Such Beautiful Fairies!

Karla's Faerie Book Swap

Karla Nathan comes up with really wonderful swap ideas - like this one! We sent in 8 fairy pages and received 8 different pages bound into a book.  Karla made the covers, selected the best pages for each book, and decorated the binding ring with lovely ribbons and charms. 

Warning: Lots of Photos Ahead!

Karla's Front Cover - she hand-painted the beautiful little fairy, then decorated the copies differently with flower petals or leaves for the fairy's wings and added other embellishments too. Probably no two covers are exactly alike.

Flower Fairies - Tami Hacker - the arms and legs move so she can dance!

Tami digitally created the back of her page

Suzie Button - blue satin, lace, jewels, butterflies, and more!

The back of Suzie's page - how dreamy!

Beautiful Fairy in a forest of green velvet leaves - Ruth Flowers

A younger fairy on the back of Ruth's page - and dream by Nancy Collins

The back of Nancy's page - and Kathy Kathy Cabble's Blue Flower Fairy - the dewdrops don't show in my photo

The Blue Flower Fairy's back page - and Lynn Legge's Sleeping Fairy - so elegant

The back of Lynne's Sleeping Fairy. I think this might've been the front of the page - so beautiful - but the other side looked better with the Blue Fairy page.  Karla selected pages that looked good together for each book.  Here the Fairy Whispers page by Myrna Ernst looks good with Lynne's page. Of course, they're both beautiful on their own too!

The back of Fairy Whispers - and this sweet Pink Fairy leaning over to smell the flower by Carol Pohl.  She makes me think of a Hummel girl!

The back of Carol's Pink Fairy page - the really dramatic background doesn't show so well in my photo! Karla used vintage wallpaper for the inside front and back covers, as well as the back cover.

I'm so happy that I was able to join this swap! Love my book!!! When I made my pages to send to Karla, I made an extra to keep for my own book.  I'll show it along with the others I made in my next post - soon, I hope!

It's a LONG Story!

Whooomp! There Goes Another Tree!

Just when I thought I was all set to post some craft photos - a swap here, a swap there, gifts sent, gifts received ..... all that fun stuff .... I  once again woke up to the dreaded "tree falling" sound in the middle of the night! 

This is always pretty scary since it's a very distinctive sound and, of course, it's pitch black outside - 20 or so wooded acres with no street lights or close neighbors. The first thought is always, "Am I sleeping in the safest room? Is it going to land on the house - and on me?!"  

Our telephone pole is under there somewhere! No telephone - no dsl - no email - no Internet - no Facebook - no Pinterest - no Words With  Friends! Just a plain little cell phone for my lifeline - not even an iPhone! 

This isn't even an entire tree, just one "branch" or section! That's the remains of our old tool shed in the foreground and my parents' house (unoccupied) in the background.The house was not damaged. 

It extended quite a ways and actually knocked down two smaller trees as well as the telephone pole.

The smaller branches of the large "branch" seemed to just keep on going! 

Lopping off the remaining branches of the tree 

Here you can see where the piece broke off the tree. That was the second piece of that tree to fall, so we decided to have the rest cut off since it extended so far towards our house. Very expensive week!  

The Bobcat pulled the smaller logs to the truck but they used a crane for some of the larger pieces.  

There's another tree directly behind. See how tiny the men look!

It's so sad to see these huge old oaks go! They've been here so long - at least 60 or 70 years.

This all started way back (!) when Tropical Storm/Hurricane Isaac was heading up the other coast of Florida and on towards New Orleans. We had no wind but quite a lot of rain over here on the Atlantic side.  

A few days after the pole was knocked down, a telephone man came and temporarily hooked us up, but the tree people came the next day and unhooked the temporary line. Then they came back a couple of days later to finish the rest of the tree so we didn't call AT&T until they were all through. Now today AT&T put in another temporary line and said another crew will come by the end of this week to bury it. Yay! Love those buried cables!

Enough tree talk! I usually post things like this on my Aralia Lane blog (which I've also used for the 52 Books in 52 Weeks challenge this year), but this has consumed my time for the past two  weeks or so. Have posted so little this summer that I wanted to show something!

Time to get back to my crafts and swaps!