Happy 4th of July!!

Due to the holiday today, I have changed the colors on this blog. I'll switch them back next time I get on.
S. was in the parade today with his fellow boy scouts. K, Rapunzel, and I gathered a large bag full of candy. I know, 18 and 16 is supposed to be too old to gather the candy, but most of it was just K.'s doing and us grabbing the candy that fell in the road. Thankfully Mom didn't frisk us for any pocketed candy this year like she has done for as long as I can remember. I have quite a stash of the good stuff (eg. Twix, Skittles, not tootsie rolls) in my purse. S. came down after the parade and had his pockets STUFFED with candy. Mom and Dad gave him the two choices: have all the candy that was in his pockets or put it in the bag with all the stuff we gathered and get an equal share of it all. He chose the latter, although he wasn't very happy about it.
After the parade we went to a county park and had a picnic lunch there. Dad, S, K, and I played catch and did a little batting practice. We had an old free-bee (sp?) baseball from last year that we played with. I don't think the poor thing was meant to be played with. It was doing just fine 'til Dad pitched it to me. I gave it a nice, solid hit, straight back at Dad. I deformed it. Now there is blue paint on the bat from the ball and a flat spot on the ball from the bat. After I hit it a few more times, the S, K, and Rapunzel, and even Mom, it no longer bears much resemblance to a baseball. It flies weird. It feels really weird to throw it.
I had to use Rapunzel's old glove, the one Dad got her when she was two years older than K who is now 7. We're keeping our eyes out for a good used one at a garage sale or Goodwill. Mostly I use Dad's, which he's had for a good 20-25 years.
After that we tried to find two more letterboxes. The first one we (guess what!) didn't find! Even after I tramped around and got my legs all scratched up trying to find it. But I found the second one. It was really easy, the directions told exactly where to find it, didn't have to search at all. But the stamps were interesting. It was hidden by the same person I mentioned before, the one who did the Buffalo Bill Cody one. He hand carves the stamps, and they're really intricate. I'll put pics on here soon.


Yesterday, after cleaning for a house showing, I finished a last practice painting of one of the butterflies. It's the one (if you look back a few posts) in the circle with the flowers. Tomorrow or day after I'll start on the final paintings.


I'm going to go be sociable now. We're at my grandparents' house now and everyone else is in the living room talking. Have a wonderful day!!
~Candy-stuffed Kiwifruit

New Paint

Today we went out, since it was so hot and sticky and boring sitting around the house all day, and looked for a couple of letterboxes. We found the first in a pretty park overlooking the Mississippi river and Buffalo Bill Cody's childhood home site. It would have been a very nice place for a picnic; cross that out, it is a good place for a picnic, just not on a hot, sticky, buggish day like this was. Then we looked for another one at a welcome center, but it was no-where to be found. The instructions said that it was "under the porch behind the lattice on the south-west corner of the porch. The instructions lied.
Afterwards I tried to convince Mom to take us to the courthouse in the county I was born in (wouldn't you love to know where it is!) so we could get my birth certificate so that next time we're in C______ I can take the test and get my permit. She didn't want to go there, so who knows when I'll actually get my driver's permit! Instead, we went to an office products store and I got fiver new colors of paint. The store is more of an art supply place than an office supplier, but that's what they call it. Anywho, I got Winsor & Newton's Cotman Water Colours in Burnt Umber (my last tube has some sort of mold or something in it and leaves little black flecks in the paint), Lamp Black, Cobalt Blue (my tube of that is also diseased), Prussian Blue, and Permanent Rose. At least four, if not all five, of those colors are to be used in my butterfly project. I'll leave y'all to figure out which ones. Mom was quite shocked at the expense of paint. Just those five little .27 ounce tubes cost just over $18! No wonder you hear about 'starving artists'! It's not because they can't sell their art, it's because they have to spend so much of the proceeds on buying more paint! And that also explains why good paintings are soooo expensive.
Actually, after I finish my butterflies, I might fix up some Christmas card ideas I have and find a way to sell cards. Last year I designed and painted our family Christmas card.
Today we went to Hobby Lobby so Mom could look at pictures to possibly put in the kitchen. I browsed through some of the posters they have, and have designed a room around them. It's to have a sand colored floor (or maybe actual sand poured on there, although that would be really hard on the wood) and a beach-themed mural (painted by Yours Truly, Moi) on one wall. The other three will be light brown, or better yet, bamboo painted on! The windows will have light, billowy white curtains and shades that, when pulled down, show water and sky and possibly another of those huts that you see in commercials for the Bahamas. And last, but not least, the bamboo walls will have the pictures hung on them. Pictures of beaches and beach chairs and surfers. Paintings of palm trees and sailboats. *long sigh* Once I get a chance to use my oil paints I'll try a palm tree or two.
Sorry for the long fantasy, it just looks so nice in my mind. It would be really cool if I could actually do that.
"Anything else?" She asks Herself.
"Not that I can think of. Can you think of anything else?" Herself asks She.
She replies with "Nope!"
"Then we're done here. See y'all later!" Herself finishes.
I'll write again later, after I've gotten at least one of the three butterflies finished. See ya later!
~Kiwifruit

New Computer

Woohoo!
We have a new computer now, so I'll be able to keep this thing more up to date. And also I'll be able to put on those pictures of my butterfly paintings.

Here's one:

What I did here was print out some butterfly coloring pages off the internet. Then I lightly traced just the outlines of them and free-handed the inner details. The pictures on the notebook paper are my paintings.

The second step: (It ought to be right here!)

Drat it!! How am I supposed to put a second picture on here when it won't go where I want it??? ARGH!! Hmph.

Well, I'll post the second step tomorrow. For some reason unknown to all, the computer (who doesn't have a name yet) has decided that he doesn't want to cooperate. If another picture is going on here, he wants it anywhere except where I want it.

My mom, brothers, sister, and I went letterboxing today.

For any of you who don't know what that is, it's sort of like geo-caching (sp?) or a treasure hunt. To get started, you choose a rubber stamp that you feel represents you or your family, or just one that you like (I wanted one that said 'Blah blah blah', but we got a Snoopy one instead). You also purchase a notebook and an ink pad. Then you go to www.letterboxing.org to find a box hidden in your area. Mom found two at a park in a nearby town, so she printed up the instructions for finding it. The first one we found today was quite well hidden in a real cool little hollow just off the main trail. Now, the letterboxes are all different styles, usually a tupperware container with a notebook and a rubber stamp in it. What you do when you find one is take the stamp from it and stamp it in your notebook, and then you stamp your stamp in their notebook, along with the date (let's see how many more times I can put the word 'stamp' in this sentence :-).

Anyway, we found two today. The first time we tried to find some, Mom found some instructions for a set of four stamps. They were spread out around a park, and the last one had the notebook in it. We set off, all excited, and carefully followed the instructions. The first one was no-where to be found, and same with the second. I found the third right where it was supposed to be, but we tried for a long time to find the last one and never found it. Dad was working that day, but during his lunch break he came down and looked for the first two, convinced that we were all blind as bats and they were right infront of our noses. Guess who didn't find any! But I won't rub it in too much. My sister (she wants her nickname on here to be 'Rapunzel') found the first one today, then seven-year-old K. found the other. Now we have three stamps in our notebook.

I'm going to go take a bike ride or something before it gets too dark out. Have a good day, and thanks for reading!

~Kiwifruit

P.S. Has anyone else ever had trouble adding a picture and it not wanting to go where you put it? If so, could you please tell me how you made it work? And also, how do I make it double space (as in, putting two spaces between paragraphs)?