Last weekend I was invited to a little retreat to a cabin hosted by my cousin Terry and her daughter Jaime. There were 19 of us in all (including 5 children) and we were instructed to bring our sewing machines. Terry is an excellent quilter and we were to make 6 blocks each out of strips of fabric. The triangle in the middle was for our name since these squares will go into a memory quilt. We had such a good time, laughing, eating, sewing and catching up with family and friends that we are going to do this every year. Now that we have some experience in quilting, I'm sure next year's quilt blocks will be much more complex. I believe that quilting is an art form and you can get very creative with the fabrics.

These were the blocks for one of the quilts--very colorful!

I was very excited because it snowed while I was there. This is the view of the lake from the cabin.

I had to take my paints with me and I painted three small paintings while I was there. This is for Terry, signifying her landmark birthday with the cupcake (purple is her favorite color).

And this little painting was for Jaime.

These four paintings are the last of the miniatures that I have painted so far. . . I may do some ballerinas. I think my favorite so far is the one of my father-in-law on his tractor and the sheep. I believe that makes me a country girl (I already knew that though). When I was a girl, I used to go with my neighbor (who is now my father-in-law, yes I married the boy next door) and feed the pigs and cows. He would pull a little trailer behind his tractor and that is where I would ride. I moved to Kentucky from Nashville, TN and I thought it was wonderful to feed the cows, chickens, pigs, climb trees, ride horses. . .

Here are more miniatures that are about 3 x 4″ in size. I wouldn’t mind being under this palm tree right now!

This is from one of my vacation pictures–I love the reflection of the bird on the wet sand.

I have a fascination with these little easels made out of forks. I’ve gone to all the antique stores around and collected quite an assortment of forks and my husband provides the labor to transform the forks into these lovely little easels. Well I had to paint little paintings to go with the easels. Here are a few of the paintings, the first one is a vineyard, the second image is a better view of the easel, the third image is my little still life of three pears and finally I painted my father-in-law on his tractor and some of his cows (his big pets). So far I’ve painted eleven so stay tuned for more.