Daily Challenges

Of course, sometimes just getting out of bed is a challenge, let alone realizing a dream, creating a masterpiece or changing the world!  Look to accomplish little things.  I have posted before about daily projects, and I have started several strings of daily projects over the past few years.  I have yet to finish any of them.  As I have said before, if you get bogged down and break a daily sequence, just pick it up again whenever you can.

I am returning to an artist trading card a day project that I made up for myself.  It was supposed to run for one year, 365 cards.   I have been working in it for five years now!  I have finished January through May.  Here are most of the pieces for June and July:

It is June again, so time for me to pick up the project again.  Will I finish the rest of the project this year?  Time will tell.

Last year, I discovered a great website about art journaling, DaisyYellow and a two month challenge out on the site each year - the index-card-a-day challenge.  I started the challenge last year, and did not get very far:

I enjoyed the concept and I love the cards I made.  I lost the self discipline to keep going to the end. Now, I am rolling along with this year's challenge:

I fully intend to pick up and complete last year's remaining index cards (most of them!) after I get through the ones for this year.

Latest Adventures, Having Fun

Can anyone blame me for not wanting to sit in front of my computer when I've had a week like this?  First, this is the week of the annual Route 40 Yard Sales.  I took a day off from work on Wednesday, rain dampened the four days of the event, but I found a couple of astounding late 1800s scrapbooks.  Here is a sample of the treasures in them:

I am a casual collector of paper ephemera, I never thought that I would find anything like these.  They have a bit of everything, calling cards (social media, 1800s style), advertising cards, newspaper clippings, and embossed and printed cut outs that were sold just for scrapbooks.  The newspaper clippings are mostly social news columns for rural communities near where I live.  Notice the date in the above image, but I don't know who MSL was, I have not found a full name with those initials yet.  One of the scrapbooks goes to World War I, with clippings about local residents in the war effort. 

In between everything else, it is tomato planting time again:

Finally, I tried something new this year and went to a produce auction to get a stash of locally grown. strawberries to freeze for the year ahead:

I have usually been able get strawberries from local Amish farmers selling from the roadside, but I have not been in the right place at the right time this year.  They must all be taking their produce to the auction, so I will be buying there from now on.  I simply cannot eat grocery store strawberries anymore, they are picked when underripe to survive shipping, and strawberries do not continue to ripen once they are picked - sour and tart tasting.  The local berries are right on ripe, so sweet and delicious.  I am looking forward to strawberry cake, strawberry milkshakes, strawberry shortcake, strawberry bread...