Spring in Maine is Fast

Kitchen sink windowsill: tiny Irises from Joanie with a little gnome friend.

We go from nothing to everything. All of a sudden things are growing! The weeds, the flowers, the grass! I am always surprised by the suddenness of spring here, and by now I shouldn't be. So my semester is nearly done (only two and a half weeks to go!), the garden wants attention, and thank goodness Jake has been using his vacation to get a lot of housework and outdoors' work done, while I have been working a few extra hours! My plan is to sort through winter coats and boots...

I recently visited crafting mecca, Michaels Arts and Crafts, and loaded up on some supplies. A very generous angel passed a gift certificate my way in thanks for something I was already glad and happy to do for free. Lucky me! So I have some new toys to play with...new stamps and stamp pads, papers, new (sharp!) scissors, pens, and lots more. This morning my children and I had some play time and made some cards.

Below, find Jonas's "Cozy," featuring a hedgehog getting snuggly by the fire. The hedgie is from Jan Brett's book Trouble with Trolls and was withdrawn from the library because it was severely damaged: torn and written in!
Sylvan, our sporty boy, made this card for our also-sporty friend, Carl. I helped find the right words:
"Invitation to a Tea Party," below, with new teacup stamp!
Below, an ATC with movable arms! This teacup girl can wave to you! There are a couple of techniques here that I learned by an advance viewing of Robinsunne's book The Great Library ATC Swap---I can't give you more details, you'll have to have a copy for yourself! Visit her website to get more information about the release of this resource that will help you go about starting an ATC group at your own library.
A week from today, on Wednesday, April 30th is the next meeting of the Wednesday Swap Group at Rockport Library! It's National Poetry Month, so that will be the theme to get us started. Come at 6pm, bring some lines of poetry, scissors, glue, maybe your favorite papers---and don't forget your cards to swap, if you have any! Hope to see you there.