the things you see when you are locked out of your house...

Last Wednesday we were accidentally locked out of the house for about an hour. While waiting for someone to come home to let us in, we were able to notice the little things that we often pass by in daily routine...

 

 

“Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back

and realize they were the big things.”

 Robert Braul

rock paintings of fauna, flora & feathered friends

Earlier this month Nicole of GardenMama hosted a rock swap. I quickly jumped in to be a part and had so much fun figuring what things would come to life from a rock. Here are the rocks I painted and swapped saved for the green spider web doily. That one is mine :)

Creatures of the Night

Thanks to emails from LocalHarvest.Org, we found out about and attended Creatures of the Night at the Fullerton Arboretum. Still daylight at 7:30p we headed out with a tic-tac-toe paper assignment with various things to check out. Some of the things to see on our assignment were looking into the palm fronds for owls, listening for frogs and crickets at the pond, looking for possom and/or skunk tracks in the desert area and keeping our eye out for jackrabbits in the garden. After about an hour or so, we had a lady with various creatures come talk to us about them. She showed us a possum, a snake and our all around favorite of the night, a fennec fox. I tried to document as much as could before the sun died down. 

I found out that they have plenty of volunteering positions for things like cultivating, potters, nature guides, etc. They also have a Victorian Society you can volunteer for where you can be a docent in Victorian attire. Volunteers for this learn historical facts about Dr. Clark, Heritage House, Fullerton and Orange County.

ralph b. clark

 

 Natalie has begun her softball practices already and we are blessed enough to have them at the lovely Ralph B. Clark Regional Park. Before practice started, we visited the lake and we were both pretty pleased at seeing water lilies for the first time. Afterward, while she learned plays, pitches, bunts, etc. I got to wander around a bit...

 

The park is filled with jackrabbits and squirrels, everywhere! I had a lot of photos but the zoom on my camera phone is not that great. Just pretend in all these photos, there are sweet little creatures hiding everywhere (which they were)!

 

It also has plenty of nice spots for picnics as well as some volleyball courts too.

 

They have a stage area which you can rent out and near it is the Interpretive Center. It's small but the animal bones found inside are quite big. They have mammoth bones as well as skeletons of other animals that were native to the area from thousands of years before. I never knew a giant sloth was, well, so gigantic!

I am hoping to score more pretty photos from this place but all in all, you can't beat a beautiful park...

at west end and a challenge maybe?

There are a lot of lovely, creative, eco friendly shops with amazing products made/built from sustainable resources and recycled items. A few years ago, a new catalog made it's way to our address and I was instantly in love. At West End has beautiful things, that are rustic and practical all at the same time.

We just got another catalog in the mail and I find myself wanting so many of it's lovelies. Here are a few (and i mean a few, they have a TON of things I like!):

Okay, so I could go on with showing you photos but what I am going to do next will be slightly different. I'm still going to show you goodies but I think there are some very crafty and innovative individuals out there that might be able to replicate the following in a homemade, recycled, crafty kind of way. If you see these items and figure out ways for us every day folks, please share here (with link too). My mind is already scrambling on how I can make a couple of these items. I mean, not as nice or ritzy, but you know, in that humble 'I (We) made this' kind of way.

This is the item that got me thinking of 'hmmmm...maybe out of some sort of carton with old hanger wires or maybe still using a glass jar or..'

'using stick and branches Nat and I have gathered and a bit of cloth...'

'We already save a bunch of glass bottles...maybe if i found a cool crate thing or something at a thrift store? Well, maybe not but if I knew woodworking...'

'nice idea for a family outing, gathering and craft perhaps...'

'Some one who is really crafty, talented and has all the right resources...'

'again with the glass bottles and sturdy sticks we find...'

So I will force myself to stop here and to point out that in know way am I trying to undermine the talents of the craftsmen or the store. I think the shop and it's good are brilliant and would love to buy everything in stock if I could. It's just that I always have this wheel turning in the back of my head for crafts Nat and I could do together or things I could make with my surrounding resources (fallen branches, rocks, other nature items, etc.) and out of used products (jars, bottles, cartons, boxes, etc.) into a great recycled item.

I love looking around, finding cool projects and ideas and posting them to Believing Nature (where all credit is to the blog/blogger/website where I find what I share). There are some very amazing mommas out there that are guiding their children in a knowledge of loving and respecting nature and the earth. If I may, I would like to mention a few here (by their blog name):

GardenMama

5 Orange Potatoes

The Magic Onions

Resurrection Fern

Quince and Quire

SouleMama

Childhood Magic

Maya*Made

Acorn Pies

Natural Suburbia

Of course, there are plenty other natural and crafty folks out there. I am constantly on the look for new blogs (which I have found a few new jems!) and adding them to my Google Reader. I admit, it is hard keeping up with so many that I sometimes I have to unsubscribe, subscribe again, unsubscribe, well you get the idea.

I will be posting something similar at Believing Nature and probably tweet this on my herb and flower twitter to see if anyone would be interested in a new task to discover :)