, “I keep wanting to email you about this trip but then I realize I can just TELL you!” XD It was so strange because we do tell each other anything and everything by email usually.
AHHH I LOVE THIS. Aria said she wants to get a print of this one. ❤ I think Aria is possibly my long-lost sister? Or maybe a long-lost cousin. Whatever she is, I’m awfully glad she’s not lost anymore. ❤
THIS WAS SURPRISINGLY HARD. For one thing, my fingers are a lot longer than Aria’s, so at first the heart was lopsided. XD And apparently even though Aria was more flexible than I was for, say, the bending-backwards photos, her fingers were not as flexible as mine. BUT WE GOT IT. SORT OF.
Now both of our curls were kind of disintegrating at this point. BAD HUMIDITY.
Next we tried some photos in the corn but it didn’t really work out. The corn leaves intruded into our faces too much. XD But it worked quite well to be in front of the field!
Isn’t this one so cute?
Lastly, we took (or re-took) this picture the day before she left. I like to tease Aria that her eyes are blue because she says they’re green. What do you think? I think we’re both right and they’re mint or aqua… or just beautiful. 🙂
Since this is the kind of picture that I think looks good when you can tell it’s edited, I took the liberty of editing it. Tell me if you would rather not, Aria, and I’ll take it off. 😉 I don’t know why I love eyes so much, but I sure do. ❤ They’re just so gorgeous and unique!
________________________________
Lessons learned:
Thanks SO much to my sister Megan for helping us with the photoshoot. We couldn’t have done (at least part of it) without you! Also thank you, Aria, for too many things to count, but especially for listening to anything I tell you, for the looooong and honest emails and letters about everything from faith to health to politics, and for being my best friend forever. ❤ PLEASE COME BACK SOON.
I hope you enjoyed that post, guys! Be sure to check out Aria’s post to see a few different photos (and some photos of just me that I didn’t put on here), and follow her blog to see more posts about her visit in upcoming weeks. And tell me…
Isn’t Aria’s/Megan’s photography gorgeous? Have you ever had a friends photoshoot? Which pose or picture was your favorite? Have you ever met an internet friend?
Thank you so much for reading, dears, and have a lovely day!
***Allison***
P. S. Also, a big thank you to guys for participating in the first week of The Summer Bored Games! We LOVED hearing your feedback and seeing your photos from those challenges – I can’t wait to show you guys the pictures too. 🙂 Ready for some new boredom busters? Check out Megan’s post here!
Hello, dears!
Welcome back to another episode of The Art Lab! It’s a bit late because I kind of got the posting schedule confused but ANYWAY, here we go! Today I’m going to show you how to draw cute, summery popsicles inspired by some popsicle stamps Megan bought at the post office the other day. (They’re forever stamps – thus the strange post title. 😛 ) Here’s our art inspiration for this post:
And here’s what you’ll need to re-create it:
Ahem. We are now ready to start the tutorial.
Ta-daa! Step back and try to admire your work of art without eating it. It doesn’t taste as good as it looks, trust me.
If you make art inspired by this post, we’d love to see it! Send us a picture at theartlabblog@gmail.com and we’ll add it to our gallery on The Art Lab website.
What do you think of this art idea? Did you get the new popsicle stamps? And what is your favorite popsicle flavor?
***Allison***
P. S. Made some art and now you’re bored? Well I have some good news: The Summer Bored Games have started! Check out Clara’s post here to start completing challenges! And thank you SO much to everyone who signed up – we now have over 40 participants!
Hello, dears!
I’ve been half dreading this post and half eagerly anticipating it, because it is SO much work to sort through over six months of photographs and edit and organize the best ones for a post. O.o But it’s always so satisfying to know I’m “up to date” once I finish Etcetera posts, so yay! 🙂
Anyway, today I have for you quite a lot of pictures about quite a lot of things. I’ll attempt to organize this post a bit more than I have previously so it’s not overwhelming. XD I hope you enjoy browsing through the sunsets, farm landscapes, portraits, etc!
When it hasn’t been raining (which is rarely XD), there have been some beautiful sunsets, clouds, and other skyscapes recently.
Ahhh, big, fluffy cumulus clouds just make me happy when I see them. 😀
Isn’t this gorgeous? Sun rays through clouds also make me happy. 🙂
We’ve gotten so many rainbows recently (and so much rain too)! I don’t think I even noticed this one was a double rainbow until I edited the picture. O.o XD What a beautiful promise a rainbow is. ❤
I love how calm and soft this picture is!
