Back from my break and it's up to nothing wednesday!

It took a little longer than expected to get back to my blog and I completely blame it on the very short heat wave we had until today, although of course I was simply still in vacation mode and do-nothing mode. I started work two days ago, but my time at home was still spent reading and just sort of hanging around doing nothing too useful. ;-)

But now I'm back and wouldn't you know it: it's wednesday! This would be the day to show you what I'm up to, but as you may have guessed, I'm up to nothing yet. Tonight will be the first time after 12 days that I will be working in the studio again. Of course there's still projects lying there and of course I have plenty of ideas, but as for anything to show you about them...nah.

So I've decided to just show you a few pictures I took last week so you can at least see what I was up to then. As stated in my last post I went to my sister's house for a free vacation. The only 'cost' was to feed and watch her dog, which was actually just a bonus. I mean... come on...look at him:

Meet Casper, my foster dog.

Is he cute or what? He's a very old and very sweet beagle. He's not one of those petting dogs, he likes mostly to be left alone. Except when he's scared and he gets scared by thunder storms and hard rain. When that happens he likes to be comforted and lie really close to you. I felt quite flattered thinking this dog saw me as a comforting rock of safety ;-)

Staying with my sister also meant enjoying her beautiful garden which was in full bloom. For someone with no gardening skills or desires to gain any her garden was a sweet haven. (I have a jungle in my back yard and I expect wild monkeys to move in any time now to replace all the cats that call it their paradise.) I took many many pictures of all the flowers and here's just two of them.

Stokrozen (no idea how to translate that)

Enormous lillies

She also has a lot of trinkets in her garden, you know, little statues, little decorations. Here are some of her stone birds. I took this picture because the perspective made me smile.

They look like a couple of chatty birds to me.

But the best part of where she lives is that it has a beautiful country side. It's mostly farm land with lots of grass, trees and fields full of corn or potatoes. And many of those fields were in bloom too. Here's what the Achterhoek (it's in the east of the Netherlands) looks like:

An old barn next to a farm.

Another farm.

A beautiful white house. I could live there!

Sometimes it was like walking/biking inside a postcard. The funny thing is that I live in a beautiful place myself and can almost forget about that when I see countryside like that. I sometimes wish I could live in several places at once!

I am especially drawn to this countryside because it was where I was born. I guess it makes me all nostalgic.  My father used to have a farm there. I only lived there for the first six years of my life, but just look and see if you wouldn't remember it well:

Yup, that's the house I was born in!

The farm is long gone, but the house still stands. Every time I'm in the neighbourhood I just have to ride past it. I haven't had the nerve yet to knock on the door. I would like to, but I think I would also like to keep my memories unspoiled. Oh well, maybe one day I will...

On the last day I went for a long bike ride and what did I spy in one of the fields?

It's a stork!

I never saw a stork in the wild. It was so cool! Unfortenately it was too far away to get a really good close up, but I stood there for quite a while observing it and enjoying it anyway. It didn't seem to care I was there.

Well, there you have it, my vacation in a nut shell. Next to biking and walking I went to the nearby city's market and bought lots and lots of fabrics to take home with me. There was so much to choose from that I wished I lived closer so I could go more often. I also bought some ribbons and paper.

I didn't do much art. I did some doodling in a sketchbook and I kept up my journal, but that's about it. It's okay, today I am going to get back to the work table and get back into my artsy groove. There's lots to do and it's high time I did some of it! ;-)