Just Keep Swimming.

      Hi everyone. I hope your week is going well. After rain early in the week we're back into some sun, and I hope to be able to enjoy it while it's here. It sounds like we're going to have another  slightly wet but still wet start to the weekend. If that actually happens it will be the 13th wet Saturday in a row.

     Some of you mentioned after reading my T Day post how big my new refrigerator is. I know in many parts of the world the refrigerators tend to be smaller, but ours is actually on the smaller side for here in the US. It's not the smallest you can buy, but far from the biggest. The scratched and scared one we have in the basement (which I mentioned in my T day post and which was the best refrigerator deal ever) is  even a little bit bigger than our new one is.

    And look what my husband bought on his  latest grocery store trip right after the new frig was in place.

     Ha ha! The coffee ice cream for me and the chocolate chip for himself. 😀 (They're actually the same size containers but his is pushed a little further back on the shelf so mine looks bigger-which wouldn't be so bad if it was-hee hee.)

     Today I want to share another page for Matilde's People challenge at Art Journal Journey. It's a page out of the Nature Journal I am making. I call it swimming with the fish, which of course you do if you swim in a lake, river, ocean or other natural water feature.

    I started by adding this strip of filmstrip that you might be able to see some fish on. I nabbed a few of these old filmstrips when we were cleaning them out of storage at the school I used to teach at.  This is a section of one about fish, which then inspired my page.

    I stenciled the big fish images by using a brown marker to get the image nice and crisp. Then I used watercolor paints to color them in. When that dried I added a bit of sparkle glue to them which sadly is showing up more like speckles than sparkle in this photo. I used paint to stencil the little schools of fish, and even though those did not come out quite so crispy, I think you can make out they are fish. The background was then created with some various watercolor paints and some brown watercolor splatter.  Finally I stamped the 2 people (from an old Hero Arts stamp), fussy cut them and added them. I also stamped the quote, another oldie in my stash, but I'm not sure who made it.

    This past Sunday was put the dock into the water at my mother-in-law's home. I still keep calling it that even though my mother-in-law hasn't lived there for several years now, and my husband and his 2 sisters are now the legal owners.  One of his sisters and her husband came over, and along with my husband and myself we did a bit of leaf clean up and put the dock in place. It was actually a beautiful day, and so after all the chores I decided to go swimming with the fish myself.

    Actually I never swim alone because Mr. Pete is my swimming buddy always.  He was so excited that as soon as the steps were put in place, (and not yet even screwed in), he was running down them and taking a swim.  He did so much swimming it took him a full day to recover. 😏

   That's it for me. Have a super day (or night) ahead.