The moon looks HUGE beside the miniscule airplane and tiny cloud, doesn’t it?
Does this count as “skies”? I don’t know. But this strange, neat limb broke off one day and it was sad. 😦 Now there’s just a stump left.
I actually combined a couple of pictures to make this one, because I wanted more birds in it. 😛
I thought it was so neat how you can faintly see the entire moon!
Sunsets + reflections? OH YES!
A e s t h e t i c. ❤
This spring there were buttercups EVERYWHERE! It was so pretty! One day Maggie was conveniently laying in a highly-concentrated area of flowers which went perfectly with her sunny, buttercup personality. 😀
BUNNIESSSS! My brothers built new rabbit pens for them, and the next two pictures are when we first put them in. I love how Basil’s ears are always one up and one down. XD
OLAF IS JUST WEIRD. XD
And here’s Lavender! SHE IS ADORABLE. And she’s also grown since I took this picture.
Well this isn’t exactly a pet, but… WARNING, SNAKE AHEAD! We found this black snake one morning while we were cleaning out the raised beds. I don’t particularly like snakes, but it was so neat to get such close-up photographs! It didn’t slither away for quite a while; it just posed. 😛 I got a bunch of good pictures, but I’ll be considerate and only show you guys two. XD
This was a looong time ago, but here’s a pretty picture of blossoms on our what we thought was an apple tree but is actually a pear tree.
In early spring, there were violets EVERYWHERE! There was one row beside a small, white shed in our backyard that was overflowing with blooms. ❤
Such a cute, tiny flower! (Actually it’s a weed, but it’s still cute.)
I LOVE THIS PICTURE! It’s just so CUTE!
Ahh, this is so creamy and gorgeous!
We always pass this on the way to my grandparents’ house and I always want to get a picture of it. This time Mom kindly stopped to let me take some, and I’m SO glad she did! I just love the scenery here, and the rolling hills that seem almost too perfect to be natural. The tractor baling hay adds a nice touch too. 😉
Dad planted corn or soybeans in most of the pastures this year, and it looks GREAT! He got the crops in a little late because of the immense amount of rain we got, but now that they’re in they’re looking gorgeous. I took this picture a while ago; the corn is a lot bigger now.
The cows are gone now. *sniff*
Carmen got absolutely SOAKED (on purpose) one day when it was raining, which made for some pretty neat pictures.
Carmen wondered if I wanted to take a picture of her glasses, and I said, “Sure!”
I took this picture after we finished unloading the tractor-trailer load of our house belongings, and I was all sweaty and dusty. And then I had heaps of fun editing it later. XD I don’t know why I like taking pictures of eyes so much, but I DO!
Carmen wanted me to take a picture of her swinging. 🙂
It was a BIT scary to balance my camera on a fence post on a windy day, which is maybe why I have a slightly strange expression… XD
Oh look, it’s me leaning up agains the fence again! What do you know. XD Carmen took this picture for me, because a friend wanted a photo of the dress I got.
Okay, this is really random, but… did you know you can use a mixture of about half coconut oil and half baking soda to repair worn wood? If you scrub the mixture into scratches or places where the varnish doesn’t look good, it will magically look like new after you wipe it away with soap and water! Trust me, it is amazing. O.o I don’t know exactly how it works, but I think the oil stains and darkens the wood and the baking soda kind of sands it down a little. However it does it, IT WORKS. We’ve used this a lot to “refinish” worn furniture, floors, and trim lately.
We don’t have a huge garden this year, but we are growing a few things in the raised beds behind the big house. One of those things are (or were) radishes! I thought these baby radishes that we thinned out were so cute, hee hee.
GUYS. I FOUND A FIVE LEAF CLOVER. AND MEGAN FOUND A SIX LEAF ONE. We found a lot of mutant clovers around the Cedar House, actually. XD And no, I did not photoshop an extra leaf on. Promise.
This almost looks abstract if you unfocus your eyes.
I love photographing water drops. 😀 Don’t they look like crystal?
Phew, that was a TON of pictures! Not nearly all the good ones, though. *sniff* This post was a great (but hard) exercise in only keeping the best of the best, or else the most interesting. Hopefully I succeeded. 🙂
So, which category was your favorite? Have you ever found a more-than-four-leaf clover? Have you tried the coconut oil trick?
Thank you so much for reading this lengthy epistle, dears, and please have a lovely day!
***Allison***
Allison Marie 